*michael parekh on IT*

ON A COOL KINDLE FEATURE

ONE SMALL STEP

I've been an avid user and fan of Amazon's Kindle book reader since the original launch, having now bought and read hundreds of books on the Kindle and the excellent Kindle for iPhone (free) software App. 
One of the big differences between reading a book on the Kindle (either generation) and the iPhone App has been the ability to highlight the content of the book and write notes in the margin as it were (can't do all that on the Kindle App...yet).
But once the notes are in the Kindle, attached to a specific book, they're kind of trapped in there.  The opportunity around making this stuff available on the web is of course a no-brainer.  Today Amazon took a baby step in this regard, as this TechCrunch piece explains:

"Amazon opened up a new feature on the Kindle: the ability to read your notes and highlights on the Web. Readers have always been able to make notes and highlight text on the Kindle itself. Now those annotations appear on your account at http://kindle.amazon.com. Once you sign in, you can see all your notes.

While this opens up all sorts of possibilities, Amazon is taking a very conservative approach. You can’t share your notes with others. You can’t even edit them in your browser.

All you can do is read them. That makes the feature little more than a Web archive of your notes and highlighted text snippets. It is a convenient feature, but why not enable sharing?

Why can’t I share an excerpt with my friends on Facebook or Twitter (with the beginning of a quote and a short link)?

Amazon needs to connect the Kindle to the rest of the Web.  Hopefully, this is the first step in that direction."

Couldn't agree more.  Hope Amazon's listening.

ON DOWNSIDES OF UNLIMITED TEXTING

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

I'm always amazed at the way a young person these days seems to be able to text away at seemingly amazing speeds on the numerical keypad of an otherwise ordinary cell-phone.  And come away thinking how cool it is that they've been able to learn to do that, much as I had to learn how to type on a QWERTY keyboard at their age. 

But this cautionary piece in the New York Times about the potential downside of unlimited texting by teenagers especially, raises some other aspects of this phenomenon.  First the context:

"Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation."

All this may be too early to blame just on texting, as the piece goes on to emphasize,

"The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop."

Another thing for teenagers to learn to do in moderation, as if the list wasn't already long enough.

ON MORE NETWORKS FOR iPHONE

MORE THE MERRIER

Looks like we may have more than one choice of carrier when it comes to an iPhone from Apple.  Some background in this USA Today piece:

"Verizon (VZ) and Apple (AAPL) are discussing the possible development of an iPhone for Verizon, with the goal of introducing it next year, people familiar with the situation say.

It would mark the first time Apple has produced a version of the iPhone for a CDMA wireless network, which is different from AT&T's GSM technology. Vodafone, co-owner of Verizon Wireless, already sells the iPhone in Europe..."

"...AT&T (T) has exclusive U.S. distribution rights to the iPhone into 2010, though specifics aren't known. The deal was struck in 2006, when the iPhone was still on the drawing board. Many telecom analysts expect AT&T to try to persuade Apple to extend the contract for another year, at least."

Why would a Verizon iPhone be a big deal?  The article goes on to explain:

"Should Verizon succeed, it would be a big loss for AT&T, says Roger Entner, head of telecom research for Nielsen. "Breaking the (iPhone) exclusivity with AT&T is a huge thing," he says. "That would send shivers into AT&T's stock and senior leadership."

The power of the iPhone was on full display last week, when AT&T reported stellar wireless results. AT&T signed up 1.6 million iPhone customers during the quarter — 40% of them new to AT&T. Revenue from mobile data was up almost 40%. Verizon reports results today.

By linking arms with Verizon, Entner says, Apple would gain access to its 80 million customers. While a few may already have an iPhone (some people have more than one carrier), the bulk don't."

The iPhone is well on it's way to being a mobile computing platform for thousands of third-party applications (aka "Apps").  Just this week, Apple passed a billion Apps downloaded milestone.  Making the iPhone available available on more than one carrier is almost a no-brainer for Apple.

ON THE BEARINGS OF A BOOK

BEYOND THE COVER

Here's something I ran into today that should be of interest to any fan of books, either reading them, and/or buying them to fill up one's bookshelves.  Author Peter Sacks wrote this piece in the Huffington Post a while ago**:

"I received an interesting invitation the other day. It was from Marshal Zeringue. Marshal runs a wonderful website called the Campaign for the American Reader, and he has a blog that he calls the Page 99 Test, which is based on this Ford Madox Ford quote: "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." Marshal's challenge, if I cared to accept it, was to respond to the Ford quote regarding page 99 of my new book, which he had just learned about in a magazine.

