The first item to remember is that this thing reads like a real book. That is to say there is no “backlighting” on the screen. What you see in the pale afternoon light is what you get. It’s like reading an actual book in the evening — you’re going to need to shine some light on it.

I think the hardest thing for me to get used to was that it is not a computer or smartphone. It doesn’t act like one with regard to feel, light, response or speed. So a minor realignment of expectations is necessary at the get-go, especially if you have a fast touch-screen phone or tablet computer that you’re accustomed to using. I’m assuming it’s pretty much that way for all e-readers.

This is a relatively accurate representation (on my monitor, at least) of the brightness of the nook screen. This photo was taken in the early evening, with one lamp turned on in the living room:

clicky

~

Here’s a view of when I sat right next to the lamp:

Better.

~

Truthfully — I could stand for the screen to be a leeeeetle bit brighter. But that’s likely just my horrible eyesight. Not a deal breaker. And the text renders beautifully outside in the sunlight — no screen glare or whiteout issues.

The page turn transitions are nice, but again, it’s not like swiping to the next menu on your Droid or iPhone. I’m not a page ripper in real-book life; I take my time, so this was no biggy. I shot a quick & dirty Flip video, illustrating both ways to advance the pages:

~

~

The Wi-Fi connection is cool — it picked up the wireless signal in my house right away. I also got the 3G for on the road, which will be nice. Here’s a shot of searching the B & N store, again with no direct light shining on the screen:

~

Again, you’re going to need a lamp or a book light to read in the darkness. B & N sells a clip-on model called the Lyra for $15, but my cheapy little GE book light did the job, too. I turned off all the lights, pulled down the shades and took this photo:

~

You can change fonts and sizes, of course. (I don’t particularly love serifs, so I chose the smoothy font.) The pictures above show the “large” version of the font.

I haven’t had it long enough to measure battery life with the Wi-Fi and 3G on, so maybe Helen or BoomR could comment on that. I look forward to taking this little gem on the road.

Yay, it’s Finkday for all you people with real jobs.

Hmm….nice.

I’d always dismissed the Chrome claim that it was the fastest browser — faster than Firefox, which I have used since the day it appeared in beta form for public download over five years ago — believing  that no piece of software could really improve on speed that much. Well — I think I was wrong.

So I spent some time fooling around with Chrome this morning. You know, it really is faster. Firefox was starting to bug me a little with its feature creep and extension bloating issues. Chrome is slick and quick, no lie. You might want to try it for yourself. Mac users can, too.

On an unrelated note: thanks to all my RtB fiends who posted nice thoughts on Facebook and sent emails about my icky tests yesterday. All is well in the cancer department — as in, there is none. Now the doc will search for other clues (hopefully using less invasive tests).

Happy, um…I don’t even know what day it is.

Fink, in summer mode

PS – I am putting this ad on my site (the only ad I will ever put on my site) because if somebody signs up through the link, I get 3 months of hosting for free. Such a deal. It helps keep finkweb going. These folks have been good to me, so use them with my highest recommendation, should you ever want to start a little world of your own on the Internets.

I recommend SiteGround web hosting

Fellow crusties will remember typing class in high school, where we used old manual Royals, Olympias, Smith-Coronas or Olivettis to hone our mad skills. f-f-f-space, j-j-j-space. I loved those exercises because they had a definite rhythm. I remember trying to get the “tempo” of my typing as fast and rhythmically correct as possible. I never wanted to miss a “beat.” Is that music-geeky or what? But it served me well; learning to type fast on a manual helped me immensely on the easy keyboards of today, and even on electric typewriters back in the olden days (remember that old Selectric we had in the office years ago, RD?) I learned from the ground up.

Some of my friends and family like to poke fun at my typing style. I’m like Beethoven; keyboards don’t last forever with me. I type the way I play piano: forcefully, and without a single iota of finesse. But I get the letters and papers written, lemmetellya. Love it. (The secret:  in both playing piano and typing — never look at your hands. Well, almost never.)

Anyway. I was looking at some old typewriters this morning, and saw a few memories. I typed on a Royal manual, pictured above. The typing classroom was loud, loud, loud, as you might imagine (or remember, if you’re old enough).

Then came the portable manual — made of plastic instead of metal, so they were easy to carry around. But it was the IBM Selectric (pictured at left) that made everybody go positively mad. It had a little golf-ball-lookin’ typing head mechanism that you hooked onto the carriage. You could switch it out when you needed a different font, which of course meant that you had to buy a whole box of them to get the ones you wanted. But it was awesome at the time, heh. Progress.

Our mom had a portable electric — similar to the Selectric, but, again, made of plastic instead of metal. I remember typing a paper or two on it in high school, just to be fancy (back when typing a paper was almost never a requirement, except in typing class).  It was all cool and new and impressive.

