Well, I finished up Crystal Rain (another of my free Kindle books from Tor), and it was indeed not all that. The story was a little too disjointed and the characters a little too shallow. Interesting idea, execution not quite there.
I’m partway through reading the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine on my Kindle (gotta love the wireless subscription); I just finished reading the article on the neuroscience of identity (it was surprisingly intriguing), but I’ve temporarily put it aside. I was leafing through Ubuntu Kung Fu at a bookstore and learned a few new tricks just from glancing through it, so caved and bought a copy. Ubuntu is just so much more fun to play with than Windows.
Apple had its Q3 earnings call today, and reported nearly 6.9 million iPhones versus 5.4 million BlackBerry units in the third calendar quarter. But really, the iPhone will never be able to compete with the BlackBerry in the enterprise. Uh huh.
I’ve got a guest post today on the IBM Research blog describing some of my recent work on supporting the creation of user experiences that span personal devices.
I’ve fallen behind on writing reviews of what I’ve been reading on my Kindle, so I thought I’d do a little batch update (aided by the facts that I’m sitting in one of the less interesting UIST sessions and that my talk is now out of the way). The following are all books that Amazon made available free for the Kindle.
First, a pair of mystery books. In the Bleak Midwinter, by Julia Spencer-Fleming, was one of the first free books I got on the Kindle. I enjoyed the book more than I expected to (c’mon, a mystery book focusing on a cop and an Episcopal priest?), primarily because the author does a really good job with her character development (the mystery itself was actually relative easy to figure out; I had it nailed by midway through the book). I actually bought and read the rest of the books in the series (thus meeting the publisher’s goal of seeding purchases by making the first book available free) just to find out what happened with the characters.
I contrast the excellent character development in Spencer-Fleming’s book with the characters in Tess Gerritsen’s The Surgeon, who seemed like total cardboard cutouts. It was very hard to care about their fates, and combined with the gruesomeness of the mystery itself (which seemed to be gruesome just to be gruesome), I think I’ll be avoiding Tess’s work in the future.
The last two books are both fantasy books that Tor made available free. Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson was fun read, and the take on “magic” in the world was sufficiently different to be interesting. Nothing about the book was particularly annoying, but at the same time nothing was particularly compelling. The book is part of a larger series, but stands well enough on its own that you can read it without feeling any particular need to read further. I’m not sure if I’ll read further in the series or not; if I do it’ll probably be a sudden impulse (assuming Tor ever gets the rest of the books out in Kindle format) combined with a lack of anything more immediately compelling.
The last book, A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham, was more compelling, again in this case primarily because the author did a pretty good job developing the main character. The author also has an unusual take on “magic”, but it was the interactions between the characters that really drove the story forward. By the end I was sufficiently curious about what would happen next, although the story does stand on its own, that I will likely read the next book in the series (assuming Tor gets around to making it available for the Kindle).
Next up is Tobias Buckell’s Crystal Rain, which has the interesting premise of a civilization similar to the Aztec’s on another world, but I must confess that I’m 1/4 of the way through and the characters aren’t really grabbing me yet. We’ll see if the book reallly takes off a bit further on.
Anna has Columbus Day off from school, and since I get more vacation time than Kate we’ve started a small tradition of having a father-daughter day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This time we actually got to spend some time looking at the fish; Anna is getting old enough that she doesn’t want to spend all of her time just running from place to place. This year I think the Deep Bay and the touch pools were the big hits. Well, that and sitting outside by the ocean with our “fizzy drinks”.
Anna chose a Halloween crafts book from the library during our weekly visit, and we’ve slowly been making our way through it. Costume elements have been big hits; we’ve made fangs, a monster mask, a bat costume, and zombie hands. Next up she’s set on making some of the food crafts.
Wired.com has a post about some of the work we’re doing in IBM Research around the use of mobile devices. It’s a positive article, but I’m reminded that technology reporters never get things quite right. We are looking at how to redesign user experiences when users incorporate highly mobile devices like the iPhone into their computing activities, but it’s a bit of a stretch to say that we’re seeding the App Store with research prototypes. Right now IBM has zero apps in the store. WritingPad is a third-party app using licensed IBM Research technology. I discussed how an iPhone could be part of your Personal Information Environment, but practically the current iPhone SDK makes that a little difficult (you can’t run applications in the background). In fact, the only mobile PIE client we have is for Windows Mobile.
Although we’re therefore not currently using the App Store as a test bed (at least not directly), I would like to see us doing so in the future.
The PC World blog has pictures (via the Boy Genius Report) that are purportedly of the forthcoming Kindle 2. While the new design (if it is accurate) looks rather slick, I must admit that I’m not completely sold by it. The original Kindle didn’t look great, but after using mine nearly daily since May I can say that in practice it grows on your really quickly. It’s a good size and weight, and I actually like the placement and size of the buttons. Most of the changes I’d make (e.g., making it easier to browse through a book to find a particular part) revolve around the software rather than the physical form factor. Of course, hopefully Amazon will update the software when the update the hardware, so I might get the changes I’d want anyway. I’m also somewhat surprised by the design decision (if true) to remove the SD card slot; I like the fact that I can upgrade the amount of memory in my original Kindle relatively cheaply.
So overall, the new design looks nice, but I don’t think I’ll bother to upgrade to it when Amazon finally releases it.
Kate and I added a Mac mini to our collection of computers last weekend. Our DVD player was always a little flaky (it just didn’t like to play some discs), so we’d been thinking about replacing it for awhile. We finally settled on a Mac mini as a relatively inexpensive solution that would let us simultaneously get a better DVD / digital movie player and put together a digital library of all our CDs. This weekend we finished ripping the last of our CDs. Aside from leaving a few out to play in our cars (until we get cars with iPod integration), our physical CD collection is now tucked away in a closet. So far it’s been both smooth and convenient. And I must say, once you have your music collection on a Mac connected to your stereo, Apple’s Remote app for the iPhone is extremely handy. Remote control in your pocket for your entire music collection anyone?
Now I just have to resist the temptation to add a Dell Inspiron Mini (running Ubuntu, naturally) to the collection. Small, light, and I totally don’t need one. I’m trying to hold out until my Macbook Pro finally fails, at which point I’ll get myself one of the later generations of Airs (Apple makes great computers, but the first generations always seem to have quirks).
All I can say is, about damn time. I could understand keeping the SDK under NDA before the 2.0 firmware was officially released (and I can understand why Apple is still keeping it in place for unreleased software), but it made zero sense to me that they’d gag developers from discussing the SDK after they released the 2.0 (and then 2.1) update. Seriously: you want developers talking about your platform, sharing tips and tricks, and writing books. Stiffling those people should be the last thing on your mind.
Frankly, I regard this as evidence that it’s a good thing Google’s Android is in the ecosystem; it seems like Apple needs someone forcefully applying a sanity check to make sure they don’t go too far off the deep end.
jeff pierce 