Category: technology

My Kindle is here, and I love it!

I got a delivery notification in my letter box today saying I missed a deliver and the caretaker took it in. Wondering what it could it be, I looked in my inbox and found…

Dear Customer,
Greetings from Amazon.co.uk,
We are writing to let you know that the following item has been sent
to:

Ian Forrester
APARTMENT ****
** *********** ********* *****
MANCHESTER, LANCS M** ***
United Kingdom

using Royal Mail.

For more information about delivery estimates and any open orders,
please visit: http://www.amazon.co.uk/your-account

Your order #*************************** (received September 07, 2010)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qty                           Item    Price        Delivery Subtotal

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amazon.co.uk items (Sold by Amazon EU S.a.r.L.):

1  Kindle Wireless Reading De...  £109.00               1  £109.00

Dispatched via Royal Mail (estimated arrival date: September 24, 2010).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This completes your order.

Yeah!!!! I got my Kindle3, so expect tomorrow a unboxing using my new camera. Its been ages since I ordered the Kindle and I’m so glad its came.

So now’s a really good time to sell my Sony e-ink PRS600 reader, although its got a slight scratch which means CEX won’t buy it off me. Its well used and served me very well in its short time.

I got the device in my hands now and yes there is a nice series of unboxing photos on flickr.com if your interested.

What really got me was the amazing difference between my old Sony PRS600 and the Amazon Kindle 3. I know the Sony PRS505 vs Sony PRS600 was always a challenge because the PRS600 had the touch screen over the top of it. But boy oh boy, the PRS600 vs the Kindle3 is shocking… I can’t believe how clear and crisp the screen is. Then there’s the weight of the device! Its almost too light, I feel like I’m lifting a paperback book! Just like the Sony, when you plug it into a computer (yes even Linux) it comes up as a mass storage device, allowing you to just shift stuff back an forth easily. Of course Calibre allows you to easily convert between ebook formats and sync with the kindle directly.

My own complaint so far is the wifi won’t connect to my wireless network, but actually I think what’s going on is my local network isn’t actually connected to the internet yet and its failing to touch the internet and giving up. But over all this device is amazing! They have done so much, even down to the screen saver (as such, because of course with a eink screen you don’t need one) which is displayed when your charging the device. I can’t wait to get the experimental browser working (actually going to the northern quarter later to try it out) and try out some of the kindle apps. I’ve not looked into the Kindle hacking yet but this is certainly one of the massive advantages over the Sony.

This has to be the first break through e-reader… Just over 100 quid for a amazing device! Can’t wait to sit out in the shared garden reading on this device.

The Kindle3 has everything I asked for…

Sony PRS600 vs Amazon Kindle 3

I’m going to sell my old Sony PRS-600 Ebook Reader for the Amazon Kindle 3. But why?

Well it kind of centres on a blog post I wrote a while ago when the iPad was unveiled to the world. In the blog post I touch on points which would make my perfect ereader. 2 of the main points are,

  • Add Bluetooth for file transfer, dialup, networking, etc.
  • Run an open operating system like a cleverly crafted Andriod on it
  • Add accelerometers, proximity sensors and some haptic feedback
  • Wireless 802.11b/g

Well although not all my requirements are met, the Kindle3 does have wireless and a operating system to support (as such) 3rd party apps.

Android would be great to have on there with a open marketplace so people can really develop for it. I don’t know if Android would work on a e-ink screen but you could imagine it wouldn’t take much to build a custom build just for E-ink screens. Bluetooth, Wifi and Accelerometers would open up a whole bunch of applications which the ipad has demonstrated. But the smaller screen would be much more mobile and friendly.

I assumed slightly wrongly that you would need android to have the ability to add apps, but actually Amazon have decided to go with there own OS and App platform. This might be a good idea because you don’t want apps made for a Lcd mixed up with the eink ones. Its also a good idea if developers are thinking about eink instead of building for Lcd and just converting down to eink. Battery life under ink is amazing, but I’d hate to see that going because some app took liberties with the eink technology. Kindle apps are certainly a new area with a fruitful future. I can think of some clever apps you could build with the eink screen.

