Republishing in full not allowed without permission.. Source: bhatt.id.au/blog/

Video (2 minutes): Kobo eInk Ebook Reader Unboxing & Size Comparison With Paperback Book and Kindle DX

Video Transcript: Earlier today, Borders Australia launched their eInk powered KObo eBook reader and associated eBook store with over 2 million ebooks for sale.

This is a short unboxing video and size comparison with the Kobo eReader versus a paperback book and Amazon Kindle DX eReader.

First we’ll have a look inside the Kobo package. The retail package describes the main features of the Kobo reader, inside it slides open to reveal a paper Quickstart guide, USB cable to connect to your Mac or Windows PC and the actual Kobo eInk powered ebook reader itself.

As you can see, in terms of height and width it’s almost the same size as a printed paperback book but its much thinner.

However both are dwarfed in size by the large and more premium priced Amazon Kindle DX.

Choosing an eBook reader is not a simple task as prices and features vary a lot between different manufacturers, however one key differentiating factor is whether you plan to read eBooks often, or just now and then …

read more of my article at PC AUTHORITY Feature: eBook reader buyer’s guide: four challengers to the Kindle

Borders/Kobo eReader Background Information

For more background information about the Border’s Kobo eReader you can read the articles I wrote recently for Australian technology news and reviews sites iTnews and PC Authority:

Borders Australia has announced plans to launch online bookstores powered by e-books download service Kobo and sell its own e-book reader devices.

The book retailer is selling content in its online book store which is compatible with many devices besides its own e-book reader, aiming to catch up with rivals and win a piece of the fast-growing e-book market.

read more at iTnews – Borders Australia lays down challenge to Amazon.com – Price guarantee – and on any device..

Retail staff at Borders have confirmed that the book retailer’s e-book reader – to be launched on May 19 with an accompanying e-content store – will be the Kobo e-Reader, priced at $199.

read more at iTnews – Borders to sell Kobo e-Book reader for $199.

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

Republishing in full not allowed without permission.. Source: bhatt.id.au/blog/

Like me you’ll be familiar with American news stories like Justice Dept. Defends $1.92 Million RIAA Fine Against Minnesota Mom and MPAA Shuts Down Entire Town’s Wi-Fi Over Single Illegal Download

Pirate Flag. photo credit: nickhumphries

However I bet you don’t know that The United States of America (USA) was the biggest copyright pirate in the 19th Century. In fact the famous authors Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) spent a lot of time berating Americans for not paying a penny in author royalties until the every end of the 19th century

In my opinion the pendulum has swung too far the other way because these days US legislators are in the pockets of organisations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and have enacted legislation with ultra-harsh penalties completely out of proportion for even small breaches of copyright.

In an ironic twist yesterday’s biggest pirate is today’s global copyright enforcer trying to make countries like China crack down on piracy of intellectual property (IP) like Movies, Computer Software and Books.

Some commentators say that China will get more serious over time in attempting to reduce piracy of IP due to pressure from trading partners like the USA, external bodies like the World Trade organisation and local Chinese producers of Music, Software, Movies, Music etc who want to earn money from their work rather than seeing pirated copies sold on the streets for $1.

For more information listen to this BBC World Service podcast exploring the world of intellectual piracy – the stealing of ideas.

For more background about the piracy of Charles Dickens book “A Christmas Carol” read A Christmas Copyright Carol

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

Republishing in full not allowed without permission.. Source: bhatt.id.au/blog/

During the weeks leading to the 40th Anniversary of NASA landing a man on the moon I’ve been reading the biography of Werner Von Braun, one of the key players who helped achieve that great success

photo credit: jurvetson

“Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War” is a hefty volume at almost 600 pages but through this rich detail the author Michael Neufuld (chair of the Space History Division of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum) manages to paint a brilliantly nuanced portrait of a man caught between morality and scientific progress, between his dreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.

As one of the leading developers of rocket technology for the German army, Von Braun yielded to pressure to join the Nazi Party in 1937 and reluctantly became an SS officer in 1940.

During the war, he supervised work on the V-2 rockets which were assembled by starving slave laborers in a secret underground plant and then fired against London and Antwerp. Thousands of prisoners died, a fact he knew all to well but kept silent about for as long as possible.

