A Kindle Lover Unboxes a Nook

Len Edgerly, host of the great The Kindle Chronicles podcast, unboxes the somewhat unfortunately named Barnes and Noble "Nook." I was at a local B&N over the weekend, and they had a little booth set up directly inside the entrance with two people eager to tell you all about the Nook, even though all they had to offer the curious were two mock-ups.

"We'll have it in the store on Monday," said one of the demo people.

"To buy?" I asked.

"No," he answered. "Just to show."

I like the idea of the Nook, especially the thought of cruising into a B&N with Nook in hand and browsing through books.  And the Nook touch interface looks a lot more elegant and iTouchish than the Kindle.  But, having said that, I'm a scarred enough technophile to be wary of early adoption of anything.  All-in-all, everything I've read or heard indicates that a Kindle 2 is a more realistic eReader choice than a Nook at this stage of the game... especially if you're hoping Santa might put one in your stocking.  But the eREader wars are heating up, and that's likely a good thing for consumers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

fhb is back. Stay tuned.

Too Many Goodbyes

As you've probably gathered, I don't update fhb all that much anymore (I think once every five months would qualify as "not all that much"). I'm still writing regularly over at Dreamtime, which better suits my interests at the moment.

Of course I have the issue that Bob Dylan has apparently ended Theme Time Radio Hour with the "Goodbye" show, but I still have a few more Dreamtime posts, maybe even a podcast or two, and some other plans.

It's not turning out to be a good year for radio shows we like, as today we heard the news that Jeff Turton's long-running Jazz Brunch has ended after 26 years on WFNX, which parallels the time that Peggy and I have been together. We started listening to the Jazz Brunch shortly after Peggy moved in with me during that brief (but enjoyable) period we were living together in sin. We listened to the Jazz Brunch after we married; after a move from Massachusetts to New Hampshire; after we bought our first home, a condo, and then after we bought our first house and home, the one I'm writing in today and where we heard Jeff's announcement.

A lot of Sundays. We went to see Jeff and have brunch when he was doing the live Jazz Brunches in Cambridge. We bought a lot of wonderful wine thanks to Howie Rubin at Bauer Wine's recommendations. I even went to Bauer Wine after missing Howie's regular appearances on the show. "How come you don't do Jazz Brunch anymore?" I asked. "Because they won't pay me," he answered.

We listened to Jeff's son Ben grow up over the years through his annual appearances. We learned how much Jeff hated winter and Christmas music, especially jazz Christmas music. We ate at the East Coast Grill in Cambridge because we heard about it on the Jazz Brunch. Jeff introduced us to more artists and their music than I can name now, but included Debra Henson-Conant, Madeline Peyroux, Nancy Wilson's Guess Who I Saw Today, and Sarah Vaughan's Just A Little Lovin' to acknowledge a few singers and songs we first heard on the Jazz Brunch. I spent years tracking both Wilson's and Vaughn's cuts down, and in fact only found the album containing the live version of Guess Who I Saw Today last October in San Francisco, triumphantly bringing it home to Peggy after 20-odd years of looking for it. Jeff Turton is probably directly responsible for several hundred dollars worth of CDs residing on my shelves.

In other words, Jeff Turton and the Jazz Brunch have been a big part of our lives as long as we've been together. It was evident that the end was nearing. Jeff's on-air time was cut from six hours - from 6 a.m. to noon - down to four a couple of years ago, the Jazz Brunch apparently only remaining on at all because WFNX's owner liked jazz. In the past year Peggy and I started looking for other alternatives to listen to on Sundays as Jeff fiddled with the programming to try to attract a more contemporary audience. Instead, I think he probably alienated his core listeners, like us. There are only so many jazz covers of pop tunes or weird "world music" you can listen to until you start longing for some straight-ahead Thelonius Monk or Abby Lincoln, which had all but disappeared on the Jazz Brunch in recent months.

But we still checked it out regularly, hoping that we'd hear the older programming that had made us Jazz Brunch fans, and we were listening to it today, and were at least happy to be there at the end, as we were at the beginning. We'll miss the Jazz Brunch, and Jeff Turton. Jeff you have our thanks for being part of our Sundays over the last 26 years.

As you get older, you find that few changes are good.

