The Computer Next Door

Whew! Finished 133 chapters on an iPhone

Well, I finished it.  Yup - 133 chapters of  "The Lost Symbol" on a little iPhone (using the Barnes & Noble eReader ).

I really thought it would be arduous at best, and possibly impossible to slog through such an immense book with such a small device.

But, in fact, it wasn't bad. The iPhone's bright little screen made it easy to read in virtually any condition, with dim lighting or not.  I read some chapters in bed, I read some chapters (as a passenger) in a car, and the ease of turning pages on the eReader actually made the reading experience fun (I have it set up so that all I have to do is tap my finger on one side of the page or the other).

I'm definitely planning to read more eBooks on the iPhone, even more..looooong form fiction.

Taming Snow Leopard's Beastly Aspects

Frustrated with the problems I was having with Snow Leopard (application crashes galore), I did a Google search for "application crashes snow leopard how to fix" and finally found some helpful postings on how to fix my issues.

2 solutions were listed in iLounge for how to solve the issues I was experiencing:

Two Proposed Solutions to Snow Leopard Crash Problems

I decided to take the following approach:

1. First do Solution b as described in this forum.
2. Then do Solution a as described in this forum.
3. Then run the disk utility on Mac OS X (Utilities / Disk Utility) to verify and then repair permissions.
4. Restart.

Results: Very good.  I have experienced only a couple of application crashes since undertaking this approach (compared with numerous crashes/day before I did this).

I recommend doing the same thing if you are having problems with your Snow Leopard installation.  And hopefully Apple will issue a patch in the near future so we don't have to jump through such hoops.

Thank you to iLounge for helping to tame the beast.

About This Weblog

The Computer Next Door is written by Meryl Enerson, joined by the occasional guest author from the consultants of Enervision Media, a digital media consultancy based in upstate New York.

This blog is non-commercial in nature. No products or services are provided to us for free by any of the vendors written about.

Another Day, Another eBook

On my laptop, this 2-page layout with a "bookmark" offers a fair facsimile of the experience of reading a traditional book

I decided to expand my horizons recently and read a loooong format eBook - the new Dan Brown novel, "The Lost Symbol."

I bought it on Barnes & Noble's website (see my previous post on the Barnes & Noble eReader experience). Having finally figured out where to store my Barnes & Noble eBooks, I purchased the book for $9.99 (standard price for eBooks these days), and  downloaded 2 "copies" of it:

1. One to a network drive, accessible to both my desktop Mac and a laptop Mac.
2. A second download to my iPhone, from the Barnes & Noble eReader application.

Then, I proceeded to read it on both my iPhone and my laptop, just to see how I felt about this.  I like to read the kind of genre fiction Brown writes in the wee hours of the morning, so it needed to be on one of my portable devices.  So, I started out on the laptop (with the 2-page view, the novel actually feels like a novel), bookmarked where I left off, and then picked up the eBook again on my iPhone.

Not unsurprisingly, the copy of "The Lost Symbol" on my iPhone had NO idea where I had bookmarked the book on my laptop.  Although I knew I had bookmarked the laptop version on Page 100, the page numbering scheme on my iPhone was a little different, so, in order to find where I could resume reading, I had to search for an odd phrase from that page.  It worked, and I took up again on the iPhone.

The bookmark and search features within eBooks make this all possible.  Does it sound like time well-spent?  Maybe not.  But so far I am enjoying the read on both devices - partly because I can do it, and partly because each in its own way offers a reasonable facsimile of reading an actual paper book.

(One last caveat, however: I may or may not I feel the same way when I get to the end of this tome!

Stop! Don't Install Snow Leopard

Grrr! Snow Leopard has NOT met my expectations of what an operating system upgrade should be!

I've had some bad experiences with operating systems in my time, but Snow Leopard, the new update on Apple's operating system which was supposed to make everything run faster and better, certainly takes the cake.

How much am I dissatisfied with Snow Leopard?  Let me count the ways...

1) My networked printer (an HP OfficeJet) stopped taking the "print" command from my Mac.  This, even after re-configuring the printer to work with the built-in Snow Leopard drivers (as opposed to the dedicated HP drivers).

Solution: I had to connect this printer to my computer locally, via USB. 

2) Many, many of my programs have been crashing. Not just once or twice, but pretty constantly. This includes such major programs as MS Word, PowerPoint, and Photoshop. When I save files, when I am in the middle of work. I keep sending "reports" to Apple as I work, but

Solutions: Not yet! I have installed some new programs that are more compatible with Snow Leopard (like iWork) to keep me from going crazy at the moment, but I unfortunately will have be made to wait for the updates on Photoshop and MS Office.  Aarrrghhh!

3) Some programs don't run at ALL!  They required my to I install NEW VERSIONS in order to run with Snow Leopard, which disturbed (including some design tools I use regularly).

Solutions: More money out of my pocket! This has already cost me over $200 in new licensing agreements.  So, it's not just the $29 Snow Leopard cost, but you have to figure in what you will REPLACE on your machine before you go the Snow Leopard route.

