MEDIA ABC Blog

Amazon revealed a new, larger version of the Kindle (called the Kindle DX) designed to better display newspapers and magazines for $489.

The screen size is 9.7 inch (versus just 6in. on Kindle 2) and is auto-rotating (meaning it will turn the text landscape if it is held horizontally).

Starting this summer the Boston Globe, New York Times, and Washington Post will offer discounted Kindle DX to readers where home delivery is unavailable in exchange for long-term subscription contracts.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/06/technology/shambora_kindle.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009050611


Also of note: it was stated that for some books, digital copies account for as much as 35% of the book's sales.

Dan from College Humor experiments in making our modern text culture oral again. In public.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1909386

Want to share every second of everyday of your life with the rest of the world?
Grab a webcam and try "lifecasting".

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/30/pirillo.lifecasting/index.html

Studies have shown that the largest group of Kindle users is 60-69 year olds. This is pretty contradictory to the understanding of how new technology gets adopted.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/04/old-people-love-kindle.html

Remember Kurzweil's speculation about lenses that would provide you with map overlays and the names of people at parties. Check out this brief article by Anne Eisenberg from Sunday's NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26novel.html?_r=1

This is an article about laptops aiding sick kids to be connected with school and friends.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/27/hm.sick.kids.satellite.connection/index.html

http://xkcd.com/77/

Today I stumbled across this cool concept design for a possible Braille E-Book reader. Check it out.

http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/04/17/braille-e-book/

via http://www.theawesomer.com

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/new-york-times-sees-intensifying-advertiser-pullback-in-first-quarter/

a fun video clip about the font comic sans...

http://bancomicsans.com/home.html

for those of you who haven't seen it....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSQJP40PcGI

The next step from the monkey video in class today. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/braintweet.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/20/google-news-timeline-offers-a-new-way-to-search-the-past/

Google creating new links to knowledge as well as enhanced filters for the information contained on the internet.

Daniel_reetz at Instructables.com has posted instructions for a DIY book scanner.

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-Trash-and-Cheap-C/

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/20/braille-e-reader-concept-cant-be-far-from-reality/

Earlier in class there was a discussion of Time Warner changing to a new usage model of pricing. They have recently decided against doing it due to enormous negative feedback.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc20090416_696468.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

This clip of Inside Edition "reporting" on a new-fangled craze called "Ninetendo" is pretty funny.

http://dorkyearbook.com/post/96605057/inside-edition-has-some-tough-question-for

Although I am aware of its popularity, I have to admit that I don't use or even understand Twitter. I just read an excellent article about how it started out, how it was initially meant to be used, and how it's used now.

There is a lot of good stuff here about understanding the flow of information (even if it's 140-character "tweets"), and utilizing the information. Interestingly, companies like Starbucks and Dell monitor Twitter to improve their products or refute rumors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14twitter.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Compared with antiquated pre-internet information flow, Twitter seems like telepathy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html?ref=business

Just in case you sometimes feel that we are surely the only people in the world who could possibly care about transcriptions from handwriting, there's this bit from today's scholarly editing list-serv--about Stephen Crane, the American writer, author of Red Badge of Courage among other things):


Subject: question about handwriting

In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Stephen Crane occasionally used an apostrophe in the middle of words, as in

F'our
F'riend
F'eb [as in the abbreviation for "February"]

Has anyone seen this use before, and do you know what it means?

Paul Sorrentino (psorrent@vt.edu)
Virginia Tech