The Kindle 2 I bought arrived today and I have spent the evening playing with the new gadget. I haven’t had very much time for some serious reading with it yet, but there are some fairly clear early impressions that can be drawn.
The e-ink display is absolutely amazing. It is just beautiful. I find it easier and clearer to read than most printed material and it doesn’t feel like you are viewing an electronic device at all. I haven’t really used this technology before, so one thing that did come as a surprise is that each page turn or refresh is noticeably slow. That is, it takes probably around a quarter of a second to actual render the page. It doesn’t get in the way, but it was a surprise. This is an artifact of the e-ink technology itself, which effectively “prints” the page material once and then the display holds it stable.
The size and weight of the device is just right. It’s about the size of a standard paperback and at 10 ounces feels just right in your hand. It is incredibly thin – less than the thickness of a small magazine. Even with one of the optional covers on, there would be no problem taking this thing on a long holiday or business trip.
The user interface for reading is good. The button placement doesn’t seem quite perfect for my hands, but more time will tell. Pages turn fast enough and the ability to quickly highlight words and get their dictionary definition is one of the best features of the device. That said, it clearly would benefit from a multi-touch interface, ala the iPhone, but this would likely just render your e-ink display full of smudged fingerprints.
The keyboard and cursor control are acceptable, but it was much faster to do browse for and buy books via a computer web browser. There are some clear engineering trade-offs made on the keyboard and the cursor control to make them useful in a real world scenario. The good news is it only takes a couple of minutes and then the interface is very natural and more than fast enough.
Amazon’s selection of Kindle books is more than adequate at the moment, and certainly more than we can read in a lifetime. We’ll see as time goes on if the books we want to read show up in the Kindle store versus in print.
I am curious to see if the Kindle 2 is something I will enjoy using or not. There is something incredibly wonderful about the tangible feel of a book that makes any e-book reader a hard sell. We’ll see if I find it pleasant enough to use for my primary reading tool or not.
I just finished reading Heft On Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing A 180, by Mike Magnuson. Magnuson gives us a pretty deep glimpse into himself has he rapidily transforms himself from a fat, drunken slob into a highly active road bicycle junkie.
Magnuson discovers what I also discovered a few years ago when I started cycling: high-intensity exercise with a purpose can be extremely liberating and can totally change your outlook on life. Cycling is a great fit for this, given that it is relatively easy for people to get up off the couch and get on the bike and get to the point where they can ride for hours on end.
Overall I’d give the book 3.5 out of 5 stars. It is an entertaining read, even if you aren’t a cyclist.
This morning I finished reading Blood Canticle, another of Anne Rice’s vampire universe novels. This book is set immediately after the Blackwood Farm novel that I read a couple of months ago. It continues the integration of the vampire and witch storylines that Rice has cultivated, and this time thoroughly mixes in the Taltos portion of the witches story as well.
It was a decent novel, told again from Lestat’s point of view which make for the most interesting of her novels. Overall I’d give it 3.5 stars out of 5.
I finally got around to reading Smart & Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide To Finding The Best Technical Talent which came out a little over a year ago. The title pretty much hits the point of the book on the head.
It is a quick, pleasant read, even if you aren’t a big fan of the Joel On Software blog. Joel has some pretty good insight into the software development industry and technical talent in general, so even if you don’t agree with all of his assertions (I certainly don’t), his opinions are worth reading and heading.
Some key points I took from this book were:
- The great developers aren’t usually on the job market, so you have to go out and hunt them down.
- Treat developers like the talent they are; the great ones are rare.
- Spend the money making sure the developer’s work enviroment is top-notch; it’s a better way to spend your company’s dollar than with over-the-top salaries.
- Follow some real software engineering processes or pay the price with a poor quality product and a stressed-out team.
- If you’re hiring programmers, make sure to actually have them write code during the interview process.
Overall, I’d give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
This morning I finished reading Category 7, a thriller about a monster hurricane that destroys much of coastal New York City.
The plot of the book is actually quite good. A former government scientist focused on weather control returns to the subject once he has amassed a fortune in the private sector. He masters the ability to create and harness weather and begins to unleash the monster hurricane as a lesson to his arch-nemesis, the President of the United States. Meanwhile, scientists within the CIA begin to notice something might not be right about the weather…
Unfortunately a good thriller plot is coupled with some not so great writing. I’m pretty tolerant on writing styles but this one felt too much like someone had just read a book on “writing fiction in 21 days” or something along those lines. It had a tremendous quality of a “made for hollywood” movie that didn’t want you to think too hard.
Glad I read it, but I wouldn’t read it again. I’d give it 2.5 out of 5 stars.
