PMN Log

Just finished reading How to forget by Marius Brill. Excellent book, intelligent and whimsical featuring psychology, magic and celebrity. I recommend it.

I love reading Seth Goldin’s blog for tips and interesting reading material. He posted a list of interesting books that he recently read, of which the first book on the list – The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau looked really interesting. When I go to the Kindle app and look to buy the book, I get the message that the book is not available in my geographical area. Now the moment is lost and I may never buy this book. Those copyright restrictions just cost the author and publisher a sale.

Now this is an interesting device which was reported by laptop mag has reported. The article also mentions a device where a 12 inch table can attach itself to a keyboard to transform itself into a notebook. However, I’m a fan of devices becoming as small as possible but also to be usuable. The iPad (which I saw for the first time yesterday) is too heavy and too big for my liking. That’s what makes the third device to interesting.

As a note-taker, the Eee Tablet could hardly offer more functionality. Its stylus uses Wacom technology to give it an incredibly smooth drawing / hand writing experience. But if writing down notes or drawing diagrams when you’re in a meeting or class is not enough, why not take a picture of the whiteboard? The Eee Tablet has a back facing camera that will take photos of anything and let you annotate it. You can also record sound while you take notes. So just imagine recording a college lecture and then playing it back while you read the notes and look at photos of the whiteboard.

It seems to me to be something business people would take to in droves. The iPad is notoriously unhelpful for productive tasks like writing, there is no camera and as far as I’m aware, there is no microphone. The ASUS tablet has all three. It seems that ASUS has stolen a march on their competitors yet again. Watch them try and catch up.

The Financial Times reports that Sony will standardise the format of their ebooks.
That brings up 2 questions for me.

• Will they update the software on existing readers to allow the new format to be used?
• Will this mean that for customers outside the US will be able to buy their books from more than one source?

I like the sony ereader but the whole experience of getting books that I actually want has been a frustrating experience. Customers from Ireland are restricted to the Waterstone’s site and the selection of books that I actually want to read there is really small. In addition, the interface on the Waterstones site is bad. I’m not interested in buying physical books from them. If they want my business, they need to have those books in ebook format. Otherwise, I buy from Amazon or physical bookshops.
If I can buy physical books from the Amazon US site, why can’t I buy books from the central Sony store? Sony, Waterstones and publishers in general need to wake up to make this experience as easy and straightforward as Apple can make it.

Nice idea, type in the last book you read (and enjoyed) and a list of related books is displayed in a list.
What You Should Read Next

I bought jPod when I bought the newspaper this morning. I’ve already finished the newspaper and am half way through it. It’s wonderful so far, just like Microserfs was.

I’ve just finished A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger and saw Zodiac in the cinema last week. Both are set around the same time, 60′s and 70′s about serial killers who were never completely identified although both pieces tend to point to an individual as being responsible for each spree. Both works are by respected and talented individuals but in both cases I was left not being completely satisfied with either.

I picked up a book in the English second hand bookshop a couple of weeks ago. Diane Arbus: A Biography is a haunting book about her search for images as an artist, how she strived to expand her view of the world by her journey into the most unexplored parts of New York and how her being as an artist affected her personal life. I’m less than half-way through it but it’s captivating. I’m not sure if I really understand her vision but I will look at her work again when I’m finished and see if the view is different.