Book Review: "The Gathering Storm" by Robert (Brandon) Jordan (Sanderson)

Robert Jordan's epic Wheel Of Time continues courtesy of Brandon Sanderson. As a charter member of WOT madness (books 1-4) WOT concern (5-8), WOT disillusionment (9-10), WOT semi-redemtion (book 11) and WOT depression (Loss of Robert Jordan) I must say I am not sure what I expected from this series continuation. Over the years I have re-read the series numerous times, even the horrible 8-10 books in order to prepare for the next offering. That I would buy this book was never in doubt... but I was prepared for the worst.

So what is the verdict? Well at least from this long time fan the verdict is superb. If you are a fan then pick it up. Think of this as J J Abrahms re-vitalizing star trek... only without the time travel nonsense. Sanderson picks up the threads of the story like he had been writing them all along... and he does so with the pace of the early books. He starts with this gargantuan traffic snarl of threads and pushes through solidly to the end and finally lots of progress is made. Here are the highlights (spoiler alert)...

- The willy nilly thread hopping of the last half dozen books is gone. Rand and Egwene represent some 75-85% of the story arc of this book and it is a good thing. By the time the dust settles Rand is poised to resume his rightful place as the centerpiece of the story and the Aes Sedai seem ready to finally rejoin the story as a mature entity rather than the catty fractured monstrosity that has been endemic for the last several books..

- Faile is blessedly absent but for maybe 10 pages... and in that brief time Sanderson adroitly returns her to an independent character of action. Only a paragraph or two is devoted to the dysfunctional relationship between her and Perrin.

- Nayneve is treated in a similar fashion though her closeness to Rand keeps her in the flow a good bit more... a couple of nods to plunging necklines do appear but not at the nails on chalk board repetitive nature of the last several books.

- Min only calls Rand a Wool Head once... and her character is returned to its uniqueness as Sanderson carves out a new niche for her to fill other than flouncing about as the only available booty call for Rand.

- Aviehnda is similarly low key but again her character is moved definitively towards something that will be productive. The past 3 novels of her struggling with no longer being a 'spear sister' is finally (mercifully) put to rest.

- Mat and Perrin have little time between them. This was one of the few disappointments. However I think Sanderson wisely chose not to try and do to much in this book and instead gave just enough of the two to placate long term fans... but they are still very much in a holding pattern. The next book should have two major plot elements with Mat, one involving his connection to Tuon, and the other his jaunt with Thom into the tower of Genji that will probably net a return of Moirane and Lanfear.

- Blessedly absent are almost any plot summary exposition sections trying to keep folks unfamiliar with the intricate story lines up to speed. These sections pretty much ruined books 7-10.

- Surprisingly absent are almost any sections dealing directly with the forsaken. There is one in the prologue... and a brief encounter between Semerihage and Moridin... and that is about it.

- And perhaps my personal favorite... Cadsuane is finally put in her place.

All in all Sanderson has handled the hand dealt him admirably. He is not trying to claim ownership of the story. However he is also not trying to do the impossible of channeling Robert Jordan. His own writing style flows naturally and the resulting effect is minimally jarring. The world remains familiar and the most dramatic change is the pacing of events. He did a lot to clean up the tangle of story lines and as a result has (at least in my eyes) successfully refocused the story. The next book should serve to clean up the few remaining loose ends and poise the story for its grand finale.

Kindle 2: Long Term Impressions

So I have now been a kindle owner for about 8 months. What do I think now that I have actually lived with it for a while?

The Good:

The Kindle has easily become my main source of reading material. There have only been a couple of cases where I have resorted to a bound book and that is due to having already purchased the book, borrowing, or a gift. No matter what else bad I have to say about the device (and there is plenty of irks and niggles) it is extremely important to remember this simple fact... I read on it and seek books out in a format compatible with it first. End of story.

The best element by far for me has been as a travel companion. Packing the kindle in my bag in lieu of my typical 4-5 novel load has been the 'killer app' as far as I am concerned. A close second is the fact that if I need something new to read it does not take to long to have a new file downloaded.

The So-So:

Lack of a built in light of some sort is quite annoying. It should have been simple to include a little pop out led or something to make reading in low light conditions easy.

Glare... not something I really considered initially but this has been a surprisingly common annoyance. Especially difficult to deal with when using small direct light sources such as night stands. Because it is a direct light source (aimed at the screen) the angles often mean a glare point on the screen sometime necessitating odd angles (compared to a printed page) to avoid. I encounter this same phenomenon with glossy magazines and to a lesser extent with highly bleached stocked (very white).

Wireless enabled Battery life: Let me explain this one. First off... it lasts plenty long enough for day to day reading purposes... I think it might be possible to drain it in a day if you did little else than read (9-12 hours I think...) but it would be pretty uncommon. In realistic daily reading of <>

In the same vein I wish you could set a minimum battery life at which the device will shut down if a page has not been turned. IE at 25% or something. This is because if you forget to turn the radio off 25% battery life is still plenty to read a good long time before having to charge the device up... and picking up a dead device because you forgot to turn the radio off when you are ready to read is a truly irksome experience.... especially when on travel with no real charging options to hand.

Blogs/Magazine subscriptions: They sorta work but by and large they have more problems than they should. It should be mandatory for any segmented source of material to have a good table of contents with a memory for what articles have been read and which not etc... Blogs are just to hard to keep updated and really complicate keeping the device with a usable charge. Images should be included.

Samples: First X % of a book for a sample works relatively well for fiction stories but it sucks hairy balls when searching for a good reference/education book. You should be able to choose chapters for browsing this type of material. Certainly there should be some mechanism in place to keep someone from abusing this (ie downloading different chapters as they need them and never paying).

Amazon really should have allowed for more than a single font.

Needs Improvement:

Browsing capability: This is perhaps the single most frustrating element of the kindle. Not because it is bad, but because of how much more useful the device would be if the browsing functioned at a more tolerable pace. Shopping for a specific book is simple and works fine. Browsing for new books is a form of medieval torture even if you have a good 3g signal. Why? Because loading each page from whisper net takes 10-30 seconds if you are lucky. You often go through two or three levels of category lists before you get to a list of books. The list of books only provides about 6 books on a single screen and there are limited ways of filtering them. You only get a small thumbnail of the cover, title, author and about half a line of the intro on the top level of browsing. Selecting an individual book brings up a summary page of that book that again only has about 2 sentences worth of summary information often requiring a click on a more link for another page with the full summary. So to look at the summary info (equivalent to the inside flap or back of a paperback) you have to load the store front, drill down to a subcategory (say two minimum, Books, then subcategory like sci-fi), a page turn or three to find one that looks interesting, an initial summary page and then the actual summary page. All in all it could take 4-5 minutes to get to this point for the first book you are interested in... then figure 30-120 seconds for each subsequent one. While this is still ultimately less time than driving to a store etc... it is far below par of say standing at a shelf and grabbing a likely title and scanning the back/inside flap etc... In fact this is so annoying that I often go browse for new material at a book store... and take note of what interests me for later download. Browsing amazon with a real computer is a middle ground often used as well... but still sub par to a brick and mortar store for finding interesting new stuff.

