The same thing goes for other consumer technologies. Insurance companies are willing to throw down thousands on huge, ugly, bulky Augmentative Communication devices for autistic kids, but I bet they wouldn't put down the $400 on an iPod Touch + Proloquo2Go, which is a) a much better solution altogether, and b) less likely to be rejected by younger kids.
A lot of kids reset having to carry around a huge box that marks them as needing special assistance - even if they really do need that assistance just to communicate. Putting that same functionality into an otherwise awesome iPod makes the kid a lot less likely to throw the device out a window in frustration- especially if the kid has music and games on it too. Unfortunately, the same music, games, and social flags that cause the kid to accept it is what causes the insurance companies to not pay for it.
It also weighs you and calculates your BMI every time you use it, and then proceeds to tell you that you're fat.
I started my shift from sedentary to kinda-sorta fit with Wii Fit Plus. The cardio is pretty low-level, but more than enough to wear out a fat video game nerd. Push-ups, however, are still push-ups, even if you're doing them on a balance board. In any case, I started with the Wii Fit, and now I pretty much only use it as a scale, and I get my actual exercise running. But, even though I don't use it now, if I hadn't had it to get me started, I probably would still be unable to run a mile without wanting to puke.
Apparently there's some research that indicates that people are actually slightly more likely to buy a $x.99 priced product over its $x+1 identical counterpart.
Even if it's just 0.01%, when you're looking at inventories as massive as Wal-Mart or Amazon, that can be a LOT of sales.
The problem is that Apple has and Amazon will shortly have a "you can't sell your book for cheaper at other ebook stores" clauses in their agreements. (The Amazon one is part of their newer pricing model, which matches Apple's 70% cut but adds restrictions on pricing, which should go into effect this summer.)
A hypothetical: You've been selling your ebook on Amazon, and you've done some pricing experiments. You've found that you sell half again as many books at $2.49 than you do at $2.99, and the volume more than makes up the difference, so you set your price accordingly. In order to expand to the iBookStore, you must price your book at $2.99 there, and take the hit in sales. But wait! Apple will refuse to sell your book if you're selling for cheaper on Amazon, so you have to raise your price to $2.99 at the Amazon store as well.
So, now all your customers are paying more, even the ones who are not buying from Apple, and you have fewer of them. You are not making as much money, and neither are any of the distributing companies that make their money by taking a cut off yours. Everyone loses, all for the sake of a nice round (?!) number.
-AT&T doesn't like downloads over their network larger than 10MB in size. If you buy an app larger than that, it'll tell you to find a WiFi connection and try again. Some of the previous iPhone software updates have been a few hundred megabytes - try downloading that over 3G in a reasonable amount of time.
-Plugging in to a computer before updating the software forces the user to make a backup. The otherwise stand-alone nature of the iPhone makes it rare for me to plug my phone in to my computer, so updates are just about the only time I actually do back up my phone.
The reason there's no Offline capability in the new GoogleDocs is cause it's not ready yet. They say, in so many words, that they plan to have the HTML5 Offline Mode up and running soon. Until then, use the Old Version + Gears.
This may not have been a good idea, but it is very Google-esque to roll out a new product with features missing.
I don't believe Pages will save to ePub, but iBooks can read third-party non-DRM ePub files. So, you can always type it up as a Pages file, export it to your computer as a Doc, and use some other program to convert it to ePub, and then move it back to your iPad, but ugh.
As for getting your book onto the iBookstore for others to buy, currently only Amazon allows individuals to self-publish ebooks for their store.
However, you can publish with SmashWords, who offers none of the editing/marketing assistance of a big publishing house, but they have negotiated publishing agreements with the big ebook vendors. Just upload your work, and they will in turn publish your book on iBooks, Amazon, B&N, Sony, and Kobo, or any subset thereof, in return for a cut of your cut. (http://www.smashwords.com/)
I'll say it. I don't get fiction. As far as I can tell it serves no purpose besides idle entertainment*.
Pretty much. But it's a far more interesting form of idle entertainment than TV or movies. Also, fewer ways to go wrong. Fiction can be poorly paced and badly written. Movies/TV shows can be poorly paces and badly written, with poor direction and terrible acting, and cheesy special effects. Also, you're not limited to a 30 minute TV show or a 2 hour movie- you can take as much time as your story needs to tell, without worrying that your audience will have to go to the bathroom and miss something important.