Avoid these pitfalls - don't install Snow Leopard until they have been sorted out. Check out what can and can't play on Snow Leopard before you install it!  I saw this list too late:

SnowLeopard Compatibility Issues

Apple's iPhone: A Poor Man's GPS?

I was pleasantly surprised when I got my iPhone recently to realize that it has a pretty good built-in GPS system.

The "Maps" application, provided by Google, can pinpoint your current location and give you directions on how to get from your current location to any destination you enter.

This is really handy if you're lost, or if you just want to estimate how long it's going to take to get somewhere.

A mounted iPhone can work as a pretty decent GPS system.

The "Maps" application also helps you find nearby services, which is something I haven't seen on other GPS systems.  Let's say, for example, you're speeding up the Taconic State Parkway from New York City, as I was recently, and want to find a place to stop for dinner.  Using Maps, you can search for "restaurants" and it will locate restaurants in the area or by ZIP code, if you know it.

All this is made easier to work with when mounted on your car's dashboard or vent system, such as with the DLO VentMount, which lets you mount the iPhone either vertically or horizontally, and eliminates most of the hassle of having a PDA in the car. 

I'm going to use Maps on a few voyages and keep you posted about how well it fares as a car navigation system.

Capturing a Life (in 6 Words or Less)

According to legend, Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in a mere six words. The result of his literary genius was reportedly, “ For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”  Now, that’s a short short-story.

So began the tradition of the six-word memoir.  A compendium of 1,000 Six- Word Memoirs were collected in the volume, “Not Quite What I Was Planning”, which became a bestseller.

That amusing collection featured the work of the famous, the infamous and the merely clever.  So successful was that effort that a sequel was born, and in 2009 the book Six-Word Memoirs of Love & Heartache was published.

 Perhaps in the age of Twitter these are the new memoirs for the 21^st century.  In fact, Smith Magazine and Twitter originally teamed together for a contest in 2006, which received 11,000 submissions  and resulted in the book deal.

I loved reading “Not Quite What I Was Planning,” a book I stumbled upon from a review on the blog of Tiffany Shlain, (www.tiffanyshlain.com) the gifted filmmaker, of the short film “The Tribe.”

Never one to shirk a challenge, I‘ve tried my hand at  6  Six -Word Memoirs that might work for the Love and Heartache book.

 Moved in, cheated, married her instead.

 Positive I'm negative.  Call me tonight.

 Loved, lied, left.  Took him back.

 Black shoe missing mate.  Me too.

 Blue eyes,  black heart, saw red.

 Slept together Friday, married another Sunday.

I don’t know what Hemingway would have thought about my efforts, but I know I found my super short stories the perfect exercise for a writer short on time and long on imagination.

Anyone, amateur or pro, can try their hand  at writing their own memoirs by registering at http://www.smithmag.net,.

In addition to the memoirs  SMITH Magazine hosts a site where everyone with a story can be a storyteller.  Who knows, you might end up in one of their books.

And at the very least you can share your stories with family and friends. 

The Barnes & Noble eBook Experience

Barnes & Noble has just debuted their digital bookshelf of over 500,000 eBook titles, and I thought I would try them out on my new iPhone (a 3GS).
Too many "libraries" make for a confusing experience on Barnes & Noble's Website

GETTING THE BOOKS

found the process of shopping for an eBook on BarnesandNoble.com pretty confusing  On the iPhone, you simply download the Barnes & Noble "bookstore" application as well as the Barnes & Noble "eReader" application.  Both are readily available from Apple's iPhone AppStore.

The Barnes & Noble website made everything more complicated, however.

For one thing, it's unclear where to go. The B&N Website bookstore has several similar components, incuding "MyBarnes&Noble" and "My LIbrary" and "My eBooks Library."  B&N works hard at making sure you buy the books, but once you do, it simply wasn't clear where to go to retrieve the books to read both on my iPhone and on my Mac. Once a B&N title is in your library, clicking on the on the eBook title merely takes you to a description of the book rather than the ability to read it in the desktop eReader software.  What I finally discovered after considerable effort  was that you have to download the books and open them on your hard drive, with all the navigation that's involved.

READING THE BOOKS

Once I got that cleared up, I went on to read a couple of books on my iPhone.  Would the screen prove too miniscule for reading a book?

I have been putting off buying a Kindle because of the price, so I was hopeful that my iPhone could become a "do everything" device, including acting as an eBook reader.

My initial experience was that it wasn't bad.  I had tried this same kind of thing on my other small screen PDA a year ago (the Palm Treo 750), which was more or less a failure (see "E-Books and the Virtual Library").  The iPhone is much better, although definitely not perfect.

Here's what I liked about using the eReader application on the iPhone:

1) There is an appropriate amount of type to read in either the vertical or horizontal position of the iPhone.  Although you can change the font size on the iPhone, the "medium" setting produces a reasonable amount of text at a reasonable size right out of the box (so to speak).

