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Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts

Monday, April 02, 2012 3 comments

Changing It Around

I didn't set out to do this, but various failures over the weekend kicked off several minor technology changes today. It's like my gadgetry forgot to stop pranking me once April Fools' Day ended…

The old iPhone earbuds I've had since the 3G days are officially worn out: the left earbud has very little audio coming through. I don't know why I put up with that as long as I have, especially since I have a working pair of iPod earbuds (no clicker) and some higher-end things. I'd love to use my Bluetooth stereo headset, but it's good for about six hours and I need at least eight to get me through the workday. Right now, I'm using a pair of Future Sonics in-ear 'phones that I won some years back. I miss the clicker to start/stop my music (or answer the phone), but better that than no left channel.

The iOS Twitter client has become increasingly annoying, especially since IT has made Twitter's webapp unuseable. I need the ability to manage my lists from my phone if I can't use the webapp (or the official OSX Twitter client, for that matter). The last straw was yesterday, when the app decided to not update my Mentions anymore. I downloaded the free (ad-supported) version of Echofon this morning and like it better already. I can manage my lists, and the ads only appear in the primary timeline. The only two drawbacks so far: you have to switch out of Lists to tweet (unless replying/RTing) and I don't think new followers appear in the Mentions column like they do on the webapp.

Finally, I've started using Evernote instead of PlainText to write draft blog posts and story scenes while mobile. The Evernote app doesn't have ads and pulling a draft out of Evernote into Scrivener is about the same amount of effort as pulling it out of Dropbox (where PlainText saves stuff).

Technology can be such a PITA. I'm editing White Pickups on paper, and the only thing I have to worry about there is Mason snatching the pen out of the stack and thereby losing my place.

Thursday, March 22, 2012 3 comments

Here Comes the Sun

The guts of the system (plus some load)
Solar panels, I’ve been told, now cost about half of what they did a year ago. And it’s true — for less than $200, you can build a charging station for your mobile gadgets from off the shelf parts. Just add one sunny window, or take it with you on camping trips to run lights and a radio.

I bought most of the pieces for my system at Amazon and a local auto parts store. Here’s a list of similar items (links go through my affiliate account, so I’ll get a few cents if you buy them through the links). Prices shown were current at the time I typed this in. More about these items below.


Stuff you need:
Left to right: solar panel +/-, battery +/-, load +/-
The heart of the system, obviously, is the charge controller. The controller that comes with the solar panel is a dirt-cheap single-chip design, and is good for 3A at 12V — sized perfectly for one 30W panel. I was expecting the controller to simply provide regulated voltage, and was planning to hack a UPS I had laying around. But when I looked at the instructions, I found that it has a built-in charger circuit, and you just have to attach a 12V battery using the furnished alligator clip leads. Sweet!

The solar panel itself is pretty basic. It has an aluminum frame and a power cable coming out the back. You should cover the leads and the panel itself until you have things hooked up — bare wires touching metal on a bright day can make an impressive spark! (How do I know this?) There are optimum positions for solar panels, but hanging it in a south-facing window (preferably not shaded) is sufficient. It will produce power from dawn to dusk.

Speaking of the battery, you want an appropriate size. Too big, and you spend a lot of money for no gain. Too small, and you’ll be out of juice too soon at night. Since the USB charger I have is rated for 1A, and most gadgets only take a couple hours to fully charge, anything between 8Ah and 12Ah should work very well. Unless you’re only using the system outdoors (like on a camping trip), or installing the battery in a ventilated basement, always use a sealed lead-acid (SLA) battery for this system. Car batteries vent hydrogen gas, which could cause havoc inside your house.

If you’re willing to hack your car charger, you can skip the auxiliary power outlet (also called a cigarette lighter socket). On the other hand, it does provide a clean way to disconnect the car charger if you need to break the system down (like if you’re moving it around). Car chargers are also fused, which provides some protection if you overload it or short it out.

Finally, the power delivery. I personally wouldn’t fool with a USB car charger that isn’t capable of delivering 1A or more — large tablets (like an iPad) won’t charge with anything less, and you want to have some juice left over for your other gadgets. A charger that provides one or two USB jacks and two or three cigarette lighter sockets is a good way to go: the lighter sockets provide a convenient way to plug in your cellphone car charger, and you could run a fan during the day while the solar panel is holding up the battery.

The nice thing about this setup is, the only tool you need is a small Phillips screwdriver. Attach the battery (using the clip leads, don’t forget that red is positive!), then the solar panel, then the auxiliary socket. Plug in the car charger, then plug in your gadgets.