A lot of fiction, primarily science fiction, also can explore the future. Not insofar as the new gadgets that people will have (so many science fiction gadgets have already become real, although I'm still waiting on my flying car), but how those devices will affect our society. If AIs gain sentience, if robots become more prevalent as anything but vacuum cleaners, if people can connect to the internet straight from their brain, how will these things effect people. They are thought experiments, of a sort.
Definitely the case -- "best" and "favourite" don't necessarily overlap at all. Quintessential film example, that everyone seems to agree on: Hawk the Slayer.
Oh god, that movie. Total production budget: estimated $50. It's one of the few movies that has earned a permanent place on my hard drive.
2001: A Space Odyssey remains one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. I'm sorry that it didn't have enough lasers going PEW PEW and ships roaring loudly through space (which is, you know, impossible in a vacuum) to hold your interest.
I read the book when I was in middle school, and I loved it. I read all four of the books, even. They go downhill after the first two, but what book series doesn't?
I saw the movie for the first time two weeks ago. It's TERRIBLE. There's no sense of pacing at all; 10 minutes go by just staring at a guy looking a little nervous. The exposition is nonexistent, so you really have no clue what the hell is going on, especially near the end, unless you're read the book. The soundtrack is terrible, for being largely nonexistent, and then being acutely painful to listen to at times; the wailing part near the end made me mute my TV.
In my opinion, the worst thing you can do to the Classics is to foist them on children.
Children aren't mentally prepared to tackle the deeper issues that earned these books the title "classic." They don't get anything out of them- I certainly didn't. At best, a kid slogs through the book in order to memorize enough names and events in order to pass the test/write the paper, and then moves on. At worst, the child extrapolates the displeasure to be found in reading *this* book to *all* books.
I am a total bookworm. I always have been. I read probably 50 novels a year through middle and high school. I had a city library card before the school made us sign up for them. But required reading in grade school put me off of the Classics and nonfiction and any books with real substance until just recently, and I graduated from high school seven years ago. Even children's books were ruined for me, in some ways. I was first introduced to the Chronicles of Narnia hand in hand with a lecture about identifying symbolism in literature. We read the book as a class and pointed out every Christian symbol and motif to be found (and there are many). I was never able to enjoy those stories as just stories; to me, as a non-Christian, they are and have always been Christian propaganda. To my classmates who found those books before English 2, they are cherished childhood memories.
I recognize that there might be some deep and important message to take away from The Grapes of Wrath, All Quiet on the Western Front, or Lord of the Flies. But all I remember are stories so boring that my classmates prevailed upon the teacher: "If it's so boring that even she (me) won't read it, why do we have to?" I recall little to nothing of the events or characters of those books, but I do get a bitter taste in my mouth thinking about it.
Few people ever enjoy something they have been forced to read.
Re:He didn't address suitability of it as a ereade
on
iPad Review
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Taco may have skipped this issue, but other reviewers haven't:
Based purely on my iPhone (also known as "the precious"), I would skip the iPad and get a Kindle if reading is your primary goal. If you want to do all sorts of stuff, and read books too, then you may be happier with the iPad.
Checks are largely dead in the US as well, at least for personal use. I write exactly one check a month, for rent, and that's because I rent from a nice old lady, not a business, and nice old ladies rarely have merchant accounts set up to receive credit card payments.
However, in my work at a small business that does a lot of work for other small businesses, perhaps 90% of the invoices we send out are paid by check.
The problem lies when you move away from MD, where there aren't Chevy Chases. You can withdraw from any ATM (for a fee), but have fun trying to deposit a check to your Chevy Chase account at a WaMu ATM. In this case, your only options are to switch banks or to mail in your checks.
So, I gladly welcome the ability to scan checks in. Right now, USAA is the only bank I know of doing it, and they only have one branch, but service military personnel and families all across the country. My bank, SECU, has a total of six branches, none of which are near my home or work, so I have to make a dedicated trip to go deposit a check. If I was eligible to join USAA, I would in a heartbeat. As it is, I have to hope SECU will think about implementing it.
It seems to me like a cellphone-sized Optimus Maximus (http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/). I can see a lot more use for the full-size keyboard than for a cellphone version though.
Maybe to provide a phone with most of the user interface flexibility of an iPhone without sacrificing tactile feedback?
Digital readers are only seeing a small fraction of the advertising that the print reader sees.
Kindle newspaper subscriptions have NO ads, and no classified section either.
While it's a blessing as a reader, I imagine it chafes terribly for the newspaper's finance department, since I'm pretty sure they make most of their money selling ads.
Then again, the internet at large has conditioned me into thinking that "ads are for free things, and things I pay for have no ads." I would probably be VERY upset if ads started showing up in my Kindle newspapers.
