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Comparison of eBook Readers for Mac: First Impressions January 30, 2010

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I have tried reading books on my computer screen before, and I have been disappointed. Mostly, I have realized that scrolling sucks. Given that I have already paid to download a few technical books as PDF, I needed a reader that could make the PDF experience easier than Preview or Adobe.

(psst: I’ve heard good things about the Kindle, though I have not extensively used one myself. [affiliate link])

I’m learning to develop for iPhone, so I found two books from Pragmatic Programmers, Cocoa Programming Quick Start and iPhone SDK Development.

Following this, you’ll get a screenshot of each reader, and a bit about why I would / wouldn’t use it.

Here’s Preview:

Preview

After having gone through the other apps in this list, Preview is actually not too bad for reading technical books, but not my first choice.

I had heard Andy Ihnatko talking about Stanza. I think he likes it to synch books between his iPhone and his laptop. I’m pretty sure you can also buy books wirelessly from your iPhone inside this app.

stanza

The problem here is that this app is designed for reading story books – tons and tons of text, no fancy formatting. In fact, this app strips out all of the formatting and fonts, to the point that it makes no sense for tech manuals.

I saw Tofu on another site reviewing Mac eBook readers.

Tofu

In the description, there was a line “Tofu is different”. In fact, Tofu works almost exactly like Stanza (at least for my purposes). While Tofu did keep more of the fonts and formatting, Tofu still wants to break the layout that the original publishers created, which makes this the wrong choice for programming books.

Then I discovered my saving grace: Skim – and it’s open source!

Skim

It may be because it is created by programmers scratching their own itches, or maybe because it is not geared specifically for mobile devices or story books, but something just felt right about Skim. I really like the ability to highlight text and leave notes. Everything you highlight now becomes a bookmark you can jump back to for future reference. This seems like an app I’ll keep open while I’m coding to go back and refer to examples and explanations. More or less, exactly what I was looking for.

It also has pretty good search functions – when it finds a word you’re looking for, it circles it in red. You also have tools to manually circle text, draw a box, underline or strike through text, or draw arrows to help you annotate graphics.

There is a full screen mode and a presentation mode, as well as a neat feature called the reading bar – basically, a line-by-line bookmark to let you remember where you left off.

I’ve said the most about Skim because that’s my pick. It’s free, Mac-only, and open source.

A final note: I also tried an application called eReader Pro. This seemed to be tied to an online bookstore, and had zero support for PDF. Any tech book I’ve seen comes as a PDF, so steer clear of this one if you’re a programmer.

Let’s Make it Suck November 1, 2009

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This week I ordered my copy of The Art of Community by Jono Bacon. Jono is a community leader for a big open source software project, and hosts one of my favorite podcasts, all about open source, but he tries to write the book from a neutral perspective.

Still, you have to write what you know, so Jono’s 4 big examples so far are the Jokosher sound editor, Linux user groups, the LUG Radio Podcast, and the Ubuntu project, of course.

He has a big emphasis on writing things down, which I have to say I haven’t always been the best at in the past – I like to get my hands dirty. However, when the mission, goals, and a plan are written down and shared with everyone, more doors can be opened than if you keep everything in your head.

What do you mean by “making it suck”?

One of the coolest examples from the Art of Community is when Jono is discussing methods for brainstorming. One of the ways he suggests to get people talking and break down mental barriers is by asking them to design an end product with the opposite goals in mind.

From The Art of Community, Chapter 2, p. 55:

The idea is simple: reverse the aims of what you want to achieve.

As an example, imagine you wanted to design a cell phone. Traditionally, you would brainstorm the attributes of a great cell phone. Instead, turn everything on its head. What would make the worst possible cell phone? Maybe it ignores all calls? Or maybe it only accepts calls from telemarketing companies? Maybe the buttons are too small? How about really short battery life?

Awesome idea. I’m stealing that one.

So, what’s something I love, and how can I make it suck? I think Florida Creatives would be a great thought experiment:

Um, you get the idea… Now how would you make your favorite thing suck? The idea here is not to complain about an existing problem or bring up negative points. This is to be the “minus” side of the battery (+|-) or the “south” side of the magnet (N|S). What is so far opposite from the ideal, that any change whatsoever will be a step in the right direction?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Try the Clip Show. You probably won’t regret it! February 23, 2009

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Really. This is one of those shows I watch every single episode of, no matter how far behind I get. It’s fantastic, and they review some awesome stuff.