Now this, of course, is just the gateway drug. Eventually, I hope to upsize the system to provide enough power to run the laptop and the network (DSL/router) gadgetry, along with a few emergency lights. I think 100W should be sufficient, but prices continue to come down… and the wife would be thrilled if it could run the TV and DVD player…

Monday, January 23, 2012 4 comments

iBooks Author: the REAL Problem

APPLE WANTS TO
EAT YOUR COPYRIGHT!
There has been a lot of sensationalist “reporting,” breathlessly repeated on Twitter, about the licensing terms for Apple’s new iBooks Author app. I’m not going to reward blind panic with links, but I’m sure you can Google your way to something that would be “enlightenment” if there were any useful information to be gleaned from that link-bait. This fish ain’t bitin’.

The big problem is: there’s something that we, both authors and eReader owners, need to worry about and the link-bait articles aren’t telling us about it. And iBooks Author is only half of it.

Let’s take a look at the clause in the iBooks Author licensing agreement that has all the link-baiters going ballistic. Fortunately, it’s like the third paragraph down in the licensing agreement (under “IMPORTANT NOTE,” emphasis mine):
If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g. through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.
XKCD always puts things in perspective.
I’ve bolded the part that should (but won’t) hush up the link-baiters and the fish that continue to bite at it. Let me make it clear:

Apple is only restricting the output of the software. What you do with eBooks generated by any other means is your own freeking business.

So basically, you can take your MSS and feed it to Amazon, Smashwords, or anywhere else you like. But if you’re selling your book (and aren’t we all?), the version you generate using iBooks Author — and only the version you generate using iBooks Author — has to be sold on the iBookstore. Apple may or may not approve it for sale, as they do for iOS apps on the App Store.

A lot of indie writers have talked about the problems we face, often put succinctly as “now that anyone can publish a novel, anyone does.” Most of us want to put our best foot forward, providing an engaging story at a price that won’t break readers’ banks while giving us the opportunity to earn some recompense for the work we put into bringing that story to the readers. Unfortunately, we are often lumped in with those who just throw whatever they have onto the eBook stores. What Apple is doing is attempting to guarantee some measure of quality (what measure that may be, I have deliberately left undefined) for people who want to sell enhanced eBooks in the iBookstore. Instead of welcoming this development, authors are running around with their hair on fire.

The Real Problem

Unfortunately, iBooks Author presents half of a real problem, one that nobody else is talking about. The other half is presented by… Kindle Format 8. Right up until the new year, we had to deal with only two eBook formats: MOBI (Kindle) and ePUB (everyone else). Both formats are well-standardized — you can build an ePUB by hand if you really want to (I’ve done it) and convert it to MOBI using Amazon’s free KindleGen utility. Now we have Apple’s extension to ePUB (i.e. iBooks Author) and Amazon’s extension to MOBI (Kindle Format 8) — and who’s to say B&N won’t jump into the game with their own incompatible extensions for Nook Color?

In short, it’s the browser wars all over again. The only winner of that war will be traditional publishers.

People writing technical documents, comics, and other works that require more formatting options than current eReaders offer are the ones in a bind here. They’ll have to live with the possibility that what works now might not work next year. They'll have to determine whether it’s worth the effort to work with features that are coded differently in different tablet eReaders, or if they should just work with one eReader and not the other.

I’d like to see a few zillion pixels dedicated to this instead of a misread licensing clause.

Monday, July 18, 2011 11 comments

The "Disposable" Price Point

J.A. Konrath is back from vacation, and brought home an interesting insight. He shares it in One More Nail in the Coffin. The heart of it is:

Kindles have dropped in price to the point where they've become disposable, like cell phones and laptops and digital cameras. Ever notice that you buy a new cell (or computer, or camera) every few years, even if your old one still works?

"Disposable" as a price point seems to have a pretty wide window. To me, it’s a lot closer to $20 than $114 (for the ad-bearing Kindle). Of course, I’m not the people he’s talking about: I’ll use a cellphone or computer until it wears out, or just won’t do what I need it to do. For me, MacBooks have a five-year use life (if they endure the life of hard knocks that laptops are heir to). Since I live in a rural area, and am often doing outdoor kind of things, my cellphones get banged around even more than laptops — if they last three years, they’re limping across the finish line with multiple injuries.

Yes, I’m a cheap so-and-so, and eBook readers are (IMO) nowhere near the “disposable” price point. But fear not, they’re following the same curve as calculators. When I was gifted a Kindle a couple years ago, it was 1974 for eBook readers: $250+, limited functionality. It's now 1976, maybe 1977: prices approaching $99 for basic models, features considered “premium” last year (touch, color) are rapidly becoming standard in the mid-range.

Come “1980” (3–4 years from now), the price wars and standardization shakeout will come. Most of us will have to replace our eBook readers, but that won't matter because they’ll be $49–$79 and will have tablet-like functionality yet with amazing battery life. If what I’ve been hearing about solar panel developments is true, we could see the high-end ($119) sporting a solar panel on the back (again, like calculators except for placement). Lay your reader face-down near a sunny window to recharge it while you’re off doing something else. If you read outside a lot, you could have potentially infinite battery life.

