by aaron on June 15, 2010
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.
by aaron on March 9, 2010
I’ve been really jazzed about this latest round of the MacHeist bundle. They have some really useful software that I have already started ing in my workflow. For $20 you can’t go wrong, Not to mention that a percentage of the sale goest to charity, it’s a win-win.
- MacJournal – This is really great software that allows you to write not just blogs but also video and recordings as well. You can even do your own personal journals that are password protected. I can see this being great for students who need to write notes for classes. You also have the ability to import Word Documents, images and PDFs into the journals.
- RipIt – Looks like a really cool app. It will take a DVD and create an image of the DVD on your hard drive so you can watch it in Front Row or Boxee or another media player. I haven’t used it the app yet but I can’t wait to give it a try. It looks really slick.
- Flow – This is a pretty slick looking FTP client with a very Mac like interface. What I like about this app is that you can set up droplets for specific directories so you can just use finder to just drag and drop to upload. Really cool stuff. It currently supports the FTP and SFTP protocol, but it’s very nice.
- Tales of Monkey Island – All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. This is an adventure game that is using the charachters from Lucasarts fun The Secret of Monkey Island game. I just played it for a little bitt but it looks like a lot of fun.
Those are the apps that I have used. There are also Clips (a clipboard manager) and Coverflow that are in the bundle but to be honest if you only use one of these apps, it’s worth your money.
There is only 1 day left to the sale and (as of this writing) there were 43,960 bundles sold. If there are 50,000 bundles sold there is another app that will be released. Rapid Weaver – a web site design app. It looks really slick and I hope that it can get to the 50,000 bundles.