When the Allies overran Germany, von Braun and his team surrendered to the Americans in a tactical move because he thought they would be willing to finance further rocket research. The U.S. Army immediately recognized his skills and brought him and his colleagues to America to work on the development of guided missiles.

Handsome and likable, Von Braun dedicated himself to selling the American public on interplanetary travel and became a household name in the 1950s but he never fully escaped his past and in later years faced increasing questions as his wartime actions slowly came to light.

Von Braun’s main skill was not primarily in engineering or nuts and bolts rocket design, (many people contributed to those efforts) but as a man with a bold vision who could inspire the public and politicians while having the ability to manage giant military-industrial organisations to achieve his goals.

Some of Von Braun’s Key Achievements

United States 1st Satellite & Discovery of Van Allen Belts

The first United States earth satellite “Explorer-I” was sent aloft supposedly as part of the United States program for the International Geophysical Year 1957-1958. However in reality it was a reaction to the launch of the first ever artificial Earth satellite, the USSR’s “Sputnik I”, on 4 October 1957.

photo credit: US Army – EXPLORER I photo gallery

This “Jupiter-C” rocket was a special modification of the Redstone ballistic missile designed, built, and launched by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) under the direction of Von Braun.

The Redstone in turn was a direct descendant of the German A-4 (V-2) rocket . Without his research on the V2 rocket and its predecessors there may not have been a space race between the USA and USSR.

Once in orbit, the cosmic ray equipment of Explorer-I indicated a much lower cosmic ray count than had been anticipated. Dr. James Van Allen theorized that the equipment may have been saturated by very strong caused by the existence of a belt of charged particles trapped in space by the earth’s magnetic field.

The discovery of these Van Allen Belts by the Explorer satellites was considered to be one of the outstanding discoveries of the International Geophysical Year.

Skilled Science Communicator

Von Braun, a hero to many for his work as technical chief of the Army’s missile program and later NASA’s space program, began a concerted effort in the 1950s to sell the idea of space travel to the American public. That included the collaboration with Disney on three highly popular space-related television films.

“He had the ability to take this interest in space exploration and take it to the public”, said Mike Wright, staff historian for the Marshall Space Flight Center. Von Braun’s work on the Disney films and the Collier’s series sold many Americans on the idea of space flight and helped ensure adequate funding of the space program, said Wright.

The German scientist’s personality was important for the success of the space program, said Michael Neufeld, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington who wrote a book about von Braun and his rocket team.

“He was very charming, he was very charismatic”, Neufeld said. Von Braun’s talent was that he could communicate a vision of space travel in layman’s terms while bringing to the message the authority of a scientist.

“To make people believe that space flight was a possibility was his greatest accomplishment” said Wright. “Von Braun brought all of this out of the realm of science fiction.”
- Space History – Von Braun & Disney

You can watch part 1 of “Disney’s Man in Space – Prehistory of Rocketry” below:

View all of “Disney’s Man in Space” parts: 0 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Saturn V Rocket – Manned Missions to the Moon

The Saturn V was a multi-stage expendable rocket used by NASA’s Apollo and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973 under the direction of Wernher von Braun. NASA launched 13 Saturn V rockets with no loss of payload. It remains the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever.

You can watch a Saturn 5 launch below:

NASA’s Space Shuttle

Even at the tail end of his career Von Braun had great influence in setting up NASA to survive long term as a scientific organisation with a reliable and relatively cheap shuttle to ship satellites, space telescopes, astronauts and cargo back and forth from earth orbit.

Von Braun envisioned huge spacecraft sending legions of humans to the moon and to Mars. The craft would be assembled at huge wheel-shaped space stations orbiting the Earth. While Von Braun did not envision the space station as a freight terminal, he did see the need for a fleet of piloted space cargo carriers to ferry up supplies and crews for the outpost itself and for the long missions to Mars etc that would begin there.

NASA tried to settle for the shuttle/station combination, but the timing was terrible because America was mired in an expensive war in Vietnam so by 1970 all that remained of Von Braun’s grand scheme for putting footprints on Mars was the shuttle.
-CNN

In the end Von Braun’s goal was manned spacefight and if helping to create weapons of mass destruction in the form of V2 rockets for Hitler and Intercontinental ballistic missiles for the USA would get him there than he was willing to work with whoever would finance his research and testing.