How could they improve this? Easy. They need to download their catalog or some significant portion of it locally to the device so that page turns when browsing are the same as when reading. If the whole catalog cannot be reasonably maintained then say the top 25% should be, and it should allow for readers to choose favorite sub categories to maintain full updates on. This is still slow as hell but not intolerably so. In a similar vein they really should create similar repositories for research type web sites like wikipedia or even journal repositories. I would be more than willing to suffer a symbiotic (paired with computer etc...) life for some of the more data intensive sources if whisper net would not allow for something like downloading the top 10-25% of articles on wikipedia.

Wallpaper: In my original hands on review I mentioned this as a niggle. I have changed my mind. This is a major annoyance. First they should allow you to choose a single wallpaper instead of just having random ones cycle through. Two, you should be able to pick a selection of ones you want to be randomized. Three, you should be able to include your own pictures for use. I honestly think the decision of how amazon approached this is very indicative of their mindset regarding the ownership of content on the device. And it does not bode well when you consider it that way.

Content management: Simply not enough ways to filter. They really should have erred to the side of excess on the options for arranging your books... from customized arrangements to Library of congress and the dewy decimal system. A real simple miss they had was read/unread/partially read. They also should have provided the option to have the books in your library displayed the same way they are on the web site with the thumbnail icon of the cover art and summary information of the book should be stored locally. As is you have to pull it from the website even when you own it.

Another major hole in content management has to do with privacy and the option to give up material. You should be able to pass code your device and preferably certain categories you may not want people to easily access. One obvious category of this nature is say romance/erotica material. A parent may not want this to be accessible by their children. Another area of similar problem are such things as politics and religion. The nature of this device is that others want to see it and fool with it. This can lead to some awkwardness if you have material in your library that you may want to keep private for whatever reason. Similarly you should be able to banish some information from the device. For instance I was downloading some free material and ended up with a title I found quite objectionable. I don't want it on my device, I don't want it in my archive for later retrieval or for someone else to stumble across when using my device. While removing something permanently should be hard it SHOULD be possible. Currently it is not. In short the device should be made more friendly for the management of sensitive material be it professional, prurient or just plain personal.

There should be the ability to have the Kindle pull from a remote personal library rather than just the kindle store. That way if necessary I can maintain the safety of my own library or provide access to personal libraries of information. Yes you can keep the files on your computer... I am referring to the ability to point the kindle at this store of information for retrieving books.

Lending: Electronic file ownership should not be any different than print ownership. I should be able to loan my books out to friends and family with the ability to read kindle books. Amazon already maintains ownership information on its servers so managing a loaning system should be trivial. Heck I should be able to even do loans of a specific time limit (say two weeks). During the loan period I should not have access to the material. Barnes and Nobel has understood this with the nook. Here is hoping that Amazon updates the Kindle to provide a similar capability. They should also allow for re-sale/transfer of ownership. Last but not least. Amazon needs to make damn sure they never ever touch material on an end users device again. EVER. For those not familiar with what I am talking about here is what happened. A book was sold through Amazon where the rights were not properly handled. IE someone was selling a book they did not have the right to sell. When this was identified Amazon remotely removed the copies of the book for any user that had downloaded it and that contacted amazon (IE had the radio on). Again. Ownership of a file should not be treated any differently than ownership of a printed book.

Annotations: Taking margin notes is a pretty time honored tradition with books. The kindle does not manage it well. Mostly because of the short comings of using the device for any significant user input. I doubt this will be possible to solve on the device itself. What is needed is a full up computer program that allows you to use your computer for annotations.There probably should be that ability to interleave notes in multiple methods. IE display them in line via different fonts etc... astrix/footnote notation etc... and possibly even a separate outline document that links to relevant passages... ie read from the book and go to notes and then keep going in notes back to the book etc... This is an area where the kindle should shine over traditional print but does not due to artificial restrictions in place due to piracy concerns. If Amazon really wants to get into the text book business with the Kindle they really need to sort this kind of functionality out.

Document Types: Until a universal document type is created for passing digital text documents there should be every effort made to make the device capable of reading as many formats as possible... and any document conversion should be able to be done by the end user. I have documents I would love to maintain on the kindle but I cannot because it would entail sending the document to Amazon for conversion and the information is to sensitive to handle in that way.

Obamacare: A simple observation

I remember a very common sound bite from Obama while he was on the campaign trail. It went something like this. "I want to extend the coverage I receive as a Senator to the nation." Seems simple enough. Needless to say the current health care reform bill is not extending the Senate plan to the Nation... and I have yet to hear of one Senator saying they would swap their coverage for the new system if it passes. So.... I think a lot of folks are bitching about the proposed health care reform bill for good reason. However, that does not mean we shouldn't be trying to overhaul the current health care nightmare in the US.

Universal health care is neither the commie plot horror tale some make it out to be... nor is it the wonderful health system nirvana others tout. You need only look to other countries employing ‘universal’ systems for examples to prove either. All the systems have problems... all pretty much do a better job insuring their masses than the current US system (or lack there of). Many think we should just leave well enough alone. Me personally? I find it impossible to defend a status quo that unequivocally leaves millions with no care system at all... not to mention millions more with inadequate coverage. It is shameful, it is not something that can be ignored. It is quite simply inexcusable. I offer no silver bullet. I offer no certain solution. I simply contend that where we are is indefensible and we should find a better solution... in the mean time I offer only the following advice to our elected officials currently attempting to solve this gargantuan problem we all face.

If you want to institute a universal healthcare system then I suggest the plan devised be one that congress would unanimously choose for the care of themselves and their families. Because if you are going to devise a plan you yourself would not use... why on earth would you expect anyone else to want it?

Gadget Review: Nike+ vrs GPS exercise tracking on the iPhone

So like many in the second fattest state in the union I am carrying quite a few extra pounds around. My employer recently decided to offer free gym memberships so I decided it was high time to get serious about shedding a love handle or three. Of course being the geek that I am I also wanted a cool and easy way to track my efforts. When I recently picked up the 3GS iPhone I kind of laughed at the feature bullet listing the new phone as Nike+ compatible. But once I decided to start tracking my workouts I decided to give it whril... since I already default to Nike tennis shoes and the phone could read the sensor signals all I needed was a $20 dollar sensor to see what it was all about. If you are interested in getting one and not sure what you need you can read up about it here. If Nike Shoes are not for you it is possible to rig the sensor to work on other shoes but some of the methods are not for the feint of heart as it can require shoe surgery. There are other less drastic options that will likely bring a call from the fashion police... and if you don't mind the stares and pointing they seem to work just fine as well.

Nike+ is cool... but it is just a simple Pedometer. Considering that the iPhone has GPS I wanted to see if I could use that as well. As luck would have it and as Apple loves to point out "There's an App for That". In this case one called 'Run Keeper Pro". A minimum Nike+ system is much cheaper than RunKeeper... but RunKeeper is cheaper if you already have an iPhone with GPS capability. I of course decided to try both (since I already have the phone and shoes it only cost $30). Also, due to the fact the built in Nike+ app on the iPhone 3GS is allowed to run in the background I have been able to track my walks with Nike+ and RunKeeper at the same time for comparison.