For example, here is their 2008 Year in Review episode:

WANT! Nokia N97 February 17, 2009

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Still the best camera of any “smartphone”. AT&T or T-Mobile should really start carrying these things…

Palm Pre, it’s better than Ritalin January 24, 2009

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“At CES, Palm announced that the new iPhone/BlackBerry/Android KILLA would be out in the first half of this year.” (CrunchGear)
If this video is any indication, the main two features I see in the Palm Pre is multi-tasking, and fancy ways to hide and show the interface. I also have to say that the combined, yet sepatate, email inboxes, calendars and contacts are a nice-to-have.

The little chicklet keyboard reminds me of my old Sony Mylo, of which the best feature was the feedback that I had pushed a button. Still, unless they put a light behind that keyboard, say goodbye to typing in the dark.

With all these applications staying open, I can’t imagine battery life and speed being all that great, but I may never find out, because the phone is on Sprint! Sprint?

I wonder what ever happened to Sprint’s “draw in the air” guestures? Is touch really a superior technology? Hmm, I think it must be… I can’t even find any references to the announcement about drawing in the air to dial numbers, answer calls, etc. – just a bunch of videos with light painting.

Will the Palm Pre be the light painting commercial of tomorrow?

Research and Development 2.0 January 16, 2009

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A few weeks ago I started reading Richard Florida’s game-changing (profound? or controversial?) book, The Rise of the Creative Class. Something he spends a lot of time on in the early part of the book is watching how advances in science and technology fueled changes in the way businesses were run, and the kinds of work people were doing; this leads to changes in the layout of cities, quality of life, home and entertainment, trade, and society in general.

The Rise of the Creative Class For example, he talks about enterprising gentlemen who would buy large quantities of raw materials and ship them to various craftsmen for processing. These craftsmen would not have direct interaction with the end-users of their products. This process was called “factoring”. Later, instead of working with a network of skilled labor over a wide geographical area, they consolidated their talent under one roof and created a “factory”. We all know what happened next: big cities got bigger as more people moved out of the country for these new kinds of jobs, and the first-world countries and cities with factories changed in a very real way.

Web 2.0

Something very similar has been happening in the past 4 years with the way we write and deploy web applications – Tim O’Reilly noticed this change happening, and coined the phrase “Web 2.0″ to try and give us a rallying point around the kinds of changes that were taking place. In the Wikipedia entry for Web 2.0, there are mostly references to the kinds of applications and content that exist on the web. Second, it talks about the ways applications interact with people, and finally the way that applications interact with each other; there is very little reference to the way in which applications are built and deployed.

Still, talking about communications protocols and the kinds of applications that are built, fancy business models and altruistic ethics still don’t explain how we got here. Out of the entire article, the only line that really talks about the manufacturing process, in this case computer programming, barely scratches the surface:

Web 2.0 technologies tend to foster innovation in the assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers. (This could be seen as a kind of “open source” or possible “Agile” development process, consistent with an end to the traditional software adoption cycle, typified by the so-called “perpetual beta”.)

If you read Rise of the Creative Class, you see that agile processes and perpetual beta are not new tools in the hands of enlightened managers. He shares stories from the optics factory where his father worked, where most of the managers on the shop floor had been promoted from the labor positions. He argues that one of the major things that kept the factory running smoothly was the managers’ faith in the experience of the laborers – if they had an idea about how to speed up production, or if they improved a process or design, the managers understood that their laborers knew what they were doing, and that their voices should be heard. Once the factory started hiring the MBAs and engineers, the management stopped listening to what was happening on the floor and productivity (and innovation) dropped almost to zero.

Research & Development

At the same time, a new class of mega-corporation was emerging, and along with mega-corporations were mega research and development budgets. The Bell Labs and Xerox PARCs of the world ruled the roost, and tons of new ideas were hatched – some succeeded, most failed. At some point, the mega-corporation stopped spending so much on R&D, and the venture capitalists entered the scene. Instead of the large corporations innovating in-house, entrepreneurs and tinkerers created startup companies, and the innovation was externalized. Bigger corporations could now incubate businesses that rose to the top of the pickle barrel by acquiring technologies along with their inventors. The VCs get a return on their investment, and the big companies only need to spend money on projects with a healthy track-record.

