New Kindle Out, But Can You Read It at Night?

in Amazon Kindle, Apple | May 6th, 2009

Before you get dis­suad­ed by my orig­i­nal com­ments, please see my lat­est update down below.

As we men­tioned ear­li­er this week, Ama­zon unveiled its new Kin­dle this morn­ing in NYC. The Kin­dle DX ($489) fea­tures a large screen (9.7 inch­es mea­sured diag­o­nal­ly) and it’s intend­ed to make read­ing news­pa­pers, col­lege text­books and PDFs a more user-friend­ly expe­ri­ence. Plen­ty of news out­lets have pro­vid­ed cov­er­age of the unveil­ing: Engad­get, Giz­mo­do, Ars Tech­ni­ca, etc. And it’s most­ly pos­i­tive. But I’m left won­der­ing if the Kin­dle DX address­es the major prob­lem with Kin­dle 2 ($359). If you spend some time on Ama­zon’s Kin­dle dis­cus­sion forum, you’ll see that one of the longest threads (so far con­tain­ing 857 posts) is devot­ed to com­plaints about the Kindle’s light fonts and dark back­ground — a bad com­bo, espe­cial­ly when you try to read it at night. (Oth­ers have kvetched about it here.) I bought the Kin­dle 2, and real­ly loved it in many ways. But I could­n’t use it in low­er light con­di­tions. At night, the screen gets mud­dy, and the words don’t pop off of the page. And that’s a deal break­er for me. Mean­while, with the same light­ing, a tra­di­tion­al book reads per­fect­ly well.  The major prob­lem with the Kin­dle gets down to this: Users can’t real­ly cus­tomize the look & feel of the read­ing mate­r­i­al. Yes, you can increase and decrease the size of the fonts. But you can’t make the fonts dark­er (unless you know how to hack the darn thing). Nor can you make the back­ground lighter. This one-size-fits-all approach is what Guten­berg gave us in the 15th cen­tu­ry. (Sor­ry, don’t mean to knock on Guten­berg.) It should­n’t be what Ama­zon gives us for  $359 in 2009. Could you imag­ine Apple serv­ing this up? Hard­ly. And speak­ing of Apple, it may have its own e‑book read­er com­ing soon. Accord­ing to PC Mag­a­zine, Apple may be rolling out the iPad ($699), which could be an e‑book/internet read­er and media play­er all rolled into one. For now, I’m wait­ing to see what Apple brings to mar­ket and hop­ing that Ama­zon finds reli­gion. When they get the Kin­dle right, it will be great.

UPDATE: A year lat­er, a new Kin­dle is out (see Wifi ver­sion here, and 3G wire­less ver­sion here). The con­trast is notice­ably improved with this mod­el. But, even bet­ter, Ama­zon now sells (sep­a­rate­ly) a case that has a built in retractable light. Tak­en togeth­er, you can now read the Kin­dle fair­ly well at night, under pret­ty much any light con­di­tions. This Kin­dle I kept, and I’m a big­ger fan than before.

The Invention of Self: One Woman, Eight Characters

in Random | April 30th, 2009

At the TED Con­fer­ence, actress Sarah Jones takes a fun­ny look at “the inven­tion of self,” which is a fan­cy way of say­ing she does some good imper­son­ations. Com­ing up, Jones imper­son­ates an elder­ly Jew­ish women, a young fast-talk­ing Domini­can col­lege stu­dent, peo­ple from var­i­ous nation­al­i­ties (Chi­na, India, France, Ger­many, Jor­dan, etc.). And it’s all mixed with some humor. Runs about 21 min­utes.

The Big List of OpenCourseWare Resources

in Online Courses | April 29th, 2009

The folks at universitiesandcolleges.org have pro­vid­ed a very handy resource here. They’ve  sift­ed through the big Open­Course­Ware uni­verse and cen­tral­ized the resources for over 500 col­lege cours­es. In some cas­es, you’ll find audio lec­tures. In oth­er cas­es, you’ll find lec­ture notes, read­ing lists, and home­work assign­ments. This mega list makes it easy to browse through the dif­fer­ent resources with­out hav­ing to skip from one Open­Course­Ware web site to anoth­er. The page must have tak­en quite some time to put togeth­er. Very glad that they did it.

As a last note, the U&C folks were kind enough to include our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es on their list. Here, you get audio (and some­times video) lec­tures from over 200 cours­es. Sim­ply down­load them to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, and you’ll be trans­port­ed right to the class­room of many fine uni­ver­si­ties across the world.

