“For the past year and a half I’ve been reading books on my iPad and never felt a need for a Kindle. However, after now using the Kindle Touch for several hours a day over the past few days, I feel as if all the accolades I ever heard about the Kindle were vast understatements.”

To call this review thorough would be an understatement too.

“Like most convergence devices before it, the Kindle Fire doesn’t do anything exceptionally well (except for buying things via Amazon) but the price is right at $200.”

How in the world is the price right when the product “doesn’t do anything exceptionally well”? I’d say the price is wrong.

The story of White Fang is nothing too exciting, to be honest. To enjoy White Fang I’m guessing you’d have to be a dog lover, or a nature enthusiast, or simply enjoy reading about the Wild, the American Indian and the gold miner’s life and times through the eyes of an animal. There is no hook, no twist, no one thing that you can point to that would make someone want to read this book.

That doesn’t mean this book isn’t very good. In fact, I would recommend anyone give it a try. London often times feels a bit dry to most people but I think reading a dry book on occasion can really help a reader force focus. Never once, even after pages and pages of a small puppy’s first experiences, did I get bored or think that the story was being purposefully drawn out.

Here is a quick excerpt, ripped from Project Gutenburg where you can read White Fang in whole, where London describes the Wild’s desire to kill anything that moves.

“It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man—man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.”

London’s descriptions of Beauty Smith, who was the owner of White Fang for a time and treats him ill to become a prized dog-fighter, was simply brutal. I tweeted that I thought London had a personal vendetta he was filling with these pages. I thought it was great. He handed it to Beauty Smith. I wish it went on forever.

Looking back I think this is how London wrote White Fang. He probably created a list and story arc for this book. Dog is born. Dog lives. Dog fights. Dog gets angry. Dog gets happy. Dog travels to California. Then, he spent the next few years filling in the middle with as much detail as he possibly could dream up. Down to how the coals from a hot fire feel on the padded foot of a wolf. And somehow he pulled it off beautifully.

I should probably begin to rate books, since I’m reviewing them from time to time. I’ll rate them based on the following categories: Readability (the most important thing to this reader), writing, pace, and story. Here is how White Fang stacks up.

• Readability: 3.5 – I had little trouble getting through this book. Others, however, probably would.
• Writing: 4.0 – London’s pen for White Fang seemed to drip words onto the paper. Nothing forced.
• Pace: 3.0 – Slow at times. Even the action was seemingly in slow-mo. Not all bad.
• Story: 2.5 - Nothing to get excited about but worth a read.

This may perhaps be because of popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean and the harsh edge of a good pirate story worn down through comedy relief. A pirate story filled with peril isn’t one that you generally sweat over any more. Perhaps if this book was published in the 1950s it would be much more exciting – but in today’s market (at least in this reader’s imagination) the pirate story has been worn down to the nub.

This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it because Pirate Latitudes has its moments. While Crichton has written about voyages on the sea in the past (the most notable of which comes to mind is in Eaters of the Dead and perhaps the young T-Rex’s chase near the waterfalls in Jurassic Park) he certainly didn’t get to go into as much detail as he was able to with Pirate Latitudes. You get the sense that these men really felt much more at home on the sea than they did on land. They were their own society, as it is put in the book, with their own rules, their own code and their own objectives. They knew their craft (one of the characters being called a sea artist) and knew their seas. In this sense Pirate Latitudes was a fun read and I even found myself wishing that Crichton found a way to put even more of the nitty gritty sailing details into the book.

Unlike Prey, this story ended pretty strong and I would actually recommend reading it if you like a good pirate story.

Here are more of my reviews of books by Michael Crichton.

“It’s by far James Cameron’s finest pieces of work and although I’ll be one of the many to grab a Blu-Ray copy, seeing it in theatre is an experience you should not miss out on regardless of how big your Hi-Def TV is. Even the 3D-glasses supplied were a considerable upgrade from the tradition paper and plastic ones so I kept them as a souvenir.”

Agreed, I will too, yes you should, and I did too (twice).

/via Every Star Wars geek I subscribe to.

PS. There is a lot of backstory that goes along with this link. An example of which is that Damon Lindelof, the major creative driving force behind LOST and the recent Star Trek film, watched this and said: “Your life is about to change. This is astounding film making. Watch ALL of it.” That is why I’ve decided to leave my link to this video as simple as possible and just say watch it.

Mike Rundle, whom I had the extreme pleasure of working with at 9rules, is – and I have absolutely no reservations about saying this out loud – one of the very best designers I will ever work with. He also doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty with regards to programming. And he’s done just that with Beak – his foray into developing software for the Macintosh (which is, I think, exactly what he should be doing).