The next step is “1984.” That’s when I had a calculator built into my watch. I don’t know how the equivalent would work for an eBook reader — maybe a goggle display with controls based on eye motion? The end-point is around 1990, where calculators (with solar cells and lots of features) ended up in supermarket checkout racks at $19. The thing is, I don’t think it will take 16 years to get to that point for eBook readers… it might happen by 2020 instead of 2025. Either way, that’s when paper books will finish dying out — when eBook readers are truly disposable.

Thursday, April 21, 2011 2 comments

Transferring eBooks to your Kindle

While Amazon is the primary source of eBooks for most Kindle owners, there are other sources out there: Smashwords and Project Gutenberg, just to name two; and even eBooks you or your friends create. If you’ve never done it, the process can be mysterious… but TFM is here to solve the mystery. I bring you instructions for both MacOSX and that Microsoft operating system. (If you use Linux, you know what you’re doing and you don’t need me to help you!)

If you’re using that Microsoft operating system, make sure you’re connected to the Internet because it may want to download a driver.

Plug It In, Plug It In

The first step is to connect your Kindle to your computer. In case you didn’t know, the Kindle’s charger cord detaches from the charger itself, giving you a convenient USB cable:


Plug the small connector into your Kindle, like you would to charge it, and the large connector into your computer:


USB connectors are where you usually plug in a keyboard, mouse, or “jump drive.” On laptops, they are usually on the left or right sides; some older laptops put everything around the back. On desktops, there are always USB connectors in back, but some have one or two up front — maybe behind a little panel. If you have a USB hub, you can use it, but plugging directly into your computer also lets you charge your Kindle.

The computer treats your Kindle as a detachable drive. On Macs, you’ll see Kindle in a Finder window below the primary hard drive. On that Microsoft OS, it makes a bunch of weird noises, maybe downloads a driver if this is the first time you plug it in, then displays it in the “removable storage” area. I’ve circled what to look for below.

Note: I used Windows 7 for the Microsoft side of things. XP is going to look a little different, but functionally it’s all the same. If your CD/DVD drive is D: the Kindle will likely be at E:.

 

Electric Slide

Now that you have your Kindle connected, and know where to find it, it’s just a matter of copying your eBooks into the right place. The “right place” is the documents folder inside the Kindle. To see it, click the Kindle in the Finder window (MacOS) or double-click the Kindle in the Computer window (Microsoft thing).


Now that you have the destination in mind, let’s start with the source. When you download an eBook on a Mac, it usually ends up in either the Desktop folder (OSX 10.4 and earlier) or the Downloads folder (10.5 and newer). On Windows, it goes to the Downloads folder. The Kindle can handle eBooks with either a .mobi (MOBIpocket) or .azw (Amazon) extension — so when you download an eBook from a non-Amazon source, make sure you get one of those two types! (Another very popular eBook type is .epub but Kindles don’t recognize them right now.)

So let’s use WhitePickups.mobi as an example file name. Go to the Downloads (or Desktop) folder as appropriate, find the file WhitePickups.mobi, then Ctrl-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) and select Copy. Go back to the Kindle’s documents directory, Ctrl-click (or right-click), and select Paste. Repeat as necessary to copy more than one eBook.

Almost done!

Eject-o-Mundo

Before you disconnect your Kindle from your computer, you need to eject it. This tidies everything up so you know your eBook is completely copied. To eject on OSX, click the little eject icon next to the Kindle in your Finder window. On Windows, go to the Computer (or My Computer) window, right-click on the Kindle, and select Eject.

Now you can enjoy your new eBook, knowing you’re not forced to use the Kindle Store if you don’t want to.

Other Ways

A program called Calibre is available to manage your eBook collection and simplify transferring eBooks from — and to — your computer. It runs on OSX, Linux… oh yeah, and on Windows too. It has several advantages: for one, it’s a lot easier than going through the steps I outlined above; it also works with multiple eBook readers and (if your eBooks aren’t copy-protected) converts between different formats. If I get a chance, I’ll run that by everyone next week. Until then… happy reading!

P.S. This post isn’t cast in stone, or even ink on paper. If I didn’t cover something throughly enough, leave me a comment. I can fix it.

Sunday, March 13, 2011 4 comments

Twitter Twaddle

It appears that Twitter may want to curtail third-party Twitter clients. Now I think Mashable might be overstating the case a little, and their failure to link to the forum post doesn’t bolster their case, but Twitter does want clients to act the same way.

Too bad they don’t practice what they preach.

