Of all of the social networking services out there, I like twitter the most. It’s the only one that I constantly use. One of the annoying things about twitter is that when you use two different devices you always have to scroll up to the most recent tweets. Somehow this concept has escaped the folks at twitter. I don’t understand why but it has.

Now, a developer is looking to change this. Manton Reece of Riverfold Software has developed a service called Tweet Marker that will sync your twitter timeline and you’ll always be up to date no matter which device you’re on.

Right now only twitterific from Icon Factory is using the service. I seriously thought about buying the app for all of my devices so I would always be in sync. For the time being I have decided against that since I like the apps that I’m using and have purchased. However it will be interesting to see how many other developers of twitter apps out there will use Tweet Marker in their applications. I know that I’ve already made the suggestion to Tapbots, the maker of Tweetbot (my favorite twitter app for the iPhone). If you want to see this service (and independent twitter clients stay around) I’d suggest making support for Tweet Marker a feature request.

My copy of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson’s “Towers of Midnight” arrived today. Not surprisingly, it’s very thick and with the glossary it comes to 816 pages.

After I got over my excitement about finally having the penultimate book of the Wheel of Time series, I couldn’t believe that I used to carry around books like this. I got to thinking that this is exactly the reason why I got a Kindle. I can easily carry all of my books, no matter of how many pages they are, with ease. Yes, I can’t read the books on Shabbos but I have plenty of books that are of the dead tree variety that I can read.

Here is a nice spam email I got this morning. It was so amusing that I thought I would share it with everyone

Dear,

I am Attorney Loo Tan Leng (Esq.), the managing attorney for Leng & Co Associates (Malaysia). It is explicable for you to grow apprehensive reading from me since there was no previous exchange between us. However, I implore your attention on the subject matter here to contained.

A deceased client of mine, who died in 2002, had left large sum of account in his bank account totaling USD Six Million approximately. Documents of the account are in possession.

Upon maturity legal responsibilities, the bank has requested that I present the beneficiary of the Estate.  This reason underscores my contacting you since you share the same family name with the deceased.

I am disposed to present you to the bank as the beneficiary of the Estate after procurement of necessary documentations applicable for inheritance.

Please be assured that there is no ramification (legal or otherwise) in the means of consummating this transaction hence the process and procedure will be conducted in accordance with legal applicable requirements.

Please, revert accordingly to indicate your interest to be part of the aforementioned transaction.

Revert me through my private Email: <redacted>

The grammar just made me laugh out loud. I think that it came out of Google Translate.

Not to mention the Dear ,

It’s like they  couldn’t even bother to get a mail merge to work properly.

There has been a lot of talk in the Kindle blogoshpere about how the new Kindle 3 is the beginning of the end of the ebook reader wars. I think that this is a silly idea and there is plenty of room for ebook readers that are already on the market. Here is why

Defining the context

I think that the first thing that needs to done is defining what exactly an ebook reader is. In the scope of this discussion (and I think in all discussions about ebook readers) you can’t include the iPad as an ebook reader. The reason for this is because that the iPad can do a whole lot more that just read books. Yes, you can do long form reading on the device but it’s not all that it can do. I think that it can be placed into a different argument about specific ebook platforms (a Kindle reader being on all kinds of devices, iBooks or Barns & Noble’s Nook reader being on kinds of devices). However we need to make a difference between the platform and the device. So for the scope of this discussion, we’ll just be talking about the hardware devices like a Kindle, Nook, eReader, etc.

Price Point

Now that we have the question of “what is an ebook reader?” out of the way, we need to look at some of the reasons why people are saying that the war is over. The first one that I’ll tackle is price. The price for the 2 models of the Kindle is very attractive ($189 for the 3G and $139 for the wifi only version). In fact I think that they are $10 cheaper then the Nook on either product. There is nothing to say that Barns & Noble won’t be dropping their price points? Not to mention any of the other manufacturers out there (especially the sleeping giant – Sony). Their profit margins may be razor thin but they will try to make it up on people buying books on the store.

The Tech

That new eink display on the Kindle 3 looks really sharp and clear, no other device (save for the Kindle DX) has such a display. Will that always be the case? Of course not. It wouldn’t surprise me if the other manufacturers get the new display shortly or maybe skip it entirely for the newer generation of displays/readers.

