Amazon Kindle

It is kind of ironic that books, which can be digitalized much easier than sound or video, are the last medium that resists against being swept away by the digital revolution. The reason may be that the traditional book is a pretty good mobile device already and as opposed to music or video, where one wants to spontaneously select a song or movie, it's easy to choose a book that lasts for the day, when you are on the road.

This may change with Amazon's Kindle. As opposed to previous attempts to establish eBook reading on the mass market, I think this one has the chance to really transform how we read. For two reasons: first, it's from Amazon, which is already the primary site for many readers to buy books. Second, because of the excellent idea to deliver content wirelessly, without a monthly contract, but also without installing software, syncing and without adding more cables to the clutter at the desk.

Here is how it works: You go to Amazon.com and select a title that is available in Kindle format. Most likely, faster than you can go to the content page on the Kindle, the title will be downloaded and is ready for reading. Also nice: you can first download some pages for free, before you purchase the full book. A slightly stripped down version of the Amazon bookstore is also available on the Kindle directly, so in theory you could use it even completely without owning a PC.

The design and usability is functional, but the device doesn't feel nearly as good as, for example, anything built by Apple. There's a next page button on each side, so you can comfortably use it with either hand. For some reason, however, the Kindle is asymmetric, with a bias to hold it with your right hand. The readability of the display is great - the eInk technology allows reading even in bright sunshine. On the other hand, in the dark, the Kindle is as useless as a paper book and there's no built-in light. Also eInk is much slower than a LCD display, so while you can write a full review directly on the Kindle, it's probably not really fun. In order to get around this, the Kindle has a select bar outside of the main display, which is used to select menus and lines in the text for marking up or adding notes. A great feature is the built-in dictionary, which is somewhat slow, but still much faster than looking up a word in a real dictionary. 

So what's not to like? First, of course, the copy-protected content. I wouldn't mind so much, because I don't really read books multiple times, but it also prevents sharing books with friends and family, which is part of the fun you can have with books. I can't imagine that publishers and Amazon believe that they can make friends and family pay the full price for a book that they just could have borrowed. So they have to come up with some way of sharing content and the fact that the content files are not easily available open up interesting possibilities.

The display is great, but there's room for improvement. The background is not really paper white, rather grayish,  and of course we really want to have color. But all this is probably only a matter of time as the eInk technology evolves.

Lastly, 90,000 Kindle books sounds like a lot to choose from, but if you're looking for a specific book, chances are pretty high that it's not available for the Kindle. The device is currently sold out, so there's a real possibility that it reaches a critical mass that forces all publishers to provide a Kindle edition. If not, the Kindle will remain not much more than an interesting gadget.

What's up with Apple TV?

This year is heavy with Apple news, so the silence about Apple TV is somewhat suspicious and triggers comments like http://www.switched.com/2007/11/27/is-there-hope-for-the-apple-tv/. Not surprisingly Apple TV is painted here as a device only for "die-hard Apple fanatics" without future on the mass-market.
That would be sad, because Apple TV is a good and easy solution, if you don't want to listen to music and watch movies sitting at your desk in front of your computer, but on the sofa in your living room. Yes, Apple TV is restricted to the iTunes world, but that's a pretty big world. I buy video on iTunes and can rip DVDs - what else is missing? Apple TV is by far not flawless and I'm a little disappointed that we haven't seen a software update, for example bringing Internet radio and improved handling of slideshows, but still we have lots of fun with it.
And as far as using a Mac mini instead: did anybody actually do this? I tried and sank a couple of hundred dollars (on top of the mini itself) into it, but I just couldn't come to a satisfying solution. First even with a DVI-to-HDMI cable the picture on the TV was either too small or too big. Then - as opposed to Apple TV - the Mac mini cannot be used just with the remote. It needs a keyboard and a mouse, preferably with Bluetooth, which just don't seem right in a living room. And Frontrow would happily burn the iTunes logo in our plasma screen.
No, I think that Apple TV is still a great idea and I hope that Apple neglected it just because so many other things were going on this year.

