Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market.
[ Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses ]
This leaves BluRay as the only High Def on a Disc format left in the game. I'm a bit surprised how quickly that went. I'm rather sure that there are still some Super Beta people out there who refuse to give up the ghost. What is the actually market condition that hammered the nail in HD DVD's grave?
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Universal and Paramount rumors? -
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Who really knows. What I do know is this means that Universal, Dreamworks, and Paramount will all be changing their tune to BluRay soon. And that means Back to the Future, Heroes, Shrek, Breakfast Club, and many other goodies coming to BluRay.
Props to KooshMoose for sending me the Kotaku link.
I generally avoid puzzle video games. Why? Because they generally suck. Usually plagued by few, simple, old, hackneyed, puzzles that I figured out when I was 8. This, however, is an exception. Clearly my many years of experience helped me solve these puzzles, but that doesn't mean that I did them all instantly, or that I didn't sloppily miss a few the first time. There are over 120 puzzles, and apparently a weekly puzzle available for download (for who knows how long, but still that's cool). So lack of puzzles won't be an issue. And the interface is perhaps the best part. Instead of just saying here's 120 puzzles go at them, there is a well written story with decent animation (for a DS) that even has good voice acting. All-in-all it took me about 9 1/2 hours to complete the game and save the day. I've now started to destroy the game by finding every last puzzle and completing them all, and who knows what great "super ending" they have in store for me. Basically if you like puzzles, this is a must buy.
Lee Siegel argues that our ever-deepening immersion in life online doesn't just reshape the ordinary rhythms of our days; it also reshapes our minds and culture, in ways with which we haven't yet reckoned.
[ Amazon.com ... The Kindle Store ]
To hear the guy you'd think we're all headed towards living in caves sealed off from each other only relating via computers and in totally inadequate ways. Sounds like he doesn't like the electronic life, or the always on connection. Read all about it on your Kindle. Yes, he's selling a Kindle version. Hope this sells 0 copies.
Cherry Mash consists of a soft cherry flavored center containing real maraschino cherries covered in a mixture of chopped roasted peanuts and chocolate coating.
[ Cherry Mash: America's favorite cherry flavored candy bar ]
If you watched Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt, you saw him eat this treat and actually like it. So when I saw it for sale at the C.J. Olson Cherry's fruit stand, I knew I had to grab a few. What I didn't know, since I wasn't paying attention, is that it's not a cherry flavored center surrounded by chocolate, but surrounded by peanuts and chocolate. I just may have found a new favorite candy bar (though more of a lump than bar). And living no where near Kansas City, MO I will have to figure out how to secure a steady supply of these cherry-peanut-chocolate treats.
Yum.
Some folks just aren't happy with the Kindle case, and I think I'm among them. A few folks have pointed out that the Kindle stays in the case due to a tab that grabs on to a divot in the back of the Kindle. Due to this design the Kindle may stay in place, or pop out if the angle is just wrong, or the battery cover may stay in place and the rest of the Kindle fall out (happened to me once). Some folks seem to like holding the cover like a book, and it seems to do that OK, but after a week or so I've found that I like to read without the cover, so it served as only a case for me. And not a good one, IMHO.
No company has stepped forward with a replacement case yet, and I guess I'm just itchy, so I went to see what I could find. Cases seem to come in just a few varieties (based on a sampling of on-line shops, Microcenter, Circuit City, Staples...):
- Small Gadget Size: cell phone, iPod, PDA, etc.
- Camera size: a wide range here from point-and-click to pro-sumer SLR sized
- Laptop size: 13"-17"
- Portable DVD player: bigger than a small gadget, smaller than a laptop, thicker than a camera
And that's about it. The small gadget sizes are well ranged, as there are tons of these devices these days. The Kindle, however, isn't one of them. The Kindle could fit into some camera bags, but they are designed to hold a lot more than a small slate, and are therefore very impractical. Laptop bags are a good design for the Kindle, especially sleeves, but no one makes a 7" laptop bag. Portable DVD players are about the right size except way too thick, they seem to be a good alternative for UMPC devices, but not the kindle. Finally I checked container store and found the Baggallini Pocket Bagg. It holds the Kindle with little room to spare, which is exactly the size I needed. However as you can see from the product page there are all sorts of internal bits, which I am concerned could scratch my Kindle's screen. Not wanting to immediately hack up a $35 bag, I decided to augment it without altering the bag or my Kindle, and I did that by asking my wife to make a snap-in screen protector. The bag came with a snap-out key fob, so I bought a sew on snap of the same size and a polyester felt remnant and my lovely wife stitched it together to make this:
Which snaps in to the Baggallini's inside:
I place the kindle inside the bag, upside down, with the screen facing the screen protector and then I can even charge the Kindle right inside the bag. Of course this means I remove it from the bag to read it, but that's the way I like it.