Beak is a simple, yet relatively full-featured Twitter application for the Macintosh that has Mike’s visual tastes dripping all over it. The icons in the application, as an example, could be picked out as Mike’s work from a hundred yards.

One of the differentiators that Beak has going for it, over any of the other Twitter applications I’ve used for the Mac, is the “Stats” tab. Mike chose to use the URL shortener Idek.net, which has a nice, clean, simple API, that allows him to show the number of click thrus on a URL that you’ve shortened from within Beak itself. I think this is both genius and handy. While Tweetie supports all of the URL shortening services I could ever want (and photo posting services too), it doesn’t support showing the statistics of those clicks nor does it even connect me to my account on said URL shorteners (neither does Beak, but at least I can easily check the stats tab).

There are several other nits that Mike has, no doubt pain stakingly [sic], poured over, refined, and included in the first version of this application. Profile pop-up boxes, in-line replies and retweets, and support for multiple accounts all seem like things that someone who was taking the easy way would have left out.

This is still “beta” software people. But I’m very much looking forward to what Mike ends up with before hitting 1.0 and even more looking forward to seeing what he does for his next trick in the world of Mac applications.

Reading his review, albeit late and after an update has already been released for it, has inspired me to dive into the application a little more fully. I’ve found even more than I thought was there before. Tweetie is a fantastic Twitter application for the Mac.

During our stay on Oahu for the Social Media Club Workshop, Podcamp and Wordcamp Hawai’i, and a little leisure time – Eliza and I stayed at the Wyland Waikiki hotel.

This modern hotel showcases some of Wyland’s (whose name is Robert Wyland, by the way) artwork on nearly every surface available. Wall-sized paintings, sculptures, surf boards, and even tile works on the bottom one of the hotel’s pools all show off the creativity of Wyland.

The rooms are a decent size with all of the amenities that you’d come to expect nowadays. Beautiful flat-panel televisions, high beds, and nice bathrooms. Eliza and I had a room with a fridge and a sink (no range to cook on). We both really enjoyed our stay here.

Not that you spend a lot of time in your hotel when you are in Hawai’i, but I still think it is important to find one that suits your lifestyle. The Xbox-filled gaming room suits my lifestyle, though I admit I didn’t end up using it. The bar in the lobby with some of the better tenders I’ve come across, suits my lifestyle. The free wifi throughout the property, does as well.  Though, I must say that only having wired access in the rooms was a bit disappointing.  But Eliza and I quickly took care of that with Mac OS X’s internet connection sharing which is drop dead simple to set up.

Why am I writing about this hotel? Because they were extremely accommodating. They helped out the Podcamp attendees and speakers and also were always on hand when we wanted to chat about the hotel. Something I have never, ever heard of with any other hotel.

And, in the very near future, if you head down to one of the lobby’s two iMacs – you may see Viddler sitting on the desktop ready for you to record your video testimonial for this excellent hotel.

Airframe was written very much in this same Michael Crichton style – though that may be the only reason I was entertained by the book.

Airframe’s story is centered around Casey Singleton, an employee of an aircraft manufacturer, who finds herself with about one week to figure out what happened on a flight that killed a few people and injured many. The story has a few twists, like most good stories do, in that Singleton is being setup by her bosses to take a fall for the company, that the company itself has had a track record of problems with the plane that aren’t easily explained in a single sentence, and a popular TV-news program is about to run a story on her company’s “deathtrap” of a plane.

Airframe is captivating, no doubt.  Again, because I like the way Crichton moves through stories I was able to read this book with ease and without let up. It was never a chore.  But when I was finished with the story it didn’t make me want to start again.

If you’re a Crichton fan, I suggest giving this a read – preferably when you are on a plane, as I was when I began reading this book. It makes the story a little more fun.

Even though I read State of Fear a few months ago, I thought I’d jot down my overall thoughts of the book. As you might notice, I read nearly all of Crichton’s works, so even though the subject matter for this book isn’t particularly interesting to me, I read it because Crichton wrote it.

I’m a sheep, I know.

State of Fear is a story about the environment and the effect Global Warming is, or is not, having on it in the world around us. Is is also about a lawyer trying to pull all of the pieces together, along with a cast of other characters, of a plot to wreak some environmental havoc just as an environmental group is trying to score some dough for their work.

There is more to it, of course, like the whole ideal jousting about the environment and about whether or not Global Warming is a real threat, caused by humans or not, and even if it is having an effect on the planet as we speak.

An interesting way for an acclaimed author to get the information out there and into the hands of his readers without, perhaps, writing a work of non-fiction.

It is also hard to see where Crichton sits on this issue. Frankly, I do not care. Which is why I think he chose to keep it as vague and balanced as it appears to be by this uninformed environmental novice. It really seems like a report on the facts wrapped in an action-packed adventure.