And Daily Deer

And, continuing the Double-D theme of the day, here's a pic of "Daily Deer," so named because of his habit of showing up almost every day and grazing on fallen bird seeds, as well as our yews, which I wish he wouldn't.

But, I have a soft spot for DD, because he's got a bum hind leg. We first thought he had dislocated it, or had been hit by a car, but have now concluded it's a birth defect. He gets along quite well on three, thank you very much, even through the snow.

On the other hand, he looks like he's expending a lot of energy doing with three legs what other deers do with four, so I put out a feed block for him (you can see it behind DD), and he seems to be enjoying chawing on that. After consulting with our vet, I've now also expanded the DD menu to apples, carrots, and a hay bale and Peggy has taken to calling me "Farmer John."

DD may have put out the word that I'm a soft touch, as a few days ago, a posse of four new deers, including a Fall fawn, showed up behind him. Although DD is too slow-moving to keep up with them, they all seemed used to hanging out together, and I suspect they all share some bedding place in the woods behind us.

I dithered about "nature taking its course" and all that, but again, after a frank discussion with our vet, who I trust, we figured that as long as DD nether looked like he was suffering or starving I'd at least give him a fighting chance. As the vet said, if he can make it through the Winter, the chances are he'll do fine come Spring. Interestingly, she says deers with only three good legs are quite usual, and many of them live a deer's normal allotted time.

And, I have this nagging thought that DD is a sign to an often-morose Farmer John that " you have to farm in the weather you are given, you can't be waiting for the sun to shine."

Live long and prosper, DD.

Demolition Days

For those asking for news of how bad the flooding in our basement was... it was this bad. Or more accurately, this was the aftermath.

About the only thing that we didn't have to take down was the ceiling, but at that point it seemed ridiculous to renovate the basement office and leave the funky, old, ill-lit, mouse-infested ceiling in. So it went too.

As did the dark, old, `60s-era wall paneling, pleasing Peggy to no end. We found that the walls had been incorrectly studded and most of the paneling wasn't anchored to anything. Hence the reason behind the walls bulging out from the pressure of the water behind them.

As did all the insulation , which was still soaked six inches up after three weeks. We were going to cut the wet insulation out, saving what we could, but the insulation was so inefficient compared to modern standards that we had it all pulled.

As did all the studding. We were going to add new wall studding in, but found that the floor studs - after repeated soaking over the years, were sodden, rotted so badly that they were crumbling, and covered with black mold. So we pulled it all out.

The rug, an indoor/outdoor, has been pulled, but is salvageable.  The pad wasn't.  We probably won't replace the pad - "once is accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

 I lost about 30 years of books, happily not all of them.  Mostly the paperbacks.  Peggy lost Christmas decorations, books, boxes of memories. Probably other things that we won't know about until we try to find them.

Yes, we know, We appreciate the sentiment.  We're getting over it. 

What was the finished basement is now an empty shell.  Actually, it isn't an empty shell.  As I write this, new studding and wallboard have arrived and are being loaded downstairs.

As that frosty poet, Robert Frost, once said, "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned in life: It goes on."

And it does.  And so will we.

Into `09

I have a semi-policy not to talk problems on fhb, mostly because I could easily turn the blog into a forum about nothing except my problems.  Occasionally, like we all do I run into a string of bad luck where there seems to be nothing to talk about except problems... and that's been pretty much true since mid-October, and is partially the reason I stopped blogging at fhb.

But y'know, writing that brings to light that the statement isn't entirely true.  Yeah, we've had some tough times in recent months, and we're not out of the woods yet.

But up to October, it was a pretty good year, although the last three months overshadowed the preceding nine.  But we had a great trip up at my ancestral watering hole in Moosehead Lake, Maine. 

I did some work - both for clients and for myself - that were as good as anything I've ever done, and of which I'm still exceedingly proud.

We had one of the best Thanksgivings ever with our family.  Thanks to their generosity, we also have access to a beautiful house on Martha's Vineyard whenever we want it.

Dreamtime continues to keep me sane and whole.

I have two cats who love me unconditionally, because they don't know any better. 

And I have Peggy - who certainly does know better, but who still loves me, too.

I'm not sure at this point how much I'll continue blogging at fhb, although the fact that I wrote the word "continue" without thinking about it indicates to me that I'm not quite ready to shut it down altogether.  As I've said, most of my writing is over at Dreamtime now, and posts here will probably continue to be sporadic at best.