Here are a couple more photos of the bag with the Kindle and my NPS Parks Pass as reference:
 
Perhaps this will help you with your Kindle Case Conundrum, or just add fuel to the fire. (OK, not fire, but certainly a polite discussion...)
Julie was lucky enough to get an order for the Kindle in on launch day — it’s been sold out more or less continuously since then — and I’ve been putting it through its paces for a couple of weeks. A few months ago I reviewed the Sony PRS-500, so the Kindle has made an interesting comparison.
[ The Gadgeteer - Amazon Kindle ]
They really went into great depth here, so much so that I won't try to duplicate their effort (which was on my list of things to do). If you are curious about the Kindle and looking for a good overview, this is the review to read.
A lecturer has criticised students for relying on websites like Google and Wikipedia to do their thinking for them.
Professor Tara Brabazon, from the University of Brighton, said too many young people around the world were taking the easy option when asked to do research and simply repeating the first things they found on internet searches.
[ Lecturer Bans Students From Using Google And Wikipedia (from The Argus) ]
I certainly hope she doesn't stop at this point and also bans them from using the computer to find books in the library. Card Catalog was good enough for her, why can't these kids just prepare for their future in the past, after all once they leave the university they won't have Google and Wikipedia to use as resources.
And ban copy machines and typewriters too, if 14th century monks could write out dozens of bibles in their lifetime, seems a student shouldn't rely on these modern crutches and just pick up a quill and vellum as we did before that accursed Gutenberg invented his devil contraption.
Props to Mak.
The Kindle Web Browser has 2 modes: Default and Advanced. Being the "power user" I am I promptly put it in "Advanced" mode figuring the controls would just get more complex. Actually, at a minimum, it would appear that "Advanced" means use CSS and Javascript to the best of your little ability, and thus the screen shot I took of Wikipedia isn't the experience that Amazon.com was going for. Here's an example (at Deathbringer's request):
 
Certainly the first one seems to attempt to be a niftier experience, but since this is more of a pure informational device, the second one is clearly a better Kindle experience. I'm guessing that Wikipedia does the same. I know it will make this site look much better (since that's how I rolled it).
So, the Kindle Browser Issue, once again, is a "Didn't take time to fully read the instructions" issue on my part. My apologies Kindle team.
In the last post I basically covered my first thoughts and how it handled various types of media. But there is more to the device. There is the odd case, wireless connectivity, the promised Wikipedia access, experimental web browser, and the curiosity about what this thing really is.
Odd case
The case that comes with the device has certainly had it's fair share of detractors. At first I didn't like it. The way the Kindle sits in it isn't very exacting. It would seem like it would fall out easily, and apparently some people have had malfunctions or a loose fitting where it just doesn't work at all. On mine it just doesn't sit square, but is about 2° askew. I forced myself to use it a bit more, and it does let me hold the Kindle more like a book, and protects it a bit when carrying it around. However with the cover it's much harder to type on the keyboard. Hopefully Crumpler, Case Logic, and/or Body Glove will fill the need with a neoprene sleeve that I'll end up loving. As free gadget cases that come with gadgets go, it's on par with what you'd expect, so I don't know why people are complaining.
Wireless Connectivity
The Kindle uses "Whispernet" which is some kind of resale of Sprint data without a long term contract or monthly fee. Amazon pays for the bandwidth by including that as part of the price of books, magazines, and blogs. The access is about what I'd expect. Sprint is supposed to have a good network, and it certainly seems to have better coverage than my T-Mobile phone. The wireless has a hard switch in the back so you can conserve battery and use it on planes. Certainly no complaints here, this is where the Kindle shines above all other e-readers.