The cellphone/carrier mess

It's holiday season and a the wireless carriers let loose a wave of commercials about fancy new phones, practically for free -if you are willing to sign a new two years contract. In other words, the carriers exclusively focus on customers of their competition, whose contract has expired. Of course, since all four major US carriers are playing the same game, it's obvious that the they win some customers on one side and they loose them on the other side.
This is a silly game with a negative impact for two groups of customers: first those who are still proudly carrying their old monochrome, brick-sized cellphone ("All I need it for is making phone calls"). They may save some money for hardware, but with their fixed monthly charge they cross-subsidize those who get the latest phones every year by switching the carrier. Second, those who like to buy a new gadget as often as they want, but cannot do that without the feeling to throw away money if they don't wait for the end of the contract.
This cries for regulation, as it's already done in other countries: carriers should be obliged to offer a bare-bones monthly rate without any hardware-subsidies priced in and hardware vendors should offer unlocked phones for the full price. That way customers can select a phone and the plan that they want, instead of having a drastically limited choice.

A pleasant iPhone surprise

There seemed nothing particularly interesting with the 1.1.2 update for the iPhone. As usual there was no information from Apple and the reviews are listing only multi-language support for the international roll-out and some security fixes. Whatever.
But there's more to it: One big flaw of the iPhone was always that it would only allow typing in English - the built in dictionary just went crazy if you tried to type in a different language. Well, that's solved now. And in a surprisingly good way: while I was expecting that I have to go to Settings, General, International, Keyboard to switch keyboards, it's actually much easier. You can activate multiple keyboards, which can be switched with a button next to the space bar. Perfect - as wished √

One Month with the iPhone

It's been a month since couldn't resist all the hype and bought an iPhone. And, like most others who couldn't wait, I'm enoying it very much. It's shape, weight and vivid display makes you want to use it again and again and I catch myself several times a day just checking the weather or the stock quotes. No doubt, Apple did an amazing job in engineering the iPhone and one can only imagine how the design departments of the Motorolas, Nokias and Samsungs of this world feel after they were so easily overhyped by Apple.
Of course the iPhone is not perfect, but who could expect that. There's the AT&T network for example. Yes, I'd love to have 3G as anybody else, but I agree with Apple that battery life and form factor are more important. It's a phone after all and not your primary device to surf the web. But somehow it seems that AT&T has found a way to make phones to live up to their "raising the bar" slogan without actually improving the effective quality of the net. Sometimes the phone shows 5 bars, 2 bars and "No service" within minutes without you changing locations. And 5 bars doesn't mean that the data connection is good anyway: it can be still slow or non existent. If everything comes together well, though, EDGE provides enough bandwidth for most websites and even YouTube movies.
Then there are the 4 classical PDA apps: calendar, contacts, notes and todo lists. Only contacts is on par with other PDAs. Calendar misses some vital functions (a weekly overview, more than just the simplest repeat options), Notes doesn't sync with anything and due to the missing cut and past functionality cannot be used for actually taking notes from websites, e-mails etc and todo lists are non-existent. I understand that Apple had to get the iPhone out of the door at some time, but I really hope that we'll see some improvement here in one of the next software releases.
What I really like, though, is rarely mentioned: the home button, which takes you to the home screen in all situations. Whatever the iPhone is doing, pressing that button works without delay. Try that with a Treo - if it's busy then you may have to wait. Even a cancel button often just takes you to a screen saying "Cancelling" and then you have to wait even longer. It seems equipping the iPhone with a modern OS really pays off.

Common Ground

We felt kind of helpless, when our favorite Friday night hangout Bar on A was closed for renovations. It didn't exactly seem to be scheduled, so we guess a certain New York City agency might be involved in this sudden closure. (Later we discovered that Nice Guy Eddie's was closed as well, so maybe there was a crack down on Avenue A last week).
Anyway, something like this is always a good moment to break habits and so we tried Keybar (which was packed with seemingly non-locals), Mug, that went through a recent renovation and served terrific Schneider Weisse from the bottle (for $8 though) and then finally Common Ground, a new pub on Avenue B.
Although Common Ground is new, it's a very traditional place, with chandeliers and a large, dark wooden bar. They have a nice selection of beers, most notably the two brands that make us happy: Brooklyn Lager and Sierra Nevada. A CD-driven jukebox runs the gamut from oldies and brand new stuff and our two last CD purchases, the Kaiserchiefs and The Killers were power-played by others and us. The specialty of this place is the bar food, though. Since there's no real kitchen, the chef had to be creative for the better. No burgers (which we came for originally, because what is a common ground food if not burgers), but quesadilla, french pizza, various dips and everything usually with a nice twist. We enjoyed it very much.
The downturn were the two barkeepers. Both were really nice girls, but they were intensely engaged with some guests, which made us feel like outsiders. With one of the girls we weren't even sure if she was on shift, because she exclusively served two friends sitting next to us. There was not much business, so we cannot complain about being neglected, but the vibe the two bartenders created doesn't really make us want to come back. The food however does.
And another thing (if any bartender reads this): please do not offer "the next one is on me" after we order our third beer. It's certainly meant as a nice gesture, but it also makes us drinking more than we want to.