It’s a constant game of cat and mouse. One company gets the ground breaking tech and then the others rush to keep pace or leap frog to the next generation.

The Features - There can be more than one

This is the meat of  why the war isn’t over, people like different ways of doing things and having a choice. Do you like having a graphical interface to choose your book? Don’t like some of Amazon’s policies? Get a nook.

Do you get Amazon gift cards from your Amazon Associates account? Get a Kindle.

Do you want your kid to have a ebook reader but not the ability to buy new books or connect to the internet? Get a Sony eBook reader.

The scenarios are endless and that is why there won’t be only one app out there on the market – people want a choice in what they want to buy. It’s that reason why I object to what was called “Highlanderism” on the AMB Podcast a while ago. Everyone (mainly the press and bloggers) want to position this device or another to be a Product X Killer. That is just being plain silly.

There is also the issue of DRM. Do you want to have all of your books DRM free and in the ePub standard? Do you like eBooks with DRM? If so which kind? Again the options are endless.

Wrapping things up

Competition is good. In any walk of life or profession, being challenged to  be better is a good thing. It brings out the best in you and your products. Having two or three companies fight it out for you dollar just makes the products better and the pricing more competitive. I would love to see some open standards for DRM books that all ebook readers would support but since that is a while away enjoy the competition and buy what best fits your needs. The ebook war is far from over.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’ve been looking at ways to make my Mac mini into a media server. Well, I think that I have stumbled upon the right formula for myself. And now for the two of you who have been wondering what I’d do, here is how it broke down.

Hardware – There really wasn’t much of a debate on what I was going to use. I had an Intel dual core Mac mini that was no longer being used so I was going to use that. I just went to Best Buy and bought a DVI to VGA cable and away we went.

Software – Here is where the real dilemma was. I was torn between using Plex or Boxee and so I decided to try both of them. I decided to first give Plex a try since I was more familiar with Boxee having used it on my MacBook Pro. I really wanted to like Plex but I just couldn’t get some of the things to work. One of the main things that I wasn’t able to get to work was the SMB connectivity. No matter how hard that I tried, I just couldn’t get it to connect to a SMB share. I also couldn’t seem to get it working with Hulu.

Then I gave Boxee a try. Like I mentioned before I have a better idea of how Boxee works and so there were somethings that went easier than when I tried it with Plex. One of those things that went easier was adding TV shows. And the neat thing with Boxee is that it will automatically pick out what kind of feeds are out there for the show. If there is a local file, Boxee makes that the default choice.

As you may have figured out, I decided to use Boxee as my media player.

There was one other piece of the puzzle that I needed to get into place. I needed a what to get the shows that aren’t able to be streamed over the Internet, to be downloaded automatically. I found an app that can do that when used in tandem with the Mac bit torrent client, Transmission. The app is called Automatic and it’s a system preference. You tell it which shows you want to download and it will download the torrent file into the directory of your choice. Then, Transmission (which monitors that directory) will pick up the torrent and start downloading the file. The way that it works is simply wonderful. It gets even better when you add in how Boxee will automatically fill in the episode details.

There you have it folks. There is my Mac mini media center in a nutshell.

Like one or two other people out there, I waited in like this morning to get the iPhone 4 from Apple. You may be wondering why I just didn’t get it delivered to my house and have it yesterday? That is a good question and I would have done that except for the fact that I was traveling this week and I was still in the Boston area today. That means I wouldn’t have gotten my grubby little fingers on an iPhone 4 until this evening. That is a situation that was totally unacceptable to me.

I’m not going to give a review on the iPhone 4 because there are plenty out there and I’d have to agree with almost all of them that this is a really good smart phone. The display is really crisp and the A4 processor that powers the phone is snappy and my battery life is great. I have not encountered either the calls dropping when I’m holding it in my left hand or the yellow staining.

What I did want to do is talk about the waiting that I had to do for the iPhone. No, I’m not going to complain about it but I really have to give major credit to the staff at the Northshore Mall Apple Store. Since I had reserved my phone I got to the store at 6:30am. When I got there the line was already really long and it was only one line. This surprised me a little bit since I had expected two lines. That was taken care of a bit later on. What really impressed me was that the store was very strict in making sure that everyone stayed as calm as possible while waiting in line and made sure that there wasn’t a mad rush and people potentially getting trampled. Major props go out to Brandon and his staff for making sure that everyone stayed calm. Also major props to all of the people waiting who listened and were respectful to one another.