I thought good and hard about swapping to the Kindle, specially with the 1984 uproar. But to be frank, I’ve never bought a ebook and won’t really be affected by this thing. I would have also perfected a open market place like Android but its the start, so who knows what may happen…

I also downloaded the kindle app on my android phone in preparation for my new Kindle (which has been ordered but I’m still waiting for stock). In the meantime I’m selling my lovely Sony PRS-600, so if anyone is interested drop me a message.

My current Home server (explained)

So I finally bought a 2 terabyte (TB) western digital hard drive for my home server. I have about 7 TB’s over 6 hard drives. I’ve already explained what makes a home server and my frustrations over home server software. But never really gone into my setup.

I have 7 hard drives of varies sizes from 200gig to 1.5tb. Most of them are Western digital drives but I do have others such as Maxtor and Samsung hard drives. I tend to buy the slowest drives because realistically I’m only storing stuff on them and accessing them over samba (smb) or universal plug and play (upnp) on my lovely XBMC setup. So speed isn’t a major thing, in actually fact the faster the drive spins the hotter it gets and heat is a enemy when you got 6 drives all spinning together.

The weird thing is I’ve never had a hard drive fail on me yet.

I’m using a combination of old 133m/s udma/eide and the new 150m/s sata. I have 2 ide drives attached to the onboard Ide ports, 2 on board sata ports and a PCI to SATA adapter with 2 extra SATA ports and a ide port. The motherboard is a elitegroup 761-gx with a old 2.8ghz mobile Amd athlon which I got from the states quite a while ago (maybe 4 years ago). I’ve thought about changing it but I really don’t need the power for a home server. In actual fact 2.8ghz is well over power for what its doing.

I think one of the reasons why nothing has failed on me is because I use spinrite 6 every few months to check if the drives are running ok or in need of some TLC. I also don’t use any Raid solutions or even Lvm solutions, I was tempted to try Lvm but gave up on it a long time ago. If Raid supported odd size drives I might have considered it a long time ago but its not practical when you have so many different drives across different local buses.

I had considered getting drobo but there quite costly even the simplest version and they certainly hold there prices well. Even the ebay prices are close to the retail price.

Right now its much more efficient for me to build a home server because I have all the parts.

I expect I’ll consider going for a NAS because its a lot quieter and it just works, which means I won’t need to do much to it. However running a machine means you can do a lot more. I’m running Ubuntu 10.4 desktop edition on top of my server right now. I had considered switching to Ubuntu Server but I quite like having a gui. I also use Webmin to control the box remotely. Webmin is good but its not as powerful as I would like it to be. For example I’m considering moving my torrent app to the server but controlling it would be a issue.

Right now I’m moving most of the stuff to a couple of drives so I can shift over to Windows Home Server. I tried freenas and others but I think Microsoft have come up trumps with Windows Home Server. My only problem is the fact it prefers to be installed on a blank system so that means shifting all my data around on to a couple of drives then moving them away while I install windows. Shame I deleted all my photos in the conversion. Oh well, wish I still had upto date dvd backups.

Google App Inventor, excellent stuff

Google have really hit it out of the park this time. Google App Inventor (sign up page) allows almost anyone to build a Android application using a simple interface. Now don’t get me wrong, the interface is pretty nasty but heck Google are democratization app development and in my book thats great news for content producers or just people with good ideas and a little time.

This all flies in the face of Apple’s restrictive SLA which prevents apps being made with a application on another system.

I look forward to seeing what other democratization google does in the near future, but boy do google need some good designers, because this looks pretty ugly. Hopefully that won’t put people off. Maybe Google should get Adobe involved in this one?

Why I Turned In My iPhone and Went Android

Louis Grey, A large fan of Apple just turned his back on Apple, why? Well thats best explained by him. But there’s some real good points which I also made in a recent episode of TechGrumps.