At first, when Marshal asked me to do this, I read page 99 and thought, "Oops, it's not very sexy." There were a lot of other pages of interesting writing and storytelling that I would have picked to reveal my book's whole. But I discovered that Ford Madox Ford was right in a sense. I looked more closely at 99, and there it was, the genetic code of my book. In fact, I could pick any page at random, and I would be able to find the same strands of DNA that held my book together."

The blog he refers to is interesting to peruse, offering at the very least a quick way to get impression of a book mostly by the author applying the page 99 test to his/her book.

It's not unlike how most of us decide on a book in a book-shop, or how in recent years, we've been able to see sample pages of books digitally on Amazon for a while with it's "Search Inside" feature.

Incidentally, a minor problem comes up trying to apply this test to books on e-readers like the Amazon Kindle.  Since the Kindle's software translates all the "pages" in a book into a location code, so that readers can change the size of the type up or down at will, there are no hard and fast page numbers, and thus no easy way for the reader of a book in one Kindle to cite a "page" number to another.

For that matter, there's no easy way to cite a reference from a Kindle book, a topic that will surely become more important for researchers over time, as this discussion in the Amazon forums indicates*.

But picking on one specific page to judge a book by more than it's cover, is an interesting idea.

P.S. *Suppose a possible solution for this might come with the way to highlight any page in a Kindle book, and have that translated into a page number in the hardware and/or the paperback version of that book, at the touch of a button, all done in software.  The action would be similar to getting definitions for a word in a Kindle book today, but would just give the page numbers in a "real" book, to use in citations.

** Image source.

ON THE END OF AN ERA...AGAIN

CHAIN REACTIONS

End of an era, this bit of news from Microsoft:

"Microsoft's years-long-running multimedia CD-based encyclopedia product, Encarta, will be history by the end of the year. According to Ars Technica, Microsoft quietly announced the discontinuation date for Encarta to be October 31, 2009. Although the MSN press release doesn't go into too much detail on all the reasons why this decision was made, (nothing about Wikipedia for example), they do mention that the way people look for and consume information has changed substantially in the last few years, which seems like a fair assessment.

It appears that all Encarta properties will be phased out over the coming year. They will stop selling the retail and student versions by June and the online MSN Explorer content will be removed by the end of October. Customers paying for a subscription to Encarta Premium will receive a pro-rated refund around the middle of the year. Technical support, like with most other Microsoft products, will continue for three years after the official end of life.

As we mentioned, although Microsoft doesn't directly implicate Wikipedia as one of the harbingers of their decision to kill Encarta, we can only assume that it is a big part of that decision. Although Encarta's content was carefully curated, and of course factually accurate (which is often more than what you can say about Wikipedia), apparently the cost and availability of instant sources of information online has overcome the appeal of this once-novel encyclopedia."

It's a bit ironic though, since not too long ago, the world of encylopedias almost saw the end of another era, as this piece from Capitalism Magazine recalls from 2000:

"In 1768, three Scottish printers began publishing an integrated compendium of knowledge -- the earliest and most famous encyclopedia in the English-speaking world. They called it Encyclopedia Britannica. Since then, Britannica has evolved through fifteen editions, and to this day it is generally regarded as the world's most comprehensive and authoritative encyclopedia.

In 1920, Sears, Roebuck and Company, an American mail-order retailer, acquired Britannica and moved its headquarters from Edinburgh to Chicago..."

"By 1990, sales of Britannica's multivolume sets had reached an all-time peak of about $650 million. Dominant market share, steady if unspectacular growth, generous margins, and a two-hundred-year history all testified to an extraordinarily compelling and stable brand. Since 1990, however, sales of Britannica, and of all printed encyclopedias in the United States, have collapsed by over 80 percent. Britannica was blown away by a product of the late-twentieth-century information revolution: the CD-ROM.

The CD-ROM came from nowhere and destroyed the printed encyclopedia business. Whereas Britannica sells for $1,500 to $2,200 per set (depending on the quality of the binding), CD-ROM encyclopedias, such as Encarta, Grolier, and Compton, list for $50 to $70. But hardly anybody pays even that: the vast majority of copies are given away to promote the sale of computers and peripherals. With a marginal manufacturing cost of $1.50 per copy, the CD-ROM as freebie makes good economic sense. The marginal cost of Britannica, in contrast, is about $250 for production plus about $500 to $600 for the salesperson's commission."