Once I got in the mall, the reserved line moved pretty quickly. This was because they were allowing in about 30 people who reserved the phone to 1 person who was on stand-by. When I got to the head of the line I did have to wait a bit longer since they let one of the stand-by people in since he was being a total whiner. Once I did get into the store the person that helped me had a smile on his face and was in a good mood. This was impressive since he must have done several if not tens of activations already but didn’t seem deterred by that. I also help by being a wise guy and asking if this is where I could pick up my Droid X.

The whole activation process took about 10 minutes and I was on my way back to the hotel to sync my new iPhone with iTunes so I can listen to stuff.

I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with how the entire thing went.

Yesterday I got the last part that I needed to move the Mac mini into the living room and now have it as a media center. The last piece was a DVI/VGA  cable. Once I went to Best Buy and bought it I was able to move the Mac mini. Now that it’s in the living room. I have a decision to make. It is such an angst ridden decision that I’m starting to think that I should have my own show on the CW; should I use Plex or Boxee?

I’m having a hard time getting some videos recognized by Plex. It seems that no matter what I try it doesn’t want to find my videos. Then there is the issue of torrents. Because I can’t get some of the shows that I like to watch via a stream, I need to go to the grey market for them. As far as I can tell, Plex doesn’t have a torrent client but I think that there may be one in Boxee. If there isn’t it’s not that big of a deal as I can just install something to take care of easily enough.

Here are some photos of my rat’s nest of wires and a screenshot of the HDTV acting as a monitor for the Mac mini.

I few quick updates to the Mac mini media server story that I started yesterday morning.

• I looked the Big Box o’Tech crap and didn’t find the DVI to VGA dongle. It looks like I’ll have to purchase one. That’s disappointing but not a big deal since it shouldn’t be that expensive.
• I wiped the Mac mini clean and installed Snow Leopard on it with all the updates. That is ready to go
• In the comments to the last post, James brought up a good point which I meant to discuss but I forgot about. The other piece of hardware that I have is a Harmony remote from Logitech. According to James, it works with OK with Plex although it misses keys from time to time. The question is, how good is the Harmony support for Boxee? This will go a long way in helping me make my final decision about which software to use.

Due to recent events, I have decided to taking my old Mac mini (bought in 2007) and repurpose it as a media center in the living room. There are plenty of articles out on the web that show you how to set up a Mac mini in the living room, this won’t be one. This will be strictly about my trials and errors along the way and how I finally succeded (or didn’t).

Let’s start off with what I already have in my possession. I have a Samsung 42″ HDTV and a Mac mini circa late 2007. The drive in the mini is an 80GB drive and it has a DVI port for video. My TV has a VGA port and a PC audio out port as well. It looks like the standard cable will work for that. As for getting VGA and DVI to play nicely together? That should be pretty simple since all Mac minis came with a DVI/VGA converter dongle. I should have that somewhere in my big box o’tech crap.

The next thing that I have to figure out is what software I’ll use for the media center. There are three options for that:

1. Apple’s Front Row
2. Plex
3. Boxee

Let’s eliminate Front Row from the list since it only works with iTunes or movies that are on your hard drive. Although that it an important factor, I am also looking at having a streaming component (from Hulu and network websites) as well. This leaves either Plex or Boxee. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and I still have not made a decision about which one I’ll be using.

That where things stand at the moment with this project. I’ll try to update when another stage is completed.

I was going to write a post about how it was already 6 weeks past the date to get the Amazon Kindle 2.5 firmware upgrade but then yesterday I saw a post where Amazon was offering a download of the firmware so the wait for an over the air update was no more.

The headline feature of the 2.5 upgrade is the ability to put your books into different categories or folders. This is something that has been a major sore point for myself and other Kindle owners for a while. Now that we have the ability for folders organization of books is a lot easier. I’ve decided to use the folders to set up my books in genres. I did find the creation and moving books into the catgories a bit clunky on the Kindle but I don’t know if you can do it another way.

The other feature that is a little interesting is that you can now highlight a section of the book and share the passage via twitter or facebook. To be honest, I don’t know how much I’ll use the feature (or if other Kindle users will use it) but it is an interesting addition to the OS.

OverallI I think that the firmware upgrade was worth the wait just for the categories feature alone.