No Reservations

Yesterday we went to the movies for the first time after a long time. Being extremely turned off by the flood of blockbuster franchises this summer, we even skipped "Pirates", even though there's Keira Knightley in it. But we wanted to make a point to watch one of the few romantic comedies this year and went into the "No Reservations" on its opening weekend.
However, before we actually went to the theatre, we had to endure a barrage of bad critics, as usual with a romantic comedy. TONY gave a single star, because Melissa Anderson just didn't like its star Catherine Zeta-Jones. That's okay by itself, but Transformers got 5 stars. This has to be disheartening for any actor these days: a story, whose heroes are (CGI-generated) robots is considered 5 times better than one that evolves around two real, human characters. And EW considers "Ratatouille" the far better movie on the ground that both mostly play in a kitchen. Maybe, but, personally, I still enjoy seeing Catherine Zeta-Jones more than a computer-generated rat, no matter how cute it is.
It seems that many critics just gave up and try to make their peace with what Hollywood considers the movie of the future. Really, "No Reservations" is not the greatest movie and has many flaws, but it is at least a story about real people in a real environment and it deserves at least for that some credit.

iPhone Wishlist

So far, so good: the iPhone is certainly a lot of fun to use. Yes, the Internet over EDGE is slow, but at least I'm used to it: my Treo 650 wasn't any faster. But most of what I'm missing, can be done with a software update, which are supposed to come often and quickly, according to Steve Jobs. Here's my wish list:

• I have not problems with the on-screen keyboard, which I think it's not worth than the one of the Treo. As long as you type in English. In other language, I guess, the built-in intelligence works pretty much against you and even worse, the custom dictionary would fill up with non-English words, which hamper typing in English as well. So please come up with installable dictionaries in other languages. I can imagine that this is high on the priority list, not only to roll out iPhone in other regions, but also to support a large bi-lingual market in the US.


• In the sparse pre-launch information about the iPhone that came out of Apple, the calendar was always suspiciously missing. The reason is now obvious: the calendar application has the bare minimum functionality, far sub-par to what Palm and Windows Mobile are offering. No to do lists, no multiple calendars. I would expect at least the functionality of the iCal on the Mac.


• There's no way to put files on the iPhone, despite the fact that it can display PDFs and office documents. This means no attachments to e-mails and no reading on the go.
• 
  
• The iPhone would be an excellent e-book reader, if there was some software for it.


• For some inexplicable reason, e-mails cannot be read in landscape mode. This would help reading some HTML-formatted e-mails.

We love Google...

... who doesn't? Because it's always fun to browse Google's site for features and get inspired about something new we can do to shape our online life. So here are two additions to our site, that someone may find useful:

• Elke's And Olivers NYC: This is a map where we mark places where we love to go. Check it out for some tips about good places to eat out or to party or to have some other kind of New York moment.


• Elke's And Oliver's Events: A calendar with events where we're planning to go. Unfortunately it doesn't mean that we can make it, but we'll try hard.

Digital Loss

Since we meet Swati from time to time at one of our favorite bars and her CD “Small Gods” is one of my current favorites, I thought it would be nice to have her sign the CD. However I downloaded the album from iTunes, so the only way would be printing the cover art, having her sign it and then scan it again and add it to the iTunes library.
Now this seems a quite geeky thing to do and probably not worth the effort, but it makes one think about what we loose during the transition from physical media to free-floating bits and bytes that travel wires and the air in light speed.
We still have a couple of hundred vinyl records on display in our apartment (although we have to turntables at the moment) and each of them tells a story of where I found it and what my life looked like at this time. And then, of course, there's cover art, booklets and other stuff that made a record seem precious. Some records used to be mysterious in the pre-Google age, because I didn't know more about the musicians than a (probably fake) name.
Now this is all gone, all information is plain in the open and music is available 24/7 from everywhere with a mouse-click. That's progress, no doubt, but again, something certainly got lost.

