Kindle for PC: Almost Useful

Today Amazon announced the release of Kindle for PC, a PC-based version of their eBook reader (Mac version soon to follow). The reader itself is very Acrobat Reader-esque, easy to use, and synced with your Amazon account (no Kindle necessary). It displays an uneditable/unselectable version of the books in your library and allows you to adjust font + page size.

I don't actually use a Kindle. I've read books on my iPhone and actually like it, so I've been considering buying more. One thing has held me back though- some books just don't work on a phone. Programming books, for one, aren't the greatest. It's tough to scroll through lines of code on a tiny iPhone screen. I thought Kindle for PC would help solve this problem, and I could pop open my laptop (or eventually MacBook) if I wanted a richer reading experience. Unfortunately, Kindle for PC is very bare bones at the present time. It works…but that's about it. Which is actually pretty disappointing. 

Three things that cripple the app-

1) While you can view notes/highlights, you can't actually create notes on your PC. This is listed as a known feature request on Amazon, and I hope they get to it quickly. Also, now is the prefect time to address the ability to export notes. This is a must-have for the Kindle platform.

2) Can't adjust background color. On the iPhone I have options other than the standard retina-burning white page w/black text. Not so on Kindle for PC.

3) Cannot select/copy/paste. This is a huge limitation with Kindle's DRM and has no quick fix. How cool would it be to be able to copy/paste a code example directly into you IDE? Since enabling that would also allow you to copy/paste it into a PDF and sell it for $5, this will never happen. Worse, you can't even copy a word or group of words and Google them, or save a neat little quote for personal inspiration.

I love the Kindle, I love the ebook selection & 1-click purchasing on Amazon, and the cloud-based library. But when the DRM rears it's ugly head, it's enough to make you look into other options like Safari books.

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Cadmus Groups Duplicate Tweets, Actually Works

Louis Grey posted about Cadmus earlier today, and the idea of grouping duplicate tweets to remove noise is a great one. 

Better yet, it actually seems to work. For Tweets anyway. Cadmus also supports FriendFeed and RSS, but I haven't had luck with RSS yet. I had some odd results importing my 150-ish subscription Google Reader OPML. It pulled in thousands of old items in no discernible order. But it did group 30% of them…

Here's Cadmus in action, grabbing 8 posts regarding Google's acquisition of Gizmo5 and rolling them into a single nested tweet. By clicking "Related Posts", you expand the grouped duplicates. Now THAT is cool.

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How Do You Sleep at Night, Comcast?

Apparently on a huge pile of money…

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Note to Self- Avoid Financial Times

Nice. Forced registration is a great way to guarantee most readers will get their news elsewhere. I don’t care if it’s free, it’s yet another login and extra steps I don’t want/need.

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So Ends My Yearly Affair with Netflix

Over the past 5 years or so, I've signed up and cancelled my Netflix account 3 times. It's usually been for the same basic reason- I just don't watch DVDs very often. I want to, but it never really pans out that way. There is just too much other stuff in my life to do/read/watch/play. But this time I was sucked in by another emerging phenomenon- online streaming. The ability to fire up any movie or TV show on my laptop, Xbox360 or networked DVD player it's exactly what I've been wanting for years. So I was pretty psyched when I signed up a few months ago. Initially I was not disappointed; Netflix has done a great job with its online streaming. It works incredibly well. But after spending some time flipping through movies, i noticed a disturbing trend. There was nothing I wanted to watch.

I'd say 75% of the content I wanted to see was not available to stream online (DVD only). Netflix does a great job getting DVDs out within a day or two, but that's not my style. I want to click and watch. If I realize my judgement was clouded by nostalgia and Emergency! is really a dumb show, I want to be able to change my mind without a 3-day mail swap. That's what “Instant” means, and that's what I thought Netflix “Watch Instantly” should mean.

