Kindle Updates and Cooking Updates

There is an exciting new update for the Kindle. There are going to be real page numbers which will correspond to page numbers in the print editions. This is what everyone complained about trying to use kindle books in classes. CNET news posted the story. I believe that this update will be for all kindles (although the article is a little vague on this matter), but apparently the rest of the updates will only before the Kindle Wireless and the Kindle 3G (i.e. not my beloved DX).

Servia and I made Three Teacup Chicken again tonight and I added pictures to my previous blogpost. It was wonderful. I highly recommend it. We made a few changes to the recipe. We made a 1/2 recipe (for the two of us) but used double the amount of garlic and ginger (i.e. the same amount one would use to make a whole recipe) and 4 instead of 3 shallots.

Kindle DX: A Side-by-Side Comparison

My mother's college roommate came into town this week and stayed with us. She used to be a librarian and a library sciences professor. Although she has some limited vision, her vision is so low that she is legally blind and has not been able to read a book in almost 15 years.

Last year, she and my mom bought my Kindle DX for me as a gift (which was lovely). My mom's college roommate finally decided to buy herself one of the new generation of Kindle DXs and she loves it. Although the buttons are almost impossible for her to read, she is learning how to use them by feel and by increasing the font to the second-to-largest size, she has been able to read again.

Since she was staying with us, I got to play around with her new kindle and see the differences first hand, although I did not try out the internet on it, so I cannot report on that aspect.

There were some notable great developments.

1. The new Kindle DX is 50% brighter. There was a significant difference in a side-by-side comparison between the two devices.
2. The new kindle has global 3G, which is fabulous.
3. The pages seem to turn a little faster, although that might be my imagination.

Some things I'm still holding out for:

1. The new 6 inch kindle has an improved PDF system, so that one can actually put notes on individual PDF pages. Seriously-- this is much more useful on the kindle DX because of the larger screen size. Why did they not add this new software to the kindle DX? It makes no sense to me.
2. The font size on menus cannot be modified. As amazon has successfully marketed the device to those with low-vision, it would be useful to let them see their menus as well as the books.
3. You cannot have the dictionary look up a word while the text-to-speech feature is in use or even paused. You have to actually stop the reading and look up the word before resuming.

Eyestrain, iPads, and e-Readers

I cannot understand the phenomenon of the Apple iPad. Many of the places that I go, my first instance was when I got stuck waiting for Jury Duty, I notice people over the age of 60 with iPads. Although I understand the benefits of an easy-to-use, portable computer, I simply cannot understand why I primarily see this crowd reading books on their iPads. I am sure that enhanced e-books are awesome, but I cannot imagine why someone would want to read off an LCD screen, and this is particularly important tho those of the age group I see most often with iPads.

vs.

Having a visual processing disorder, I try to avoid reading off of LCD screens. I print a lot of articles into PDF with programs like PDF creator and read them on my kindle. When I work on this blog, read the New York Times, etc.,  I wear a set of computer glasses with a particular color and lens that relaxes the eyes (recommended by my neurologist). I definitely understand the desire to have a computer one can stash in one's purse or messenger bag, but I can check my email on my cellphone or my Kindle DX (and without the $15 per month of the iPad for 3G which is free on the Kindle DX) and I have an 11" laptop that is much more powerful and much less expensive than the flashy iPad.

The lack of e-Ink in something which one uses for reading boggles the mind. I know that the iPad was designed for much more than reading, but most of the people I see (and this is obviously anecdotal evidence) use it primarily for reading. Even more confusing is the Nook Color by Barnes & Noble, which is a dedicated e-Reader with an LCD display. An article on KindleWorld explains that people are claiming research has been done to show that LCDs are not as hard on the eyes as originally thought, but I cannot imagine that this is true, given my own personal experience.

According to KindleWorld, there will be a new "KinTablet," in which Amazon is the e-Reader with Android technology and creating a tablet. I guess this is not surprising is the tablet is the way of the future, but according to the same article on KindleWorld, most e-Books are still bought by those with dedicated e-Readers, and the there has been a recent upsurge in sales.

Updates: Kindle and Free Books

I wrote two blogposts of the last few weeks which I feel are in need of updating: A Bibliophile's Review of the Kindle DX and Problems With Free Books. (I also recently updated the Blog on the Minoan Octopus Jar.)

Kindle for Cooks

One of the things that I did not mention in my original review is my use of the kindle for cooking. I use it in two ways. One is to download and put recipes on my kindle and stand it up on my counter-top. This only works, obviously if one downloads a cookbook or creates a PDF or MOBI document. I used a particular case, a platform kindle case, that allowed me to stand the kindle upright so that I could read the recipes easily. The other way that I used the kindle was to have it read to me while I was cooking. I downloaded a free version of The History of the Peloponnesian War and had the Kindle read to me while I was cooking so that I did not waste time [1]. It was pretty helpful, except for the pronunciation of the Greek names. For example, Themistocles (the-mist-oo-cleez) was pronounced (the-mis-do-cls). Although the humanoid voices can be kind of annoying, it gets the information across and entertainment can be found by poking fun at it.