But 2008 is over. Let's see what 2009 brings.

Use iGoogle? Hate the Look & Feel Changes? Here's How to Revert

Google, with it's usual arrogance, foisted off a new version of the iGoogle look and feel with zippo warning to users.  I left my iGoogle page yesterday, opened it another tab a few minutes later, and had a classic "WTF" moment, thinking somehow I had chaged my page settings accidently.  I spent a fruitless afternoon trying to revert to my old settings, until finally realizing today that it wasn't me, but that great big Goog in the sky.

I'm going to leave aside the arguments about whether the changes are good or bad.  Personally I think they suck, especially moving the tabs to the left side of the page and the mail preview that can no longer be turned off.  But opinions of suckiness aside, the point is that I was/am familiar with how my iGoogle page works.  I don't want to have to adapt to some new way of working because some Google engineer thinks it's "better" for me.Maybe eventually I will, but at my own speed and inclination, Google, not yours.

Hidden on the "Google Operating System" blog are these instructions to get the old interface back - at least temporarily:

If you have the new version, but you prefer the previous interface, go to the settings page and select English (UK) from the list of languages. Please note that this is just a temporary fix.

News You Can't Make Up - Part the Nth

via William Gibson:

A US Illuminati black op to seek, locate and disarm a Soviet nuke disguised as a blue plastic cow sculpture ended in failure when the special agent charged with the task got stuck in an air duct in Knoxville Museum of Art, and was obliged to call for traditional law enforcement assistance.

According to Knoxville's WBIR, 25-year-old Richard Anthony Smith rang 911 at around 4.30am on Wednesday to alert the authorities to his predicament. When officers arrived, they found him trapped in said duct about 45 feet below the roof, having "repelled [sic] from a CH2 Huey"* onto the museum. Smith simply said: "Mission failed."

Once extricated, the spook - dressed in "camo top and bottom, black shirt and green hat" - elaborated that he was in fact a "special agent with the United States Illuminati, badge number 0931" ordered by "Director Womack" to "defuse and confiscate a Soviet-made MERV6SS-22AN warhead, with 14.5 kg of enriched uranium and a plutonium trigger, capable of delivering a 40-kiloton yield".

Full story here which also includes my favorite part - that after becoming stuck in the duct, Gibson received another call from "Director Womack" advising that he had made a mistake, and the cow sculpture was actually in Memphis.

City By the Bay

Another podcast series, as Leo LaPorte likes to say, is in the can, this one from Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) in San Francisco, which is where I've spent my last week.

OOW surprised me by its size - over 43,000 in attendance, according to reports. It was kind of like a Comdex, the super-technology show in Las Vegas which I used to work regularly in the `90s.  Blocked-off streets, packed sidewalks, hotel lobbies so crowded that it was hard to move through them.  This all in San Francisco, so outside of the influx of the 43K technophiles, you also had the early Fall turistas on the streets.  San Francisco is probably one of the best cities in the world to visit in the Fall if it isn't raining, and nary a drop did we see that week.  Weather was mild and in the mid-70s during the day, mid-60s at night.

I haven't been in the City for the past eight years.  In fact, I haven't been much of anywhere in the past eight years.  I've traveled more in 2008 than I have in the previous eight combined.  I was pleased to find that few of the personal landmarks I remembered had changed.  I was able to hit Napa Valley Wines and take care of our holiday wine needs in one fell - albeit expensive - swoop.  Vy's Jewelry was still in the same location in Chinatown, so Peggy got a present for being abandoned with two unhappy cats as I worked and played out west.  I went back to one of my all-time favorite sushi places, Sanraku on Sutter, and found a new favorite, Colibri Mexican Bistro on Geary, which I highly recommend - I had one of the best meals of my life there, undoubtedly oiled by two margaritas with blue agave tequila.

I didn't get to Kayo Books or Hunan Home, or John's Grill, which would have pretty much rounded up Fred's Cooks Tour of S.F., but given I produced and engineered a dozen podcasts over a four-day period, I was pretty pleased that I got in as much personal time in as I did.

