Size: I like this thing a lot. It’s smaller than my iPad, which needs to either be in a bag or under my arm the whole time I have it out of the house. Because if I’ve taken my iPad for reading purposes to a restaurant, there’s just no way in hell I’m going to leave it unattended if I need to go get another plate from the salad bar. Yes, I have a particular jacket that has a pocket big enough for the iPad, but you know, I don’t wear that jacket all the time. The Kindle is smaller enough than the iPad that I can stick it in regular-size pockets in other coats, and into the thigh cargo pockets of the shorts I like to wear in hot weather.

Readability: Turns out I like e-ink displays like the Kindle’s. The type looks good, though because of the variability of the ebooks I’ve put on the device (some books converted from Calibre, rather than gotten from the Kindle store), sometimes I have problems getting exactly the type size and format I’d like. I think I actually prefer reading books on my iPad a bit more from the readability and font standpoint. It’s better to use the Kindle outdoors, versus the iPad. The Kindle’s matte screen is great. And the naysayers who moaned that the screen would get all mucked up with fingerprints turned out to be wrong. I notice fingerprints on the glossy iPad screen way more than on the Kindle. On either device, a quick wipe is all it takes anyway. At the beginning, I had a bit of trouble with the Kindle because I’d tap the screen and it would advance two pages, and I’d have to go back one. I just needed to learn a bit different, and lighter, tap behavior.

Responsiveness: The iPad is faster, no doubt about it. The Kindle takes a second to change pages when I tap it. But I got used to that pretty quickly. It hasn’t turned out to be a big deal except when I want to do anything other than read on the Kindle, like browse the Kindle Store, or change settings, or the like. Then I get impatient with the slow screen redraws. But that’s generally offset by the next category. I’ll typically buy books on the Kindle Store on the Amazon Web site (rather than on the device), and send them to the Kindle or other devices running a Kindle app. I understand that the Kindle Touch Software Update Version 5.0.3 helps with speed issues, but it just came out yesterday, and I haven’t updated yet. Update: OK, so I installed the software update, and yes, it improves the Kindle’s responsiveness quite a bit. For example, the Kindle Store is now usable, rather than feeling painfully slow. I expect this update alone will end up selling more books for Amazon.

Battery life: No contest here; the Kindle is good for at least a month between recharges. The iPad is good for about a day. I’ve put the Kindle down for a week or so, and the battery indicator has barely moved.

Other stuff: The Kindle Owners Lending Library for Amazon Prime members is a gateway drug like you can’t believe. I used it to borrow (for free) the first two books of The Hunger Games in November and December. I said I had the $99 version of the Kindle Touch, which is the version that displays ads. They don’t intrude on the reading experience, and I’ve taken advantage of two of the ads, including one that offered a good deal (50% off) on a Marware case for the device (I decided I wanted this case because I wanted to protect the screen, and it has a hand strap that improves one-handed reading).

So there you have it. Though I already had two other handy devices I could use to read ebooks (my iPhone 4 and iPad 1), the Kindle Touch has proven its worth to me. I’m happy I got it.

It covers virtually all of the aspects of iCloud, from setting up the service on Mac OS X, iOS devices, and Windows, to using iCloud to synchronize email, contacts, calendars, and reminders. It also covers using iCloud with iTunes (and iTunes Match), iPhoto, the iWork programs, and using iCloud’s people and device location features. For a book that took me only a bit more than a month to write, I’m pretty happy with it, and I think it will be useful for your favorite iCloud newbie. Please join me in spreading the word that the book is out.

You can find it in the following places:

• Paper book at Amazon
• Kindle book
• Paperback and ebook at Barnes and Noble
• Ebook at the Apple iBookstore

Like most folks, I think that any nuclear weapons are too many; it’s all but unthinkable that they will ever be used in war again. And I find the graph of the declining numbers of stockpiled weapons heartening. It’s one of the good things that the first President Bush did with the START treaty, and that work was continued by President Obama (with the New START treaty).

Full disclosure: this was pitched to us as a paid ad placement. But I thought that it was interesting enough in itself that I agreed to put it up.

Via: Mozy

Then, when the Kindle 2 was released in early 2009, I wrote about it again, and said that the only reason I didn’t buy one was that I had gotten used to reading books using Stanza on my iPhone. Now, of course, I have an iPad, and I read ebooks on that. But the iPad has some significant disadvantages as an ebook reader. It’s heavy in the hand; you have to prop it on something or put it on a table. It’s too big to fit in a jacket pocket (except for my ScottEVest jacket), and the iPad, having email, tends to interrupt my reading experience. And the Kindle has that just-about-forever battery life.

I’d been thinking that I was going to try a Kindle when it hit the magic $99 price point. So after today’s Amazon announcements, I sprang for the $99 Kindle Touch (the one with the ads, because I’m pretty good at ignoring ads, the ads don’t interfere with the reading experience, and I didn’t mind saving $40). I’ll report back when the thing arrives in November. We’ll see if I like it or not. But my track record so far has been pretty good.