A Closer Look at YouTube EDU

in Google, YouTube | March 31st, 2009

Introducing YouTube EDU!

in Google, YouTube | March 26th, 2009

Here’s a lit­tle break­ing news: Today, Google has launched YouTube EDU, which cen­tral­izes the con­tent from over 100 uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges (get list here).  This robust col­lec­tion gives you access to lec­tures by pro­fes­sors and world-renowned thought lead­ers, new research and cam­pus tours. At the moment, you can access over 200 full cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing MIT, Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, UCLA, Yale and  IIT/IISc.  And it’s all search­able with­in YouTube EDU.

I plan to fol­low up with a more exten­sive piece soon. But I just want­ed to get the word out and let you start check­ing it out. If you have any first impres­sions, please let us know what you think in the com­ments. Nice work Youtube!

Last­ly, if you want to down­load hun­dreds of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es (most­ly in audio) to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, check out our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es here.

Fol­low us on Twit­ter at @openculture or sign up for our rss feed here.

The New Open Source Textbook

in Media | March 9th, 2009

A lit­tle rev­o­lu­tion is get­ting under­way. The state of Vir­ginia has pub­lished a new open source physics text­book under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. As detailed in this piece from ZDNet, this peer-reviewed text­book was pro­duced in less than six months by a team of authors, which includ­ed “active researchers, high school teach­ers, and col­lege pro­fes­sors, as well as some retirees.” And it was launched on CK-12’s tech­nol­o­gy plat­form. Here comes the new world of text­book pub­lish­ing. Quick to press, vet­ted, easy to revise, pro­duced at a low cost by pub­lish­ers, free for stu­dents. What’s not to like … except if you’re in the tra­di­tion­al text­book pub­lish­ing busi­ness?

As a quick aside, you can find anoth­er free physics text­book (in e‑book for­mat) at motionmountain.net.

via ccLearn Twit­ter Feed (Open Cul­ture Twit­ter feed here)

Hitchens & D’Souza Go Mano-a-Mano on Faith

in Religion | February 18th, 2009

I did­n’t think it would be pos­si­ble, but it hap­pened. I found my two least favorite intel­lec­tu­als togeth­er on the same stage, and King’s Col­lege in NYC made it all pos­si­ble. So, to mark the occa­sion, I bring you Dinesh D’Souza, the acad­e­my’s dressed up ver­sion of Ann Coul­ter, debat­ing the ever surly Christo­pher Hitchens. The top­ic is faith and athe­ism. The debate is heat­ed. And as you watch, you’ll see the charm­ing per­son­al­i­ties come out. The video con­tin­ues with Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10. 90 min­utes in total.

A Guide to E‑Books (and 100 E‑Text Classics)

in e-books | February 12th, 2009

A quick fyi: Mark Glaser at PBS’s Medi­aShift has just pub­lished a handy guide to e‑books. It cov­ers the his­to­ry of e‑books, the com­pet­ing e‑book read­ers, the pros and cons of work­ing with e‑books, what Google and Apple are now doing in this space, and more. Good stuff.

Sep­a­rate­ly, I also want­ed to flag a col­lec­tion that fea­tures e‑texts of 100 major lit­er­ary clas­sics. You’ll find it over at universitiesandcolleges.org.

Philip Roth on Indignation

in Books | December 2nd, 2008

Indig­na­tion is Philip Roth’s 29th book and his third nov­el in the past three years. Pret­ty good for a writer work­ing at 75. In this extend­ed inter­view with Michael Kras­ny (iTunes — Feed — MP3), Roth talks about Indig­na­tion, which takes read­ers back to the Kore­an War and col­lege life in con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­ca.

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Your Digital Magazine Rack

in Web/Tech | October 21st, 2008

A quick fyi: All­top is a new web ser­vice (cre­at­ed by Guy Kawasa­ki) that aggre­gates RSS feeds about pop­u­lar top­ics. Name a top­ic and they bring you sto­ries from “the best web­sites and blogs” on the issue. If you want to see a sam­ple of what I’m talk­ing about, you can take a look at the area where All­top was kind enough to list Open Cul­ture. We’re in their col­lege sec­tion. But you can also find hun­dreds of oth­er top­ic areas here — art, books, health, writ­ing, cof­fee, human rights, you get the pic­ture.

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