07Dec 2009 by R&O 1 Comment

The Kindle arrives in Canada

Of Interest, Technology
Amazon.com's spiffy new reading device is now available in Canada. Kindle is now available for order from the Amazon.com web site and, for now, is shipped from the U.S (and subject to duty and taxes of course). But what exactly is so great about the Kindle? I've said for some time that print publications (newspapers, magazines, flyers, brochures etc) are still being printed on paper because there's nothing available to replace them. When something comes along that can offer a similar reading experience without the need for bulky hardware and expensive data transfer charges, print media will begin to die. The Kindle may be the beginning of that wave. I'm not saying that ALL printing will come to an immediate halt. There will probably be the need for text and…
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24Nov 2009 by R&O 2 Comments

Technological Torture

Rants, Technology
Our expensive, European, state-of-the-art clothes dryer has an interesting button labeled Extra Dry. I'm confused. Why do we need this setting when the assumption is the clothes DRYER will dry our clothes until all the moisture is removed ? The dryer demands we use the extra dry setting to ensure the clothes are completely dry as opposed to the optimistically labeled normal setting which leaves socks, shirts and sheets a bit damp and guaranteed to be exceedingly uncomfortable if worn directly from the dryer. That's not normal. Not like our old and much cheaper dryer which just dried everything completely without a number of variation selections to mystify and confuse. It only had two knobs and one button and I loved it. Our new dryer has a back-lit touch pad…
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20Oct 2009 by R&O 3 Comments

The Death of Digital Discs

Technology
I sold my large vinyl record collection in 2002 after lugging boxes of records from home to home, maintaining each with brushes and special liquid cleaners and praying I or someone else wouldn't scratch one of my beloved records. I held on to my vinyl records for 14 years after abandoning them for the smaller CD format in 1988. I abandoned the CD format in 2006 and converted most of my CD collection to high quality MP3s, replacing my CD players with 8 streaming audio players located in various rooms in our house. Digital audio is fantastic, my entire music collection is stored on a 4-disc NAS 1TB RAID the size of a small toaster and I can access any album or song instantly along with Internet radio stations and…
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25Aug 2009 by R&O No Comments

The next wave?

Technology
Apple computers is reportedly close to launching a new tablet computer that may replace the Kindle, the Sony Reader and a number of other portable devices. The picture above is a design concept for their reader and, according to rumors, will be available in two sizes (a 6" screen for gaming, videos and ebooks and a larger size to run Mac applications). I mentioned the demise of print in a past post and I'm not sure this is the piece of hardware that will make my prediction come true but it's getting close. Portability is the key factor in the demise of print but an expensive piece of hardware like the Apple Tablet will be stolen, broken and outdated as quickly as your ipod so I'm not sure it's the…
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