We Write A Script

As Hollywood heads into the movie summer with a barrage of CGI-heavy kid's movies, we are kind of disheartened. Our demographic seems to be forgotten by the studios and these days we can find joy at the movies only at film festivals or maybe in the Oscar season.
Now, the least we can do is writing the movie we would like to see and go from there. We've been tossing around ideas for over a year now, but we're coming (slowly, much too slowly...) to an end.
Why are we doing this? First of all, it's fun. Sitting, for example, at a bar and talk about stories and characters just so perfectly fits to New York City. And the formalized and concise writing style of a movie script, suits us well with our tech writing experience. On top of it, it's an ideal art form for working together, again because individual writing style has a much lower priority.
Secondly, I think, as a screen writer you're competing on a relatively level field. Of course, having a well-known name gets your work much easier in front of producers and directors. But people watch movies because of actors and directors and maybe the people, who brought you some other stuff you like, but very rarely for the screenwriter. This means, as opposed to musicians and novel writers, there's no marketing power associated with a screenwriter's name. That may be frustrating at times (who remembers the name of the last screenwriting Oscar winners?), but we'll happily deal with that later.

3 Favorite CDs in May 2007

Blonde Redhead - 23
I've already liked Blonde Redhead's previous release Misery Is A Butterfly, but 23 is a CD where – at least for for my taste – everything falls together. It's the kind of album where every track kicks of a movie in your head and inspires highflying thoughts. The voices are unusual, but if you can get over it, then it's likely some of the best stuff ever.
Official Site | iTunes

Swati - Small Gods
We discovered Swati because, well, she's a regular at the Magician as we are and when we learned (through a full-page article in the TONY magazine) that she's putting out a new CD, we bought it on iTunes, more or less, to show support. But it's good, really good. TONY has already called her a guitar goddess, but she also has a great voice and interesting lyrics.
Official Site | iTunes


Hybrid - Morning Sci-Fi
Hybrid is an Welsh band, whose recent concert fell into the club section rather than into the music category. So I guess, it's not really band, but DJs and and programmers, who crank out atmospheric and probably very danceable music. But it's great stuff to put extra-loud on the iPod, while walking through the streets. It's music that gives you an extra kick of energy and let's your thought fly to more pleasant regions than they probably currently are.
Official Site | iTunes

Watching Apple TV

After having an Apple TV for a couple of weeks in our living room, I can confirm that it truly changes the way of watching TV or listening to music. Still there are some features I dearly miss and which can be hopefully added soon by a software upgrade.

• Something like a “Playing now” playlist. Maybe I'm overlooking something here, but every media player except iTunes supports an ad-hoc playlist. Basically there should be a way to select music and not play it right away, but after the current selection finished. This is a feature a love on our Squeezebox.


• Speaking of the Squeezebox: remote controlling Apple TV from a PC would be nice, too. Sequeezebox does it via a the web browser, for Apple TV iTunes would be the natural choice.


• The main reason for buying Apple TV was to present pictures on a large TV. But this feature of Apple TV seems to be designed in a hurry. The main feature that is missing is some sort of index page: if you want to start a slide show at a certain picture, you have to click through it one by one.


• Support of streaming from iPhoto: iPhoto itself can so it, so should Apple TV, too.
  At least allowing to sync iPhoto slides hows with all settings, including a soundtrack. As of now iPhoto just copies the photos of an album.


• Re-sizing pictures automatically before the sync, as it's done for iPod. A 7 megapixel photo doesn't do anything to improve the experience on the TV, but it slows down syncing and fills up Apple TVs hard disk in no time.


• Syncing iTunes with other computers. I don't understand, why I can sync a TV show to my iPod to watch it on a tiny screen, but not to my laptop. Yes, I know, I can just import it, but an automatic sync is much more convenient.

Last, I think Apple needs to think about how to organize the iTunes media library, as they grow bigger and bigger. And it will get only worse when finally HD content hits the iTunes store. So there need to be a way to distribute content on different disks and computers.