So what exactly is Nike+ ? In short it is an electronic coach that tracks you through a pedometer and keeps up with your workout history on a special website run by Nike... if you like the results of your workouts can be sent out to your friends via Facebook and Twitter. You pick a workout (distance, time, calorie burn goal, open ended), you pick a playlist, hit start your workout and once it picks up the sensor in your shoe rocking along off you go. You will receive periodic updates through your headphones when you reach milestones. You get a notice every mile in distance based workouts, 5 minute callouts on time. I do not know what you get on the calorie burn workouts and it seems you get no periodic updates on the open ended workout. On any workout you can get a status summary by pushing a button that tells you the time, distance and average pace per mile/k depending on your preference. It works extremely well for the most part. When you are done you get a summary of how far you went, your average pace, best time for the mile and approximate calorie burn (highly optimistic for walks I have found... probably more accurate for runs). The next time you sync with iTunes the information will be sent to the Nike+ website where you can view even more information. The website also offers lots of other options like challenges you can join, or goal setting in addition to posting your results automatically to facebook or twitter as previously mentioned.

RunKeeper is GPS based exercise tracker that allows you to track ANY outside based activity where you cover ground... roller blading, walking, running, cycling etc... When you are done it uploads your results via the iPhone mobile web application to a website that is not quite as cool as the Nike+ one but it works well and it also allows for the automatic posting of results to facebook/twitter if you so desire. While it cannot run in the background you can play your music in the background and have some limited control over it (ie you can skip a song if you want) without interrupting the program.

So how well do they work?

The Good:

Application:

Nike+ application is simple and much better integrated with the phone. Run Keeper Pro is definitely more accurate (if it holds the GPS signal) and useful for tracking more types of outdoor activities. Both maintain a basic history on the device and track your high points.

Voice updates on Nike+ is very slickly implemented. It dims your tunes so you can easily understand the status report. The instant status tied to a home button push works very well also.

Website:

Nike+ community elements (challenges, goals etc...) can be a strong incentive for those of a competitive bent... be it with oneself or in comparison to other members of the site.

RunKeepers maps including elevation changes has some serious cool factor. The site is also far more responsive than the Nike+ one.

The So So:

Application:

Neither program seems to agree on calorie tracking... and in looking at numerous online trackers it seems Run keeper falls to the conservative side where Nike falls to the optimistic end... but neither were crazily out of whack. Since Caloric burning is fairly difficult to determine for a given individual it is probably best to view these results more as a 'score' for relative comparison than taken as literal fact. That being said the Nike+ app will adjust your burn rate based on what you say your weight is... so in the long run it probably provides a better comparison value.

Voice updates on RunKeeper are occasionally overpowered by your tunes. Normally not a problem but can suck if you miss your turn around point on an out and back activity.

Website:

Run Keeper has a ways to go to catch up to the community elements of Nike+. Being able to set and track goals is needed. Similar community type challenges to what Nike+ does might be worth pursuing. But don't get me wrong. The website is simple and highly functional... just does not have the same whizbang factor other than the maps.

Nike+ site is sluggish... very heavy on the flash and Nike shopping options are in prime locations which relegates your activity summary controls to less optimum areas of the screen. In other words its designed more for buying Nike stuff than for using as an activity tracker. While the tracking elements are solid... the interface is annoying by being slow and not optimized for that use.

The Bad:

Requiring Nike+ shoes or awkward hack alternatives is annoying. Nike shoes fit me better than most brands so I often gravitate to them anyway. Since I was due a pair it was not a problem to find a Nike+ pair with the hole in the shoe for the sensor... but for many out there this would represent a new cost. It seems to me that Nike could forgo the sensor for the iPhone application and utilize the GPS. Linking people to the website would still bring them closer to buying Nike stuff. And seeing as you have to have an iPhone in the first place... I doubt it would really hurt sales of Nike+ shoes for folks using regular iPods without a GPS capability. This would also allow them to do the cool mapping of what you did rather than just showing your rate changes (really boils down to how often your footstep set off the sensor).

I have been tracking walks with the sensor I bought for about 4 weeks now and it seems the sensor is already dying as I keep getting periods of 0 pace and sometimes strangely fast paces that I did not get when it was new. If this is the case then that would mean having to buy a new sensor ever month or so since the battery is not replaceable. If that is the case the $20 bucks a month just to have a pedometer in my shoes will make this one a one time deal for me. I would be fine with it lasting 3-6 months at a shot.... but not ~1. It is possible this is being caused by operating the RunKeeper app at the same time. I am going to try doing some Nike+ only runs to see if the sensor stops acting up and will update this section later.

GPS exercise tracking is not cheap. There is lots of purpose built gear by the likes of Garmin etc... that do similar stuff to RunKeeper that are cheaper and more accurate. If you already have an iPhone then RunKeeper Pro is cheap at 10 bucks. But if have to buy the iPhone you are spending WAY to much for something that is not quite as accurate as the other purpose built gear. If you count the iPhone cost it is cheaper to buy an iPod (nano), iPod Nike+ unit and Nike+ shoe sensor combined than it is just to get the iPhone. If you already have the iPhone then RunKeeper is much cheaper than the other options at a one time cost of $10... and unlike the Nike+ sensors the GPS receiver doesn't wear out after a couple of months and need replacing.... it also does not require special shoes or oddball sensor mounting solutions.

In short don't buy an iPhone FOR run keeper... consider it if you already have one and don't want to purchase additional expensive dedicated GPS exercise tracking gear. If you are starting from scratch with none of the equipment you probably want to seriously consider the purpose built GPS watches. if GPS is overkill the Nike+ system is relatively cheap if you don't count the cost of the shoes ie you need them anyway so it is not an additional cost.

The RunKeeper application suffers from a common iPhone app malady. It cannot run in the background. This makes iPod music playback operations during your activity tricky and subject to inadvertently pausing your exercise... along with damn near any other interruption that comes from your phone like Texting, taking a phone call etc... The default action of the program when these other things happens is to pause/loose the GPS signal etc... It can be very frustrating. Since I am mostly just walking it is quite possible for me to mess around with reading Texts/e-mails take phone calls etc... and the Nike+ app allows me to do that without missing a beat. RunKeeper requires you to keep that application up for the duration of the exercise. Thankfully they fixed an early bug that meant you even had to have the screen on (drained the battery and made it subject to accidental input in your pocket).

Both applications need to allow for more voice notification options. Currently the iPhone automatic updates are limited to Time/Distance based on which type of workout you choose and they only provide updates at the 5 minute and mile markers only. They need to allow you to chose your desired interval and what information you want to know. IE the only way to get your pace from the Nike app is to hit the home button or read it off the screen. The RunKeeper app only does updates every 5 minutes or every mile but it does provide current pace information... but not average pace. This seems such a simple and obvious addition. They have already done the hard work it making the apps give you any kind of notification... it should be relatively easy to add some additional options for how often and what set of information you would like to hear.

Conclusion:

Well... neither of these applications/sensors etc... is going to get you into shape. However if tracking your progress is a motivator for you then I recommend both provided you like Nike shoes and already have either an iPhone with GPS (for run keeper) or one of the numerous compatible iPod models for Nike+. Right now I personally want to drop the Nike+ tracking and just use RunKeeper as it is more accurate and has no requirement for a shoe sensor I may have to replace often. However, I find the goal tracking and challenges on the Nike+ website far more compelling than the bare bones tracking alone found on the RunKeeper website. For now I am going to continue to try both simultaneously until I reach my first Challenge Goal on Nike+ of 100miles.

