techNOcool

I had a chance today to play with the new Amazon Kindle. Pete, over in the bookstore, has purchased one and he's happy to show it off to anyone who stops by.

If you haven't heard of Kindle, it's the new e-book reader from Amazon. It includes free wireless connectivity (through Sprint's EVDO network) for purchasing and downloading e-books. Books typically cost $9.99, often less than what you would pay on Amazon for the same book.

I was surprised by how quickly I got used to reading with Kindle. The font was set rather large, so I did find I had to "turn" the page more often than I'd like. But that's adjustable - 6 font levels, with the smallest fitting most of a typical page on the screen.

A neat feature of the Kindle is that you can download a sample - usually the first chapter or two - of any book that's for sale on the device. Not only does this give you a way to really check out a book before buying, but it also gives you plenty of free reading.

Once a book is downloaded - and it's very quick - you can read offline. So if you're in an area without EVDO or if you're on an airplane, you can still read what's been downloaded. (You are able to turn wireless off for situations like using on an airplane, or to save battery life. Battery life is about a week of reading, with wireless off.)

The big appeal of this, to me, is for travel. When I'm heading off on a trip, I usually pick my reading material according to how much space I have for carrying it and not necessarily according to what I feel like reading right now. The Kindle is smaller than most books, paperback or hardcover, and can hold over 200 titles so it's perfect for travel.

At $400, it's still too pricey for me. But if it catches on it will get cheaper and better. I'll be keeping a close eye on the situation. I wonder how long before textbooks start becoming available this way?

Posted by Susan Fenton at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The New York Times has an article about "classroom capture" systems - software that captures the audio of a lecture along with a powerpoint slide, and at the touch of a button bundles it all together on a server for students to view later. It specifically mentions Tegrity and Echo, with costs of $10,000 - $100,000 per year, depending on options and school size.

These systems have been around for quite some time. But they're gaining in popularity for a couple of good reasons. They're easy for the professors to use, often requiring only that the professor start and stop the recording with a simple click. And the availability of wifi on players like the Zune, iPod Touch, and iPhone, combined with the larger screens of those devices, has made viewing the recorded lectures very convenient for the students. Schools with large commuting populations, especially, are seeing big demand for this.

Will Allegheny ever see a similar demand? We already know that a number of professors use Powerpoint slides in class and that students like professors making those available online. But at the moment, I don't hear a clamoring for the whole lecture online. I think that may be partly because students don't realize what's possible. Once they hear of their friends at larger schools downloading full lecture audio with their powerpoints I think the demand will trickle down to us.

Will we be ready, able, or willing to meet that demand?

Posted by Susan Fenton at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone play around with Live Documents yet?

I am waiting for my invitation email so I have not gotten in to kick it around. I googled it and found a few posts from around the web.

How long do we have before something like this actually replaces Office?

Posted by James Fadden at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I finally got around to installing Leopard (OS 10.5) on my Macbook Pro. Well, not exactly on my Macbook Pro, but on an external hard drive connected to it. I decided to test drive it this way, mostly to be sure my software and hardware is all compatible, before taking the leap and wiping out Tiger.

So what do I think of it? The box it came in is really cool. It's got a neat holographic image on the front. I'd post a photo, but it wouldn't do it justice and you'd just think I was crazy. Not that you don't already think that.

I guess you have to wonder about an OS when the first thing that comes to mind to comment on is the box it came in. But the truth is that I didn't get to really explore the new features last night. I can say I'm not delighted with the visual changes to the OS - the transparency of the menu bar and the changes to the sidebar of the Finder, for instance. Stacks leave me cold - in fact, I removed the two default Stacks - Documents and Downloads - from my dock. I keep my dock on the right, where the whole 3-D thing doesn't happen, so I'm not bothered by that.

Tonight I'll install Office and Dreamweaver. I know I'll eventually need to upgrade both of those - neither is intel native right now - but I don't use them that often at home so I'm hoping they'll chug along well enough with Leopard. I also want to make sure that iChat works well when connecting to Tiger users, as I don't expect Louise or Tom to upgrade any time soon. Then I'll start testing things like Cover Flow in the Finder, and Quick View.

Stay tuned.

Update: Played some more last night. Office and Dreamweaver act the same as they do on Tiger/Intel (i.e., OK, but DW crashes when you try to ftp within Sites). I explored Cover Flow in the Finder and was underwhelmed. We'll see if it helps someday when I'm having a hard time finding a file - but generally Spotlight works really well for me so I'm guessing I won't have much use for it. Quick Look could be useful. I'm getting used to the transparency of everything, but I'd still prefer more opacity for menus, etc. So far everything seems stable, so I may just bite the bullet and switch over this weekend. I have a disk image of my Tiger drive ready, just in case.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I was watching 60 Minutes for a bit last night and was reminded of the One Laptop per Child initiative. I was also thinking a lot about the bizzare little family I have where my wife and I probably watch about 3 shows on television + a football game, a DVD or two, but easily spend about 10-15 hours on the computer a week. My wife spends more like 25. (It's how she communicates with friends, entertains herself, goes shopping, keeps up with world events... Phone, what phone? Drive to Erie... bah!)

Our kid's going to want a computer. We're going to want him to have one, rather than wasting his brain on television.

Continue reading "How young is too young?" »

Posted by Jason Ramsey at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A few weeks ago I techNOcool: posted about the latest release of Flock the Social Web Browser.

On Friday one of the co authors of this blog harassed me about the new fangled browser I was using. I tried to explain one would want yet another browser option but as he is not a social software kind of a guy my arguments fell flat. Today, I emailed my original post hoping to pick a discussion online for you the reading audience (ha, ha) so I used the Flock feature "share this link via email"

While I freely admit I am not a disciple as of yet, I do like many of the little things like the 'share this link via email" feature. That being said how will browsers change over the next few years as social networking becomes ingrained in our online lives as this NPR segment suggests.

Posted by James Fadden at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Google Maps for Mobile has a new feature, My Location, in beta. I can't get this for the iPhone yet, but have read that it's coming. It uses the GPS on your phone to find your location, or, for those of us with phones that don't have GPS it shows your general vicinity based on the cell tower(s) you are connecting to.

I can definitely think of times I could have used this. Looking for a restaurant nearby, like in the video below, is one obvious example. Figuring out how to drive from where you are to where you want to be is another, but an approximate location for a starting point might work better in some situations than others.

Maybe those of you with smart phones that let you install applications will give this a try and let those of us who have to wait for Apple's blessing know how it goes.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)