2) You can easily jump around the book once you learn how to access the contents (a left-right swipe motion on the screen will bring up the navigation controls).

3) You can set different ways to go forward or back.  I don't want to sweep constantly, so I chose a tap on either the right side (for forward) or left side (for backward) to "turn" the pages of the book.T

The big downside of reading B&N titles on both on the iPhone and on a computer is:

1) Images.  Little illustrations (at chapter headings), photos, and small tables of data (such as you find in trade books) are relatively low resolution.  This is passable on the iPhone itself, because of its small size (although the small tables really are very hard to read), but unacceptable if you're trying to read the same book on your desktop computer.  When you compare this to some of the digital scans of older books that result in PDF eBooks it's a little tough. I'm sure it's a file size issue (smaller is better?).  But I think they should have upped the ante a little and gone for quality on the imagery.

Still, for books that are largely text, the B&N eReader is nice and legible.  Not to mention handy for reference books you can take with you anywhere (and - best part - you don't need a dedicated device.)

Who's Ready for All Online News, All the Time? (Not I)

One hears pretty dire things these days about the decline of the newspaper industry.  Time Magazine recently listed The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America. The list includes some major rags from major cities across the nation.  The financial facts are harsh.  The Boston Globe is losing $1 million/week.  The San Francisco Chronicle lost $70 million in 2008.  Obviously, they can't stay afloat forever.

I have to say, though, that it seems perfectly absurd to imagine the demise of ALL NEWSPAPERS.  Is this really possible? Will a day dawn that doesn't have a single newspaper in it?  It's sad and shocking, if so.  I just have a hard time believing it.  Part of me doesn't want to, and part of me thinks the public won't put up with getting ALL their news online.

For one thing, I don't think that reading news online is anything like the same experience as reading a paper newspaper.

I consume (er, "read") both kinds of news - online and offline.  In the morning, over coffee, after a quick glance at my e-mail inbox, I browse the stories aggragated on my iGoogle Home Page - from all four corners of the globe.  At lunch, I like to leaf through the New York Times.  And there's really no comparison.  The online news is straight to the point, but hardly a pleasurable experience.  The paper version of the New York Times, on the other hand, is a delightful, physical browsing experience.  I open sections up, I stretch them this way and that, I look at ads for things I can't afford, and I find little bits of news I would NEVER HAVE FOUND ONLINE.  That's the key, in my opinion.

By specifying "top news stories" in my iGoogle Home Page, I have put a filter on the news that the physical paper removes.  There is always a surprise waiting for me in the physical paper - not so much online.

So, although I have long been an advocate of doing things digitally for the sake of efficiency and speed, this is just one area where I have my fingers crossed for the old, traditional way of getting information.  I suppose I want to have my digital cake and eat it, too. Hang in there, publishers.

How to Contact Amazon When Things Go Wrong

We all get used to our vendors and suppliers, whether online or in-person. And we get used to a certain level of customer service, and come to expect it.

This is why I was shocked when Amazon.com fell down on their expected task of zipping my book order to me.  Don't get me wrong - they did get it to me in record time (I am an Amazon Prime customer, and am thus am entitled to free 2-day shipping.)  What they got wrong was the book itself.  This had never happened to me with any online order, and I simply didn't expect it from Amazon.

I had ordered Alexander McCall Smith's "The #1 Ladies' Detective Agency" as part of a "4-for-3" promotion (buy 4  paperbacks for the price of 3 paperbacks) which seemed like an attractive deal. When the box of box arrived from Amazon, "Ladies' Detective Agency" was simply not there, replaced by  "Across the Dark Islands: The War in the Pacific."  It was as if someone in Customer Service had decided I needed to change my reading habits.

So, I contacted Customer Service.  First, I tried to find the information about how to return a book that was incorrect, but the directions in both the "Help" and the "My Account" section were circuitous and unhelpful, and I was unable to find a service resolution, so I decided to call them instead. 

Now, in case you haven't noticed, IT IS NOT EASY TO FIND THE AMAZON CUSTOMER SERVICE NUMBER ON THE AMAZON.COM WEBSITE. They seem to live and breathe "automation," and really discourage phone calls (probably a cost issue).

Fortunately, I had the number on file a previous bout with Customer Service, and so was able to locate it.  For those who remain frustrated about contacting Amazon by phone, here it is:

Amazon.com Customer Service: 1-800-201-7575

When I reached Customer Service, I got a profuse apology by phone, and a promise to ship the "Ladies' Detective Agency" immediately.  I then printed a free shipping label for the wrong book, and waited another 2 days.  Friday came, and I got a package.  WRONG BOOK AGAIN!  I couldn't believe it.  Once again I called Customer Service to inquire about the mishap.

This time, they didn't even try to ship me the correct book. They agreed to give me a refund on the book when it came back, so I will probably never know what happens in Alexander McCall Smith's mystery.  It shall remain a mystery - as much a mystery as  Amazons' Customer Service phone number is for many Amazon customers.