As a random technological sidenote, I have had my phone for 6 years and it is finally beginning to break down (people cannot hear me when I answer the phone and I have to shout, etc). Does anyone have a good recommendation?

A Clarification and More Amazing Free Books

I realized that I never explained the meaning of the title "The Problems of Free Books." The idea is that Google Books provides some downloadable free books as well as providing essentially an enormous, no-membership-required digital library that allows the reader to browse through editions of books online for the purposes of research, as well as for the ability to preview books online. For any other book, there is the difficulty of finding the book in the first place, making sure that it is the correct edition, etc. Speaking of free ebooks, there is another Amazing Site (referred to me by Propertius II) that has a bunch of academic books marked "public" which can be read online.

Endnotes

1. At the time when I was doing this, I was taking a class on Thucydides: Book 1 in Greek, I was attempting to read the rest of Thucydies' History of the Peloponnesian War for context. Usually I would read the beautiful Landmark Edition, which was a wonderful gift from my parents, but I ended up just trying to breeze through the kindle edition, and look at the Landmark for reference.

The Problems with Free Books

This morning, my mother emailed me a thoroughly amusing article called "The Trouble with Google Books." The article deals with the errors and problems that Google books has, specifically with metadata (i.e. the data that allows you to find the book you are looking for, e.g. publication date, author, etc). Some of the pieces are particularly hilarious, such as attributing a book an the Mosiac Web browser to Sigmund Freud's distinguished co-authorship [1]. My biggest problem with google books was that it always omitted exactly those pages of a book that I needed most when I looked something up because some other enterprising classicist had checked it out of the library before I got there [2].

Although I have always been a massive lover of cheap books and used books (which is the only way I could have amassed the massive collection of books around my house and in boxes in the garage), receiving a Kindle (see my previous blogpost) I have become a zealot for free electronic books. Part of the time while Cerinthus was visiting, I stupidly spent showing him the wonders of ACLS Humanities E-Book Archive (because he still has access to our college's server). It is incredible. Although one can only download PDF pages in three pages bursts, there are some fabulous academic texts on every subject from archaeoastronomy to modern urban planning. If one compiles the books oneself, they're free (provided, of course, access to said archive through school or an academic institution). I also have spent a lot of time searching for books, especially classics books and found a number of different places (to many of which I link on Platonic Psychology). Some interesting ones are as follows:

• Project Gutenberg: An archive of out of print books and audiobooks. Has a pretty awesome variety of formats available, including MOBI documents for the kindle. They are now also compiling audiobooks, as well as adding works in their original languages, such as Greek and Latin (as well as German, French, etc)
• Internet Archive: Very much like Project Gutenberg, this archive includes a variety of out of print books in many different formats, including the Sanskrit Grammar that I included in my blogpost last night.
• Textkit: A selections of out of print materials for teaching Classical Greek and Latin.
• Free Books from Amazon: this is all in kindle format (but can be read with free kindle reading apps), but it includes out of print books, as well as government documents like the U.S. Budget, and a number of new studies on digital media and learning by MIT, like this one.
  

There are some more but this is a start and I would love to hear about more I have not found yet.

Harping on my education theme, again (sorry!), I think cheap used books and free ebooks are awesome. I believe, most certainly, that authors and the institutions who aid in dissemination their work should be paid and that they provide a vital service for society. However, the library near my house has a book section only twice the size of my bedroom. Thus far, I found no classics texts there I am interested in reading. The books are simply too expensive for a small local library. It seems to me that libraries are one of the great places that one can supplement or design their own education. It makes no sense that only university libraries have the necessary academic texts when cities and towns without universities are the ones could most use an extensive library. So I think that used book sites and free ebooks are great because they provide access to a whole range of materials not otherwise available.

Endnotes

1. This reminded me of when I asked a group of my SAT kids what they knew about Charles Dickens' writing, and I got three blank stares and a girl who told me that she had only read half of Alice in Wonderland and did not remember it very well. I was also shocked to learn that out of a 13 person class, not one person knew who Adam Smith was. On the other hand, every one of them can work a smartphone, an art which I have not yet mastered.
2. My junior year this was a particularly pernicious trend, which prevented me from ever getting a chance to read Genres in Dialogue for my Phaedrus paper. Luckily, I received a copy for my last birthday and I am enjoying it thoroughly.

A Bibliophile's Review of the Kindle DX

I have had my wonderful Kindle DX for a year now. It was a wonderful and incredibly useful gift from a close family friend. I think that is ample time to explore the benefits of the Kindle and also to demonstrate that owning an eReader is not going over to the dark side.