Crime, Punishment and Vick

So Mike Vick has done his time and is once again a free man. The pundits are all kicking up a fuss about what the NFL commissioner might or might not do regarding his NFL eligibility. My question is... why is this even being discussed? what right does the NFL have to determine if Mike Vick should pay further for his crimes? What has happened to the notion of paying your debt to society? Vick did something stupid, wrong, immoral etc... etc... etc... On this I have no argument. In fact I hold no love for the guy and as a long time Falcon's fan I am one of many he has disappointed with his idiocy. As a result of his actions he was found guilty by a jury of his peers and sentenced to serve a prison sentence. He was deprived of his freedom for the past two years. He served his sentence and is now a free man. By and large the idea is that is supposed to be that.

Granted we all know that in reality convicts are not ever really viewed as full members of society. They have broken trust and few if any ever regain it to the same extent they enjoyed before running afoul of the law. Many claim that Vick should be banned from football... that it is a privilege rather than right to play a game for millions of dollars. Perhaps that is true. But I have to ask if it is right for him to be banned? Let us say that Vick was an auto mechanic rather than a Football wonder kid and that the ongoing discussion was to ban him from ever turning another wrench? Would that be right? I think the answer is obviously no and so I think the same holds true for running a naked bootleg on Sundays.... that is if any team will have him. Playing in the NFL IS most certainly a privilege. It is one earned by being better than anyone else at playing a game. That Vick still qualifies on those grounds I doubt anyone would seriously question. I doubt any would care to bet that no team would be willing to pick him up provided the league allows them the option.

I believe the league has the right to ban players from the game. For use of banned substances. For cheating. For illegal/dangerous hits, breaking contracts and any number of things. But I have serious heartburn with the notion that the League has the right to further punish someone who has served time for his crime as adjudicated by the legal system we have entrusted with the responsibility to uphold the laws of the land. In short I feel it is not within the leagues purview to deny Vick a chance to play in the NFL again. That is the responsibilities of all the teams in the league who will have to decide if he is someone they want to risk a roster spot on.

Review: iPhone 3G S

It has been a very Mac few months for me. First I take the plunge on a mac book pro, then I get an iPhone 3g and here I am with a shiny new 3G S I picked up the first day it was on offer. Why did I plunk down some hard earned cash for the new phone? Well not really to have the new phone (thought that is a nice side effect). I recently joined the ranks of iPhone developers and hope to release some apps and perhaps if I am fortunate make that money back (and more???). When developing for the iPhone it helps if you have some dedicated testing equipment. I decided I wanted to be able to play with the phone specific features so I got the new phone so I could make my old one a test unit.

Initial thoughts:

For those holding on to a current 3g phone and wondering if they should take the plunge? Well the short answer from me is that for most folks there really isn't a reason to go plunk down for the new phone immediately. This is definitely an evolutionary step for the iPhone and the changes are mostly small. Is it faster? Yes, but while noticeable it isn't an earth shattering increase. The speed up is most apparent in more intense applications. Video loads noticeably faster, it is easier to swipe between images, resize etc... Heavy gamers will likely find more benefit here than typical phone users. Also you get a higher quality camera and are finally allowed to record video without resorting to a jailbreak solution.

Think of it this way... the difference between the 3g and the 3g s is similar to the difference between a Subaru WRX and WRX STI, Mustang GT and Shelby Mustang, 3 series BMW and the M variant. In other words it is the same phone with a turbo charger and some bells and whistles. For day to day 'driving' its the same experience and the changes don't show up until you push the limits.

Bottom line, If you are buying new then get the 3g s. It is worth the 100 dollar difference to step up from the 8gb 3g. And if a 100 bucks makes that big a difference to you then I would ask why you are picking up a phone with a 360 dollar a year data plan commitment on top of your phone line/ msg'ing options. For existing 3g owners... wait till your can renew and honestly it might be worth it to wait for the next step. Most likely Apple will go dual core on the CPU and the difference should be far more dramatic.

The Bad: Sure the iPhone is a great device... but it still has its warts.

Still no micro SD expansion slot? Seriously Apple solve this one. Make a dual SIM/SD holder in the top or something. This is so ridiculously overdue it is silly.

plastic body. Don't get me wrong I don't think this is low quality or chintzy. I just think Apple is missing a bet here with materials. Make this phone a 'unibody' phone with an aluminum or other metal (titanium?) block design. It is stronger and more solid in the mac book line.. why wouldn't it be for the phone? It is less prone to scratching and would do more to set the phone apart. Perhaps there will be an iPhone Pro ? While we are on the subject... drop the damn gloss. It looks great on TV and when it is sitting there all untouched. But these puppies live in your oily greasy hands and in 2 minutes that wondrous glossy look becomes a smeared smudgey mess. Design a phone that looks as good after a good day of use as it does fresh out of the box.

Battery capacity. A basic phone will generally be usable for days. An iPhone charge lasts you more than a day only if you use it like a phone. Heavy usage tops out around 3-4 hours, longer in non screen intensive uses like listening to music. I have no real sense yet if the 3g s eeks a bit more life out of its battery than the 3g or not but I doubt it is a significant difference if there is any. Most likely it is much hungrier when you actually use the new capabilities that make it stand apart. Capacity in comparison to other smart phones is solid... this is a problem across the whole genre of phones.

Push Notifications / lack of true multitasking: The iPhone is in many cases a conundrum. Take AIM chat sessions for example. You cannot chat and check e-mail at the same time, or browse the web while your favorite event based app of choice (say mlb) monitors something going on. I applaud Apple's dedication to ensuring the iPhone interface maintains a uniform level of responsiveness but I still can't get over the fact they will not let users opt out of this artificial application limitation. The new push notification system is a poor substitute for multitasking apps.

iPod dock/charging connector: Normally I am all for consistency. And the iPod dock connector provides so much in the way of accessories I have a hard time saying this thing should go. But it should go. Mini/micro-USB should be on the table. Smaller hole to get gunk in and works with more things. Docks and accessories can be used with adaptors until they catch up. As a bonus they should include the ability to be a usb host. If Apple wants to come up with a new proprietary connector that gets my vote I recommend a mag safe style mobile connector for data and power.

E-mail inbox management: Sure OS 3 brings search to e-mail but damnit, every other freaking e-mail client in the world allows you to sort your inbox by date received, to/from, subject etc... so why in *_(#*$&_(*@&#_$(* does the iPhone e-mail client still not allow for this? Unified e-mail inbox and/or the ability to switch directly between inboxes (as opposed to swiping back to the list and back into the inbox), tagging or some form of folder management capability and NO cap on how many e-mails are accessible on the device. Multiple item selection needs to allow for multiple actions such as mark read/unread etc... not just delete.

AT&T Restrictions: The iPhone has brought the smartphone and its attendant data hungry nature to the masses. It takes a lot of backbone guts to serve millions of iFart apps, twitters and facebook pokes. AT&T can be forgiven for underestimating the data appetite of iPhone users to begin with. But we are now 2+ years down the road and the iPhone still isn't allowed to send MMS messages because AT&T is afraid the traffic will melt their servers. Apple provided them with a phone that has sold 17 million units of which a large percentage are new AT&T customers holding expensive unlimited data plans. The revenue from those customers should be enough to have built a dedicated iPhone infrastructure by now. Don't get me started on the debacle that is MMS and Tethering.

