1twentyeight — Brad Hamilton

My Kindle arrived yesterday afternoon and I’ve spent the last 24 hours trying it out. The packing was overly simplistic. In fact I was a little surprised…just a standard Amazon cardboard box and a protective liner on the front screen.

After plugging it in and getting a little battery power I began to put it to use. Since I purchased it for myself it was already linked to my Amazon account. In the last 24 hours I’ve ordered 4 books. The purchasing and downloading was straight forward. The Kindle did lock up while downloading the ESV Study Bible. I’m not sure how big the dowload was but it choked and I had to turn the Kindle off and on again to get things back to normal. Other than that minor hiccup everything else has been performed as expected.

Pros:
- Unbelievably easy on the eyes. The E-ink screen is really nice. I had read other reviews and didn’t really believe them, but it is just like looking at the pages of a real book. The screen is the biggest plus for me.
- Easy purchasing capability. You simply choose the Amazon Store from the menu, type the book you want in the search bar and choose Purchase. That’s it. In under 1-2 minutes you have the book on your Kindle and can start reading.
- Bookmarks and Highlights. While you’re reading you simply click the little joystick which starts a highlight, move the joystick right and/or down and then click again to end the highlight. It’s then added to your list of highlights for that book, which can be found under the Menu in the “My Marks” section.

Cons:
- I don’t really care for the keyboard. The buttons have a funny shape with a slightly raised center. It doesn’t feel natural at all. And while I know how to type I felt the need to search for keys instead of intuitively finding them.
- The little joystick seems like it could break easy.
- No backlight. While I appreciate that this greatly improves battery life it would be nice to have.
- Navigation seems to lag a little. As you’re reading if you push down on the joystick it places your cursor at the top of the page. With every downward push of the joystick it moves your cursor down a line, naturally. It just seems to me it could be a little more responsive. I have found myself wanting to touch the screen at the location I wanted to place the cursor.

One other thing I’ve tried, which worked well. I have had a book in PDF form sitting on my computer for quite a while. I emailed the PDF to my Kindle email which converted the PDF to the Kindle format and emailed me back a download link. I downloaded the file, connected my Kindle and simply dropped the PDF in the Documents folder of the Kindle. The PDF is now listed along with my other books for me to read. Pretty cool.

The first 24 hours have been great. I’m looking forward to trying it out in “real-life” scenarios…flights, doctors offices, while driving, etc.

*Full Disclosure: the links to Amazon are through my Affiliate account. Purchases made through my account go towards the projects and work we do through our charity, CommunityOne.

Ignite Cardiff is happening again. This time it’s being held at the Wales Millennium Centre on Thursday, October 15th. I think Ignite is a really cool idea. Presenters get 5 minutes, 15 slides, 15 seconds per slide to talk about anything they want…although there is a “no self promotion” rule.

Unfortunately I’m unable to attend this year since I’m in the States. If you’re in or around Cardiff you should make plans to attend. Here are two links for you. The first is to the official Ignite Cardiff info page, through Cardiff Web Scene, and the second is my short review of Ignite Cardiff #2.

Enjoy.

Ignite Cardiff Details
Ignite Cardiff #2 – A Review

Imagine doing your grocery shopping with a device that allows you to see if the toilet paper you’re about to purchase was manufactured in an environmentally friendly way. Or imagine walking up to someone on the street and within seconds of meeting the person you know his background, where he works, where he lives, what groups he belongs to. Pattie Maes from MIT thinks it’s possible. She demoed such a device at TED. Enjoy.

I recently purchased a Flip Mino HD. Overall I’ve been really impressed with the camera. It’s dead simple to use, small enough to fit in your pocket, and provides very good picture quality. The one downside would be image stabilization. Because of the small size and light weight of the camera it can be difficult to keep still while recording. And forget about walking while shooting and getting a still picture. Another small gripe is that the FlipShare software, while allowing simple uploading to YouTube, it doesn’t allow for the uploading of HD video.

Here’s a short clip (50 seconds) of the view from the back of our house. Don’t forget to watch it in HD.

…at least that’s what I was told last night at Ignite Cardiff. It’s hard to describe exactly what Ignite is or who it’s aimed at, but let me briefly try to explain.

Basically, a presenter is given 5 minutes, 20 slides at 15 seconds per slide, and can talk about anything they want. Last night there were 11 presenters with topics ranging from the truly geek (“Drupal”) to the truly philosophical (“Change”).

The crowd was predominantly male with an average age in the mid-30′s. I would also suspect that the majority of people in the crowd had some interest, either hobby or work, in web technologies, design, social media, etc.

A couple of highlights:

• Pete Prior talked about how he’s tagged his cats with an RFID collar and now knows when they leave the house. You can follow his cats movements on Twitter.
• Lloyd Morgan talked about the psychology of wine. Don’t order the second cheapest bottle of wine on the menu. It’s been marked up the most.
• Rob May gave us all a plan for retreating to Cardiff Castle should zombies attack the city.

All in all it was a good night. I’m looking forward to the next Ignite Cardiff. Thanks to Cardiff Web Scene, Nocci, and Lonely Planet for putting on the event.

I think this is pretty cool: http://ignite.oreilly.com/

I’ll be attending Ignite Cardiff. http://www.cardiffwebscene.com/events/ignite-cardiff-2

Cheers.