I’ve used the official Twitter clients for web, MacOS X, and iPad. They all kind of look similar, perhaps as much as possible given the natures of the underlying platforms. But all three of them do things a little differently:

  • Hover over a shortened link in the web client, and it displays a tooltip showing the expanded URL. Neither iPad nor OSX versions do that.
  • Tap a tweet with no links or hashtags on the iPad, and you get the tweeter’s profile. Click the same tweet in the OSX client, and you get… nothing. On the web client, you get other recent tweets from that account.
  • The OSX client has a pretty slick way of handling multiple accounts — avatars for each account appear in the sidebar and you can click on them to switch. I don’t see that on either the web or iPad clients.
  • In the OSX and iPad clients, retweeting gives you a “quote tweet” option that the web client doesn’t.
Even if Twitter’s own clients worked the same across all platforms, I’d say they’re jumping the gun by trying to limit third-party development. In addition to the Twitter clients, TweetDeck (my primary client until recently), and a FireFox plugin called EchoFon on occasion. TweetDeck is an elaborate client, offering simultaneous views of user-defined lists. For example, I have my main tweetstream, mentions, several searches, direct messages, and new followers in separate panels. It’s a very nice way to keep up with a lot of info at once… too bad it uses Adobe AIR, which makes it screw up under heavy load. EchoFon is very simple, and lives in the bottom right corner of the browser until you pop it up to see what’s going on. Both of them offer different ways to interact with Twitter from the “official” clients, and depending on what you need they can be better ways.

In short, the Twitter ecosystem is far from being complete. Even if it was, it needs to be able to evolve to meet the needs of the people using it. The Twitter developers themselves know a lot about the system internals, but they’re somewhat removed from the people actually using the system day-in day-out. The users know what they want to do and how they want to do it — let the creativity of third-party app developers fill the needs, and leverage the knowledge gained. In other words, adapt the most popular new features to your own apps.

But first, get your own apps working the same way before you demand that third-party developers do likewise.

Thursday, August 26, 2010 2 comments

Head in the Cloud(s)

I haven’t lost my mind, it’s backed up on tape somewhere. — Unix fortune cookie

Tech-utopians believe that we’re approaching the point where the human mind could actually be uploaded into — and run on — computer hardware. I’m firmly in the skeptic camp on this one: perhaps some memories and sensory impressions could eventually be copied; after all, it’s already possible to stimulate certain memories or impressions by probing certain parts of the brain. If quantum computing offers insights into how our minds work, those copies could happen. BUT, can personality be both captured and then run on some kind of hardware? I doubt it.

On the other hand, some of my memory — and most likely some of yours as well — is already stored outside our heads. From the paper address book/calendar, to the lowliest PDA, to our calendar programs, to the fanciest cloud-based PIMs, we’ve offloaded a lot of the basic information we need to do our work (or not get whined at by a friend or family member whose birthday just went by), replacing it with a habit to “check the calendar” on occasion. A lot of this information is useful and even crucial — your mom’s birthday, your anniversary, that scheduled meeting with a potential customer. Some of it, like Amazon’s wish list, can be hazardous to your budget… instead of forgetting about that gadget you saw and thought was cool, add it to your wish list and come back for it later.

The tricks are, of course, to:

1) Make it so easy to add that information to your repository, wherever you are, whenever you need to, that you just do it without thinking much about it.

2) Extract that information — or better yet, have it automatically presented to you — at the right time.

As much as I like to slag on cellphones, they really do help with part 1 — even if you don’t have a signal at the crucial moment, you can often configure the phone to bring up an audio recorder without too much effort. I set up my old Samsung Sync to bring up the recorder by pressing one of the arrow keys, if I remember right. Of course, the smarter the phone, the easier it can be to find useful information entry apps. On the other hand, if you want to pay for Jott, you can use any phone capable of dialing a number (Jott converts a brief voice message to text and can return it to you in a large number of ways).

But the other side of the coin is getting that information back at the right time. Again, there are plenty of ways to make that happen. While Remember the Milk is popular, I kind of like Chandler for its open-source, cross-platform goodness. Unfortunately, the client is currently broke for Leopard and Snow Leopard; there’s supposed to be a workaround, but it didn’t work for me. Once they get the client working again, I’d love to see a full-function iPad client; right now, there’s a write-only “Chandler QE” (Quick Entry) iPhone app that’s okay for brief notes and events. Directly accessing notes at the Chandler Hub is a workaround on the laptop for now… I can’t enter text from the iPad for whatever reason though (grumble mumble) except by using the iPhone app (snarl hiss).

One thing I’ve started using Chandler for is to capture whatever random thoughts about White Pickups wander through my mind at any given moment. I thought I was going to start working on the last part of Book I today at lunch, and realized I needed to give the plot a little more thought… into the iPhone I went and added the information, now it’s on the hub whenever I’m ready for it.

So as always, you get your choice between free (or Free) and community-supported, or paid for and (maybe) reliability. The big problem I see with the latter is that going with a commercial cloud-based service is like giving your data to some corporation and then renting it back. Everything’s fine until you can’t make the next payment.

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