Nov 18
Editorial David
amazon, apple, book, download, DRM, e-book, ebook, electronic, file, freedom, iphone, ipod, kindle, market, mobile, mobile phone, mp3, pdf, phone, sharing, store
Electronic Book Readers
With the release of the International Kindle from Amazon, the subject of e-book readers is heating up. This is one of those technologies I want to love, who wouldn’t? You have a low power device that gives you a much more natural, ink on paper, like reading experience than any backlit LCD screen can. Then with Amazon you have an integrated discovery and delivery method for receiving books to your reader, just like Apple did for the MP3 player with iTunes.
Then again, I’ve just compared the Kindle book store to iTunes, perhaps this is where the problems start. We all know that in its early days, iTunes was locked up with DRM to the point of madness, the only way to free your content was to burn everything to audio CD and re-rip to MP3. Of course, things are now better in the digital download music market, with DRM gone and a choice of music stores. Although, both the movie and e-book industries have yet to catch up to the current state of sanity we enjoy with music downloads. I remember many years ago when I experimented with the e-book store for my Palm Pilot. Not only were your e-books tied to your credit card number, but they were tied to your device too. If either changed there wasn’t a clear route for how to get your books back. So when I did inevitably change my device, I lost my books.
With the Kindle, things aren’t quite so restrictive, from what I’ve been able to find out, not having one myself, your books are only tied to your Amazon account. This means that you can transfer to new Kindles, and also to the iPhone application. Unfortunately, Amazon haven’t released an application for other mobile platforms yet. Still though, the Kindle isn’t the only e-book reader out there (there’s also Sony and Bebook readers), but you can’t get your Amazon e-books on any of them. Whereas, the music I buy from any music store on the web can be played on any device I like. So the Amazon e-book system still ties you to the one device, just like iTunes with the iPod, which I submit is a reason not to use iTunes. The same goes for all current e-book stores.
My phone vs the Kindle. Which would you rather carry around?
I think the e-book and movie industries needs to learn from history. All encompassing ecosystems like iTunes work for a while, until the market (i.e. consumers) learn enough about the restrictions that DRM puts on them. Electronic documents already have a standard, PDF, which is so ubiquitous, it would be hard to imagine any other format being used. Yes, PDF’s can be copied without restriction, just like MP3′s. Although, a recent study has shown what many people believed all along, file sharers buy the most music, and I am certain that the same will be true for books and movies when they are available DRM free. Currently, the only way to get DRM free e-books and movies is illegal. Which is a shame for those industries, because by not using DRM free formats they are denying themselves a large and enthusiastic market segment.
Finally, lets look at the devices themselves. Despite the attractive features I mentioned at the beginning of this, it is still another device to carry around and look after. E-book readers are fairly large when compared to the likes of MP3 players and mobile phones. They are also expensive, the cheapest setting you back over £200. Sure, I imagine they’d be nice to have laying around at home. Although, in our busy lives, sometimes the best time to read a few pages of a book is in those strange little pockets time during the day (as David Allen would put it). Is it really worth carrying around something the size of an e-book reader? In these days when convergence seems to be an irresistible force, I find it hard to believe that e-book readers will get a firm foothold when mobile phones can do the same job, with a PDF application providing a free or inexpensive electronic book reading function.
Nov 11
How-To Guides David
alias, backup, backups, cloud, computing, curl, download, e-mail, email, flickr, forwarding, gmail, google, hotmail, scripts, upload, webmail, wget, yahoo
When cloud computing goes bad
Cloud computing is great isn’t it? We can have all our data stored somewhere on the interwebs, accessible to us from any computer or mobile phone. I’m picturing it now, a white fuzzy-bordered soft-focus video with shampoo-advert beautiful people gather around a computer smiling and laughing at work and at home. Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but cloud computing definitely has its advantages, especially given that OSX and Linux are nibbling away at Window’s desktop market share. We’re in more need than ever for cross-platform and platform agnostic software solutions.
So, what’s the catch? Well, if you exercise due diligence on which services to use, then there are not really any significant catches. But there lies the rub, I know most people won’t bother with due diligence, they’ll just sign up to that free email/calendar/documents service and give little thought to what happens when that services breaks down or (wrongly) decides you’re doing naughty things and locks you out, or even worse, disappears from the internet forever. Think about that for a moment, it could be a disaster for you.
The most important thing to ensure with any cloud computing service (e.g. email, calendar, documents, etc.) is to make sure you can get a copy of your own data. If your data only exists in the cloud, then you don’t have your data. If your cloud service ever has a catastrophic failure, goes out of business or locks you out of your account, then you loose access to all of your data. If you have a backup copy, then you’re already in a position to set up an account elsewhere and upload your data. Of course, your cloud service should do their own backups, but downloading your own copy is like having an off-site backup too.
