sustaining word » books

first thoughts on the kindle 2

jazzmetalman — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:09:32 +0000

It’s been now two days since I received my Kindle 2, Amazon’s eBook reader. It’s early days, but I am extremely happy with it so far.

These are the really pleasing attributes of the Kindle 2 (International Version):

The speed of the transfer from the Kindle Store to the device
The management of titles on the Kindle; both those purchased from the Kindle Store and those transferred from previous purchases on other devices
The integration with the Kindle for iPhone app, whereby books are synchronised over both devices for ease of continuity of reading
The iPhone app is as good an eBook reader for the iPhone that I have used – easily on par with Stanza
The reading experience is pleasant and better than expected
It’s lightweight, easily held and controllable with one hand
Unobtrusive style, with clean lines that don’t distract from the reading experience
The good level of third party software to assist in managing your Kindle and its library. The best that I have found is Calibre
Lastly, with the addition of a Gelaskin cover (mine are in the photos here), the Kindle is easy to hold, and looks really good.

As it has been only two days, I haven’t yet used the included dictionary or the note taking features but they look promising and both appear functional and practical.

However, not all things are perfect. In my opinion there are a few issues that need to be addressed in the future (I have no doubt that Amazon will address these).

The synchronisation between the Kindle and the iPhone appears only to be functional for books purchased from the Kindle store – titles loaded locally do not show up on the iPhone
The quantity of titles available for international users is significantly less than those available to US users. In fact, I was unable to buy Nancy Wake, a book by Australian author Peter Fitzsimons, yet I could purchase this book if I lived in the US.
Computer usage is restricted to Windows based PC’s at the moment. Kindle for Mac is coming, but no date has been given for it’s release. This is only an inconvenience as you can run Windows on any Intel based Mac. Having a Mac based client however, will complete the Kindle experience for me.

An interesting footnote is that eBooks outsold physical books at Amazon over the Christmas period.

come in kindle

jazzmetalman — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:23:16 +0000

Tomorrow should see the delivery of our new Kindles, one each for my wife and I. I have internally debated whether I should acquire one, with the competition being the long rumoured Apple tablet, as I was really keen to see what Apple would do. The debate was finalised when the rumours began declaring that the price for the tablet would be over US$1,000 – some suggested as high as US$2,000.

We have literally hundreds of books – the legacy of a pastor married to a librarian, and space has become premium so the transition to digital books has been a no brainer for me. Over the past few years I have been buying eBooks for my various PDA’s that I have owned, so I already have a good collection to place on the new Kindle even without buying any new books from Amazon.

A great way to convert existing eBooks (PDF’s, Word Files etc) is to use Mobipocket Creator (Publisher). It’s a Windows-only application which is drag and drop for file conversion. The only problem I have encountered is that it doesn’t appear to work under virtualisation on my Mac. No dramas as I bring my work laptop home – the only time a dedicated Windows machine has been in my house for years!

The thought of having upwards of 1,500 of my books with me is a bit staggering, but I must confess there have been times when having access to my library when away from home would have been fantastic. Just as the iPod changed the way people listen to, and in many cases, purchase, music, I think the Kindle will do that with books. The fact the Amazon is now producing an international version of the Kindle will only increase the usage of digital books – only time will tell if society embraces digital books as they have digital music.

Over the years I have also subscribed to Time magazine as well as many others. I generally keep about 10-15 issues before I think that I need to throw them out (again due to space constraints), now this becomes a moot point as there are many magazines that can be subscribed to on the Kindle which I will be able to keep as reference material for years to come and can also keep on my laptop and desktop through the Kindle for Desktop application.

My two requests to Amazon are:

Please finish developing the Kindle for Mac app
Make available the Kindle for iPhone app to people outside the US

As the Kindle also allows for the spoken word as you drive, it could also diminish the need for the purchase of Audio Books. What is certain is that due to the close parity of the Aussie dollar to the US$, the cost of Kindle books has become about 50% of their print equivalent – another fine reason to add to that of the space saving benefits for purchasing and using a Kindle. So in summary, my key reasons to acquire a Kindle are:

Portability
Cost versus print equivalents
The ability to be an audio book
Storage

I will give you my initial thoughts on using the Kindle after I have tried it for a couple of days – unfortunately you will have to wait. My wife says I can only use it after I open it for Christmas! I wished she believed in early presents.

Until then then, I will stick with reading my print books – I do have a few to get through that I have recently purchased.

make an audio book from any text source

jazzmetalman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:49:00 +0000

I was reading a blog that I regularly visit yesterday and stumbled upon instructions for creating audio books from any type of text file. It was so awesome that I put it out on Twitter early today and have been requested to “fill in the blanks”.

First and foremost, credit goes to Rick Mansfield and his blog This Lamp. Unfortunately for you users of PC’s and the multiple variants of Windows, this will not help you, but if your a Mac user you will find all the instructions here.

The example that Rick describes is converting a christian resource book into an audio book. Yet this method works for anything that contains text – I have created audio books from pdf files, Word docs and Pages docs, the list is endless.

One last thing that Rick doesn’t mention is that when you have your new “Text to Speech” file in iTunes, you can then convert it into iTunes audio book format by running a script called Make Bookmarkable by Doug Adams and you can download the Apple Script here.

Rick in his post mentions how little time it takes to create an audio book from scratch. One of the ones that I created was The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. The final product was an audio book that would take 10 hours and 54 minutes to listen through – total time to prepare and convert on my MacPro was about 8 minutes.

It’s an absolutely awesome way to get audio books onto your iPod or iPhone. The possibilities are endless – I can see myself converting some of my daughter’s Uni text books next year so she can listen to them as she commutes to Uni, rather than having to carry them with her.

I hope you enjoy exploring these unlimited possibilities. If you’re a Windows user and you know of a way to do it on that platform, I’d love for you to share the secrets.

Happy audio book listening!

an open view of things – part 1

jazzmetalman — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:36:00 +0000

A couple of days ago I started reading Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open. It’s really well written and so far I am about half way through the book – he has been dating Brooke Shields and just won the 1995 Australian Open, so I haven’t read the confessions of his drug taking yet, but I have read about his infamous wig.

A number of things have stood out to me in the first half of the book, including:

How well it is written (a pleasant surprise)
Agassi had a difficult, dysfunctional childhood
His candidness as he writes.

But all of that pales into his explanation of how he hates tennis, and hates it with a passion. What is telling is that he still manages to play the sport at such an elite level. How often do we say how we hate our jobs, and that we’d really love to do our hobby, sport or lifestyle pursuit as a profession, whilst looking at musicians and sportspeople through envious eyes. Clearly Agassi didn’t enjoy the where he was in his life.

He had a fair share of the world watching him “work” and he hated being there, yet he still persisted. Agassi certainly did not have the ideal childhood, it was clearly far from normal and his adolescent years took place in the public eye, yet he has grown into a fine human being.

It’s refreshing to see now, the man that he has become, and to read his confessions of how he tried to hide from himself, as well as the public.

When I finish the book in the next couple of days I’ll share Part 2 with you, but until then, consider reading it yourself – you will learn a lot about Andre Agassi, and I dare say that you will learn a little about yourself.

In the meantime, here is a video of Agassi sharing some of the reasons he wrote Open.

everybody wants to go to heaven

jazzmetalman — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:17:00 +0000

This is not what you think it is. A great book by David Crowder – dealing with bluegrass, spirituality and death not being the ultimate bummer.