In all fairness to Netflix, we've still got a ways to go before the dream of “watch anything instantly” comes true. The frustrating thing is the technology and demand are there, but something (copyright law? legal red tape? pure greed?) is keeping the content locked up. Services like Hulu and YouTube are trying, but even they suffer from the same problems. They typically offer only crappy movies and a limited number of TV shows that people actually want to see. Example- Season 1 of 21 Jump Street is on Hulu, but Mad Men is not. The selection improves on the non-subscription side as Amazon and iTunes have a much better selection, but the cost is prohibitively expensive. $60 for a season pass to The Office? That's 1 season (20-ish episodes) of 1 program? Are you out of your mind? This causes everyone but only the most hardcore fans to put their wallets away.

I still have hope for Netflix. Subscription services are the future as horrifically expensive pay-per-view dies a slow death. Networks + movie studios are beginning to understand this, so it's just a matter of time. Maybe next year.

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I Just Paid for Something That’s Free

I love Lastpass. It’s become a mission critical piece of software for me. I use it several times a day, everyday. It’s installed on every machine I have- I even use the bookmarklets on my iPhone. Best of all, it’s free.

But not for me. Today I paid for it.

Why would I pay for something I can get for free? It’s not the benefits of a premium subscription. Those are rather limited to a couple of enhanced security features I’ll never use and an iPhone app that kind of sucks.

No, I decided to cough up the dough because the people at Lastpass have created a kickass product. Not only that, but they continue to crank out cutting-egde features like Google Chrome support, Windows application support, etc. Lastpass has made such a great product, and i rely so heavily on it, that I actually feel guilty NOT paying them for it. It’s one of the extraordinarily few products I can honestly say that about.

That’s really saying something about their software. What free product/ service would you openly pay for, given the option?

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Live Music Friday: Handsome Furs

“Baby we can get you anything you want, any time you want. But you won’t know what it’s for.”

Handsome Furs – Legal Tender

Handsome Furs – Handsome Furs Hate This City

Handsome Furs – Evangeline

Mint.com: Online Budgeting is Useless Without the Online Part

Shouldn't this guy be on the phone with Citizens Bank right now?

While I wait an astonishing 2+ months...

Wait a minute let's read that again. 2 months. Mint's service for one of the largest banks in the Northeast has been unavailable for 2 months. Holy shit how has this not made the tech news yet? Better yet, how have there not been firings (plural)?

While I wait a mind-blowing 2 months for connectivity issues to be resolved between Mint and Citizens Bank, I've been hanging out with Quicken. People seem to hate Quicken, but their customer support is incredibly responsive and their account connectivity has been rock solid. That's about to change as come this spring, there will be nowhere to hide from Mint's horrifically unstable data provider-

Although many are concerned about the fate of Mint, it sounds as though most of the changes will be happening to Quicken’s 1.4 million online users. They will be moved to Mint in the spring, said Mr. Patzer, who will oversee the transition.

source

On paper this lines up perfectly. Mint- great features, crappy data provider + support. Quicken- crappy features, great data provider + support. Come this spring a Voltron of online banking awesomeness should assemble before our very eyes. As long as Mr. Patzer doesn't blow it…or allow Intuit to screw it up. 

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Fall Fair – Groton Mass.

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Welcome to Your New Default Web Browser

Well that's that. The two extensions which are absolutely critical to my web browsing experience (XMarks + LastPass) are now available for dev builds of Google Chrome. Actually, Chrome's bookmark sync works very well. XMarks is really only required if you absolutely need to keep non-Chrome browser bookmarks in sync. But now I can finally declare Chrome lord and master of my desktop.

Strange thing is, I always thought AdBlock Plus would be the killer extension. (Site note- holy crap. I just launched Firefox so I could look up the proper name for "AdBlock Plus". It took ~20 seconds to launch.) But honestly, I don't mind ads so much. I'm nearly completely desensitized to them now. Things pop up in my sidebar and I don't even see them. After staring at my screen for 10 mins, I still couldn't tell you what the ads said. Speed really does make for a much more pleasant browsing experience.

I've been using the Chrome dev channel builds for about a month, and aside from a crash here and there, the builds are remarkably stable. Firefox is still installed for only 1 reason- Fireshot is a great screenshotting app. But I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that's replaced as well.

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