The reader is left to make their own conclusion asto whether achieving this goal required making a Faust-like bargain with the military forces who financed him.

You can buy Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War from Amazon.com

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

Republishing in full not allowed without permission.. Source: bhatt.id.au/blog/

From the mid 70’s to late 90’s Gary Larson drew over 4000 single panel comics in the Far Side series.

It’s been a long time since he drew any new cartoons so why are his cartoons still regularly seen in calendars, birthday cards, stuck to refrigerators, desks and office walls around the world?

One reason for The Far Side’s popularity could be the combination of black humour (death and disaster were common motifs) and the attribution of human characteristics to insects, snakes and various animals including farm yard animals like Cows.

The mammoth “Complete Far Side 1980-1994 (2 vol set) (Hardcover)” contains every single Far Side cartoon (4,081 to be exact), including more than 1,100 that have never been published in a book. The cheapest place to buy it is Amazon.com

Upon his retirement in 1995 the Buffalo News “Nature Watch” column asked scientists around the world what their favourite Far Side comics were:

Favorites crossed specialties. Not only paleontologists cited the three most popular, all involving dinosaurs:

• “The Real Reason for Dinosaur Extinction” with dinosaurs smoking cigarettes;
• Giant dinosaurs laughing at a tiny furry mammal — as it begins to snow;
• the scientist with a large rectal thermometer standing behind a brontosaurus, “Professor Higgenbottom was never heard from again, leaving the cold-blooded/warm-blooded controversy still unresolved.”

Many runners-up were specific to disciplines.

• Mammologists: “Animal Waste Management,” bears in hard hats have run their sewage line into a human home; polar bears discussing how igloos are crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.
• Meteorologists: Airline pilots playing with their controls and maneuvering wildly but announcing to their passengers that they are flying into turbulence.
• Primatologists: Female chimpanzee discovering a blond hair in her mate’s fur, “Been doing more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” (I’m told that this was Ms. Goodalls favorite also.)

In 1994 Larson released an animated short film called “Tales From the Far Side I” and after popular acclaim a slightly longer sequel in “Tales From The Far Side II”.

These films take audiences on a strange and twisted journey through the unique landscape of the comically scientific and strangely ironic musings of Gary Larson. Long-time Far Side fans will recognize their favorites and newcomers to Larson’s land of The Far Side are sure to find someone, or something, to love.

Tales I, the Grand Prix winner at the 1995 Annecy International Animated Film Festival and official selection of the 1995 Telluride Film Festival, was described as “Unearthly and wonderful” in TIME magazine’s Top 10 List for Best Television of 1994 and The New York Times said, “Mr. Larson’s …vision defies neat categories. Sinister … and perfect.”
…
The films are an animated collection of vignettes (12 in Tales I and 16 in Tales II), each featuring its own storyline and panoply of Far Side characters, including mad farmer scientists, zombies at a Dead Ranch, time machines, swamp fairies, partying amoebae, devious zoo inhabitants, beer-guzzling hunters, beer-guzzling aliens, dog soldiers, insolent cats, a vacationing Grim Reaper, and of course, cows.

In a possible sign that Larson has lost interest in the franchise these 2 fabulous tales are only available for purchase on NTSC DVD & VHS tapes for delivery inside the USA

As this is the case I’ve embedded a Google Video copy of “Tales From the Far Side I” at the bottom of this article (23 minutes in length) so all Far Side fans can enjoy itGoogle Video removed it in mid 2007 . However a torrent AVI version of Tales From the Far Side I is still floating around the internet

I actually liked “Tales From The Far Side II” (45min) even better with its fantastic idea of following the disasters which occur around personification of death while he enjoys his vacation, however as far as I can tell it’s not available on any video sharing websites.

On an interesting side note: Gary Larson threatens his fans with cease and desist letters if they show even 1 of his comics on their website, even if their article is about how much they love Far Side and how other people should check it out.

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

Republishing in full not allowed without permission.. Source: bhatt.id.au/blog/

I’ve been wondering recently about what is a book and what are the defining characteristics of a book? How will we read books in the future?

I’m very interested in new bleeding edge technologies and their impact on older forms of information storage, publication and dissemination like printed books.