Which is why, I believe, State of Fear will never become a movie. It would be very hard to strike this same balance with a movie. Everything would be critiqued. The Director’s opinions, the actor’s, the screenwriter’s, etc. Everyone that worked on the movie would have a play for the tilt.

Either way I applaud Crichton for keeping my attention long enough to give me all of the facts about Global Warming.  I’ll bet it was a challenge.

If you have a moment, go give it a read.

Source: Hey Mr. Genius DJ!

Photo credit: Paul Stamatiou.

Holy timely post by my friend Paul Stamatiou Batman!

Paul managed to get his paws on a few different laptop bags best-suited to fit his Macbook Air.  Since the Macbook Air is a 13″ computer, I’m assuming this will work for my black Macbook as well.

I’m in the market for a new laptop and bag (if Apple would ever refresh their current line-up already) so that is why I find this review by Paul to be particularly timely.

Source: Review Shootout: Laptop Bags for Light Computing.

“Since installing the app, I find myself reading news a lot more in bed, before I get up in the morning. I roll over, grab my iPhone (which is sitting on the nightstand because I used a podcast to help me fall asleep) and start rocking and rolling with the days’ news. By the time I actually get out of bed, I’ve already made a sizable dent in my feeds. This works only because the app is not annoying; indeed, it’s quite a joy to use.”

It should be noted that Justin does not use NetNewsWire on his Macintosh.  He and I share a love for Google Reader although we both have a lot of experience with NetNewsWire on the Mac.

Currently I don’t read any feeds on my iPhone. I have dabbled with Google Reader’s iPhone interface, but found it really hard to breeze through quickly for a number of reasons. However, his fairly thorough review of NetNewsWire for the iPhone makes me want to give it a try.

He is, as far as I can tell, omitting a huge caveat to using NetNewsWire for the iPhone and Google Reader on the Mac. Syncing.  If I read something on NetNewsWire, on my iPhone, in bed – will I have to read that same post again when I pull up Google Reader at my desk?  That’d suck.

Source: I ♥ NetNewsWire (on the iPhone).

“Would I recommend this film? I think so. It’s not a strong recommendation, though. Consider it an appetizer for the wonderful bounty that rests in months to come this summer.”

I think my recommendation to see Iron Man would be a little stronger than Sameer’s, only because there isn’t enough to complain about Iron Man to recommend not seeing it.  In other words, I’d leave it up to you whether or not you wanted to see Iron Man.  It isn’t a must-see, in my opinion, but if you see it you probably won’t be disappointed.

“Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark is excellent. I laughed out loud way more than I thought I would. I think if you put Downey in any movie as a quick-witted, pompous billionaire, you’d be entertained to some degree.”

Robert Downey, Jr. is great in Iron Man.  In fact, I don’t recall seeing a performance by RD, Jr. that I haven’t liked.  There are moments when the smell of cheese was a bit thick in the air, but – this is a Marvel Comic movie.

To sum up my thoughts on Iron Man: After watching it I didn’t immediately want to rush out and buy the DVD.  I will probably watch it again, simply to be sure I didn’t miss any of the dazzling special effects, but I’m in no rush.  I am, however, looking forward to the next installment (which I am sure there will be one) because we won’t have to worry about the Iron Man setup.

Source: Movie Review: Iron Man.

An example view in Times.

Personally I think this view is refreshing (though it could stand to use some more padding) and I can’t wait to see how this application really works.  The only application that I can remember having a view like this was FeedDemon, but that isn’t on the Macintosh.

Source: Read RSS Newsfeeds In Style With “Times” | The Apple Blog

John does an excellent job reviewing these two applications based on a number of factors including interface, design, feature-sets, and how well each fits into the Operating System.

“I love Firefox’s auto-restoration of tabs and windows. Quit Firefox, relaunch it, and your previously-open tabs and windows are restored. Safari 3 has this feature, but makes you do it manually via the “Reopen All Windows From Last Session” command in the History menu. I’m sure most Safari users have no idea this feature even exists. At least as a preference, Safari should offer the ability to do this automatically.”

He’s right. I never knew that feature was even there. It is little tidbits like this, and John’s superb writing, that have made me never regret my membership fee to Daring Fireball.

Source: Daring Fireball: Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3.

Mirco-review: Excellent story but a very tough read. So tough, for me at least, that I didn’t finish it.

“1. Donate bone marrow. 2. Drink 2 gallons of milk in a single sitting. 3. Become an attack dog chew toy. 4. Host amateur acting workshops in your own home. 5. Join the Polar Bear Club.”

I guess he didn’t like it.

(Source: Movie Review: 10,000 B.C. on The uber geeks)

“I have been able to do everything in my daily work on the Air. This includes using multiple spaces, constantly streaming iTunes radio music, using many tabs in Safari, casual Photoshop use, taking notes and recording lectures in Word 2008, watching episodes of Top Gear and doing web development with Firefox.”