I have a love/hate relationship with San Francisco.  It's one of the great cities of the world.  If you like walking around as much as I do, it's a perfect place to visit.  But, the armies of street people/homeless/bums/winos/panhandlers can get me down, especially when San Francisco is on the tolerant side of the pendulum, as it seems to be now, and essentially leaves them alone just as long as they're not aggressively scaring away the tourists. So walking can become similar to running a gantlet.  You shake the head and stare straight ahead, and hurt inside, trying not to wonder about their stories.

But that's the down side.  The up side was that it was a great trip - a good job done well in a beautiful, intriguing city.

How Heinlein Responded to Fan Mail

Click on the image for a readable version.  Not a problem that I have, although I do get the occasional cranky email asking why I didn't answer someone's earlier email, and most of my responses to Dreamtime email are a canned version of "Thanks for the kind words."  But it's interesting to see how RAH handled the situation.  Harlan Ellison used to send a pre-printed postcard, as I remember, which said in a florid pseudo-Chinese style something to the effect of  "if I spent the time replying to how much you enjoyed [insert title here], I'd have less time to write the stuff you enjoy. So forgive this canned response."

I think my favorite of the group is the terse, "Please do not write to me again."

via Kevin Kelly

Not Vetting Sarah

From the usual gang of idiots over at Mad magazine.  I was (almost) willing to forgive Palin anything until the polar bears.

Rusticatin'

We're back from our annual Labor Day vacay, this time taken way up North at Beaver Cove, Moosehead Lake, Maine, where men are men and spend most of their time lazin' on the deck.

Peggy and Fred took a 3-hour cruise on the steamship Katahdin - highly recommended - which covered less than half of the 40-mile Moosehead Lake.

During his tour narration, our captain noted that the lake trout population, known locally as "togue," had been virtually wiped out because some idiot - or group of idiots - had introduced Yellow Perch into the lake. When I was a kid in the `60s, it wasn't unusual to catch a dozen or more togue in one day's fishing. Tragically, all gone now, and probably not to come back.

While visiting the quarterdeck, I mentioned to the captain I grew up on Sebago Lake, the second largest lake in Maine. "Oh, that pond?" the captain grinned at me.

We found that the only direct route to Moxie Falls involved a route that personified the phrase 20 miles of bad road. About 5 1/2 miles in on a badly rutted, washed out road with large rocks poking out just waiting to take out things without which our long-suffering Murano would probably not run, we met a beat-up pickup heading in the opposite direction. "You can't go down there, the road's terrible," the driver called.. "You couldn't make it without a 4-wheel drive. Where you headed?"

"Moxie Falls," I replied. "Maybe, I should turn ..."

"We're going right by it," he interrupted. "Follow me." And with that he sped off on another road that led off God Knows Where which a) was even worse than the one that we were on and b) our GPS, which had gamely sent us down the original road didn't even recognize as a road.

In fact, the GPS - which we've anthropomorphized with the name "Tommy," gave up trying to navigate us, except to point an arrow at where we had been, apparently in the hope we'd recover our senses and return to Known Territory. Which we eventually did after about a mile or more of following the Mad Mainer, who blasted along the road at upwards of 40 miles an hour as I crawled over ruts and rocks. As his dust trail disappeared into the trackless wastelands, I found a spot to turn around, not an easy thing to do, and headed back to where Tommy's arrow pointed. After a long long long time, we finally made it back to the point where Tommy was willing to acknowledge that there was a road there, such as it was, and then only had to spend another 5 1/2 miles crawling back out to the paved road.

We'd finally make it to Moxie Falls the following day after Peggy plotted out a circuitous route that covered about 60-odd miles to a destination that was about 20 miles away as the crow flies but, by God, had the benefit of being entirely upon pavement.

Moxie Falls is very beautiful, if a little difficult to visit.

We also found the lodge my family stayed at during our regular visits to Moosehead in the `60s - Maynards. Already old when I first came there, Maynards was established in the early 1920s, the place is virtually unchanged in 2008, the only noticeable difference that I could find is that the cabins now have a full bath. Back in 1964 it was an outside shower and an outhouse.

And we did many other things, the things you do when you're on vacay in the Great North Woods: We visited Kamp-Kamp, the largest store in Greenville, Maine where Peggy longed for moose antlers and Fred for a set of Classic Illustrated Comics that could have come straight from my bunk at Maynards. We bought hand-picked blueberries and blackberries and fresh-baked goods for dessert every night. We hiked the Lily Pond State Park, read about local things in the local paper - including the kids fined for leaping jay-naked off the Black Frog restaurant dock.