The way I see it is on one hand you're paying for ONE news source and on the other hand you can go to Google News and at a glance see news from MULTIPLE news sources both locally and around the word.
These days we also get a lot of great personal accounts/coverage from normal people in their blogs, podcasts, websites, twitter, etc.
A couple months ago I saw a fire near my apartment. I search the name of the street on Twitter and there were tons of tweets describing what was going on with pictures, warning people that the street was closed, the air was thick with smoke and to steer clear. It wasn't until hours later during their 6pm evening news that the news corps reported on it.
Google News and Twitter are great sources for breaking news, and I use it for that, but it's inherently sensationalist. The topics that are the most talked about get put on the Google News page, not the best or most relevant. You're just as likely to see an article about Tiger Woods as you are about Iran's enrichment program, but any of the in-depth, after-the-fact commentary or articles about issues that for whatever reason didn't catch the public eye are left out.
I saw Sid Meier speak at MAGfest earlier this year on the issue; EA owns the rights to it, not Mr. Meier, and a new one won't be developed without their consent. He was remarkably closemouthed about the issue beyond that.
Despite the DRM, the Amazon store is the best paid content provider for one reason and one reason only- REFUNDS.
B&N does not give refunds for ebooks. Neither does Sony. Apple doesn't give refunds for apps or music, so it's reasonable not to expect them for ebooks.
Amazon has a seven-day, no-questions-asked refund policy for ebooks. You send CS an email, and they send one back a day later informing you of the refund (which is NOT store credit), and that the book has been removed from your account. They also politely ASK you to remove it from any devices you may have downloaded it to. They don't do that automatically.
As with any ebook store, some of the books are absolute crap, whether in content or in formatting. Amazon is the only ebook vendor willing to give you your money back.
Slashdot Mirror
There are. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_86283691_14?ie=UTF8&docId=1000449691&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-11&pf_rd_r=0RZ8W5BAKW1XS4XQ4DD3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1260058202&pf_rd_i=1268190011
The same thing goes for other consumer technologies. Insurance companies are willing to throw down thousands on huge, ugly, bulky Augmentative Communication devices for autistic kids, but I bet they wouldn't put down the $400 on an iPod Touch + Proloquo2Go, which is a) a much better solution altogether, and b) less likely to be rejected by younger kids.
A lot of kids reset having to carry around a huge box that marks them as needing special assistance - even if they really do need that assistance just to communicate. Putting that same functionality into an otherwise awesome iPod makes the kid a lot less likely to throw the device out a window in frustration- especially if the kid has music and games on it too. Unfortunately, the same music, games, and social flags that cause the kid to accept it is what causes the insurance companies to not pay for it.
It also weighs you and calculates your BMI every time you use it, and then proceeds to tell you that you're fat.
I started my shift from sedentary to kinda-sorta fit with Wii Fit Plus. The cardio is pretty low-level, but more than enough to wear out a fat video game nerd. Push-ups, however, are still push-ups, even if you're doing them on a balance board. In any case, I started with the Wii Fit, and now I pretty much only use it as a scale, and I get my actual exercise running. But, even though I don't use it now, if I hadn't had it to get me started, I probably would still be unable to run a mile without wanting to puke.
Apparently there's some research that indicates that people are actually slightly more likely to buy a $x.99 priced product over its $x+1 identical counterpart.
Even if it's just 0.01%, when you're looking at inventories as massive as Wal-Mart or Amazon, that can be a LOT of sales.
The problem is that Apple has and Amazon will shortly have a "you can't sell your book for cheaper at other ebook stores" clauses in their agreements. (The Amazon one is part of their newer pricing model, which matches Apple's 70% cut but adds restrictions on pricing, which should go into effect this summer.)
A hypothetical:
You've been selling your ebook on Amazon, and you've done some pricing experiments. You've found that you sell half again as many books at $2.49 than you do at $2.99, and the volume more than makes up the difference, so you set your price accordingly. In order to expand to the iBookStore, you must price your book at $2.99 there, and take the hit in sales. But wait! Apple will refuse to sell your book if you're selling for cheaper on Amazon, so you have to raise your price to $2.99 at the Amazon store as well.
So, now all your customers are paying more, even the ones who are not buying from Apple, and you have fewer of them. You are not making as much money, and neither are any of the distributing companies that make their money by taking a cut off yours. Everyone loses, all for the sake of a nice round (?!) number.