So what the CD-ROM did to print encylopedias, the web did to CD-ROM tomes of knowledge.  At each juncture, the business models that ruled rapidly disintegrated, and new ones took their place...or not.

ON A NEW USES FOR LASERS

WHY NOT?

Forget swatting flies with a cannon, or sharks with "frickin' lasers".  Some rocket scientists, are apparently working on a fusion of those two ideas.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

"A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito.

In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.

The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile-defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction..."

"...The scientists' actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Ended in the U.S. decades ago, malaria remains a major global public-health threat, killing about 1 million people annually..."

"...The mosquito laser is the brainchild of Lowell Wood, an astrophysicist who worked with Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and architect of the original plan to use lasers to shield America from the rain of Soviet nuclear arms."

The piece goes on to explain how all this came about, along with other creative efforts to come up with a solution against mosquitoes. 
But none of them hits the inner Dr. Evil as a frickin' laser for mosquitoes.

On the other end of the spectrum for innovative use for lasers, how's this from Thomas Friedman:

"What if a laser-powered fusion energy power plant that would have all the reliability of coal, without the carbon dioxide, all the cleanliness of wind and solar, without having to worry about the sun not shining or the wind not blowing, and all the scale of nuclear, without all the waste, was indeed just 10 years away or less? That would be a holy cow game-changer.

Are we there?

That is the tantalizing question I was left with after visiting the recently completed National Ignition Facility, or N.I.F., at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 50 miles east of San Francisco.
The government-funded N.I.F. consists of 192 giant lasers — which can deliver 50 times more energy than any previous fusion laser system. They’re all housed in a 10-story building the size of three football fields — the rather dull cover to a vast internal steel forest of laser beams that must be what the engine room of Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise space ship looked like."

Mosquitoes or fusion energy power...didn't know lasers had this much versatility.

* Image source.

ON OUR STATE OF WIRELESS

BUMPY ROAD

The iPhone over the last couple of years has accelerated the trend towards Smartphones by mainstream wireless users in the U.S., both through it's innovation and the intense competitive response by other manufacturers to introduce smartphones with iPhone like features.  The bad news though, as this New York Times article explains, is that the nation's patchwork of voice and data wireless networks, be they 2G, 3G or something else, are still striving to keep up with this trend:

"Oh, the things modern mobile phones can do. They are music-playing, video-taking, direction-providing multimedia powerhouses. But many people have trouble getting them to perform their most basic functions, like making phone calls.

The underlying problem, industry analysts say, is the complex quilt of the nation’s wireless networks. The major mobile carriers have spent tens of billions of dollars on new voice and data networks that they advertise as superfast wireless express lanes. But analysts say these upgrades present major engineering challenges, and the networks often underperform.

The resulting technological glitches have given many owners of fancy new phones the urge to throw them out the window and onto the highway.

For many, the iPhone has become a symbol of the gap between the promise of a powerful device and the reality of inconsistent service. Its owners complain of continual hiccups, particularly in certain cities..."
"...The reasons for the trouble are complicated. Part of the problem is that the companies are constantly upgrading their networks — creating a patchwork of technology on cell towers, and integrating slices of radio spectrum that carry voice and data transmissions.

Analysts said the problem was not unique to AT&T, but was especially pronounced on its network in some cities because of the way its infrastructure was built."

The article then goes on to detail the many geeky ways this state of affairs contributes to many problems for users.

While most of these issues will be sorted out in due time, it's still occasionally worth pondering about the potholes on the wireless highway today.

ON SIMPLE GADGETS

SPILL-PROOF

Sometimes it's easy to forget that useful gadgets need not have the latest whiz-bang technology and a ton of bells and whistles.  Sometimes it's just about a gizmo that provides some needed functionality to make every-day life a little easier. 

That's what ran through my mind when a fellow passenger spilled some Starbucks coffee on me, while trying to get in his airline seat next to me. 

In this day and age of airlines cutting back on food and beverage services, and encouraging passengers to bring their own, the need for simple things like cup-holders in a seat seem like no-brainers.  Trust the markets to address this need, as this Washington Post article notes:

The Cup-Pilot, designed by a former Vermont secretary of transportation, attempts to stop the spills by keeping the beverage where it belongs: inside the container.