Back to Bell Labs, though. There are (at least) two incredibly important inventions that need mentioning before we move on. In an effort to computerize the telephone network, some guys at Bell Labs developed an operating system called UNIX. A few years later, in order to make the code portable to other chipsets and machines, they developed the C language, and UNIX was no longer just developed in assembly code, but could now be compiled to run on different architectures.

Right there we have the birth of two technologies that have utterly defined everything that makes Web 2.0 possible. UNIX and C were used in universities, which were a very important part of the research and development ecosystem, and remain to this day a place where massive amounts of patents are filed and startup companies birthed. By the 1990s, UNIX and C were standardized, and you could run them just about anywhere and, there were now open source (freely licensable) versions of both.

The Building Blocks of the Web

Show me one piece of Web 2.0 that is not based in some way on C or UNIX (with the exception of Microsoft .NET, which is still written on top of C). Nearly every web server is running a UNIX or LINUX operating system, and all of the programming languages fueling the web sites and services we know and love are all implemented in C. Take Perl (developed at NASA), Python (developed at Holland’s CWI research institute), Ruby (developed by the head of an R&D department in Japan), and PHP (developed in Silicon Valley).

One thing all of the above tools allow is the ability for the programmer to work at a higher level. That was the original promise of C, to be able to work higher than machine code. The aforementioned interpreted languages also remove the burden of memory management and lots of the noodly semantics from the development process.

One thing you’ll hear over and over is that all of the technologies used to build Web 2.0 existed before the 2.0 era, and that’s all too true. If you’ve read Florida’s book, you’ll remember he points out that fancy machines are not what made factories successful, it was the innovation of the people running the machines, whether simple or advanced. It was the changes in workflow, allowing workers to focus on a much smaller part of the manufacturing process, which created specialists, who then innovated on the process further.

It’s not like people were never developing great ideas on the web before it went 2.0, on the contrary. One of the most successful features of Amazon.com is their user-generated product reviews, a feature which existed when the service launched.

Old Tools + New Process = Explosive Invention

OK, so we’ve got the same tools, and one thing that is different this time around is how freely available it all is, thanks to the open source movement. When we’re talking about software, the smallest innovation can be shared with millions of people through the channels of Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). Because of things like the copyleft in the GPL, when you make a change to GPL software and want to distribute it, you have to also license your newly distributed code as GPL, and everyone can benefit. Not everyone in the world is cool with re-distributing their work, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid the touch of open source these days.

Now, instead of just using programming languages, the web community has realized that most of the code a programmer had to write for a website was being duplicated from one project to the next, and that everyone had to solve the same kinds of problems over and over. This has given rise to several web-specific programming frameworks. All of the above-mentioned languages have at least one framework available, for example: Catalyst, Django, Ruby on Rails, and Zend Framework.

The Calculus

In man’s quest to understand the world, a number of methods of communication have been developed which are ubiquitous: arguably the most universal would be numbers and mathematical symbols, like those used in calculus. The word calculus actually comes from a word used to refer to small stones used for counting and calculations. The human race is often in need of tools to communicate, yet math has achieved that communication with a shared vocabulary, theories, Laws, and symbols that communicate instantly and universally.

Mathematics is called “the language of science” – I can think of few situations where this is more true than computer science and relational databases. A large part of low-level languages and operating systems is simply allocating and recalling bits of data from memory, and of course performing simple operations or instructions on said data – an incredible feat that now can take place over one thousand trillion times per second in modern super-computers.

Think of programming frameworks and design patterns (on which frameworks are based) as the shared language – the calculus and theories – of modern computer science. Instead of lengthy explanations of abstract concepts, experienced programmers are able to speed up their communication with each other with the vocabulary provided by these frameworks. Additionally, growing popularity of practices such as Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) and favoring Convention over Configuration have helped frameworks gain widespread adoption, taking frameworks out of the realm of trends and fads, because programmers are able to focus on the parts of their jobs which are specific to the problem at hand, instead of having to “re-invent the wheel”.