A few points:
-AT&T doesn't like downloads over their network larger than 10MB in size. If you buy an app larger than that, it'll tell you to find a WiFi connection and try again. Some of the previous iPhone software updates have been a few hundred megabytes - try downloading that over 3G in a reasonable amount of time.
-Plugging in to a computer before updating the software forces the user to make a backup. The otherwise stand-alone nature of the iPhone makes it rare for me to plug my phone in to my computer, so updates are just about the only time I actually do back up my phone.
The reason there's no Offline capability in the new GoogleDocs is cause it's not ready yet. They say, in so many words, that they plan to have the HTML5 Offline Mode up and running soon. Until then, use the Old Version + Gears.
This may not have been a good idea, but it is very Google-esque to roll out a new product with features missing.
I don't believe Pages will save to ePub, but iBooks can read third-party non-DRM ePub files. So, you can always type it up as a Pages file, export it to your computer as a Doc, and use some other program to convert it to ePub, and then move it back to your iPad, but ugh.
As for getting your book onto the iBookstore for others to buy, currently only Amazon allows individuals to self-publish ebooks for their store.
However, you can publish with SmashWords, who offers none of the editing/marketing assistance of a big publishing house, but they have negotiated publishing agreements with the big ebook vendors. Just upload your work, and they will in turn publish your book on iBooks, Amazon, B&N, Sony, and Kobo, or any subset thereof, in return for a cut of your cut. (http://www.smashwords.com/)
I'll say it. I don't get fiction. As far as I can tell it serves no purpose besides idle entertainment*.
Pretty much. But it's a far more interesting form of idle entertainment than TV or movies. Also, fewer ways to go wrong. Fiction can be poorly paced and badly written. Movies/TV shows can be poorly paces and badly written, with poor direction and terrible acting, and cheesy special effects. Also, you're not limited to a 30 minute TV show or a 2 hour movie- you can take as much time as your story needs to tell, without worrying that your audience will have to go to the bathroom and miss something important.
A lot of fiction, primarily science fiction, also can explore the future. Not insofar as the new gadgets that people will have (so many science fiction gadgets have already become real, although I'm still waiting on my flying car), but how those devices will affect our society. If AIs gain sentience, if robots become more prevalent as anything but vacuum cleaners, if people can connect to the internet straight from their brain, how will these things effect people. They are thought experiments, of a sort.
Definitely the case -- "best" and "favourite" don't necessarily overlap at all. Quintessential film example, that everyone seems to agree on: Hawk the Slayer.
Oh god, that movie. Total production budget: estimated $50. It's one of the few movies that has earned a permanent place on my hard drive.
2001: A Space Odyssey remains one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. I'm sorry that it didn't have enough lasers going PEW PEW and ships roaring loudly through space (which is, you know, impossible in a vacuum) to hold your interest.
I read the book when I was in middle school, and I loved it. I read all four of the books, even. They go downhill after the first two, but what book series doesn't?
I saw the movie for the first time two weeks ago. It's TERRIBLE. There's no sense of pacing at all; 10 minutes go by just staring at a guy looking a little nervous. The exposition is nonexistent, so you really have no clue what the hell is going on, especially near the end, unless you're read the book. The soundtrack is terrible, for being largely nonexistent, and then being acutely painful to listen to at times; the wailing part near the end made me mute my TV.
In my opinion, the worst thing you can do to the Classics is to foist them on children.
Children aren't mentally prepared to tackle the deeper issues that earned these books the title "classic." They don't get anything out of them- I certainly didn't. At best, a kid slogs through the book in order to memorize enough names and events in order to pass the test/write the paper, and then moves on. At worst, the child extrapolates the displeasure to be found in reading *this* book to *all* books.
I am a total bookworm. I always have been. I read probably 50 novels a year through middle and high school. I had a city library card before the school made us sign up for them. But required reading in grade school put me off of the Classics and nonfiction and any books with real substance until just recently, and I graduated from high school seven years ago. Even children's books were ruined for me, in some ways. I was first introduced to the Chronicles of Narnia hand in hand with a lecture about identifying symbolism in literature. We read the book as a class and pointed out every Christian symbol and motif to be found (and there are many). I was never able to enjoy those stories as just stories; to me, as a non-Christian, they are and have always been Christian propaganda. To my classmates who found those books before English 2, they are cherished childhood memories.
I recognize that there might be some deep and important message to take away from The Grapes of Wrath, All Quiet on the Western Front, or Lord of the Flies. But all I remember are stories so boring that my classmates prevailed upon the teacher: "If it's so boring that even she (me) won't read it, why do we have to?" I recall little to nothing of the events or characters of those books, but I do get a bitter taste in my mouth thinking about it.