And mostly we relaxed, 'cause that's what it's all about.

What Makes a Good Blog?

via Merlin Mann, who I hope doesn't think I'm ripping him off, and if he does, I'm sure will something snarky about me on Twitter (just kidding, Merlin)...

***

1. Good blogs have a voice. Who wrote this? What is their name? What can I figure out about who they are that they have never overtly told me? What’s their personality like and what do they have to contribute — even when it’s “just” curation. What tics and foibles fascinate make me about this blog and the person who makes it? Most importantly: what obsesses this person?
   
   
2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?
   
   
3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go. Then, on some level, they encourage me to follow the evolution of their interest through a day or a year. There’s a story here. Ethical “via” links make it easy for me to follow their specific trail of attention, then join them for a walk made out of words.
   
   
4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated. They show some level of craft, thinking, and continuity beyond the word count mandated by the Owner of Your Plantation. If a blog has fixed limits on post minimums and maximums? It’s not a blog: it’s a website that hires writers. Which is fine. But, it’s not really a blog.
   
   
5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect. I regret there are not more blogs that see format as the container for creativity — rather than an excuse to write less or link without context more.
   
   
6. Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s. If this isn’t happening every few weeks, the blogger is either bored, half-assing, or taking new medication.
   
   
7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog. At some point, everyone wants to kill the Buddha and make their own obsessions the focus. This is good. It means you care.
   
   
8. Good blogs try. I’ve come to believe that creative life in the first-world comes down to those who try just a little bit harder. Then, there’s the other 98%. They’re still eating the free continental breakfast over at FriendFeed. A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
   
   
9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules. Duh. I made a list, didn’t I? Yes. I did. Big fan.

***

Although I've never taken the time to articulate my thoughts on the subject, Merlin pretty well captures what I attempt to do when I "blog," more so at Dreamtime than here. But I do try to have so small measure of craft even with fhb, which I consider more a public diary than anything else.

And it's why I keep fhb going, although my focus is obviously on Dreamtime these days. And when I think about it, most of the blogs I still read, and podcasts I still listen to, follow Merlin's list of what gets my attention - and why.

The Ultimate iPhone Application

And for $999, you too can tell the world, "I am Rich." Actually, you can't right now, as the humorless Apple has removed the app.

Stupidest design of a home page ever?

You decide.

"...and I'll whisper, 'No.'"

The new WATCHMEN trailer, the best evidence to date that the movie will cleave closely to the graphic novel. I like the word "cleave" as no matter which definition you use, I'm right.

Some fanboy impressions, in no particular order...

1. Osterman in the intrinsic field vault. His body dissolving parallels the panel in WATCHMEN IV, Page 8.
   
   
2. Archie the Owl Ship emerging from the Hudson: WATCHMEN X, Page 11.
   
   
3. Random scenes of the Silk Spectre and Nite Owl. The Comedian tossed out his window. Ozymandias in front of his world video monitoring station.
   
   
4. Dr. Manhattan. This appears to be a scene from Manhattan's origin, when he was still learning how to rebuild his body, possibly replicating WATCHMEN IV, Page 9.
   
   
5. Archie descending through flames, possibly to the Sing-Sing riot. Rorschach improvising a flamethrower (WATCHMEN V. Page 26).
   
   
6. The Silk Spectre. Dr. Manhattan x 3 in that infamous scene where Laurie cries out:, "Jon, be one person again!" (WATCHMEN II. Pages 4-5).
   
   
7. Nite Owl in a very Batman-like pose. The Comedian's funeral. The Comedian in Vietnam. The Vigilante riots. (various from WATCHMEN II) Voice-over, "God help us all." The last is probably a reference to the quote in WATCHMEN IV, "God exists, and he's American." A chilling prospect, when you think about it.
   
   
8. Manhattan appears after successfully reconstructing himself. (WATCHMEN IV, Page 10). Note the full frontal nudity. Manhattan and Laurie kiss (WATCHMEN IV, Page 18). The Comedian smashing a wall, possibly after discovering the secret that would lead to his death, Rorschach throwing someone (Moloch?) against a wall. Ozymandias fighting off an assassin (WATCHMEN V, Pages 14-15).. Nite Owl screaming and Manhattan incinerating a Vietnamese (the two unrelated, The latter from WATCHMEN IV, Page 20).
   