The So So:

Compass. Not real sure if this is going to amount to anything. But it works as advertised. Most obvious area of use is static pointing information to integrate with GPS usage.

New screen coating. I'll grant this is better than the 3g screen as far as cleaning it goes (less smearing when cleaning) but it is still finger print city. Get the apple anti-glare smudge resistant screen protectors. They are REALLY finger print resistant and make swiping, scrolling much easier. There is a slight loss in sharpness but at least in my opinion it is very very worth it. It is far better at being smudge resistant than it is at preventing glare.

Voice Control: If you ask me this is a feature box they can final check when compared to most other phones on the market. In my opinion this is something they were right to disregard initially. Voice control is a cool concept that remains a gimick due to how finicky it is. One day perhaps this will be sorted out. But considering massive purpose built computing rigs can't do this well I just don't see it showing up in mobile technology anytime soon.

The Good:

OS 3 brings a slew of new goodies that are not specific to the 3g s but the addition of cut and paste and a device search capability are both very welcome additions to the iPhone... and both are needlessly late. Another small change but extremely welcome is the addition of many more applications that make use of the landscape keyboard. I can type fast enough in this orientation to take meeting notes as long as it consists of relatively simple bulleted information. I hold out hope that one day they will design landscape modes for every thing in the root OS.

Tethering is now built into the OS rather than only possible via jailbreaking and ugly network sharing hacks. Just pair and go ala typical Apple easy peasy operation. Granted AT&T still has this nerfed but the capability is there. It should have been there to start with as it is on other phones of this calibre.

Class leading Capacitive touch screen. The hardest to swallow aspect of the new iPhone was and still remains its touch screen based interface. The spec bumps just make it even more responsive and the 3g was already pretty snappy on all things touch related.

Tight Design. Devices worth the better part of $1000 should not have the feel of dime store trinkets as do many high end phones. These phones are solid and the buttons are sparse but useful. You will use all the buttons on the device routinely which is not always the case in other phones.

The camera spec boost: I am not a huge fan of cell phone cameras. But I have found a lot of use for mine as a poor mans scanner. White board session snaps in particular are the 'killer ap' as far as my needs go. 2mp is barely adequate. 3mp is very capable. Of all the spec jumps this is the one that will be most useful for me in comparison to what I would have been stuck with on the 3g.

Third Party Software: The app store is to Apple's success with the iPhone as Office is to Microsoft's success in the desktop OS world.

Conclusion:

Contrary to popular belief (or at least Apple marketing) the iPhone is not a revolutionary handset. There is not one thing that it does that another handset was not capable of a year or two before even the iPhone 1 showed up on the scene. Web browsing, mobile applications, GPS, e-mail etc... had all be done. But none of them managed to break out of the geek crowd to mainstream audience. Particularly with regards to unlimited level data plans. Many folks bought smart phones purely for stand alone PDA capability without bundled data plans. The iPhone managed to take that existing capability and wrap it all up in a package that sold 17 million individual units with the large majority of those being people new to mobile data usage. In that sense the iPhone was revolutionary. But it got there by building a better mousetrap... not by inventing the idea in the first place. The 3G S is a very very nice mouse trap and it is a very nice step forward from its predecessor. But ultimately it is just keeping the fire alive... not taking it to new heights.

Review: Star Trek

Ok.... First my take is this. Good Flick, BAD Trek. Still was enjoyable and I look forward to another swipe taken by JJ Abrams with this cast.

Don't keep reading if you haven't seen it and don't want to hit any spoilers:
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First off lets get the Bad Trek out of the way. First up? Time travel. This device of story telling is pretty much always going to be bad. There are very few examples of good time travel stories and this isn't one of them. The use here is just plain fraught with problems most of which concern the Villain. Spock fails an attempt to save Romulous from a super nova. A random Romulan mining ship guns for him in an act of revenge for his failure. As a part of this encounter both Spock and the mining ship to fall into a black hole accidently and get zipped back through time to emerge 25 years apart? That is bad. The idea that a random Romulan mining ship would be damn near invincible a few decades in the past just takes it from there. The idea that Vulcan and Earth had ZERO other defenses than that provided by the scrambled academy cadets truly stretches this whole mess to the breaking point. This element of the story is dog meat. It is a plot device pure and simple to accomplish two things. Drive the crew of the Enterprise together, and give them a clear slate for future stories without the baggage of the Trek franchise history. It accomplishes both so despite being dog meat it is at least useful dog meat.

Alternatives? All pretty messy. Personally I would have suggested leaving Nimoy's Spock in his own time. Give him a role in the cause of the events leading to the destruction of Romulous significant enough to drive a surviving Romulan element a reason to go after him personally... and via time travel since the idea here was to give Trek a new slate to work from. At least an intentional run to the past by an advanced Romulan military vessel would have explained its nigh invulnerability to older technology... as opposed to the invincible mining ship we were subjected to. A super nova as the cause of the destruction of Romulous was probably a poor choice. They set the table for a social revolution led by Spock in TNG and it could easily have been something that backfired into a destruction of that world by civil war. They even had set up Romulan technology to be centered around controlling singularities which could have been spun to time travel with some liberal techno babbling. All wasted... oh well.

Next up on the bad? The silly(er) use of transporting. Rodenberry was pretty honest about the transporter being a device of convenience and it was a technology he specifically limited in his stories to avoid having it become an impossible story element to deal with. They blast people willy nilly all over the place in this movie at levels they didn't use even in the far future of the Trek universe. In the end I suppose it did what Rodenberry originally intended it to do. It moved the story along without tedious travel by ship. However this particular use of the transporter has plot killing implications for ANY story JJ pursues in his new cannon.

In addition to the transporter use problems they have a serious continuity issue with the time it takes Enterprise to reach Vulcan and the time it takes to get back to earth. Apparently the Villain ship is at least as fast as the Enterprise as it can't catch up before it reaches earth. The trip out seems to take a matter of minutes once the ships leave Earth at Maximum warp. Yet all kinds of convoluted shenanigans happen before the Enterprise even goes in pursuit of the enemy ship headed for earth. Yet they apparently arrive only shortly after the enemy ship plunges its mining laser of doom to Earth.

Alternatives? Don't kick Kirk off the ship in the first place... go ahead and let Scotty be on the ship already and as I already suggested there was no need to put Nimoy's Spock into the alternate universe timeline. As for the continuity of timing, it would have been simple to show the trip out to Vulcan would take a while. This would have provided time to show the crew getting to know each other on the ship doing their duties. Additionally establish that the villain ship was slower thus allowing time for the power struggle between Kirk and Spock to determine the course of action for the Enterprise.

