Brent

I honestly have not read the article yet, but that guy needs to go shopping for some new glasses!

4 hours, 25 minutes ago onWordpress in playstationlifestyle.net

I had my son Josh do a review of the Barnes and Noble Nook because despite Rod’s belief I don’t own every gadget.  If you have not jumped into the ebook pool or bought a Sony EReader, Kindle or iPad you may want to consider the Nook.

I’ve never been much of a mobile guy, personally.  A techno-snob?  Absolutely.  Shelling out $400 for a top of the line graphics card barely causes me to bat an eyelash, but I’ve always regarded mobile devices somewhat dubiously.   It is a hard sell for me to shell out hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a device which runs games like a half-baked, failed, super nintendo prototype.  While I’ve come to depend heavily on e-mail and calendar’s on my phone, for actually doing work, it is a lackluster solution.  I do love my second generation iPod (still running strong) for its stalwart music playing, but I’ve never been sold on any of the subsequent versions.

Thus was the state of my mind when the Kindle first entered the scene.  This was the first mobile device of any kind that I was ever immediately intrigued by.  I watched its progress and acceptance, but never reached critical mass where I decided I was going to try one out.  This changed a bit with the announcement of The Nook, by Barnes and Noble.

Where before I was only mildly interested by e-readers, once I placed my order for my Nook, the fact that it was back ordered was torturous.  Now I’ve owned it for close to two months, have read almost 20 books, totaling near 10,000 pages, and feel qualified to give a review of it.

First,  the good:

1) While e-ink is no longer quite cutting edge, I cannot believe how pleased I am with it.  The Nook, specifically, has a brilliant, large screen.  You’ll find this the same with all e-readers using e-ink, however, if you’ve not experienced it, it is quite a selling point.  Removing the backlight from an electronic device does wonders for your eyes and it is astonishing how pleasant the experience is.  The ability to re-size and change your font was also an unexpected favorite of mine.

2) The Android operating system. This was actually what initially interested me in the Nook.  I’m a big fan of the concept of Android, although not always the implementation.  The reason this was a big deal for me, is because as Android is becoming an increasingly main-stream OS, the ability and requisite skill sets to release Nook/Android applications grows.  Last I’d heard, Barnes and Noble had no official plans to release a Nook app store, although they had not ruled it out yet.  However, the device has already been rooted and people are tinkering with it.  It gives me hope that, in the future, I’ll be able to customize my Nook far outside of the standard interface.

3) Sharing Books.  The Nook has it, and what a wonderful feature.  My brother and I actually purchased Nooks at the same time, and we have the ability to loan each book, once, to a friend for two weeks.  This is a fairly essential feature for me since this allows me to continue my normal reading habits.  My brother and I will read different series, and then swap books.  Any other e-reader would force us to buy two copies of the same book.

4) The touch screen.  While I was not immediately convinced by the touch-screen (as a rule, I hate a UI that requires me to block my view to use it), it has grown on me.  My favorite feature of it has actually been the ability to turn pages via a swipe across the touch-screen.  This allows me to read in absolute silence, or in cramped spaces (such as a flight), I can use minimal motion of my thumb to page forward and backward.

5) I can set the Nook down on a table and eat with both hands while reading.  I’m not even kidding.  It is amazing.  Also?  No paper cuts.

Now, the Bad:

1) The release version of the OS was extremely shaky.  My product was scarcely usable for the first two weeks.  It rebooted itself at random, and, of course, would not save my page.  It was extremely frustrating.  Within a few weeks, they released an update that fixed most of these problems, but sometimes I wake in the middle of the night with a cold sweat, with flashbacks of hitting the page forward button 300+ times to get back to my spot.

2) The buttons are a bit brittle.  While my Nook is still functional, the lower-right hand button has cracked.  I do read -a lot-, but it seems to me that 2 months is too early for something like that to break.  Luckily, this is covered under the stock 1-year warranty.  It appears, after reading the official Nook forums, that I appear to be the exception rather than the rule, with broken buttons.

3) There are still some stability issues.  Occasionally my Nook still freezes, and I have to reboot.  It takes me a minute or so to reboot and get back to my spot (but it automagically remembers my page numbers now!)

4) While I have space for thousands of books, the interface seems hardcoded for 1,250 books currently, and when you add new content, it can be fairly annoying as you wait a minute or two for it to scan all of the content.  And, if by some unlucky chance, you have a corrupt e-book?  The only way to know is to go through them one-by-one, or else your Nook library will largely be inaccessible to you.

Summary

In summary, I’d generally recommend the Nook.  I’m nowhere near as zealous about it as your standard iPhone user, but I am very happy with mine.  As B & N releases new updates the stability increases and additional features are added, it looks like the usability and stability are only going to get better with time.  And most importantly, you are not hopping on the cliche Kindle band-wagon, nor are you selling out to the Megalithic Sony.  You’re signing on with a B & N product running on an open source OS.  You can tell your Linux buddies that you’re all about open source, without ever having to recompile anything’s kernel!

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2 days, 15 hours ago onWordpress in www.simplemobilereview.com

Are you referring to the frequency of the 574, since the 194 is no more?

My point wasn’t about the frequency of the 194, but of the combined frequency of the 194 and 574.

I take it that it is the 574 that will have its headway increased. Thanks for the good news!

3 hours, 45 minutes ago onWordpress in seattletransitblog.com

The bar is set so very low for Aniston by people – which worries me, because the day she does anything even REMOTELY decent, her PR flack and paid minions will probably demand she get recognized, even though she won’t deserve it then either.

8 hours, 41 minutes ago onWordpress in www.deadline.com

Along a similar line to the math tip, if you enter a math problem (ex: 759*298) into the Google search field in the menu bar of Safari, the suggested results gives you the answer to the problem.

4 months, 3 weeks ago onWordpress in mac.appstorm.net

Not all of those boardings are at the airport. The 194 picked up passengers at three park & rides and a couple roadside bus stops. In theory, the 574 should have taken over a big chunk of those pickups. The problem is that frequency at these stops was actually reduced to a half hour, instead of the three or four stops each way per hour if you combine the old 194 and 574 schedule.

Metro and ST should have looked at the 194 as a truncation, not an elimination. 194/574 should have at least maintained the same level of service between Federal Way and the airport, if not gained frequency to make up for losing the 194.

I heartily encourage ST to look at upping frequency on the 574, so that total wait&travel time to downtown via 574+Link ends up being less than total wait&travel time on the old 194. Please don’t do anything wasteful like bringing back the 194, but please do provide service on the southern portion of the old route 194 that is at least as good as previous service, timewise. ... See all content Hide content

7 hours, 54 minutes ago onWordpress in seattletransitblog.com

If we go back to the SWIFT approach, we’ll soon be able to get between downtown Seattle and Everett in just 90-120 minutes. Yippee!

8 hours, 11 minutes ago onWordpress in seattletransitblog.com

Looks like GSP might get a ligit contender to fight soon

1 day, 10 hours ago onWordpress in mmafrenzy.com

And a few more FREE titles this article didn’t mention were listed here this morning: http://www.macintoshos.com/five-free-games-available-today-app-store/21.html

1 day, 7 hours ago onWordpress in appadvice.com

Do you still do any click arbitrage? If yes, are you doing well with it? And if no, why not?

2 days, 6 hours ago onWordpress in www.shoemoney.com