Frameworks allow programmers to tackle 80% of their problems in 20% of the time, which reduces the time between invention and realization. Because these frameworks are open source and widely available, communities have begun to support technology-focused user groups, and hundreds of new Ruby on Rails programmers (e.g. “Web 2.0″ developers) are entering the ecosystem all the time. Some cities have a higher concentration of these developers than others, and these cities also tend to be those with more entrepreneurs and inventors, especially if you pay attention to the cities on Richard Florida’s creativity index.

R&D sans University

What am I getting at? Research and Development, particularly on the web, is no longer fueled by big corporations or universities, despite the fact that the tools that are enabling the current advances were all developed in the “R∧D 1.0″ institutions. In the past, you needed a big government contract or a CEO who was liberal with his research budget in order to get the capital to develop new products. These days, we’ve got tons of self-starters, folks who are going months without pay, working nights and weekends, getting funding from mom and dad or other Angel Investors, and roping their friends and relations into some crazy scheme… and it’s all happening on the Internet.

Then Yahoo, Google, AOL, or Microsoft will come along and snatch up your company and make you a millionaire… that’s the dream, at least.

Try to think of the last startup you heard of that was born in a research lab at a university… Google and Ask (Teoma) came from university, but those were almost 10 years ago. The part of this blog post that I can’t research is this one, but I hope people will leave some helpful info in comments, and I’m sure I’ll post about this subject in the future.

Our Opportunity

So here we are, the young, resourceful, well-educated youth of America. What is stopping us from developing new products, starting our own IPTV station, running for government office or just releasing some open source projects? Nothing. Try to find some inspiration, experience the world, travel, meet new and interesting people, try new things, eat food that scares you, speak in front of large groups, run a BarCamp, make some friends, get involved with your community, learn a new skill, and above all, invent something.

A huge thanks is in order to the fine editors and contributors who make Wikipedia such a great resource. You guys rock.

Howto Choose a Mac Voice Recorder for Podcasting September 19, 2008

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Every so often, I will get something that is mass-emailed to hundreds of people that I’m sure I can provide a very deep and useful answer to. Today’s challenge is a Mac-compatible voice recorder that can record phone calls, but be flexible enough to handle recording interviews that will later be the basis for print work AND apparently for possible release as a podcast. Yikes! That is a very flexible recorder! Therefore, my options were fairly narrowed-down. Here was my response:

You mean physically connects to the phone? Is it important to do it on an actual handset?

For example, I would use Skype and eCamm Call Recorder. I use these applications for recording my own podcasts, and I have never looked back. There are also solutions that will let you plug straight into GarageBand if that’s your editing program.

This is exactly the setup I used to record this interview:
Blogging Fringe Interview with Poofy Du Vey (Courtney Cunningham)

Using Skype to call another Skype account is free, and making calls to land-line phones or cell phones is handled via a flat-rate, and international calls are just a few pennies per minute.

If you use skype, you can buy any USB headset with a microphone (I recommend the ones that use USB over other solutions, because you’re using a Mac).

Plantronics Foldable USB Stereo Headset
This headset even comes with a separate (replacable) USB audio device – this is the most flexible, so you can use the headphones as normal headphones or through the USB audio port.

Olympus TP-7 Telephone Recording Device
For recording from a physical phone instead of over VOIP, this product seemed to get a lot of good reviews on Amazon. I’ve never used on myself.

I think the basic Idea is that you put this in your ear and then hold the phone up to that ear – it’s just a small microphone that plugs in to whatever recorder.

Griffin iTalk Pro – Microphone
An extremely simple option if you have an iPod is a voice recording accessory built for iPods, like a Griffin. Most of these have an input jack for an external microphone in them, on top of a mono or stereo mic. Just make sure they are compatible with your version of iPod – 3g, 4g, 5g, Nano, Touch, etc.

Edirol R-09HR High-Resolution WAVE/MP3 Recorder
If you want to go for the big guns, something like an Edirol is made for super-professional recordings, has built in microphones, accepts line-in and a whole bunch of great features – and it records to SD or SDHC cards – completely Mac-compatible. You’ll see a lot of folks recording to a Marantz, but unless you need phantom power, that’s just too much.

