TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘offtopic’ Category

By Chris Meadows

I’m not generally one to blow my own horn (much), but on the same day that my Wall•E post was linked by TechMeme, I have discovered that my Ficlets post has been blogged by one of my own Internet heroes, Wil Wheaton. Wil wrote, in the context of discussing AOL’s decision to end Ficlets.com:

A fellow Ficleteer, Chris Meadows, wrote a Requiem for Ficlets that touched me in a way that, if Loretta touched me, I’d say, “Oh yeah, that’s nice.”

And then he quoted me at length, and linked to the guide I wrote for archiving one’s own Ficlets.

Thank you so much, Wil. You’ve made my week.

By Paul Biba

Lake Superior State University has just published its annual list of words that should be banished from usage:

“It’s that time of year again!”

Lake Superior State University “maverick” word-watchers, fresh from the holiday “staycation” but without an economic “bailout” even after a “desperate search,” have issued their 34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. This year’s list may be more “green” than any of the previous lists and includes words and phrases that people from “Wall Street to Main Street” say they love “not so much” and wish to have erased from their “carbon footprint.”

This years words include: green, carbon footpring, carbon offsetting, maverick, first dude bailout, monkey, iconic, not so much, and others. You can find the full list here. Thanks to Ars Technica for the link.

By Paul Biba

Bezyacases are made in Turkey, and the one they sent me is called the MultiFlip. Here you see it with the top opened. The top is held in place with two magnets, and drops down, so it is out of the way when you use the phone. The leather and stitching are first quality and there is no ugly logo on the outside. There is a rather attractive logo impressed on the inside of the flip. Now let’s take a look at the back of the case.

Here you see a couple of things. First, and most important, the front flip cover snaps off! There it is sitting next to my iPhone 3G on my desk. It is held on by the two snaps at the bottom. The top snap is for closing the case around the phone. Notice also that you can attach a belt clip (included) also. When I use the phone on my desk I remove the cover flap and put it back on when I put the phone in my pocket.

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By Paul Biba

My MacBook is off to see the doctor and probably won’t be back for at least a week. It developed a faulty fan and started to sound like a playing card rattling against the spokes of a bicycle. Luckily I invested in the AppleCare plan, so the repair will be free. But I’m still left without my main machine.

That leaves my Eee PC. How to make it usable in the interim? The first thing I did was hook it up to my 23" LG display and it is running just fine at 1280×1024. Using the trackpad isn’t much fun, so I found a Logitech cordless mouse. The Eee PC doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I’m using one that is connected to a wireless USB receiver. The nice thing about this unit is that you can scroll left and right by pushing the scroll wheel in those directions. I don’t need it with my big monitor, but it is definitely useful when using the machine by itself, as sideways scrolling is often needed with the small screen. The photo, by the way, I took with my little Canon and then I pulled it off the SD card onto the desktop by using a USB card reader.

The keyboard issue

Now, what to do about the keyboard. I am the proud owner of two old IBM buckling spring keyboards. They are one of my most treasured possessions. I took one out and connected it to a USB to PS2 adapter and it works just fine on the little machine. I would never attempt doing much typing on that tiny keyboard. As a matter of fact, I love this old keyboard so much that when the MacBook comes back I’m going to see if I can use it with that. The Apple keyboard has all sorts of special keys so I’m a bit skeptical.

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By Paul Biba

We have just recovered from three days without power after the huge windstorms that rocked New Jersey over the weekend. This meant no computer and I kept my iPhone use to a minimum as I had no easy way to recharge it. (Also meant no heat, lights, water, bathrooms, etc. - not a pleasant time).

When the power came back I booted up and went to Bloglines and found, of course, a huge number of RSS feeds to go through. I have 130 feeds in Bloglines and that’s a lot to check if I’ve been off the net for a while. I had the same problem when I came back from California after a 5 day vacation.

I found that in both instances I only ended up checking a few favorite feeds and then marked all the others as read. Without any prompting from a list I found that I checked the same feeds both times, so I thought I would share them with you as they seem to be my favorites. I hope you find some of them of interest:

Bookofjoe
Ars Technica
Laptop Mag
MobileRead
Mobile Tech Review
Palm-Mac
TeleRead
The Unofficial Apple Weblog
The Gadgeteer
Dans Data
Peter Watts’ Blog
How to Spot a Psychopath

By Robert Nagle

I realize that this is dangerously offtopic, but the Senate’s recent condemnation against moveon.org’s Petraeus ad is deeply unsettling for those who care about the First Amendment. George W. Bush joined in the condemnation. (During the 2004 election George W. Bush refused to condemn the Swift Boat ads, instead calling for all 501C organizations to refrain from running election ads–apparently not realizing that he had recently signed a campaign finance reform law allowing precisely these kinds of political ads).

George Lakoff defended the use of the “betrayal of trust” theme in political discourse.

It seems inevitable that the political winds will change rapidly for the 2008 election and moveon.org’s current stances will suddenly become mainstream. But do symbolic votes like this have any longterm chilling effects on political speech? Do they produce the opposite effect of calling attention to such speech? Or are they just harmless political sideshows?

Publishers on both sides have flourished in this polarizing political era. Should they now start worrying about congressional meddling? NYT and other dailies run not only political ads but book ads in its Sunday editions. When a publisher runs ads for political analysis/tirade books like Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, Jon Stewart or Al Gore, are they not implicitly promoting a book’s message?

How do you market political books (or ebooks) after such a Senate vote? Should advertisements for a political book be just an inoffensive compilation of blurbs or an attempt to convey the gist of the book’s message?