Wikipedia
I guess it is there, the search quickly allows you to pull up your search phrase on Wikipedia, an I can read the resulting pages, but I wouldn't herald the experience. For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Click the link and see for yourself what it looks like where you are, and then witness what it looks like on the Kindle:
  
Clearly this wasn't considered as a priority feature by the Amazon.com team, or they are having issues with the Wikipedia people, or don't want to spend time reflowing/reformatting Wikipedia content. Perhaps it will get straightened out, perhaps not. The information is still there, and I still didn't pay a dime for the wireless connectivity.
Web Browser
Yes it has a web browser. Yes it works even though I'm not paying for access. However, no color, rudimentary javascript at best, small screen size, no resizing options, some pages just don't work (like Google Reader). What I'd love to be able to do is use this as my blog reader, but since the aforementioned Google Reader doesn't work, and the mobile Google Reader is horrible, my only hope would be to switch back to bloglines, and I'm not entertaining that idea. Google did do a Wii Opera Browser version of the Google Reader, which likely has 1 user, so perhaps they'll roll out a Kindle version. And where is this access coming from? IP Chicken knows:
What is this thing anyway?
So, as with most new gadgets, the question in the Linux community is: "How do we get Linux to install on this thing?". Why people want to install Linux on every device known to man, I don't know, but in this case it's already there:
I fuzzed out a few of the numbers, just in case they were identifying in some way that would be bad to me. But hey, how did I get all of these screen shots and the extra info? Hacker Igorsk knows how. He also has a guide on how to get non-Amazon.com Mobipocket DRMed e-books on to your device. Not sure if Amazon.com has issues with that, but apparently they are somewhat cool with hacking the device. Want even more details on what this thing is? Igorsk has part 1 and part 2 of his reversing the device, plus Mahalo has a page set up.
Yes, Jerry, I've purchased yet another gadget. This one is the new e-reader from Amazon.com, dubbed the Kindle. The kindle arrives packed in a box that looks like a book, which I find a bit ironic. I unpacked mine and proceeded to charge it as directed by the sticker on the front screen. It comes with a USB cable and a charge cord that is a standard 2 plug transformer with an itty-bitty round plug that plugs into the bottom of the Kindle. Then I looked for where to plug in my SD card, and determined that it was under the battery cover, so I waited.
Two agonizing hours later the battery was fully charged. I popped open the back and slipped in my SD card which I had preloaded with tons of test materials that I had created with the Mobipocket Creator. After all I want to put this device to the test, right? Mobipocket Creator can convert HTML, Word, Text, and PDF documents into a "Mobipocket" file that the Kindle (and other Mobipocket readers) can display. In the process of creating a few files, some for testing and some for eventual reading, I also installed the reader on my Laptop and on my PDA and neither proved to be a reading experience I would entertain on a regular basis. The PDA was nice that it's my phone and always with me so it's not something extra to carry, but it's not a very enjoyable read. So how did my conversions fair?
Religious Text
One of the most exciting things to me about my Kindle is the ability to get religious texts, for free, in a very portable, easily searchable interface. While the basic Qur'an comes in many sizes, and isn't much of a portability issue, it is not the only text that guides Muslims. There are a series of compendiums of stories about the Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) called hadith that are deemed authentic through a scientific approach and documentation of the chain of transmission. The most famous of these collections was compiled by Imam Bukhari in the year 870 or so and contains 7275 hadith and a collection compiled by Muslim Ibn al-Hajjaj in the year 875 or so and contains 9000+ hadith. Just those two alone can fill volumes, or part of an SD card in your Kindle... Do I need the ability to carry these around where I choose? Probably not, but I like the idea. I found a PDF of the Qur'an online, downloaded it and converted it. And then found the basic hadith collections in HTML that someone had spidered off of the USC MSA website.
Public Domain Book
Since I had just recently watched the SciFi mini-series Tin Man I decided a read of the original Oz might be in good order, so I went looking for the texts in online libraries. The major online repositories of free reading stuff seems to be the Gutenberg Project, iBilio, and perhaps Open Library. Gutenberg had the Oz series so I downloaded it in HTML. The books were easy to find, and although Mobipocket wasn't an available option, the conversion went pretty quick and rather painless. The resulting text is easy to read and hopefully I'll get around to it soon (as now that I have a portable library, there are many publications vying for my attention).