Few people ever enjoy something they have been forced to read.
Taco may have skipped this issue, but other reviewers haven't:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/193389/ipad_as_ereader_glaring_problems_promising_apps.html?tk=twt_strohmy
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ipad_ebooks_kindle_for_ipad_ibooks.php
Based purely on my iPhone (also known as "the precious"), I would skip the iPad and get a Kindle if reading is your primary goal. If you want to do all sorts of stuff, and read books too, then you may be happier with the iPad.
the US banks are backward
Pretty much.
Alpha Centari, Escape Velocity, the list goes on...
For a two player game, two player split screen sounds appropriate.
I'd love to play this game with my boyfriend, but alas, we have only one TV, one xbox, and - if we purchase it - only one disc.
So, unless the single player is singularly compelling, I can write this game off my list already.
Checks are largely dead in the US as well, at least for personal use. I write exactly one check a month, for rent, and that's because I rent from a nice old lady, not a business, and nice old ladies rarely have merchant accounts set up to receive credit card payments.
However, in my work at a small business that does a lot of work for other small businesses, perhaps 90% of the invoices we send out are paid by check.
The problem lies when you move away from MD, where there aren't Chevy Chases. You can withdraw from any ATM (for a fee), but have fun trying to deposit a check to your Chevy Chase account at a WaMu ATM. In this case, your only options are to switch banks or to mail in your checks.
So, I gladly welcome the ability to scan checks in. Right now, USAA is the only bank I know of doing it, and they only have one branch, but service military personnel and families all across the country. My bank, SECU, has a total of six branches, none of which are near my home or work, so I have to make a dedicated trip to go deposit a check. If I was eligible to join USAA, I would in a heartbeat. As it is, I have to hope SECU will think about implementing it.
It seems to me like a cellphone-sized Optimus Maximus (http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/). I can see a lot more use for the full-size keyboard than for a cellphone version though.
Maybe to provide a phone with most of the user interface flexibility of an iPhone without sacrificing tactile feedback?
I'm not sure if that carries over to their Kindle edition
Subscriber-only services from newspaper websites do not apply to Kindle subscribers.
Digital readers are only seeing a small fraction of the advertising that the print reader sees.
Kindle newspaper subscriptions have NO ads, and no classified section either.
While it's a blessing as a reader, I imagine it chafes terribly for the newspaper's finance department, since I'm pretty sure they make most of their money selling ads.
Then again, the internet at large has conditioned me into thinking that "ads are for free things, and things I pay for have no ads." I would probably be VERY upset if ads started showing up in my Kindle newspapers.
The way I see it is on one hand you're paying for ONE news source and on the other hand you can go to Google News and at a glance see news from MULTIPLE news sources both locally and around the word.
These days we also get a lot of great personal accounts/coverage from normal people in their blogs, podcasts, websites, twitter, etc.
A couple months ago I saw a fire near my apartment. I search the name of the street on Twitter and there were tons of tweets describing what was going on with pictures, warning people that the street was closed, the air was thick with smoke and to steer clear. It wasn't until hours later during their 6pm evening news that the news corps reported on it.
Google News and Twitter are great sources for breaking news, and I use it for that, but it's inherently sensationalist. The topics that are the most talked about get put on the Google News page, not the best or most relevant. You're just as likely to see an article about Tiger Woods as you are about Iran's enrichment program, but any of the in-depth, after-the-fact commentary or articles about issues that for whatever reason didn't catch the public eye are left out.
what's wrong with installing Windows via Boot Camp?
Paying money to install malware on your computer.
I saw Sid Meier speak at MAGfest earlier this year on the issue; EA owns the rights to it, not Mr. Meier, and a new one won't be developed without their consent. He was remarkably closemouthed about the issue beyond that.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
To console you, have an Alpha Centari fanpatch to fix some of those longstanding bugs: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7152
Despite the DRM, the Amazon store is the best paid content provider for one reason and one reason only- REFUNDS.
B&N does not give refunds for ebooks. Neither does Sony. Apple doesn't give refunds for apps or music, so it's reasonable not to expect them for ebooks.
Amazon has a seven-day, no-questions-asked refund policy for ebooks. You send CS an email, and they send one back a day later informing you of the refund (which is NOT store credit), and that the book has been removed from your account. They also politely ASK you to remove it from any devices you may have downloaded it to. They don't do that automatically.
As with any ebook store, some of the books are absolute crap, whether in content or in formatting. Amazon is the only ebook vendor willing to give you your money back.