If you use any of the Google services then you should take a look at dataliberation.org. It is a site ran by Google employees, and collects all the information you need on how to extract your data from Google’s cloud services like Gmail, Calendar and Documents, etc. If you use some other cloud service, then it’s up to you to investigate how to get a copy of your data from their servers. If you can’t, then stop using them and find someone else. Being able to manually download backups is okay, but what you really want is to automate backup downloads. This is where command line applications like wget and cURL can come in handy for running scheduled scripts. Email is no different. I recently blogged about how to set up an automated email backup. Although a reliable manual method is to set up Mozilla Thunderbird to keep offline copies of all your IMAP folders. What’s that? You don’t use IMAP? Really, get with the times, please!
Compute in the cloud with peace of mind
Talking of email, there is one extra thing you can do to protect yourself from loosing your email/webmail account. In the even that you loose access to your chosen webmail service, nobody can email you, and if you have to set up a new account you’ll have get in touch with everyone you know to share your new email address. This is an inconvenience for everyone. Therefore, the best way to protect yourself against this is to: first, never let anyone know the email address of your webmail service; and second, get yourself an email alias to redirect to your real email address. The easiest way to get an email alias is to register a domain name an set up email forwarding there. Some organisations offer email aliases as a curtosy to their members (e.g. the Institute of Physics offers user@iop.org aliases). Failing everything else, you could try out myhandle.com. Then, if your regular webmail service ever closes down, you can set up a new account and redirect your public email address to the new webmail account.
Let’s go over this again …
Cloud computing is great, so if you want to enjoy the advantages while avoiding the pitfalls, then just make sure you do the following:
- Make sure you know how to download regular backups of your data.
- Obtain an email alias to use as your public email address.
Oct 26
Reviews David
9.10, cannonical, cd, distribution, download, gnome, installer, karmic, koala, linux, live, livecd, open, operating, source, system, ubuntu
As the winter draws in, it’s time for wrap up warm with some open source goodness, as the October 29th release date of Ubuntu‘s latest version, Karmic Koala, draws near. So, let’s take a look at what’s new!
Running the installer from the Live CD is the same user-friendly set up that Ubuntu always has. Although in addition to drive encryption that came in with the last version, there is now an added option to format your hard drive with the new Ext4 file system, a new version of Linux’s native file format.
Once the installer gets running, you get to watch a presentation of screens telling you all the key features of the operating system. This something Windows has had for years, and is a great idea to educate new users on just what they can do with Ubuntu.
Ubuntu's new informative installer
Once you’re into the Ubuntu desktop, everything will be familiar if you’ve used previous versions. Although, you can see straight away a fresh set of icons have been used, and the default wallpaper is much brighter than previous versions.
Browsing the applications and system menus gives you a view of the key new features to Karmic.
The default IM application has been switched from the long-standing Pidgin, to a new but very similar application called Empathy. I expect few users will really notice the difference here.
Ubuntu's new IM client, Empathy
In the applications menu, you will find the “Ubuntu Software Center”. Desktop Linux distributions have long had software to deliver applications to you. Ubuntu’s has been the “Synaptic Package Manager”. Although Software Centre gives you a far more user friendly interface. The distinction of having a single section named “Free software” hints at Cannonical’s long term goals of being able to deliver commercial software to the Ubuntu desktop. This is a boon for developers. Until now, Linux’s repository method of delivering software has been a mixed blessing for them. The aspiration of new developers is to get their work into as many repositories as possible. However, commercial developers have shied away from this because Linux repositories have offered little opportunity for generating an income.
The Ubuntu Software Center
Confusingly, there is another existing application called “Add/Remove Applications” alongside the Synaptic Package Manager in the System/Administration menu. This appears to offer the same software set as Synatpic does, although again with a better user interface, including popularity ratings.
Ubuntu's Add/Remove Applications window
Finally, we have the addition of “Ubuntu One”, Cannonical’s other embryonic software as a service. Ubuntu One is a Dropbox like service (utilising Amazon S3), available to all Ubuntu users. For free, everyone gets 2GB of storage, but this can be expanded to 50GB for $10 (US) a month, although I couldn’t find where you are meant to authenticate your account. You can also access your files via the web and share specific files and folders with specific individuals. The eventual aim is that you will be able to synchronise all of your application settings across multiple Ubuntu computers. This is a promising service, but from my own research I have yet to find any information about privacy and encryption, which are essential to me for any on-line storage service. On the other hand, the Cannonical deserve kudos for finding innovative ways to generate more income from their desktop operating system.
Ubuntu's "Ubuntu One" cloud storage running.
You can find more screen shots at my Ubuntu 9.10 Flickr gallery.
If all of this has caught your interest, then go Get Ubuntu!
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