Next up, neither Vulcan or Earth have any defense in this movie other than academy cadets manning whatever ships are left due to a frontier conflict the federation is involved in. This already in-plausible small force is swiftly reduced to just the freshly constructed Enterprise. And I mean there is NOTHING else. This is a somewhat largish hole in the PLOT and considering the action nature of this movie it seems odd they did not take advantage of the opportunity to show more big splashy combat sequences. Of course having the mining ship fend off all comers would have simply exacerbated the whole problem of just why it was invincible. To make it worse it appears it would not have really taken that much to take the laser drilling thing out as despite the ships invincibility to federation ships, the laser itself is apparently easily taken out with handheld weapons once Kirk and crew do the ultimate sky dive to reach it at Vulcan. Lets not talk about why exactly they had to use the mining laser in the first place if the actual weapon being employed was a black hole... all you would have to do with that is get it close enough to the ground for the gravity to start pulling it in. All of this is fine for a no brainer action flick. But that is not the history of the Trek franchise. Trek has, for the most part, established good chops in using 'science' to underpin its story lines through the various incarnations. This particular pile of crap would have been bad on the infamously weak plots of the wrung dry Enterprise series.

Alternatives? Assuming we went with the idea that the Romulan bird was an advanced military vessel from the future then there would have been little problem with having massive defensive struggle with stopping it. The ticking clock could have been provided by some convoluted process needed to spit out a black hole to destroy the planet with. Think Borg episodes in TNG where it went to sector 1.

So how can I say all this and still say it was a good flick? Because it was. There are numerous holes in pretty much any Sci Fi movie and past Trek (even the good ones) have been no exception. For example there was nothing here much worse than say Star Wars, or Chronicles of Riddic etc... It was action packed fun. It just did not capture Trek very well in terms of what was driving the action. However the casting was good. The acting was good. And it sets up a true blank canvass on which to move forward. Doing any Star Trek movie was going to be hard. Doing one that basically took all that has gone before and saying 'Do Over' was a very tall order. Yet I say for the most part mission accomplished. It was messy, and it was fun. Long term I doubt this film will fare well... but if they fire out some good Trek on the now blank Canvass then I think its shortcomings will be overlooked in light of the new opportunities it hopefully has opened.

New AT&T Terms of Use

Recently AT&T made a change to their terms of service for mobile broadband customers. **Edit: and apparently retracted it almost as fast, the section below is from the old and once again current terms, but my rant still applies. The removed verbage was specifically targeted at sling player with the term "user re-directed streams" added to the list of things you could not do** Here is the section of interest:


Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing; (ii) as a substitute or backup for private lines, landlines or full-time or dedicated data connections;


This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices is prohibited.




Most people probably pick up on the idea here that you can check e-mail but not download a movie via bit torrent or limewire or something. The thing I think a lot of people don't get (fellow geeks aside) is just how bat shit insane these terms are. You see AT&T's network does not give a flip if you are downloading e-mail or said movie from a torrent. Both cause a transfer of 1's and 0's across the network from a given source (remote server) to a given destination (your device). The only difference in this particular example is one of volume. E-mail typically consists of a relatively small amount of data where a movie represents a relatively large amount of data. So why doesn't AT&T just say you can't download more than X amount of data? Because the plans these terms are referring to are 'unlimited' data plans (such as the iphone). Thus in effect they are saying you can download unlimited e-mail and no movies.

So here is the true insanity of this... the amount of data represented by 'unlimited e-mail' is .... wait for it.... unlimited. So if data is data then why does it mater if I download x amount of e-mail data versus the same amount of movie data?

Whether the source of the data is a Youtube server, E-mail server, Webpage or from a sling box makes no difference to your mobile device or to the AT&T network. In all cases this is delivery of content from a server to your mobile device. The only difference is the IP address where the content is coming from. The only aspect which may vary is the bandwidth required between the two sources.

Here is another nugget of insanity. They explicitly state downloading legally obtained music as a legitimate activity. However they explicitly state that streaming audio is not a legitimate activity. What is the difference between streaming and downloading? As far as the AT&T network is concerned, Absolutely nothing. Again as far as the network is concerned it is sending 1's and 0's from a source to a destination. The only difference here is how the device handles the data. Streaming data is played as it arrives. Downloaded content is played after it arrives. AT&T's concern is that users will 'stream' more content than they will 'download'. For example how many songs would you 'download' from itunes vrs 'stream' from XM? Again the crux of AT&T's problem is not what you are accessing but how much you are accessing. Technically speaking listening to a song via 'streamed XM' IS Downloading a legally acquired song assuming you have an XM account that allows access via the web.

So lets do this again. If I can download an unlimited amount of legally obtained songs which represents an unlimited amount of data... then why is X amount of play after I download content any different from X amount of play as I download content?

I could probably come up with a 100 different ways to say the same thing here... but ultimately this all comes down to pure "Troll Under the Bridge" stuff on the part of AT&T. Only to make it worse, in this case, you have already paid the damn troll for permission to cross the bridge and they are telling you what you can carry with you across the bridge. If you consider the 'no tethering* clause' then they are telling you what you can carry across the bridge and where you can go with it once you get across.

The FCC needs to step in here under concerns of false advertisement. The word unlimited should not be allowed if there is in fact a limit. The term should be consistently defined as 24/7 access at a given rate for the term of the contract. If the carriers want to create limits on how fast a device can transfer data across the network that is fine. Also, In addition to stipulating carriers adhere to the concept of net neutrality**, the idea that the provider has any say in where the information goes after it reaches my device (tethering) needs to be criminalized. If I access by means other than my contracted device the carriers have a beef, if I remove speed limitations and exceed the rate I pay for the carriers have a beef. But accessing data via the device within the access restrictions of my contract should be all a carrier can regulate. Not what I access or how I distribute it for my personal use.

*tethering is when you access the internet on your laptop (or any other device) via your mobile device. In effect this is turning your mobile device into a modem. Mobile carriers contend that there is a difference between accessing information on your mobile device and accessing that same information via your mobile device but displayed by another device. If the laptop connected directly to their network this would be true. However, in a tethering setup all transactions with the network are handled by the mobile device. To illustrate let us use an example. Using an I-phone to view a youtube clip and an iphone tethered to a computer viewing the same youtube clip. As far as AT&T's network is concerned the same information was transferred. The information was accessed by your iphone in both cases. The only difference is that when you view it on your computer the iphone passes the information along rather than displaying it on its screen.

**net neutrality refers to the concept that internet providers have no say in what information you access.*

Kindle 2: Hands On

The Good

1) Backed by a proven innovator
2) Instant Gratification
3) Readable technology
4) Large Library
5) Long battery life
6) Decent Form Factor
7) Multiple sources of material
8) Power by usb standard with provided wall adapter... micro is growing more common

It is easy to forget just how innovative a company Amazon is. They revolutionized the print industry and were pathfinders to internet business success. Once they established themselves as the pre-immanent supplier of books they then expanded to the point many people find it easy to forget it was their original reason for existence. They were one of the first to seize on the fact the core of internet business was not so much what you sold but how you garnered trust and managed the logistics. if you solved those two issues then you could sell pretty much anything. In retrospect it was little more than replicating what Sears Roebuck managed in the previous century with mail order business. Massive selection and trusted transactions. Simple in concept and insanely hard in reality but they have not only managed it... they are all but defining how you do it. They paved the way for internet success with selling tangible objects... making the jump to intangible should not be a huge leap. And in this case Apple has already paved the way with the success of Itunes.

