Chronicling the depravities of the State.
So I got my new Evo 4G and one question that I’ve been curious about is how durable the screen is. Thankfully somebody was willing to sacrifice for science and performed a scratch test on the screen of his Evo 4g.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeoAl-94bks]
Yes it passes with flying colors. If a razor blade won’t scratch the screen nothing I do to it should cause any trouble either.
This is awesome. The ultimate goal to projects like MakerBot is to creating a 3D print that can print more of itself. Well that goal is now one stop closer thanks to a man going by the handle Webca. He managed to create an entire frame for a MakerBot using a MakerBot. He also posted the instructions online so others can replicate his work.
So today is the big news day… at least in Apple circles. Apple officially announced the iPhone 4. So am I mad that I purchased an Evo 4G instead of waiting a couple days for the new iPhone announcement? Nope. I must say Apple threw some cool features into their latest phone but alas it’s still buckled down by Apple’s draconian App Store policies making it a wholly unusable device in my opinion. It’s also still locked to AT&T which is one phone company I personally never want to deal with.
But they did some cool shit. The new screen should look fantastic. I’m also impressed that Apple used the metal band running around the phone as an antena. One of the iPhone’s biggest problems has been reception and Apple appears to have found a method of correcting that in a rather clever way. They also have a video chat feature but it only works over Wi-Fi (meanwhile the video chat feature on my Evo works on 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi but you have to pay for yet another service to used it).
Overall it’s pretty cool if you can stand AT&T and Apple’s App Store policies.
I’m not a fan of URL shortening services such as TinyURL. In my eyes they are nothing more than a security risk as you have no idea where a shortened URL is actually going to take you. That’s a huge problem and hence why I will not click on a URL from one of those services and automatically delete any comments containing shortened URLs. For a while now I’ve been hoping somebody would create some kind of plug-in for Firefox that would automatically expand shortened URLs.
Well somebody has released a plug-in that offers exactly this service. The plug-in is called Long URL Please. Simply put when a page loads Long URL Please replaces all the shortened ULRs with the URL that the URL shortening service redirects to. I installed it and am testing it on a virtual machine to see how well it works. So far it’s doing a pretty decent job although it seems to require knowledge of each shortening services and will only work with those known services. Either way if this plug-in pans out it will be one of those must installs for Firefox.
Well it appears as though the company that makes the e-paper displays used on e-book readers I’m so fond of is making some real advancements. E Ink just showed off some of their new displays at the Society for Information Display conference. The linked article includes a video demonstrating some color displays (nowhere near as rich of color as current LCDs produce of course) as well as flexible displays. By the looks of the opening demonstration they have upped the refresh rate (the display was showing what was being written is damn near real-time).
It’s pretty cool stuff. I would love to see color displays come to e-book readers in the near future.
Every wondered what the inside of a nuclear power plant looked like? Well now you can see for yourself. It’s just awesome looking and certainly a mad scientist’s dream come true.
Yes I keep making posts comparing the Barnes and Nobel Nook to the Amazon Kindle. It’s not that I hate the Nook, far from it I just find it lacking in several areas. Well I found another thing I love about the Kindle that the Nook lacks, access to the store without the device. Before I purchased my first Kindle I browsed through Amazon’s Kindle Store to see what books they had available.
Today I figured I’d see what books the Nook had available but am unable to find the store front on Barnes and Noble’s website. It appears the only way to browser their book selection is to have a Nook. That makes checking out the selection of books very difficult before buying the device.
The Kindle store let’s me purchased or obtain trails via my web browser and have them delivered to my Kindle when I next turn it’s wireless interface on. Sure this feature doesn’t sound like much but I actually use it quite a bit. There are quite a few times where I’ll see a book mentioned but not be near my Kindle. In that case I’ll just log onto the website and select the book as a sample. The next time I turn on my Kindle the sample appears and I remember a book which I most likely forgot earlier. Yes the website is nothing more than a fancy reminder system for me but it’s very convenient.
If anybody knows how to access the Nook’s store via web browser let me know.
Every since the iPad was released I’ve been getting asked if I’m going to throw my Kindle away and replace it with Apple’s new device. My answer is always no which almost always causes the asking person to inquire why I’m not replacing my Kindle. Well simply put the iPad doesn’t do as good of a job as my Kindle at the one task I bought it for, reading books. So here is a comparison of the two devices as it relates to being e-readers.
Screen Technology
This is the most crucial element in this discussion for me. The iPad has a very nice looking screen. Unlike the Kindle the iPad’s screen is full color and higher resolution. Actually the fact it’s full color is generally the reason I hear from people who say I should dump the Kindle.
On the other hand the Kindle has an e-ink display. It’s a unique display for several reasons. First of all it doesn’t use a back light as LCDs do meaning you don’t get a harsh glow from it at the price of requiring lighting to read in the dark. The second difference between an LCD and e-ink display is the fact e-ink displays only use power when they are changing on screen elements. So long as nothing on the screen changes an e-ink display will not consume power meaning devices using these displays can have amazing battery life. And finally the third major difference is an e-ink display works in direct sunlight. You can read your Kindle on your deck, at the beach, or anywhere else bright sunlight can prevent a LCD from being usable.
Of course these advantages come at a cost. As previously mentioned e-ink displays are gray scale online while LCDs have full color. Additionally the refresh rates of e-ink displays is pretty bloody slow. While you can watch a fast paced action movie on the iPad you can’t even play Tetris reasonably well on the Kindle screen. The slow refresh rate can also make navigating the display laggy.