But get a load-a THIS…

You really got to love the throwback to drop $350+shipping to have one of these crazy thangs. It looks kind of fun, though…

Anyone got a spare iPad on ‘em? I’d like to try this.

Pretty dandy, yes? At least the mock-up conversations appear somewhat promising. Or is this not the droid I am looking for? Personally, I was just glad to see a tablet not tied to AT&T. I mean, I’m not pushing for a “killer” anything; just maybe a tablet device that will allow me to stay where I am contract-wise (not that that’s anything fantastic).

Still, it sure is pretty to look at. It appears I need to start a “Stuff I Want III” post.

I cannot believe it is not Friday. Blarg.

If I have a big handbag (which I do), it could fit nicely in there. I could conceivably have WiFi and not get all honked about hotels charging me for it.

But…

1. I’d have to forswear Verizon for AT & T — and I am account holder for four other phones.
2. Is this a flash in the pan? Just a bigger version of the iTouch? What will be its staying power vs. a laptop?
3. Check out the specs (pdf). How much better a deal is it than a laptop?
4. Will HTML5 be a sufficient replacement for Apple’s lack of Flash?

Crucial things to think about this day, a day that could shape up to be more stressful than it needs to be. Know’m sayin? Mondays: me no likey.

FO

Photo credit: Reuters

I love gadgets for my Storm. Heh. I would rather play with fun toys this day than choose music for my v-jazz camp that starts Sunday. Or clean the Finkhouse. Or wonder if Lars got my text message yesterday.

As much as I hate to, I must fly. Have to get started. Another good day for hating things, I see. I am starting to love hate. I like that.

Hating everything and everyone (except you, of course),

FinkBerry

Did I sit and figure this out on paper or with a calculator? Are ya mental? No way. I used Wolfram Alpha, the cool new math engine that can compute anything on almost any topic. Here’s what I got when I entered my birthdate last night:

I typed in the word “Cyprus,” and got just about all the statistical information on the island that anyone could possibly want. Now how dandy is that, I ask you. It won’t surprise you to know that I spent far too much of my precious free time on that site, after having outlined 70 pages on quantitative research methodologies.

Once again: my life is one big party.

Off to meet Kay at Starbucks. Yummy.

And no, I’m not writing a post about the Association of Free Trojans — if there actually is an Association of Free Trojans. Rather, I’ve deliberately misplaced the modifier to confuse you. Kidding again. I just have stuff to say about the word “trojan.”

Last night, while reading/researching, I ran into the word no fewer than three times. This, I surmised, was a sign: time to free-associate about trojans. [OK, I'm not *really* free-associating, but...you know.]

You hear the word “trojan” a lot; many times in connection with computer issues. There are three definitions one must keep separate in the virus/trojan/worm game, however (squeaky-clean, freshly-manicured Mac users, you can skip this section, although the Mighty Blue Apple has been known to get the occasional worm):

• Virus: something your computer catches from an infected source, like media (CDs, portable drives, files).
• Worm: a kind of virus spread mostly via networks.
• Trojan: a bad piece of programming masquerading as something else

There are lots of schools that feature a Trojan warrior as their mascot. My school does. But I wonder how many people, when they think of a Trojan, first think about how the citizens of Troy got their collective butts kicked via the ultimate humiliation of the Trojan horse joke.

I would imagine a person’s first thought upon learning of the ruse dreamed up by Odysseus would be, What a buncha wankers. Well, if the knee-high strappy sandal fits…

They really bought it, lock and stock. Amazing. Different culture then, though. And really, how do we know Virgil didn’t make it all up? But still, I have to wonder when I see athletic teams called “Trojans” — why did they choose that mascot? I’m sure there were brave and powerful Trojan soldiers. But that’s not really their claim to fame.

Thus ends my Trojan association, but not my fondness for all things old. Take today, for instance. Tis a special day indeed. Behold the email I received from my fiend PK:

Hail, Mistress well met! I would remind thee that Thursday bringeth Talk Like Shakespeare day withal, to honor his birthday revels. Mayhaps it behooveth thee to visit yon web site:

http://www.talklikeshakespeare.org/

I have met some wonderful friends through a protocol developed in the late 80s/early 90s called Internet Relay Chat – or IRC. Users downloaded mIRC and pIRCch software and used it exclusively to communicate real-time on a daily basis with people from all over the planet. It was instant messaging’s granddaddy. How can I explain it…it was a cult of sorts; a brotherhood, to wit:

• We didn’t call them “chat rooms.” That was for silly AOL users who didn’t want to know the guts of anything. Our hangouts were called “channels.” Many of us were Usenet junkies, and we made the transition pretty easily.
• We had channel operators (chanops or just “ops”) who controlled the mayhem. We (including the Thriller, Suzanne and myself) worked our way up through the ranks and were made channel operators by the IRC gods. At one point, Thriller and I were “499″ level ops, with the highest designation being 500 (or channel owner). Think of a jail setting…we were trustees of the highest order. HA
• These weren’t just cute little “chat rooms.” At the time, we operated the channel called #newbies, where everyone who was new to IRC came to get help and learn the ropes of the software and the environment. Hundreds and hundreds of people cycled through that place every day. There were also a lot of IRC veterans who just came to hang. Many relationships, involving lifelong friendship, romance, and even animosity, developed in there. (I’m thinking of some certain Canadians…)
• There were lots of people from Europe, Asia, Canada and the US, all coming together in one place to talk, laugh, and generally be silly. It was great, and at the time, extremely novel. It wasn’t the norm back in 1993-94 like it is now.
• Suzanne is a wonderful friend I made through IRC, and I’ll be forever grateful for that.

Suzanne: So I just blew the dust off my copy of mIRC, and connected to Undernet. Went into our old stomping grounds and found Mahatma & Clotho…whaddya know?? Cool that they’re still together, just like us.

Have a dandy day, everyone.

Fink, dinosaur

So yeah, my BlackBerry Storm is pretty cool, I must say. However, as with any new phone, people rush to judge it without really playing with it long enough. I read a review in PC Magazine where the journalist didn’t even know the most basic functions that can be executed by simply reading the owner’s manual. Anyway. Here’s my Storm, all prettied up with a violin background:

Getting used to a phone with no keypad has been interesting. It’s just a different set of steps you have to go through.

I really like the text messaging and email setup, though. That’s probably my favorite feature. (And the web access doesn’t bite, either.) Turning the phone horizontally reveals a full text keyboard, which I really like.

Lots of upsides to this phone make it worth using for me; namely, the text-messaging and email. Amazing, both. There are a few annoying disadvantages, however.

• The learning curve is sizable. I’ve heard from sales people that folks often buy these phones, only to return them in frustration a few days later. Be prepared to outlast the head-scratching. It’s been just under 48 hours for me, and I’m starting to see daylight.
• If you don’t have tiny little hands, forget about easily typing on the keyboard.
• I have yet to figure out how the two-letters-per-key keypad works. It types seemingly at random when I try to use it. Fortunately, I prefer the full keyboard, so no biggy.

So, not 100% intuitive, but that’s OK with me. I still love it. And this wasn’t exactly a Wired-worthy review of the Storm, but hey, it’s 5:54. Have a great Monday, my fiends. Today we start Year Two.

FO

Then why, I wonder, are we so slow compared to other countries when it comes to broadband?

Couple nights ago, I took an upload/download speed test at speedtest.net. Here’s how I scored after repeated go-rounds (click the picture):

Now, the Thriller pays more per month to get “business grade” speed, so my zip-chang is a little faster than the average Joe’s. But wait till you see how it stacks up to that of other countries. Check out this chart from a study done by the Communications Workers of America union, which shows where we stand in comparison to other countries:

speed1

Look at Japan – Sheefus, Mary & Joseph. Sixty-three MBPS compared to my nine? What’s up with THAT? In fact, the report states that the US – the country that invented the Internet – is “15th behind other industrialized nations in the percentage of the population subscribing to broadband.” Friggin’ Luxembourg has better download speed than we do. That just ain’t right. According to the study, Americans pay more for sub-par internet speed than their neighbors across the sea, too.

Well, turns out the answers aren’t always in the numbers. As I read article after article about it, hidden truths seeped out. The one that struck me was the logistics of upgrading/building the broadband infrastructure in the US as compared to doing so in Japan. I’m talking about sheer size:

Japan = 145,840 square miles

USA = 3,790,000 square miles

Of course it’s going to be easier to set up tighter, faster servers in small places like Japan or South Korea. Unfortunately, despite the movement by the CWA for Congress to step up improvements, I think most American ISPs would just as soon blather on about how good 5 MBPS is, and squeeze us for the $60/month, hoping that we’ll continue to be dumb & happy about it.

But sixty-three MBPS? *scratching head* If that don’t beat all. (Actually, it does.)

Fink out.

Nice. You’d think that a team of PhDs, led by former Google Golden Genius Anna Patterson, would remember to ask, “Hey, shouldn’t we probably buy enough servers to survive a humongous traffic spike, seein’ as how we’ve advertised ourselves as more powerful than Google?” Maybe not. And who am I to judge? Maybe it was bad karma having a roll-out on a Monday.

When I finally did get it to work, the results were interesting — somewhat refreshing and different:

The best part about it – no ads.

(Yet.)

(This post is basically for Firefox users on a Windows OS, but the tricks are doable on your Mac as well. I just couldn’t tell you exactly how.)