   
9. More vigalante riot footage, this obviously parralleling WATCHMEN II, Page 16.The Rorschach voiceover is a variation of the statement in Rorscach's journal entry which opens the WATCHMEN series, which reads in part: "The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up against their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!'... and I'll look down and whisper, 'no'."
   
   
10. The Martian clock tower.
    

Dreamtime Trucks Along With Episode 56

Time for a Dreamtime plug, which I haven't done in a bit. We're up to Episode 56 and about 3,000 regular listeners, as far as I can tell, which ain't bad for an amateur podcast.

It's Summertime, the living is easy, and our July Twenty-Ought-Eight show is all about solar rays and happiness, direct from the sun and fun capital of the world, Merrimack, NH.

Featuring Eric Burdon and the Animals from the Summer of Love, Mickey & Sylvia, (with a sidelong look at Dave "Baby" Cortez and The Rocky Fellers), Bob Denver (in-between gigs as Maynard G. Krebs and Gilligan), thoughts on the Man Who Walked on Water, our favorite Disney girl, Annette and her seldom-seen belly-button, a visit to the racetrack, and winding up with a hip-hop version of Cruel Summer. Plus Dreamtime favorite Summer movies, and a few jingles thrown into the mix.

Episode 56 - Ho Daddy! The Summer Surf and Turf special

The Miami Beach audience is the greatest in the woild - Jackie Gleason

Life's Too Short for High Cholesterol

A new issue of my favorite web comic is out.

Forget Kindle - I Wanna Readius!

Well, maybe.  The thing about the Interwebs is that bird in the bush always seems more attractive than the one in the hand - not that I have a Kindle in hand, just that I would like one.



Well, maybe.  The NY Times had an article on an interesting new "mobile device" this past Sunday, the Readius, billed as the first pocket eReader. Like the Kindle, you'll be able to read books, subscribe to newspapers, read email, and receive other content - such as podcasts amd mp3s - on the Readius.  Unlike the Kindle, the Readius uses a flexible display, one that can be literally unfurled from the pocket-sized device.



Fueled by way too many science fiction novels over the years, I've had this vision where someday I'll have this thing that looks like a sheet of blank paper, newspaper of magazine-sized, that I'll simply tap, and voila - I have the front page of the Times, or the Globe, or Wired. Or anything I want to read.  That vision has probably been best illustrated in a throwaway scene from the movie Minority Report, as described in this 2005 article from The Washington Post:

In the scene we're interested in, a Metro passenger is reading a USA Today. It LOOKS like a USA Today in that it's a full-page newspaper (called a "broadsheet") but instead of a handful of papers, it's a paper-thin video screen, thin enough to fold up and put under your arm. Instead of static photos and text, it's constantly changing text, video and perhaps sound. Think of it as a combination paper, television and Internet, presumably wirelessly connected to a futuristic Wi-Fi, perhaps the next generation of the new Wi-Max super hotspots that are rolling out and cover several square miles instead of several square feet.

We're getting closer to that vision all the time. As Andy Ihnatko notes in his review of the Kindle (warning: Ihnatko's site always takes a tremendously long time to load every time I visit it, I dunno why), the world-changing thing about the Kindle isn't that it's a very cool eBook reading device, which from all reports it is. But the ultimately cool cool thing about the Kindle is that it's a very good - and since its Internet connectivity is subsidized by Amazon, very free - portal to the Web.

"At its core, the Kindle is a light, compact device that (metaphorically) contains the Wikipedia in its entirety; the complete text of every RSS-enabled site that you care to follow through Google Reader or Bloglines…as well as tens of thousands of commercial titles" - Andy Ihnatko

That's what the Readius could become.  Well (all together now), maybe.  Someday.  we'll see.  For the moment, the Readius is an announced but not-shipping product, first to be released in Europe for an unknown price, and scheduled for U.S. rollout sometime in 2009.  Again, price unknown, although the Readius CEO notes in the Times that it will be priced higher than the Kindle - currently at $345 U.S. And it's unlikely that the Readius will have a free Internet connection either.