For me, more than the over-used phrase of "open", the promise of true multitasking, and the platform’s integration with Google Apps, was one word – "Choice". Choice of handsets. Choice of carriers. Choice of manufacturers. Second behind the word choice has to be "Momentum". I can see that Android has momentum in terms of improved quality, in terms of the number of devices sold and users, and yes, applications, which are growing in quantity, soon to be followed by quality. I really do believe that if Android does not already have a market share lead over Apple yet in this discussion, they soon will. It is inevitable. The growth in the number of handsets, carriers and users will drive more developers to the platform, and the holdouts who are not there will eventually make the move. And yes, third is "Cloud" – the idea that I don’t need to be tied to my desktop computer to manage data on the phone, but instead, the phone is built to tap into data stored on the Web. Fourth is "Capability". The Android platform, as the Droid commercials offer, simply does more. The power of the mobile hotspot cannot be understated, and the iPhone is a zero there.

Agreed.

Microsoft’s forward vision

I don’t get it.

Ubuntu can be a server or a user system but its certainly not a home server. I have no idea what happened to the ubuntu homeserver project but Microsoft have got the upper hand when it comes to servers in the home.

There is a large enough difference between a server in a home and server in a data centre. Microsoft understood this when they launched Windows Home Sever. They could have just re-bundled Windows Server but no they brought out a different cut of Windows Server focused on the home market. Its also different enough from a NAS (network attached storage device) due to its great range of Apps or Add-ons.

I’m not the only one to say this either.

“95% of the would-be “nixers” are completely stunned, at that point when the Ubuntu Server installation states that it has finished and all that’s offered to the user is a black screen and a prompt line. Users … basically scrap the whole thing, install Windows and use … solutions which lack raw power but come with an comprehensive interface”

Like all the others I’m pleased to see that you decided to continue this project. I’m a new NAS end user: i first bought a Synology DS410j, but i realized quickly that the processor was far too limited for me. So I made a 4 bay NAS by myself, counting on freenas. My problem is that i use linux a lot (I have a Mythtv server), but i don’t know FreeBSD at all. So the promise of a linux based NAS is a very good news. You can’t blame people to defend their chapel. Don’t listen to them, walk and see ! I assure you that i’ll be among the first switchers and the first donators because your work is useful, there’s no doubt about that.

The closes thing to Windows Home server on Ubuntu is maybe Freenas (which requires you to format all your drives into UFS for the best use, oh and its BSd based. Theres also Amahi which takes over too much of your system (it likes to control the dns, which is a pain if you got a good router).

So what makes a home server?

  • Low Minimum System Requirements
  • Simple Storage Space Management
  • Scalable Architecture
  • Cross-Platform Client Support
  • File/Data Server.
  • Backup/Restore
  • Printer Server
  • Network Functions
  • Remote Access from the Internet

Windows home server does all this really well, Ubuntu Server edition falls very short.

What else is out there? Because to be honest I’m very close to installing Windows Hone server on my home server.

Open Media Vault looks pretty good but its not quite mature enough yet.

Canonical really need to get moving with this stuff… Microsoft had the vision to kick this off, now its time for Linux to lead this area. Just like how Android is now stiring up the mobile world.

The best phone I’ve ever owned so far…

HTC desire

So I finally got my HTC desire from Orange.  It took a bit longer that expected due to Orange changing the upgrade process but I finally laid my hands on this sweet handset.

I was comparing it to my old HTC Touch Hd 1 which also now runs Android thanks to the amazing job the guys at Xda developers have done. Although they have sorted out the scrolling issue and started to get the bluetooth working it good to finally have a real android phone. And you can’t go wrong with the snapdragon 1ghz processor, it really makes things go along super smoothly. Some more memory would not go a miss but generally its fine.

I can honestly say this is the best phone I’ve ever had. Its so good move away from the windows mobile camp and I thought I might have to give up some of the features like the usb tethering option but its still there thankful. Theres also a ton of tethering apps which I can use if it wasn’t included. I’m so glad I switched over as this operating system is something else.  My next step is to root the phone because I want to mess with the inners of the phone a little bit. So hopefully that will be a simple task….