Hope this helps. If not, I’d be happy to have a deeper discussion.

If you’re looking for more podcasting help, I MUST recommend the BlogOrlando unconference coming up next weekend. Saturday, Sept 27th at Rollins College. FREE. There will be some really amazing speakers and discussions there.

Edit: For my own setup I use an M-Audio MobilePre USB and two MXL V57M mics, along with a couple of On Stage stands, shock mounts and XLR cables.

Book Review: PHP Reference by Mario Lurig September 18, 2008

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From the very first page, the author of this PHP book lets us know exactly its purpose – to act as an off-line reference to the hundred or so domestic PHP functions one might use in the course of writing software, and a couple of their lesser-used variants.

One of my favorite parts was the list of related functions below each description: this allows you to hyperlink your way around the book in a more semantic way than simply reading it front-to-back.

This is certainly not a book just for beginners, because I wouldn’t consider output buffer functions to be used by beginners (if you don’t know what I mean when I say ob_start() or ob_flush(), then you should probably pick up a copy).

This is the kind of book you should throw in your laptop bag as you get started on a new project, or keep on the shelf of your cubicle. Think about which is faster – tabbing back and forth between your browser window with the current page you’re testing, and your text editor, AND the php.net site, or just having a small reference book next to your keyboard.

Also consider your ability to make notes next to functions about your own personal tricks and experiences – I always find myself digging back into my own code as a reference, but if you just had this paper version to carry with you everywhere, you could save yourself a lot of time by not having to grep through your code.

Completely worth your time and money.

Edit: It should be said that I went to school with Andy (Mario), but that does not affect my review of his book. You should buy one.

Petentials Reviewed by Amber and Leo June 8, 2008

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Best of the Net Hooray for Google Alerts, and my media habits. A few days ago, I got an email from the google (now with a new and un-improved favicon…blech). This email linked to a blog post that linked to a podcast, and that was exciting.

The blogger was Kym Huynh, one of the hosts of a brand-new podcast called Best of the Net. In their first episode, The Google Bar, the topic was Pets, and the first story was Petentials, which is just amazing.

Then as I’m listening to some of my weekly podcasts, I noticed something even more amazing.

Net @ Night Every week, Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte sit down to talk about the latest happenings on the Internet. A few weeks ago, they were complaining about not having any guests, so they solicited the audience to email in if they had a web startup. Being the faithful listener that I am, I had to tell them about Petentials. I really thought they’d have thousands of suggestions like this every week, so I didn’t exactly expect to hear anything too soon, but…

I was listening to this week’s Net @ Night, “Tiffany Roll”, and when Amber got to the letters, I heard her say “This week’s letter is from Ryan Price in Orlando…”

Excuse me?

…and then they talked about Petentials for the next several minutes. I stopped right where I was standing and smiled the biggest smile. Right after that I called Darren and told him the good news.

Let’s keep the good vibes going – I know lots of you folks out there have podcasts and blogs – how would you like to feature a new social network that has been covered by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur? Yeah, I thought so…!

Listen to net@night 55: Tiffany Roll (RSS, iTunes)
Listen to Best of the Net 1: The Google Bar (RSS, iTunes)

Looking at the dates that these were released, I almost wonder if the Best of the Net show heard about us via the live stream that Amber and Leo do over at TwitLive.TV while they are taping the show. If so, that makes for a great follow-up to my previous post.

This is Internet TV May 31, 2008

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This is Internet TV, originally uploaded by Liberatr.net.

I’ve been hearing Leo Laporte talk about setting up his video streaming for weeks now, but he’s constantly down-playing the awesomeness of the whole thing. Today I finally had a few spare moments to check it out, and I have to say that this is what Internet TV is supposed to be. He’s got some great cameras and awesome lighting, and apparently he’s able to have guests in the studio as well.

This is every podcaster’s dream – you get to time-shift your shows, but you can have interactive features and discussion during the recording – there is a chat room under the video window at all times with a deluge of rolling comments from the TWiT Army.

Maybe Leo is a fluke because of all of his built-in celebrity, but I’m just happy he’s making this happen, paving the way for the little guys.

Nice work.

Internet TV in Action
This is a full-sized version of the video stream – that’s just a pretty thing – it looks and sounds fantastic.