I’m speaking on three panels. Dori is representing her employer, Stack Exchange, which special emphasis on two Stack sites: Science Fiction and Fantasy and Writers. Stack Exchange is also sponsoring the Green Room for program participants. You’ll be able to find Dori roaming the halls with Stack Exchange swag, including shirts, stickers, and pens.

Both Dori and I will be making occasional posts on Stack Exchange’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Community Blog during Worldcon.

My panels are as follows (all at the Reno Convention Center):

Thursday, Aug. 18, 1 PM, Room C01:

Making It as a Full-Time Writer

In the 1940s and 1950s, writing SF paid a few cents a word and an apartment in New York was $100/month. SF — sometimes — pays a little more now, but … How does a part-time writer become a full time one? Can he or she do so? What are some of the differences for non-fiction writers?
Panelists: Carol Berg, Tom Negrino, Christina York, Bud Sparhawk, Dean Wesley Smith

Thursday, Aug. 18, 6 PM, Room A09:

Online Networking Before Social Networks

Before MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook, there were CompuServe, AOL, GEnie and USENET. Yes, people were married, divorced, friended and unfriended (remember kill files?) online before 2005.
Panelists: Walter H. Hunt, Tom Negrino, Brad Templeton, Lynn Gold

Friday, Aug. 19, 11 AM, Room A03

Social Media for Writers

Writers know the Internet, but not all writers take advantage of its full potential. With the evolution of Social Media, potential readers are only a click away. But what exactly is Social Media? At this panel, you will pick up the vocabulary and background of exactly what Social Media is, what it can do, and what it cannot do.
Panelists: Tee Morris, Tom Negrino, Rose Fox, Cory Doctorow, Brenda Cooper

Hope to see you there!

Hope to turn things back on soon.

Organizing the files

When you have so many documents, you want some way of organizing them. When I bought the ScanSnap, I also bought Yep, from Ironic Software. It’s designed to manage, organize, and retrieve PDFs, and you don’t have to copy PDFs into a central database. You can use it to add tags to your documents and search them. It was just what I wanted. I’ve added a couple of thousand documents to Yep and tagged them (bills, contracts, statements, etc.). Then Ironic came out with Yep 2. I considered upgrading, but the new version didn’t seem to have enough compelling features (the company didn’t help matters by failing to put up a clear page explaining the differences for their existing customers). And now, many other Yep users are complaining that Yep 2 seems to be moribund, with no updates for more than a year. Yep 1 isn’t working correctly anymore; the tagging is messed up and I can’t fix it. So I’m in the market for a new organization tool. I’m resigned to retagging everything, though it will take a long time. A program with the concept of tag groups would be helpful (so I could apply multiple tags at once).

The tools I’ve been thinking of are:

• Evernote Premium
• Paperless, by Mariner Software
• Devonthink Professional, by Devon Technologies

I’m already using Evernote for general notes and snippets, so I’m strongly considering upgrading to Evernote Premium ($45/year) and using that; I’d just dump all of the already scanned PDFs into it. But I have some concerns. First, the info I’ve been scanning isn’t exactly secret, but it is sensitive (bills, personal data). The idea of putting that into the cloud makes me uneasy. Second, Evernote doesn’t appear to have great options for getting information out once it goes in. I’d have to retag all of those documents, which would be a drag. And I use the Evernote iOS apps, and were one of those devices lost or stolen, I’d hate to have all that personal data exposed with it.

I know the least about Paperless. It’s reasonably priced ($50). It appears to have pretty much the same feature set as Yep, plus modern and expected additions like Smart Collections. I’d have to retag my documents, but don’t know how easy that would be. Anyone have experience with this program? Update: Paperless clearly isn’t going to meet my needs, so it’s off the list. Tried it, hated it, deleted it.

Some people swear by Devonthink ($80). It seems fairly complicated to learn and use. The company touts their AI that does automatic classification and grouping. But is that smart enough so that I wouldn’t have to retag every file manually?

As you can see, I’m most interested in reducing the labor in retagging files. And now that I need to migrate to a new program, I want to be able to maintain my time investment if I have to do it again in the future (sadly, no software is forever).

I’m sure that people I know have solved this problem for themselves. Can you help me solve it? I’m open to the programs above, or others. The restriction is that it has to be a Mac, program, of course. I’ve previously used Yojimbo, but migrated to Evernote.

Best of all, she had said “yes” when I asked her to marry me. We had already been together for years when we got married. We’d gotten a cat. We’d moved to Healdsburg from Los Angeles. We had bought a house, and we were raising a son.

She’s still all of those wonderful things that made me want to spend my life with her. Ten years on, I love her more than ever. It’s been a decade with ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, joy and sadness.

It’s been a marriage.

Happy Anniversary, Dori. Thank you for the past 10 years. I love you.