eBooks, Amazon and otherwise

I have just finished reading all "The Song of Ice and Fire" books published to date. They were excellent. George RR Martin does an incredible job of building a world, peopling it with characters both fair and foul, and telling a big story using scenes that build on each other over time. Hints are dropped, plots are planted, story seeds that bloom in blossoms both beautiful and terrible. These are adult-level fantasy stories; there is corruption, the morality is typically gray, and a character you hate may turn out to be someone you like, then someone you hate again.

That is no surprise: I read a lot. The surprise is this:

If I had not had the opportunity to read these books in a digital format, I very much doubt I would have ever finished them.

There's a lot of people who swear they'd never read a digital book of any kind, in any format. I read the Song of Ice and Fire series on a ipod Touch, which is a device roughly the size of an iPhone. The screen was not very large, but due to the awesome work done by the people who put together the Amazon Kindle iPhone app, I could easily read the words. Each screen was a tiny amount of an entire "page" but I could page through the little screens very, very easily.

The best thing about the reading, though, was this: my book was always with me. In line at the supermarket, the bank, on the train, for my lunch break at work, laying down at the end of the day, whenever I had a few minutes I could quickly and easily pick up exactly where I left off and read.

I heartily recommend the Kindle app, because it takes an already useful item (the ipod Touch in this case) and makes it even more useful and entertaining. Don't knock it before you try it!

Is Twitter for old farts?

I suspect that Twitter is more for old farts than anyone else.

I recently had the opportunity to meet about 80 newly minted college grads. These folks were close to the top of their class, and in the process of interviewing them about their IT needs, the session leader asked them about Facebook and Twitter.

Apparently everyone in the audience "had a Facebook" in the parlance that was used, but when they were asked about Twitter, there was a lot of groaning and grimacing. I was quite amazed to see such a negative reaction. My expectation after listening to podcasts and reading LiveJournal was that nearly everybody loved Twitter, but apparently not among successful college graduates with Bachelors of Arts and Science degrees here in Georgia.

Now I realize that Clay Shirky says that social innovation can only take place on technology that is so commonplace that it's boring. These days, that means blogs, email, forums, and the like. Getting into Facebook and Twitter is still such a weird thing for a lot of people.

My mom's on Facebook, though. And, I wonder, how many of these students' parents are on Twitter? Older, hipper brothers and sisters?

Of course, I realize that I am in the heart of Atlanta. So maybe this is just an East Coast - West Coast thing. I'm really sorry that this group of bright people have seemed to completely reject Twitter and I wonder what it is that drives them away. Perhaps it is that Britney, Oprah, and Fitty have arrived there before them? Perhaps they're just tired of hearing about it and they've never actually given it a try.

I had a conversation with one of them, where they were talking about why they couldn't understand Twitter, couldn't get why people would want to talk about their lives 140 characters at a time. I asked her if she ever updated her status on Facebook, and she said, "Yeah, all the time. But that's different."

There's no difference, really, between the two. In fact, the TweetDeck program allows one to post directly to both at the same time.

I'm wondering now if we'll even have a Twitter this time next year. We'll see. In the meantime, I'll keep up my Friendfeed, my Tumblog, my Twitter, my Facebook, Goodreads and everything else. I love this stuff - don't plan to stop any time now.

I'm sambearpoet most everywhere, if you want to follow / read me

Bing…what is it good for?

Doing an ego search on Bing.com, I am finding the top five results amusing. Wikipedia, my home page, fireheart foundry, Heart of the Hunter, all OK. But onelook.com ? WTF? And that just redirects to Wikipedia.

So what exactly is revolutionary about Bing? Looks like Just Another Broken Search Engine, to me.

Oh, and by the way, microsoft? If I type bing.microsoft.com, I damn well expect to get Bing. Will you fix that?

Ada Lovelace Day!

Check out http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay for more information about this post and about this wonderful day!

I want to write, today, about my co-worker Olga. She came to America from the Ukraine, and when I first got to know her, she was not an expert in technology. However, over the course of time she has both taught herself (through experience) and learned (in college and from reading) from others to the point where, now, she rightfully can claim the title of computer technician in her own right.

This woman can troubleshoot a laptop problem in a heartbeat, and every new angle she learns to repair, reform, or cleanse a machine of its imperfections she retains seemingly effortlessly. She grabs bright shining facts and holds on to them like a magpie; that she can correlate a lot of disparate elements and keep them all in her head is of major benefit. She follows processes and always has suggestions for improving them.

Although she told me that she worries about an excess of automation in the future (so do I), she said that she enjoys having the wealth of knowledge available to her through the Web.

I asked her what, if anything, she has to say to girls about technology. Here's what she said:

"Technology field is no longer for man only. Being a network or computer engineer was not considered a job for a woman, but I believe that if this is what interests you and where your heart is, go for it."

Go for it, indeed, Olga. You and Ada share a great deal of sisterhood.

Thanks for lending us your skills, your intelligence, and your knowledge at work!

eSet is not fair!

I've been using eSet's "Smart Security" for nearly a year now and I really like it. It protects my family's PCs from virii and malware and other nastiness, doesn't seem to slow us down any, and runs without a hitch. The icon sits in my systray and turns orange if there's a problem. Usually it's just a nice teal color. Right now, though, it's orange.

Did it have a problem with downloading a virus definition update? No.

Did it catch a nasty virus? No.

Did it detect someone 0wnz0rring my PC? No.

It is detecting that there are 14 days or less left on the year license I bought.

That's just not fair. I have become conditioned that Orange Eset icon = bad. Now every time I look at it, it looks orange and that just bothers me.

I think they should be required to just pop up a little notice and go back to blue. After all, there's nothing altogether wrong. I have time left on the license.

I've sent a bunch of people their direction, and I'll still stay by them as the anti-virus and anti-spyware of choice.

But I'm not happy about the "false orange" thing.

Get that man a Blackberry that works for all of us.

This is my challenge to the technology sector.
I don't really know why this is not a no-brainer. Barack Obama wants to have a communications device as President that is a.) secure, b.) in keeping with the law and c.) allows him to have access to the outside world.
You're telling me that we can't create a secure Blackberry? Come on, guys. You're saying to me that we can't create something with Blowfish encryption, something that constantly changes its Machine Address Code, something that whips up and down the available spectrum like a crazed mongoose on steroids, something that isn't necessarily available to civilians but that could be made available to the Commander in Chief to be?

If I had glasses, I would be looking over their rims at you, Tech Sector. Give me a break. Get the man a new Blackberry. Why is this hard? He could probably even put in a good word with the FCC for you, get the thing approved early.

Mr. President-Elect, I would like to say that I think you should ditch the Blackberry and hire a tiger team of Google Android nerds who could do just that for you on the new Google phone. Their platform is more open, anyway - the only way we're going to be certain your security is good is if you publish the platform and have all the security experts try to break it.

I wouldn't even bother try to get RIM to play ball; this is a company with a glacial change strategy and an awful proprietary system.

Good luck, President-Elect Obama. Keep fighting for your own tech, your own personal working style. I'm rooting for you.