Reading books and engaging with technology are two of biggest interests because I’ve studied Business/Computing in my undergraduate degree and Information Management in my post-graduate degree to become a qualified Librarian as well as lots of self directed learning by reading books, magazines, websites etc.

What Is A Book?

This is a question we will want to answer if we want to enable books to reflect the electronic age and not the ink-on-paper era, just as Gutenberg and his heirs fully exploited that once-new technology back when, well, the ink was still fresh.

I don’t think a precise definition is possible, certainly not one that will clearly and unambiguously delimit books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and any other print media, and also add electronicity without claiming blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, mail-lists, and website forums. Each of these are distinct entities, yet might share every salient feature with most of the others at its margins.

So let us begin with this: “A book is something you read.” And by that we will not mean something we watch or view.
- excerpt from Future of The Book: What is a book?

How Will We Read Books In the Future?

What I did was compare the experience of reading 1 book “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” by Arthur Conan Doyle in four different ways:

• Actual “dead tree” mass market book
• HTC Dream touchscreen smartphone
• Kogan Netbook computer with 10″ screen
• Hanlin V3 Ebook reader I have as a media loan from DA Direct

My conclusion: I love printed books but the inevitable momentum is for books to be read electronically in the future. Printed books may still exist for die-hard “dead tree book fans” but the mass market will be reading electronically. Just like the switch from film to digital photography, the change may only take a few years to take place.

If i had to make a choice I’d say no current technology will win but the dominant method of reading books will be a new device that mixes the best characteristics of touchscreen smartphones and larger dedicated ebook readers

Paper Book

Pros

• Doesn’t need batteries
• Quite flexible and can often be read in bright or low quality light
• Can last decades or centuries if made from quality paper & taken care of it
• Each individual book is light, portable & cheap
• You own the book copy you buy and can resell it or give it away
• Relatively robust and not damaged much if it gets rained on or dropped

Cons

• Requires resource intensive process to create it: trees chopped down, milled, made into paper, printed, transported, warehoused
• Each book you buy requires more physical room
• Holds information as at a point in time, cant be updated
• Can’t be searched like an ebook
• Highlighting, writing notes on pages and folding pages is destructive and permanently changes the book.

Touchscreen Smartphone (as Book Reader)

Pros

• Convergent device that more people are likely to carry in their pocket/handbag as they become used by more people
• Can be searched as well as virtually highlighted and annotated without damaging the original book
• Allows hyperlinking words/phrases to other books, dictionary definitions etc
• Colour screen to view photos/images etc in full fidelity
• Access via mobile/WiFI networks to a virtual library of potentially millions of books through means like the Amazon.com ebook market (paid books) or free out of copyright books via Open Library / Google Books for mobiles
• Touchscreen is an easy way to “flip pages”

Cons

• Small screen size (currently around 3-4 inches) and may not be easy to read in bright/low light
• Limited battery life
• Reading books via a network requires reliable network access!
• Digital Rights Management (DRM) on a paid book may stop you reselling it or giving it away after reading it.
• The specific book you may want to read may not be available electronically

Dedicated E-Book Reader

Pros

• Is designed solely to read books, so in theory it should be a pleasant experience
• Current ebook readers use “E-Ink” technology which requires no front or backlight, is viewable under a wide range of lighting conditions, including direct sunlight
• Requires no power to maintain an image – the model I had on loan said it could be used to read 300 pages/day for a month without needing a recharge
• Can support reading books in many languages
• Store many books via expandable memory card storage eg: SDHC

Cons

• Greyscale screen – so photos and images cannot be viewed properly.
• May be crippled by Digital Rights Management (DRM)
• A small ebook reader with 6 inch screen is too small, but a larger screen eg: 10 inch means more weight and space in your luggage/backpack/briefcase
• Because its a dedicated single use device you also have to carry around a phone and or laptop computer as well as an ebook reader
• Have to pay for the ebook reader and then more $ for each book. Even if ebooks are cheap it may take a few years for the TCO (total cost of ownership) to be worth it
• All the books you want to read may not be available for your e-book platform
• What happens if the company you bought your ebook reader from goes bust?

Netbook/Laptop Computer (as Book Reader)

I gave up on this option really quickly. Notebook computers are too uncomfortable to read books with for any extended period. They have to be on a flat surface, have battery life of only a few hours, get hot if you put them on your lap, you cant lie down and read them etc etc.