I know the iphone4 was out at the same time but honestly I couldn’t buy one even if it had a better resolution than any other phone on the market. I did consider other phones but to be honest there was little else on the market to consider except the sonyericsson’s and samsung’s. The iphone4 may have the better screen but to be honest its a nightmare for a user like myself. The whole iTunes integration means the phone has no chance with my current operating system (Ubuntu) and why would I lower myself to that type of integration when theres a better way? I really did put my Apple hate to the back of my mind and reviewed the iphone4 on practical grounds and it was certainly not for me.

My own grumble about the desire is the USB connection which is micro USB instead of mini USB, which means I got loads of USB mini cables which are now pretty useless. I should get a few adapter because I got so many of them and only one Micro cable. Very tiny grumble but one never a less, at least its correct with the EU regulation now.

I’m looking to hopefully sell my old Hd1 but to be honest if the price is right I’ll sell it to CEX, although the idea of selling it as a android compatible device is a little far fetched for now. Give me a shout if your interested in buying it.

A few noticeable recent changes

Islington Wharf

One step closer to moving to Islington Wharf, now I actually have a deposit down on the flat I wanted. I’m just waiting on Plumlife to agree I’m able to join there scheme (which was ok last year, so not expecting any upset) and then I can apply for the mortgage (which shouldn’t be a problem this time due to the highly motivated mortgage advisor I got). After which I should be able to get everything going and maybe move next month or so.

On the computer front, I just upgraded my Dell Laptop from a 120gig to 320gig and then gave it a brand new Ubuntu install. Not only did I upgrade it but I also switched to the i86_64 version as my laptop runs a Intel Core 2 duo 2 chipset. No idea why I’ve never done it before but early indication says so far the resource control over the applications and switching is much better and I’m shocked at how smooth things are. Don’t get me wrong the x86 version was fine but there is certainly something extra about the 64bit version.  What is strange is the amount of memory available to the machine, it still indicates there is about 3gig of memory available (3262meg) not the full 4gig. I also have a couple of problems with getting Dropbox and XBMC working. Plus settings for Firefox, evolution and gnome wifi networking didn’t transfer over so well. Which is a pain. I can still boot into my old 32bit partition using a usb enclosure which means if I knew where the correct files were I could drag them over easily enough.

Finally Orange are being a pain in the ass and I can’t now upgrade my phone till August, which means the HTC Desire isn’t the phone it is now. Even the HTC Incredible will be old news. Maybe the Dell Lightning and Mini5’s will be of interest? Anyway in the meanwhile, it seems Android running on the HTC Touch HD or Blackstone has progressed to a point where the screen does not always stay on and so the battery doesn’t die within a few hours. Actually if you turn off Wifi, it will last a day which isn’t bad. So most of the time I’ll have my phone running Android in the near future. I just need to get the settings for 3G/HSDPA and work out how to divert the sound to the headphones instead to the loudspeaker.

Playing with the ipad my thoughts

Ipad

So while in Ireland for Media 2020, I got to play with a couple of people’s iPads. Now you all know I’m not a fan but these are my honest thoughts while playing with it.

Its bloody heavy, I expected it to be much lighter. When you use two hands its ok but I can see why people end up resting it against something for a while. The screen is vivid but you can see the pixels easily and even worst with apps which are blownup using x2 option. Reading an actually ebook was disappointing and felt like readiing from my on laptop. Adjusting the backlight down helped but no where near the ease of eink.

Why is it curve on the back? It seems to make even hard to hold and its not helped by the shiny back. I really would not want to carry this in a crowd in fear of it slipping out of your hand due nudges and the usual human traffic or if someone really wanting to nick it off you. Talking of which, what on earth kind of glass screen tech are they using? It picks up greasy finger prints in seconds. Not good.

Finally I thought it was meant to be slightly bigger that my Sony Ebook reader, no actually its exactly the size of two of my sony ereaders side by side. Which says to me its far too big. One of the people who had bought one had a special rubber case which i guess helps it stay clean but geez its ugly. Obviously not designed by Jon Ive.