E-books, particularly combined with the Kindle Cellular capability allows Amazon to remove the middle man as it were when it comes to the trusted transaction side of the equation. They no longer have to rely on UPS to deliver. They no longer have to contend with delaying the customers instant gratification desire. Want a book? Then download it. Instant Gratification is provided wherever you can make a Sprint phone call. You can browse for free, and purchase what you want when you want without having to go to the store. All you lack is the physical printed out form of the book. And while people do love to have their books it is important to remember that what readers are addicted to is reading... not stacks of bound paper.

Which brings us to the reading experience of e-ink. First off I have read many many many forum posts and even some professional reviews that dismiss e-ink in favor of PDA/Laptop/Computer screens. Based on my experience with e-ink I can only conclude they are not people who read. E-ink is 90% of the paper reading experience. Transmissive display technology such as CRT and LCD are simply not even in the same realm. I'd say 10% of the paper reading experience tops. They are something to be endured out of necessity because they provide invaluable capability. However, If they were as good as e-ink then the paperless office would be a reality and e-books would have long since replaced print. Instead when folks have to actually read they almost always resort to a print out or book. Many would counter that there are numerous people that 'read' all day long in front of a computer. I don't agree. True enough people use computers for long durations but rarely to 'read'. By 'read' I mean sit down to immerse yourself in a story. Dealing with E-mail, presentation building, web surfing and document review is NOT 'reading'. I am a Net junky and rarely go long periods without staring at some type of screen or other except when I actually 'read'. I have tried numerous times to read books on computers of all stripes and while I have succeeded I have NEVER found a solution that could replace lugging around books despite much money spent in search of it. I tried on old CRT monitors, Laptops, I tried early Palm Pilot PDA's I have tried snazzy windows mobile phones, the Nokia N810 MID and an Iphone. They all tragically fail at a basic capability books posses. The ability to disappear in ones hands. The Kindle 2 disappears and by most accounts so did the first generation device with the exception of accidental page turns. This capability is primarily due to E-ink. E-ink sucks at many things due to its unwieldy re-fresh process. But for reading a book it excels at a level unmatched by anything and I mean anything including print books.... at least at paperback level. Technical manuals are a different matter but I will get to that.

There has been a long standing Chicken and Egg problem with e-books. Technology capable of reading book length material on, and a selection large enough that you would not constantly be having to swap between types of books. While Amazon has not entirely solved this problem they have gone a long long LONG way down the right path. If they succeed in making their entire selection of books available for Kindle then they will have solved the supply of book side of the problem. Their current availability of 250,000 titles is a fantastic start. In fact they have larger selections in individual genre's than most other e-book retailers have been able to provide in their entire catalogues. The Sony Library and Fictionwise house the the only comparable scale libraries and only comes in at around 50,000 titles each. I personally think they have reached critical mass. As long as Amazon remains committed I will bet on them to make e-book availability a given for pretty much anything available in less than 10 years... and probably in less than 5.

So the second part of the problem is the technology. Kindle has solved the two biggest hurdles to e-book technology. The first was a screen that was as easy to read as paper. The second was to produce a reasonable battery life with an acceptable weight profile. You could make a PDA that could run for days or weeks if you would be willing to carry around several pounds of battery... but few want to carry around such a dead weight. The double break through of e-ink was the static display of information without power. In effect the device literally prints a document on the screen. Power is then not needed until you need to print another page. You can think of it to some extent as an etc-a-sketch. What is drawn on the screen stays there until it is shaken/refreshed. With the wireless on the Kindle has an effective life of greater than 1 day which is the minimum I considered needed to be successful. While my early use suggests the quoted 4 day capability is a bit optimistic I think it is safe to say 2-3 days is pretty safe barring constant downloads via shopping or net browsing. If you turn off the wireless then the battery life is truly impressive for an electronic gizmo at greater than a week (2 weeks advertised).

The next element of the technology they have done well on is the form factor. The original kindle was ugly however by most marks it was functional. Kindle 2 is bland but in a good way. Where the Kindle 1 was jarring and distinctive the Kindle 2 is a study in subdued. It fits the hand well and while at first blush the large amount of non-screen space seems a waste it does not take long in handling it to understand that space serves a very important function in helping the device to vanish in your hands. Due to the design/size and placement of the screen it is all but impossible to obscure it while in any position that you find comfortable to read in. The keyboard is necessary for the device to exist on its own without a computer symbiosis like the Sony Reader requires. Whether or not that is an issue is pretty much one up to individual taste. I personally think the devices ability to operate entirely on its own is one of its strongest features. I imagine in the future you will see a symbiotic device design from Amazon but not until the market matures a little further and experiences a higher level of competition.

One thing many people seem to misunderstand about the Kindle is the idea that you can ONLY get material from Amazon. This is not true. I have books from Tor.com, Fictionwise and Baen books on my Kindle 2. You can even download from these sources via the web browser if you are truly patient... but ultimately I would say this capability is largely reliant connecting the Kindle to a computer and dragging the files across. I wish Amazon had licensed all of the major e-book formats instead of just the open Mobi format. But mobi is one of the most widely available from other e-book purveyors. About the only store that does not have titles available for the kindle at this point is the Sony connect library. Don't get me wrong... the Kindle is still largely in vendor lock in simply due to the fact the Amazon library is effectively the only major source of e-book material in multiple genre's. However... the device can use other formats than Amazon's. The Amazon only translation of some formats however is a sticking point I will get to in a bit.

The last good element of the technology I want to talk about is a small one but still important in my eyes. They are utilizing USB micro standard. This means that Amazon is not the only provider of compatible data/power cables for this device. Proprietary cables are a serious pet peeve of mine and I am glad Amazon went this way. I would be happier if they had gone with mini rather than micro. However Micro is finally a standard with a growing market share.


The So-So

There really is not a lot of middle ground where the Kindle is concerned. This device is polarizing device for a combination of reasons. The e-book market is very much in the early adopter phase though it finally looks to be on the road to becoming mainstream. But here are some minor niggles

There is a silly power save feature that puts a 'screen saver' up on the device if a page is not turned for 10 minutes. If the re-start were as quick as a typical page change I would probably not have an issue... but it often takes several second for the device to return to your last page. There should at least have been an option to tell the device to simply continue displaying your last page when entering power save mode and the ability to select what you want to display if it showed something else. The choice of various classic authors of note and other literary themes is pretty neutral but still can be irksome. For example I would love to be able to select or provide images for my favorites and ban others. Again this is a minor nit.

The text to speech function. It works. It doesn't sound as bad as some computer synthesized voices but it certainly is NOT something I would want to rely on. However, For folks with disabilities this in conjunction with the growing amazon library could be a killer app. As for the authors guild suit against amazon I hope it goes nowhere if for no other reason than keeping this capability for those that would find it indispensable without having to pay extra for it.

Wiki access and web access in general is a hard to judge value. Browsing is very limited by the e-ink refresh rate and the process is generally pretty slow going. Access to wiki in an easily readable format could be very useful when doing research. I think some of the more important implications of e-ink technology is going to be when its refresh rates improve... but for now the device is seriously out of its element when trying to surf the web. Wiki works relatively well because many of the articles are like downloading mini books.... complete with a table of contents.

I imagine it was no trouble putting the MP3 function on the device but frankly in having this they should have had the sense to leave a slot for sd cards or something to augment the memory. 2gb is plenty for text information but pretty paltry when talking audible formats.