My Kindle DX

As I have mentioned before, I have a visual processing disorder, so reading off of anything (and especially a computer screen) for any length of time is difficult. Unfortunately, like at any university, many of my classes required supplementary readings that were held by online reserves, and had to be read either on a computer screen or by printing them out. Although I read many of them on paper, printing at school, as well as my own printing (with the cost of ink/toner) was expensive. Both of the two doctors who I consulted recommended the Kindle DX to me, because of the e-ink screen and because font size and word spacing are easily changeable, as well as the reading aloud function.

I was very skeptical, at first, of the idea of an electronic reader. I am a serious bibliophile (as presumably anyone can guess from the bookshelf at the top of my blog and my reading list). I love the feel of books in my hands, the tactile sensation of turning the pages and hearing the distinctive sounds of the paper. I love new books, so shiny and perfect one hardly wants to open them. I ordered a copy of Immanuel Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals that releases the distinctive smell of jasmine soap upon opening. I also love used books, a little worn or with an inscription by the previous owner. For one birthday, my parents bought me a copy of Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow from the mid 1890s, with a beautiful sky-blue leather cover and accents of gold leaf, a little worn on the spine with use.

However, when I received my Kindle DX, I was almost immediately won over. The device itself is sleek and lightweight (and the new graphite ones are actually even sleeker). I can carry 3,500 books and documents. While I was at school, I no longer had to print, I could do my electronic reserve reading right on my Kindle [1]. Furthermore, I could download any PDF from Jstor or any of the wonderful electronic journal archives for research or pleasure reading and read them or save them for a later date. There are also a ton of free books on Amazon and Project Gutenberg (mobi documents) for the kindle, which can be annotated the same way that a traditional kindle document can.

I also found that writing my thesis, the Kindle was a real lifesaver. One of the primary texts that I used was Plato's Laws. I read the Laws in English, and then read selected sections I needed in the Greek. Much of the time I needed to refer to specific passages that all used the same word or phrase and sometimes either calculate the frequency of those phrases or discuss their placement in the text. Although I used the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae for much of the searching, I also used the kindle search function in the English version in order to expedite certain processes as well as to contain vast annotations on particular passages.

I do have a number of criticisms of the kindle, some of which Amazon has addressed and fixed.
Concerns that Amazon has recently fixed:

1. No Organization-- The newest software update that I downloaded allows for collections of books, which means that I can organize the books in any way I choose. This is a huge help given how many ebooks I have.
2. No Zoom-- The newest software update also includes a zoom for PDF documents, which is very helpful.

Concerns Amazon still need to fix:

1. No way to refer to page numbers from the print edition. I was lucky with Plato, because Plato scholars refer to Stephanus pagination, rather than page numbers from any particular edition. However, this can be a serious issue when writing academic papers. It usually means that one has to check a print edition of the library as well and then cross-reference, which is really lame. It also provides a difficulty in citing pages for class discussion, which is part of why the kindle experimentation program at universities was not a raging success (my school included).
2. No way to borrow books. This is truly unfortunate. I lend print copies of my books to my friends all the time, and my mother and I frequently both read a book. I don't want to have to lend someone my kindle, because that is lending a portion of my library and it keeps all of my notes. 
3. The TERRIBLE pronunciation of times and sometimes problematic inflection of the reader. I know, it's difficult to get a computer to pronounce things properly. When I was taking a Thucydides course where we were focusing intently on Book I (in Greek), I would listen to the rest of the book (in English) while I was cooking or cleaning to provide context. I often had to go over and check the text because I could not understand the names and place names to which she was referring (I usually listened to the female voice).
4. Problematic edition differences. According to an Amazon representative that I talked to once, publishing companies put out their own version of the kindle books rather than Amazon doing it themselves. I understand this principle. However, I cannot understand the lack of standards between different publishers. One of my favorite features of the kindle is linked footnotes, and a lot of books just have endnotes in the back instead of the linked footnotes. It seems like it would be easy to have across-the-board standards for the different companies.

Overall, the kindle is awesome. I now only have to lug one book and a kindle on a trip, instead of taking 3-4 books with me. I love my kindle so much that I bought a second one off a friend (who got it as a gift and was not a fan) and gave it to my mom, who also loves it.

If anyone is interested, the case I have is also awesome.

Update 02/14/11: There are new updates for the kindle. The first two problems (page numbers from the print editions and borrowing books) have now been fixed, although the former has only been solved on certain kindle books and only for the newest editions of the Kindle 6". I discuss this in a recent blogpost. The borrowing books feature is also questionable. The book leaves your kindle and moves to the other person's kindle for either 2 or 3 weeks, and then it returns. Each book can only be lent once. As a person who lends out a lot of books and who is loaned a lot of books, this system seems pretty ridiculous. However, it's better than nothing.

Endnotes

1. For anyone interested, any documents that have been scanned with facing pages can be split into two separate documents with your pdf reader/editor program and then merged by alternate pages with PDFsam. This takes a few minutes, but if you do it once a week or so with all of the electronic reserve documents, it really helps. I got this tip from a friend.