But it comes down to function. The Kindle is meant, at least for me, to read books. Any additional features are secondary and barley of note. The e-ink display excels at emulating paper meaning reading on the Kindle is as close to reading a real book as you’re going to get today in an electronic device. I absolutely love e-ink displays and would really love to have a cell phone with such a display (to crank up the battery life).
Battery Life
There is no question here the Kindle wins. Once again this shouldn’t be surprising since the Kindle’s screen only uses power when it’s refreshing and the device itself uses very little power otherwise unless the wireless connection is on. I believe Apple rates the iPad’s battery life at roughly 10 hours. I’ve gotten a solid three weeks out of my Kindle with the wireless turned off. With the wireless turned on all the time the battery life still hovers around one and a half weeks. Generally this isn’t a big deal as I recharge most of my devices every night (with the exception of the Kindle). But it’s nice knowing if I have a full day of flights ahead of me I’ll have the battery life to make it.
The other reason the Kindle has such great battery life is because the hardware inside is clocked down a lot. This restricts what capabilities the Kindle has which is perfectly fine for a dedicated device which the Kindle is. The iPad on the other hand has some wicked hardware for a mobile device. You can play games, watch movies, listen to music, and pretty much anything else you would want to do. The iPad is a generic device meaning it has the capabilities to do more but at the cost of not being designable (and thus tuned to) to a specific task. 10 hours is still a pretty respectable amount of battery life for what is essentially a netbook sans keyboard.
Form Factor
Here again the Kindle wins for what it does. The Kindle’s (standard not the DX) form factor is very close to that of a real book. It’s thin and very light. The iPad on the other hand is larger and heavier meaning is doesn’t keep the form factor of a real book. Once again this is a trade-off between size and capabilities. The iPad has a larger screen and needs a larger battery. The Kindle on the other hand only needs a screen large enough to display a comfortable amount of text and a much smaller battery since it draws less power.
Wireless
Both devices are wireless capable. The Kindle is able to use cellular data connections (which Amazon calls Whispernet) while the iPad can use either Wi-Fi or, in specific models, AT&T’s 3G network. The nice part about the Kindle is the cost of the wireless data is incorporated into the price of the device and books your download. You never have to pay a monthly subscription for access to the cellular network the Kindle uses while you have to pay up to $30.00 a month for the iPad’s 3G capabilities.
With that said I wouldn’t mind having the ability to use Wi-Fi on the Kindle. Everywhere I go has pretty good 3G coverage but there are a lot of places without. For those locations your only option is to purchase Kindle books on a laptop and transfer them over to the Kindle using a USB cable (included with the Kindle). I hope someday a Wi-Fi card is put into a future Kindle model.
But once again we see the difference between a dedicated device and a general purpose device. The Kindle uses the wireless connection to download books, firmware upgrades, and browse web pages (in a very limited manner via the Kindle’s built-in web browser which isn’t very good). The iPad can use it’s wireless network for everything from browsing web pages to streaming video. Thus the Kindle uses very little bandwidth meaning Amazon can soak up the cost. Still having the ability to download books at almost any time without needing to attach it to another computer is great. Being able to do said task without an additional monthly charge is amazing.
Overall
Overall I feel the Kindle is a better e-reader than the iPad for the above stated reasons. With that said the Kindle is also designed specifically for reading meaning the entire device can be tailored as such. The big difference between a dedicated device and a general purpose device comes down to having a master of one trade or a jack of all trades. A jack of all trades can do most things decently but oftentimes is limited in some manner from being perfect on most of those trades. A master of one trade can be designed entirely around that trade making it much better at doing the job.
The iPad will net you move features but it’s not a dreadfully good e-reader in my opinion. I read a lot so it’s worth lugging around an additional device to read on. But I can’t really use it to replace any tasks I do on a laptop. Either way my Kindle isn’t going away anytime soon.
Today’s the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man. To celebrate Google has a new banner up celebrating the holiday except it’s not just a banner is a fully playable Pac-Man game written in JavaScript! Head over to Google and click the insert coin button and play a round while you’re pretending to be searching for something work related.
There are several technologies I absolutely adore and 3D printers are one of them. 3D printers are devices that can make objects from a design file using a series of printer heads to slowly piece the object together from raw material. For instance you could make a Glock pistol frame from strings of plastic by melting the plastic which would be ejected from the printer heads in the desired form. I didn’t realize how far this technology had come along until I found out the made Robert Downy Jr.’s Iron Man armor for Iron Man 2 using such a device.
The suit parts were constructed using 3D printers which made fabrication as simple as designing them on a computer. Likewise they were made to fit Downy’s body making them more comfortable to wear on set.
I got excited about this technology when it was used in Daemon and Freedom(TM) by agents of the Daemon to construct pretty much everything they used. Of course the 3D printers used by Daemon agents were able to use metal dust to construct objects that plastic just wouldn’t work for (such as machine parts for their automated vehicles). Having such devices in your household would be a huge boon. Just imagine being able to construct a 1911 frame out of metal dust (Oh that would make the anti-gunners shit themselves endlessly). Or maybe construct replacement parts for your vehicle. So long as you have raw materials around you could conceivably create anything you want or need.
Currently this technology is pretty pricey although there is a project called MakerBot which is an open specification for creating such machines. MakerBots can currently made almost anything that is within 4″x4″x6″. Obviously that’s not very practical yet but it most certainly will become more advanced and cheaper as time goes on, that’s the benefit of technology.
Frankly this technology is practically limitless in it’s potential. I’m glad to see it’s advancing pretty fast.