The collapsible contraption resembles a basketball hoop for Team Smurf, with a small net pouch attached to a plastic "backboard." A metal hook fastens to a number of surfaces, including luggage, airplane trays (open and closed) and your spouse's finger.

Although this item might seem a bit excessive, much like lipstick holders, it does come in handy in flight. We imagine using it while settling into our seat, when our arms are otherwise busy storing a carry-on, and at high altitudes, when we have important papers and gadgets arrayed on our tray table and don't trust the shallow indentation to do its job. Think of how happy your boss will be when you deliver a report not smelling of bloody mary.

The Cup-Pilot is available through the company at 877-287-1130, http://www.cup-pilot.com.

At $18.95, the price seems a bit steep, but worth it if prevents me from spilling a beverage onto a laptop, mine or a fellow passengers'. 

I'm ordering one, and also bracing for the flight attendant to tell me that FAA regulations preclude using this gizmo before take-off or approaching landing, of course making it far less useful.

ON A NEW WAY TO GO WIRELESS

CLOSE AND PERSONAL

Like many geeks, I've been waiting for a new wireless data transfer standard called Transfer Jet to finally get close to being available to consumers.  

David Pogue of the New York Times explains how we may be close to finally seeing this technology deployed later this year, with  this review  of an understated, but cool technology:

"At the Toshiba booth at the Consumer Electronics Show a couple weeks ago, a rep showed me a new technology called Transfer Jet. 

I sure hadn’t heard of it, but apparently it’s an upcoming industry standard. Toshiba, Sony, Canon, Casio, Kodak, Nikon, Olympus, Samsung, JVC and others make up the engineering committee working on it.
It’s yet another wireless technology, like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but it requires even less power and has even a shorter range—along the lines of one inch.
Yes, I know: an inch? What good is wireless with a range that small?
Once you see the demo, you’ll get it. You bring a camera over to your computer and touch them together—and a whole memory card’s worth of photos are transferred in a few seconds. No wires, software, password, pairing, none of that. Just touch ‘em..."
"...Since Transfer Jet is extremely fast (375 megabits per second), you could also offload videos from your camera or camcorder this way, too. You could also, presumably, touch your cameraphone to a drugstore kiosk to print the pictures on it; touch cellphones to transfer music; and so on."

This short demo by a Toshiba representative at the 2008 CES a few weeks ago shows how cool this could really be.

Of course it'll be a while before the technology is widely available in a wide range of devices across so many vendors, but then it didn't seem to take technologies like Bluetooth and Wifi to take that long to become so ubiquitous and indispensable.  Here's hoping the same goes for Transfer Jet.

ON A GREENER GPS

COST PER MILE

If you thought there couldn't be any more companies left to jump on the global green band-wagon, make some room for one more.  Garmin, the maker of GPS gadgets announced a software upgrade for it's devices called EcoRoute (what else?).  U.S. News and World Reports explains:

"Garmin kicked off the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show by introducing software that will assist drivers to find the most fuel-efficient route on the road.

The free software, called ecoRoute, will be available for the nuvi 205 and 705 Garmin GPS devices, Edmunds reports, starting in February. This software is just further proof of manufacturers' push to introduce more responsible gadgetry at a more practical CES 2009.

In a press release, Garmin's Vice President of Worldwide Sales Dan Bartel says, "Many of the biggest challenges currently facing people around the world involve the economy and the environment. Using ecoRoute on your Garmin nuvi ® helps you be a smarter driver at a time when everyone is trying to make their paychecks and their gas tanks go the extra mile."

Autoblog Green notes, "The software is customizable, and you can select your car type as well as enter you car's real fuel economy and gas prices. The software will then calculate also how much you could save by taking the eco-route."

ecoRoute also tracks your fuel usage over time or per-trip and can monitor gas prices and mileage.

"Every vehicle uses fuel different, so ecoRoute's allow users to enter their vehicle profits so the software is optimized for any model's fuel economy," says GPSObsessed. "Hopefully this will help nuvi users save some coin. Most of us undoubtedly could use it."

It's almost as bad as the talking gizmos in cars from a few years ago.  Now you have a piece of software in your car that shows you in dollars and cents how much bite that scenic route to your destination is taking out of your wallet.