Everyone browses the web differently. Some like several windows open at once, and some like tabbed browsing, where you have one window open and several smaller windows inside. Others don’t care. As much time as I spend online, my priority has always been ease of access. Fortunately, the Firefox browser allows users to customize to the nth degree — which I have done. I thought I’d highlight some tweaks and time-savers in case anyone’s interested. Below are a few of My Favorite Things about Firefox customization.

(And since several of my friends and family label themselves “web-challenged,” I’ve included pretty pictures, too.)

1. The Bookmarks Toolbar. This is by far my favorite tool, because I have a ton of sites that I visit every day, several times a day, and I absolutely hate the 4-step process of select Bookmarks – bring down the list – fly out the menu – find the site. I want one-click simplicity.

In case you can’t see the Bookmarks Toolbar, here’s how to activate it. Right-click in an empty space on the main navigation toolbar (like next to your “Back” button). Then select “Bookmarks Toolbar.”

Then go to your favorite site, grab the favicon (the little graphic next to the “http”) with your mouse button, and drag it to the empty toolbar until a little rectangle appears beneath your cursor:

Et voilá – one-click access to your favorite site. From then on, you can just drag sites to the Toolbar with impunity. Another tip: Once you have the bookmark on the Toolbar, right-click it, select Properties, and you can rename it to whatever you want. As you can see on this screenshot, I have done that with all of mine.

2. The Navigation Toolbar. You can customize this, too. I like a clean look, with only the buttons that I use most often. (I don’t use the nav buttons for Print, History, Cut, Copy, Paste, Bookmarks, etc.) Just right click on the navigation toolbar and select Customize:

On the window that pops up, start dragging the buttons you don’t want into the open space below (click the image):

And there you go. Those are my two biggies. Firefox also can be customized with Add-ons; I use a lot of those, too. You can get:

• Themes - I use Blue Ice, because the buttons are big (which helps my horrendously poor eyesight) and it looks super-clean.
• Extensions – There are a metric ton of them, designed to save you time and increase productivity. There are a bunch at Mozilla, as well as at userscripts.org, after installing the add-on called Greasemonkey. (Geeks will spend hours on that site.)

The best Add-ons, in my opinion and for my purposes, are:

1. Adblock Plus. It does what the name says. It blocks those stupid Flash ads and other annoying popups. You can customize it to not run on certain sites (for instance, my Boston U. class website uses popups for content). As of today, over 21 million people have downloaded it. You need to get it.
2. The Google Toolbar. When you research and write as much as I do, this is a godsend.
3. Handy Xtra Stuff for the Xtra-geeky individual.
4. PDF Download. I open a truckload of these files on a regular basis (ever been to JSTOR?). This extension lets me decide what I want to do with it before I open it. Very handy.
5. Go Up. J’ever want to retrace your steps back to a home page when you’re six miles deep into its subdirectories? It usually involves highlighting part of the URL and pressing delete and all that madness. This extension puts a button right next to the location bar, which, when pressed, will take you, step by step, back to the top-level directory of a website. For instance, if you’re here: http://finkweb.org/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=462&message=4 — pressing the “Up” button takes you here: http://finkweb.org — one level at a time. Nice.

Ok, that’s all for today. But there’s a lot more where this came from…

Finkus outus.

Martin Cooper made the first cell phone call in New York City on 3 April, 1973. He recalled in a recent interview:

As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren’t cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter – probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life.

No kidding – especially considering the weight of the thing. I mean, look at the size of the first wireless phone. The model at left (held by Cooper himself), weighed almost 2 pounds.

The cost to buy one of these babies in ’73: $3,500.

Wireless contract, anyone?

As the 80s appeared, technology got better, but not necessarily any smaller. Emphasis by the industry was placed on putting phones in people’s cars (a decision many have criticized, even to this day). I remember when they were not called “cell phones,” but “car phones.” This doozy weighed 21 lbs.

The 1990s saw cell phones shrink in both size and cost (thank God). Nokia pioneered the “candy bar” phone – meaning that it doesn’t have a lid or closing panel that must be opened or slid in order to talk. I had one of these back in the 90s. The cost by then: around $300 per phone.

Now, cell phones are lighter, cheaper, faster and more robust than ever before. Mine is a Razr by Motorola (already a dinosaur, but I still like it), weighing in at just over 3 ounces. And I went to skinit.com and designed my own Fabs cover.

So yeah – thanks Marty. You’ve come a long way, baby.

===========================

RtB’s First-Ever Contest!

King size Hershey chocolate bar awarded (or sent through the mail) to the first person who correctly identifies the product whose slogan was “You’ve come a long way, baby.” (My sister Mavis, who knows every entertainment history fact there is to know, is, unfortunately, not eligible for this contest. Heh.) Email your answer to ratfink at finkweb org.

Your wireless provider can retrieve your text messages – even if they’re deleted.

Oh, you already knew that?

K.

Just checkin’.

Cuz you know…you could end up famous.