Comments (0) Fox News quoted its darling, Sarah Palin, who claims that Rand Paul is getting the same treatment she did. That’s nonsense. Rand Paul is being criticized for honestly voicing the logical implications of libertarian beliefs. Sarah Palin was criticized for her lack of any accomplishment beyond a mean sort of glibness.
At least Paul understands what he believes, whether the rest of us agree with him or not.
This is a review of a few fine points about the free Blackberry and Macintosh versions of Amazon’s Kindle, with an eye towards reading MobiPocket format ebooks.
I do a lot of reading on my smart phone, since it has tons of text storage space, and Gutenberg has lots of free ebooks. They now offer everything in MobiPocket format. Amazon took over management of the open-source MobiPocket Reader and has apparently killed it with apathy. Meanwhile, the Kindle will happily read MobiPocket format files if you put them in the right place.
So here are my thoughts on Kindle for the Blackberry and Kindle for the Mac. I’ve also included comments on the “free” books currently offered by Amazon for the Kindle.
Continue reading 'Free Kindle Software for the Blackberry and Mac'»
I’ve been taking my first trip with my Blackberry Storm 2. I’ve battled through the challenges of synchronization. I’ve got my couple of indispensible apps. So I’m all set, right?
Wrong.
It seems incredible, but the Blackberry, the machine that became the archtype “smart phone” has never, ever, figured out how a calendar is supposed to work. Instead of handling dates and time in terms of local time zones, everything is in Greenwich time.
In practice, this means you type more information to schedule something on a Blackberry than you do on normal phones. Specifically, you must always give a time zone.
This is just bad interface design.
Continue reading 'The Blackberry Calendar is Broken by Design'»
Last fall, Alex warned me that Apple was dropping their support for the Palm Treo. I couldn’t upgrade to Spotted Lynx, or whatever the latest OS-X is called, until I switched phones. While I had been hoping to hold out for a Verizon iPhone, my patience ended a couple of weeks ago. After a weekend with a Droid, and a brief flirtation with the Palm Pre Plus, I settled on the Blackberry Storm II.
Aside from the built-in contact list and calendar (oh yes, and the phone) I rely on a smart phone for two other things: an ebook reader and a password manager. And I also want to feel some comfort for the phone’s security model. And, oh yes, I need easy access to contacts and calendar on my desktop, presumably through a sync feature.
I didn’t warm to the Droid because it’s too much like having a laptop on your pocket. And since the Pre Plus was a complete rework, I figured it wouldn’t be that similar to the Treo in practice. There was a period of suspense after acquiring the Storm, since I wasn’t sure it would in fact do all I wanted, but things eventually worked out.
I read a lot of ebooks on my smart phone, and they all come from Project Gutenberg. In other words, they’re all free. When I recently migrated from my venerable Palm Treo 700 to a new phone, a good ebook reader was a high priority.
In fact, finding a good ebook reader was deal breaker – I wouldn’t keep a phone that didn’t have a good reader. I settled on a new Blackberry Storm 2 and Amazon’s Kindle for the Blackberry. While not perfect, the Kindle software serves its purpose well. And I still haven’t had to pay for a book.
Continue reading 'Reading ebooks on the Storm II'»
Marcus Ranum has suggested that it might be a good idea (if difficult) to make separate identities expensive. While acknowledging the importance of allowing anonymity, he argues that increasing the incremental cost could dramatically reduce on-line spams and scams.
This led me to reflect on the fact that I routinely use a truckload of e-mail addresses:
Continue reading 'Too Many E-Mail Addresses'»
Cousin Jon sent me a link to David Pogue’s recent column on “Why We Make Home Videos.”
Pogue starts by complaining about how consumer video has gone through several recent media transitions, making it very hard to view older videos. He’s developed an almost industrial process for copying his Mini DV tapes to a hard drive “in the background” while doing other work. The Mini DV format is disappearing since modern recorders just use built in flash memory.
I remember moving a lot of Hi-8 and VHS video to Mini DV when it first came out. I transferred several Mini-DV tapes to DVD, but the task remains unfinished.
Personally I’m ambivalent about having a huge family video archive. It’s nice at times, but lots of it is arguably nonsense. Pogue addresses this question, coming down in favor of family video.
I’d prefer to work with only one company when doing a particular type of thing. It seems somewhat convenient that Turbotax and Quicken both belong to Intuit, and I do payroll through Intuit as well.
So, when it came time to do Form 1099 filing, I tried to do it through Intuit Payroll. Well, guess what: Intuit Payroll doesn’t do 1099s. Dumb, perhaps, but true. So I ask Google for advice and find myself to something with the uninspiring name of “eFileMyForms.Com.”
The site seems to work fine. The hilarious part is that a couple of days later I get an e-mail from Intuit – they too offer that service. As far as I can tell, though, the only way to find it is if they e-mail you the link. (Or you can click here).
Continue reading 'Uncoordinated Companies'»
Things seem to be moving forward on much of the proposed Hastings river bridge. The pic below is an artist’s rendering of downtown near the replacement bridge. This shows the ‘arch’ alternative – they still haven’t decided if it will be an arch or ‘cable’ design.
Two additional riverfront projects emerged while planning this bridge: 1) moving the electrical substation that blights the riverfront landscape, and 2) building a pedestrian ‘spiral’ – homage to the long-gone Hastings Spiral Bridge – to connect downtown and the pedestrian walkway on the bridge deck.
Neither of these will be part of the bridge project.
Continue reading 'The Bridge and The Riverfront'»
Joan Walsh of Salon made an apt observation today, when commenting on Rush Limbaugh, who is currently hospitalized. She thinks it’s impolitic to hit Rush on this, even though he’s never shied away from hitting others when (literally) down:
I think she’s right, though such high-mindedness does pose a challenge for progressive and/or liberal people. I think that good causes can be promoted with humor and the sharp side of the tongue. Florida Rep. Alan Grayson gave a great example when he argued that opposition to health care reform was “pro death.”
I hope that some day soon our own humorist-turned-Senator Al Franken can find his voice.
Continue reading 'Fighting the Good Fight'»
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