Graphic Novel
I love NBC's Heroes. The story is very compelling and I'd love to get more of it, NBC has kindly published some extra graphic novels online with story details above and beyond what we see on TV. To read them means to sit in front of the laptop for a few hours, which I do enough of already, so I figured get them over to the Kindle for a more comfortable read. Each is a PDF, which Mobipocket Creator claims to convert. Here's where we start to see some issues, not unexpected, but unfortunate. While text easily flows from one size to another, images do not. The images lacking color on the Kindle didn't pose as much of a problem as the tiny text in the images that you need to read (since that is the story...) Guess I'll be reading those on my laptop.
White Paper
As a technical resource the Kindle should be a great help. If I can get my tech library on it, it's available to me even if I'm working in the middle of the woods. I was troubleshooting some IP issues with Vista and grabbed a white paper from Microsoft about the Configuring and Deploying IPv6 on Windows Vista. Wow, this one was tricky. I guess I could have just left it the mess that Mobipocket Creator made, but I can't blame them. What the program does is have Word save out an HTML version of the document and then it does an import of an HTML document. Anyone who works on the web knows that Word does a crap-happy job of saving out to HTML, and Office 2007 is no exception. It rolls it's own unique version of HTML, that most other programs can't quite make heads or tails of. So I fired up my trusty vim and hacked it up until I was happy. The result is quite legible, but the effort means that I won't be doing a lot of Word docs.
Readily Available Document
Some documents aren't in the public domain, but are readily available for free in a format that could be pulled into the Kindle. One such example is Hacknot which Joe Grossberg made a comment about a while back, so I pulled it in and plopped it on my SD card. They've made it available on PDF in two sizes, can't remember which I picked since I wasn't going to print it anyway, just blend it up with Mobipocket. It was a totally painless process which I'm looking forward to reading the results.
Tech Specs
Being that I am a programmer/developer/coder/hack by trade I sometimes have to write tech specs. Even though I have two screens, during coding the real estate on my screens is limited so having an external copy is nice. And since I'd like to leave the world in a better state than when I got here, I don't like killing trees for that luxury (though I do resort to arboricide if need be). Wouldn't it be great if I could just pop the specs on the Kindle? Well in this case no. My tech specs were more like a series of screen caps and and ERD with little supporting text, none of which wanted to be exported out of Word to HTML, and once I coaxed them out, they were not legible enough to do me any good.
Text File
Well it says that it can do text files, who am I to argue. I'm on my third time through Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, so it's time to crack out a playing guide to help decode the skill points, since I'm not a pre-teen with years of free time on my hands. I am impressed here, it parses out the text as it imports to help with removing line ending hyphens and to figure out if there are headings or section numbers or what have you.
Amazon.com Kindle Books - Preloaded
Excited as I was, I ordered a half dozen items for my Kindle before it was even shipped, and by the time I was playing around with it, post charge, they were all there, delivered to me via Whispernet:
So far I've read the Murderer and that's it. Since I've already read the two Larry Niven stories in the past, as well as Neuromancer, I'm likely saving them for a long wait in an airport or doctors office when I'm bouncing off the ADD walls. So far, so good.
Amazon.com Kindle Books and Magazines
Once it arrived I found a few more items that sparked my interest, though interestingly most I found via Amazon.com and not from the storefront on the Kindle device itself:
All painless whichever method I chose to get it to my device, all look good (though The Nation is a bit dry). All-in-all a very pleasant experience.
Music
Yes music. Apparently the Kindle includes a speaker for audio book playback, and has a not-so-hidden experimental feature to play back that music via the speaker or headphones. I picked up a digital copy of Led Zeppelin's Mothership and loaded it up on the Kindle (I also burned a copy for the car). Audiophiles will not be impressed, but it was good enough for the likes of me. Playback interface and play options are vastly lacking, but this isn't meant to be an iPod.
Conclusion
Since receiving the Kindle a scant 36 hours ago I have read more literature of one type or another than in the 36 weeks previous. The Kindle makes it convenient for me to read when I get the chance, and provides me a better reading experience than bulky books, magazine, newspapers, and even a computer screen. I think my Kindle and I will get on nicely.
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