The Bad

1) Price
2) Price
3) Document Format Compatibility
4) Gift purchases
5) Lack of a card slot
6) Lack of a cover

So lets get the first two out of the way. 350 smackers for the privilege of paying dead tree prices for actual reading material. Granted I understand that part of the steepness of the entry cost here is an up front cellular access cost. But I still think it is nuts. At least unbundle the cellular capability and allow folks that want to buy the device with whisper-net disabled and require the use of a computer to load content. I pretty sure both options would be better than a subscription plan. But it takes a pretty select group of people to look at that price and see it as a worth while investment. It just so happens that those who do are also most likely to be extremely heavy book customers. This combination of instant gratification at or below current print cost in such a mobile package is insanely attractive to those who read, read some more and then continue reading, especially if they are on the go folks who often travel. I would be curious to know what percentage of books sales the top 5-10% of book readers are responsible for. I can only surmise it is significant and that is what Amazon has aimed for. IE they are trying to get the big fish to make the transition in hopes that the rest of the market will inevitably follow.

The 350 is a lot to bite off... but it is only exacerbated by the added insult that you end up paying an almost equal amount for a digital copy as you do for a print edition. Supposedly most of the cost of printing books is actually wrapped up in printing and distribution. Why then does the cost to the consumer of a digital book not reflect the dramatically lower cost of producing and distributing digital content? That is a problem for many with the Kindle and in my eyes is a very legitimate beef. The insult to injury here is that I lose many capabilities I have with a print edition... such as loaning it out. If we are to be subject to DRM on our purchased materials then at the least Amazon should provide for the ability to transfer the rights of the files we purchase from them. I should be able to loan my books to friends as well without having to loan them my device. This notion that an individuals rights are different for some reason when the format of the book is digital vrs when it is a physical print out is absurd and technological impediments subverting those rights should not be allowed. If Amazon really wants this market to explode they need to lower the cost to reflect the lack of physical mass production and distribution. They also need to either provide for a 'loaning' capability OR further reduce the price to reflect the loss of value... perhaps it is possible that the gained value of mobility can offset the loss of loaning. But I doubt it. Ultimately a lack of an ability to loan purchased materials easily will drive piracy and lead to folks finding ways to freely exchange their files.

In the save vein is the lack of direct document format capability. Word/PDF etc translations should have been provided via software a user could run on their own in addition to the pay per cost service of sending it to Amazon. I imagine this limitation is largely driven by copy right concerns. IE if I can convert PDF's locally then there is no check on what PDF documents I convert. Same for word docs, etc... there is a crap load of copyrighted material out there available to those not so concerned with it. By forcing people to go through their servers Amazon can at least pay lip service to preventing unlicensed conversions for use on the Kindle. I just wish the emerging e-book market would learn from the music industries mistakes. The push is on for compatibility which means open formats. Piracy just is not the problem people make it out to be. Folks that pirate material are generally not people that would have bought the material in the first place. The more material people can sample the more they are likely to purchase because they are confident in what they are getting. Another issue here is one of protecting information from Amazon... Ie if I have proprietary information I want on the Kindle in word document formating I probably do not want to send it to Amazon, and simply converting to .txt may lose important formating information.

A really stupid oversight by Amazon that began with the Kindle 1 and has extended to present date is the lack of ability for someone to purchase a kindle file for someone with a kindle. For example if I put a book in my wish list for someone to see when they want to buy something for me they should be able to purchase the kindle version. Right now all Amazon says regarding the issue is buy a gift certificate instead. This is absurd and really silly considering Kindle sales are already up to 1/10th. I plunked down for a digital book reader and as a result I will primarily want to receive books I can read on it. This is a stupid problem and one I hope Amazon addresses sooner rather than later.

They should have left some form of expandable memory slot. I don't care how much material 2gb can hold. Removing this was silly. Sure Amazon is keeping my library intact but will that be the case 50 years from now. At least you can download the files to a computer as well. I might have forgiven them this if they had provided for a way to set up your own kindle server for your material.

Lack of a cover is I think in-excusable. Paying 350 bucks for a device that is based around the concept of staring at its screen for hours on end should have come with an included solution for protecting that screen from scratches.

Conclusion:

The device itself is fantastic. The library is plenty big and complete for most appetites. Mobi compatibility provides access to most other available material out there. The drawback is that it is not yet really an economical option compared to print books.

If you are looking for reasons to economically justify the purchase of a Kindle the only one that has a chance of paying off in short order is if you are a retail hard back junky. At ~15 bucks a pop in savings you can get even in 25 books or so. With paper back you had better be a serious junky as you rarely save more than a buck or two a shot if you save anything at all. For the most part the reason to buy a kindle is to have a portable library and the ability to add to it on the go. Personally I will probably recoup a fair chunk of the cost through new release price breaks... but ultimately I bought it because I travel a lot and often cary multiple books with me when I do. Since the cost per book was as good and sometimes better I considered the ability to travel lighter enough justification in and of itself. My reason and the lower clutter of books around the house are probably the two most common justifications I have encountered in reading about Kindle owners.

One thing Amazon should have done was partnered with Project Gutenburg for access to public domain material in an easily browsable form from the Kindle. As is you can still access it via .txt format downloads.

In the world of e-books the Kindle stands tall with two major advantages. Instant gratification through whisper net downloads, and access to the largest retail e-book library in existence. For those familiar with the Sony products the clarity of this device is better than the most recent iteration and on par with the older 500 series. Page transitions are notably faster. Menu navigation about the same. Search ability far superior.

Kindle 2: Is the e-book finally here?

10 Reasons why Kindle 2 might represent the arrival of the e-book:

1) 250,000 books available.
2) Commitment by Amazon to bring its entire library to the Kindle.
3) Cellular data connectivity allowing for a stand alone device not requiring a computer.
4) Cost of wireless connectivity built into the cost of the device to cover downloading non-periodical content.
5) Design is no longer so horrendous as to be detrimental.
6) Amazon allowing you to re-download any of your purchases, and sync across multiple devices providing greater security for your investment.
7) 2nd generation e-ink display, slightly less annoying page transitions, same great sunlight visible goodness.
8) Excellent cost improvement to new release material vrs current Hardback costs.
9) Comparable cost for paperback material.
10) 2gb of storage may not sound like much but a 1500 book capacity should keep most in good shape.

5 Reasons why Kindle 2 might not represent the arrival of the e-book

1) Proprietary format e-books you can't lend to a friend
2) Supplier lock in, only Amazon can provide books barring translatable version from other sources
3) User unable to replace battery
4) 1500 book capacity is a lot but why not keep the memory card slot?
5) Expensive up front device cost with limited content cost savings.


As for whether 10 is greater than 5 or the other way around remains to be seen but from what I can tell version 2 is a clear step up from version 1. It is improved enough that I am currently awaiting delivery of my slice of future tech tomorrow. The content lock in worries me. However, the lure of a svelte portable device carrying plenty of books and able to download more most anywhere proved ALMOST irresistible. The fact Amazon finally got publishers to agree to e-book prices lower in some cases and equal in most others put me over the top. They still cost to much but at least they don't cost more... for now I'll survive with having to pay the old early adopter tax.