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Technology — 13 Comments
22
Aug 08

The Kindle is a portable book shelf

Since the Kindle is a new type of product whose purpose is to transform how we read, I try to observe how I use it myself.

A couple things.

First of all, I am reading a little more than normal. I’m also reading more new releases since the Kindle store recommends new books and bestsellers more than less well-known works. In the Kindle store, they prominently list both new releases and major bestsellers on the home screen. With the average new release priced at $9.99, I can take more of a risk on a new book; often the kind of books that have captured public attention, but which I would normally avoid until I finally forget all about them (The Tipping Point). I’m also reading less difficult material as many books from smaller publishers and academic presses are still largely unavailable.

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General — 2 Comments
12
Aug 08

Preventing collisions at intersections

I’ve seen several people writing about Tom Vanderbilt’s thought-provoking, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) . Every few pages there is a good idea that leads you down some mental rabbit hole. I have highlighted passages and dog-eared pages on the Kindle every time I sit down to read it. The universal experience of driving has turned us all into amateur psychoanalysts navigating complex social interactions, so the book’s popularity is understandable and says a lot about how much is going on while we’re just driving.

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General — Comments Off on Daily reads with feeds
11
Aug 08

Daily reads with feeds

Last Friday I was reading through the monthly archives at Matt Webb’s excellent and erudite Interconnected blog. I especially enjoy his brief book reviews and reading recommendations, which I follow religiously as he reads 100+ books a year, most of which I have never heard of before.

Anyway, he created an RSS feed to read Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notebooks (1,565 pages) on a daily basis in easy to digest chunks. This is a great way to read lengthy material that is not presented as a linear narrative or in chapter form. The Notebooks are perfect for this as would be any sort of diary or journal. For other daily content, I recommend subscribing to the Pepys Diary, which provides several different types of feed content based on what you would like to glean from the material.

There is also a service, DailyLit, which specializes in delivering daily book content via email or RSS. There are many public domain and copyrighted works available and you can customize delivery with options like receiving updates only during the work week or at certain times of the day, etc.

General — Comments Off on Make money for someone special as you surf
08
Aug 08

Make money for someone special as you surf

As an Amazon Prime member, I buy a fair amount of stuff on Amazon, especially Kindle books and MP3’s. With free 2 day shipping and $3.99 next day shipping, it’s too easy to buy things on impulse.

One cool program Amazon created is their affiliate program called Amazon Associates , where people can create links with their associate ID that when clicked will pay a percentage (around 6%) if the click results in a sale. The associate program is very popular among bloggers as it gives you one more way to make money off something you do anyway, like recommend books.

I see a lot of popular bloggers like VC blogger, Paul Kedrosky, who use this and it occurred to me that while I appreciate the book or product recommendations, wouldn’t it be better to award this benefit to someone in my immediate circle? In other words, shouldn’t a nice Amazon commission on MY purchases go to someone I actually know and care about? Someone who might really benefit from it rather than some Venture Capitalist out West who I’ve never met? It’s really just a matter of substituting the Amazon associate ID’s at the end of the URL. After a quick search, I found a Greasemonkey Script that does this.

Now, whenever I load any Amazon link anywhere in my browser the Greasemonkey script rewrites the link and inserts my friend’s associate ID. If I click the link and buy something my friend gets a 6-10% commission.

I would not recommend using your own associate ID as you cannot make commissions on your own purchases. Of course, if you got your friend to use your Amazon ID and you used his ID, then you might both be able to make reciprocal purchases.

It’s very easy. Here’s all you need to do:

  1. Make your friend get an Amazon Associate ID.
  2. Install and use Firefox as your web browser, if you haven’t already.
  3. Install the Greasemonkey Firefox Extension
  4. Install the Amazon URL rewriting Greasemonkey script
  5. Edit the script and add your friend’s associate ID.

That’s all there is to it. Now any time you buy anything from Amazon, your friend or loved one will get a nice percentage, which can add up over time.

In the future, it might be nice to add a feature to the script to rotate through a group of Amazon associate ID’s from friends and assign one to each link at random to make it more interesting. Or, you could see about finding Amazon associate ID’s for any charities that participate in the program.

Cool Tools / General / Software / Internet — 6 Comments
14
Jun 08

Free books for the Kindle

A while back I broke down and bought the Amazon Kindle, which I love. I have been waiting for a perfect ebook reader since I would like to get rid of any material possessions that are not necessary. Let’s face it, books are pretty useless unless you’re actively reading them. Books are an inefficient medium in that they are heavy and take up a lot of space.

One of my goals is to reduce my material possessions to the absolute minimum. Like many people I no longer own CD’s for music (having sold them several years ago), but I have also been scanning in all paper records and photos and have sold a lot of furniture and junk on Craigslist. I would eventually like to get to the point where my possessions consist of: a car, some clothing, computing tools, and a few personal effects.

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Literature / Society — Comments Off on At a Long Enough Time Horizon
18
Feb 08

At a Long Enough Time Horizon

Yesterday I had an itch to set my thoughts careening by reading some good science-fiction. I went down to the library and picked up Vernor Vinge’s “Marooned in Real Time“. It did not disappoint. It was interesting enough that I ended up finishing it in one day. It has the perfect mix of intrigue and ideas that set your imagination afire. The basic plot is a murder mystery with the twist that it takes place as the cast of characters travels through time using bobble technology. Bobbles are basically stasis spheres, so you don’t really travel through time as much as everything remains in suspended animation while the world goes on without you. The characters in the book end up bobbling through millions of years of real time and are able to observe changes to earth geography and evolution in progress.

Far future earth evolution is exactly the kind of thing that’s fun to speculate about. How will life change? What new animals will arise from current forms? Will any creatures achieve sapience? Likewise, if we could travel through time for millions of years, how far could we go? What would happen to the universe? What would we see if we could stick around until the end of the universe?

The pleasant side effect of reading about the flow of millions of years is that it makes all of your problems shrink to insignificance. At a long enough time horizon, nothing really matters. When the going gets tough, this idea can provide relief and perspective. One of the humbling facts about existence is the knowledge that everything you do, everything you have, everything you know, is temporary… even humanity, even this world. If everything is temporary what is the proper attitude of life? How should this inform our conduct?