But we're getting there.  First the Kindle.  Next the Readius.  Someday - maybe someday soon, the Minority Report "broadsheet."



Below, a video of the Readius (somewhat) in action:

Me & My FlashMic

As I've mentioned before, I recently got back from a gig in Vegas where I acted as producer and general ringmaster for a "live" podcast series from a business conference.

It's something I've wanted to try for awhile, and we were able to sell the clients on the idea that it'd be as close to live as we could make it without streaming - which I wasn't willing to tackle as a first attempt - and that we'd keep it to a guerrilla effort - fast, cheap, and if not out-of-control, at least not needing much oversight from our clients.

We did get about as live as you would want, posting most of the dozen shows we produced a few hours after recording, more than acceptable everyone agreed, given that we weren't doing breaking news. If necessary we could probably had the stories on the Web an hour after recording - the biggest bottleneck I ran into was the so-called high-speed internet connection offered by the hotel, which was neither high-speed nor provided much of an internet connection.

I eventually ended up posting most of our podcasts around 3 a.m. each morning, the only time I could seemingly get a consistent and relatively fast connection. In the hotel's defense, it did waive the $10 a day charge after I complained, but I still noted that a venue billing itself as a high-end business conference resort - which The Palazzo is in most respects - really needs to upgrade its internet connectivity for customers even if they have to charge more.

Because it was a guerrilla effort, there were only three of us: a reporter/industry analyst who did the bulk of the interviews; our client contact, who helped with all the necessary executive arranging/scheduling/handling; and lil ol' me, who outside of being the producer, also acted as engineer.

Most of the business podcasts I produce are phone interviews or roundtable discussions, most conducted through a traditional landline conference call, sometimes through Skype, recorded, edited, posted by me right here from the kitchen table. Since we were doing in-person, live interviews from the Vegas conference, I needed some sort of mobile recording equipment. All I was sure of was that based on experience I wanted as little gear as possible. The more gear, the more to haul around, the more to lose or break.

After some research, and discussion with fellow podcasters, I hit upon the HHB FlashMic, pictured above, and one of the coolest pieces of technology I've run into in quite awhile. It's nice when something not only lives up to your expectations but exceeds them. Resembling a wireless microphone, the FlashMic is an all-in-one recording studio. It runs on two AA batteries. It has a built-in 1GB flash drive. It has a professional-grade microphone - think broadcast or NPR-quality. One button to turn it on. One button to record. Plug it into Mac or PC with a USB cable and drag-and-drop your files over.

That's it. The FlashMic worked like a dream. Our reporter/analyst would do an executive interview and hand the FlashMic to me when finished. I'd download the .WAV file (the FlashMic can also save/transfer as an mp3) to my laptop, add our stock bumpers and do some minor editing in the freeware sound editing program, Audacity, and save it out as an mp3 for later uploading to the Web.

All done. You can listen to some examples if you check out the link above.Our client liked the FlashMic so much that she took it to the show floor for some "man-in-the-street" interviews, which I dutifully added on to our podcast series. Even the execs we interviewed dug the FlashMic, one noting that he had just come from another podcast interview which was an Old School mobile studio set-up... a room filled with mikes, soundboards, cables and equipment. The exec. thought he had walked into the wrong room when all he saw in our set-up was no set-up at all. Me, my laptop, our reporter and the FlashMic.

The price for the FlashMic can be off-putting. Street price ranges from $999 to $1200 (I got it for the lesser price through Amazon). But the equipment is a perfect example of the ol' "you get what you pay for" maxim. Would I recommend the FlashMic to the hobbyist podcaster? Probably not unless the hobbyist has money to burn. Can you put together a good, professional mobile recording platform for less than $999? Sure. My alternative - a digital recorder and a high-end mobile mike - would have run around $600-700 total, and if you're on a budget, you could pull together something for significantly less than those figures.

But for around $300 more I got what I wanted, quality, ease-of-use, and convenience. If you're doing podcasts as a business and if you want to be able to just wander around and capture interviews, ambiance, and sound for podcasts with a touch of a button you couldn't do better than the FlashMic.

Probably the best testimonial is that the other two members of my erstwhile Vegas team - client and reporter - have ended up buying FlashMics for their own projects.