(Source: Review: MacBook Air)

However, I was never really able to keep a good stride with del.icio.us because beyond the way that I used it, the service never really felt very social or usable to me. I’ve heard the creator of del.icio.us say during a speech that a huge portion of del.icio.us’ bandwidth was eaten up by feed subscriptions rather than visitor traffic. Which is exactly the problem that I have with del.icio.us for my own purposes! It does everything that I want it to do, and then some, but it doesn’t feel good and I don’t want to go there.

Me & the ma.gnolia card.

Enter ma.gnolia.com. A gorgeous, feature-rich, friendly, and social service that does everything that del.icio.us does – but it makes you feel like your driving a Porche while doing it. To top it off ma.gnolia lends itself to proper usage which I think is a huge undertaking when creating social services.

Before I go on with my showering of word sugar on ma.gnolia – let me tell you why I switched in the first place.

While in Austin, Texas for SXSW this past March – I met up with Larry Halff founder of ma.gnolia. The first time I met Larry was at a lunch about openID and he ended up treating everyone to that lunch and left before myself or anyone could thank him. Later on that night I caught up with him at one of the many after-parties and made it a point to thank him for taking care of the bill. After we got to talking about all types of subjects I began to tell him how I had never switched to ma.gnolia because I felt that del.icio.us had done everything that I wanted with my social bookmarks.

This is when it happened. This is when Larry, who could have went all marketing on me or even put up his nose at the fact that I even used del.icio.us, answered the following question: “If you only had 30-seconds to tell me about one feature of mag.nolia – what would it be?”

“Thanks. We have a feature called “thanks” that allows you to thank someone for a bookmark. It doesn’t show publicly. It doesn’t make that bookmark or that person go higher on any type of graph or scale, it is just a way to quickly say “thanks”.”

The above is me quoting Larry very loosely as he and I had already had a few drinks at this point. My response? “That’s pretty cool. Ok, when I get home I am going to switch to ma.gnolia and then write a post about my thoughts on it.”.

Now to continue with the shower of word sugar. Ma.gnolia is much nicer than any other social bookmarking site that I’ve tried. Not only aesthetically but also in its usability, its simple and social features, and also its customer service. I picked the worst day to switch to ma.gnolia too. They had just done a version upgrade of their system, and I switched directly in the middle of it. Of course there were some bugs that occurred due to me switching to a cutting-edge version of the site – but Larry and his staff squashed the bugs, responded to support questions, and even fixed some things I didn’t like very quickly.

I’ve now been using it for a few days and I’ve finally been able to hit a stride with a social bookmarking site. Ma.gnolia makes me want to add good content as well as fill in good context for each bookmark I add. I’m almost approaching it more like a blog than just a bookmarking site – since I do not bookmark things only for myself – but for the social network I’ve built on ma.gnolia.

Key features

I simply have to fill you in on what I’ve found to be some of ma.gnolia’s key features. If you are a user of ma.gnolia – and you feel I’ve missed some – please be sure to let me know in the comments.

• The “thanks” feature is as good as I imagined when Larry first told me about it. Simple, private, perfect.
• The fact that every bookmark has a permalink per user so that each user can add their own specific details to it is awesome. It is like social tagging++.
• Ma.gnolia also automatically creates “Short links” for each bookmark giving you an automated TinyURL type service for every bookmark you add. Genius.

The service also takes a screenshot of the domain the URL comes from so that at a quick glance you can see the web page that you bookmarked.

• Although I’ve not had a chance to fully explore the groups on ma.gnolia, I can see from the way others are using them that I will also find them useful. Groups seems like a great way to hold discussions, bookmark resource material, and generally converse with those inside of the group.
• The support and tools section gives great documentation on how you can consume data from ma.gnolia as well as giving you great ways to use the service above and beyond what is available at the site. Currently I’m using one of the bookmarklets to post to ma.gnolia.

There are many others and I could go on but suffice to say; I’m hooked. If you use ma.gnolia be sure to add me as a contact by visiting my profile or you can reach me and other great ma.gnolia users through the featured members page. I’ve also got my latest few bookmarks popping up in the sidebar on my homepage (which is extremely easy to do). If you are not a ma.gnolia user – sign up, import your bookmarks from pretty much any other service and use it for a few days. I’m sure you’ll like it as much as I do.

Thanks to Larry and his team for putting together a great service and to Alex Hillman for encouraging me to switch in the first place.

[tags]ma.gnolia, sxsw, larry halff, social, bookmarking, review[/tags]
[slug]sweet-magnolia[/slug]

[tags]ms. dewey, devin reams, review, search engine[/tags]