Printed Book Will Give Way To Networked Electronic Book

For several hundred years, humans have used print – the book and its various page-based cousins – to move ideas across time and space. Radio, cinema and television emerged in the last century and now, with the advent of computers, we are combining media to forge new forms of expression.

For now, we use the word “book” broadly, even metaphorically, to talk about what has come before – and what might come next.

One major consequence of the shift to digital is the addition of graphical, audio, and video elements to the written word. More profound, however, is the book’s reinvention in a networked environment.

Unlike the printed book, the networked book is not bound by time or space. It is an evolving entity within an ecology of readers, authors and texts. Unlike the printed book, the networked book is never finished: it is always a work in progress.

- Excerpt from Future of The Book: Mission

My conclusion: I love printed books but the inevitable momentum is for books to be read electronically in the future. Printed books may still exist for die-hard “dead tree book fans” but the mass market will be reading electronically. Just like the switch from film to digital photography, the change may only take a few years to take place.

If i had to make a choice I’d say no current technology will win but the dominant method of reading books will be a new device that mixes the best characteristics of touchscreen smartphones and larger dedicated ebook readers

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

Republishing in full not allowed without permission.. Source: bhatt.id.au/blog/

Organisations in the information industry such as Book Publishers and Libraries would do well to learn from Encyclopedia Britannica’s precipitous fall from grace.

Formerly a powerful company that could demand and receive large payments for access to it’s storehouse of human knowledge, it’s now been reduced to near irrelevancy and suffers the ignoble fate of being sold by discount clearance stores.

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica set of printed volumes is the oldest continuously published reference work in the English language, having been in print without interruption since 1768.

They were onto a good thing and made great profits for a long time but innovation in the form of vast amounts of free information on the Internet appeared unexpectedly from the periphery and dealt Encyclopaedia Britannica a knockout blow that’s left them woozy and barely hanging onto the edge of the boxing ring ever since.

Like King Ozymandias in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, Brittanica had believed that it was near invincible and any competitors to it’s throne would look at it’s mighty work, despair and give up.

Don’t get me wrong, Britannica Online was launched in 1994 which was just before public usage of the Internet really took off & Britannica’s arch-nemesis Wikipedia only got launched in early 2001

As Mark Pesce describes in his talk The Alexandrine dilemma, Britannica online was a subscription-based reference site for 5 years until 19th October 1999 when “the online version of Britannica containing the complete unexpurgated content of the many-volume print edition was unlocked and made freely available, at no cost to its users”.

For the next few months Britannica Online became one of the most popular sites on the internet but in the face of having to service this traffic via more and more servers and escalating data transfer costs management decided to retreat into their shell, putting the content behind a paywall and charging a $7/month subscription fee. Traffic soon plummeted to previous low levels.

This was their last best hope for success in the brave new online publishing world and yet they killed the experiment because of a crisis of over-popularity that any other website would have killed for.

If they had been brave and far sighted enough to let their quality content stay free within the publicly available Internet and allowed crowd sourced updates to their encyclopedia entries than they could have possibly become the defacto source of information Wikipedia is today.

The issues they faced were not new: all online publishers have struggled to find out how they can turn high-quality content into a money-making business where profits are greater than costs.

Shifting back to a subscription model reflected a natural conservative urge by management to avoid relying on fickle online advertising income but in the end it was also Britannica’s downfall because organisational success on the internet directly correlates to how open the organisation is willing to be with it’s information and it has been demonstrated time after time that online readers are notoriously reluctant to pay for content hidden in private information silos regardless of it’s quality.

Institutions like libraries and industries like Book publishers currently feeling the icy winds of change would be well advised to learn from this story and read books like The Wisdom of Crowds, Here Comes Everybody, Wikinomics, Crowdsourcing and The Wealth of Networks to decide how they will fight back against competitive threats in their sector.

Putting your head in the sand and continuing with business as usual when faced with a bold new competitor that threatens your core product/service is irresponsible suicidal behaviour that threatens the jobs of employees and dooms owners/shareholders to huge losses as the organisation diminishes in importance over time.

Don’t stick your head in the sand…. photo credit: blakeimeson

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more