Anyway.

I’ve been dying for a book reading device that would make [...]]]>

Lately, I have become a bit of a voracious reader; keeping a stack of almost thirty books on the go at a time. I’m not bragging. I actually think I may have a bit of a problem. But that’s fodder for another post.

Anyway.

I’ve been dying for a book reading device that would make my books easier to bring with me and access on the go. I love to read at my local Starbucks but don’t like to stick to just one book and bringing a stack around with me makes the baristas compelled to tell me that I’m not permitted to stay quite that long. “We do close, you know!”

So a book reader was in order, but with all the buzz about the upcoming Apple tablet announcement, I thought it prudent to wait until January 27th to make my decision. That evening, after reading the announcement coverage, I ordered an Amazon Kindle DX, it arrived less than 2 days later and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Unlike the Apple iPad, it is not backlit or glossy which is a huge plus for book reading in my opinion. I look at a backlit LCD all day at work and my eyes get strained. I need a light to read by, but I don’t need it to be emanating from the device. The Kindle also offers wireless access via Amazon’s global Whispernet as part of the purchase of the device—not something else I have to add to my already bloated cellular bill. That alone is magic. And the Kindle, being an Amazon product, has access to a wide selection of titles to read.¹

You might assume from this that I’m not a big fan of the Apple iPad. Well, you’re right. At the moment, I’m not.

But, in the case of the iPad, the “one more thing…” that was once a giddily anticipated staple of Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses is a powerful one. The one more thing here is the same thing that made the iPhone so compelling. It’s not the touch screen, the accelerometer, the wifi or 3G access…it’s all of those things plus one very powerful component whose impact cannot be underestimated…

…developers.

We have only seen the iPad with a handful of desktop-style apps…ones that we already have on our iPhones and iPod touches…expanded and made somewhat more glorious on the bigger screen. And, in spite of how Mr. Jobs said it as if we were about to have our eyes opened to a new world, we already know what it’s like to have the internet in our hands.² But what we haven’t seen is what the iPad can do in the hands of the enormous and shockingly talented community of developers Apple has attracted.

I saw the announcement on January 27th hoping to see something that would solve the logistical problems of my reading addiction and was disappointed. That is not to say that I won’t be getting an Apple iPad. I fear that may by unavoidable. I might be compelled to, not by Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field, but by the possibilities for this device as seen through the talented and innovative minds of what will no doubt be a formidable Apple iPad developer army.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

1. the only problem here is that 40% of my reading is rather obscure—the very “long tail” that has made Amazon so successful—and many of those titles are not yet available for the Kindle…still, there’s lots to choose from
2. Heck, with the iPhone, I know what it’s like to have the internet in my pants!

1. interesting to note that Scotch makes this glue stick but 3M makes Post-Its…maybe it’s not that interesting since they’re all the same company

2007 was pretty good too; that year I started appearing on TV as a regular guest on The Lab with Leo Laporte on G4 TechTV Canada and the How Network in Australia. This was huge for me. I had no business being on TV, but I [...]]]>

2008 has been an amazing year for me.

2007 was pretty good too; that year I started appearing on TV as a regular guest on The Lab with Leo Laporte on G4 TechTV Canada and the How Network in Australia. This was huge for me. I had no business being on TV, but I have a passion for helping people with technology and a need to encourage people creatively to embrace the freedom it can afford. This allowed me to get past my fears and actually do pretty well on camera.

In 2008, the Lab was cancelled and I lost that outlet. But, through the wonderful friendships I’d made while guesting on the show, I was encouraged to go it on my own and create a video podcast component for MacMerc.com…MacMerc.TV. The show is about ready to launch and I attribute much of the success I’ve had in even creating it and achieving it as a goal to two things: poisoned popcorn and following strangers on Twitter.

To explain this, we’ll go back to 2007 again. It was Remembrance Day weekend up here in Canada (November 11th) and my good friend Maria and I were going to head down to “The States” for a bit of shopping. Unknown to me at the time, the melted butter I had sprinkled liberally on my popcorn the night before had gone bad just enough that it made me violently ill, but not so much that it tasted in any way “funny”…so I polished off a whole bowl.

The next morning, yes, violently ill. There’s no need to give you details but, suffice it to say my abs got a workout that morning. I moaned and groaned and slept through most of the day.

Later that night, after the storm had passed, I checked Twitter for some happy news and found that someone I didn’t know (a follower of a follower of someone I did know) had invited the world to watch him as he tried to compose music in his studio. This stranger was Geoff Smith and that night turned out to be the very first of his many and awesome UStream concerts.

Note: if you happen to follow me on Twitter, first off, thank you and, secondly, if I every go off on a “come check out @geoffsmith ‘s UStream concert” jag, understand that I do it because I honestly, deeply believe the experience is so worthwhile that you need to come take part.

He’s got a Christmas show coming up on December 15th, by the way…

From being in that first concert, I have “met” so many cool people and, through them, so many more. Each contact has been an encouragement to me at some time over the last year; the names Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell spring to mind, but their friends quickly became my friends too. Awesomeness.

So, the lesson?

Poison Popcorn: every so often an unexpected turn of events can be an chance to find other opportunities. Find value in failure.

Follow strangers: often breaking out of your established group yields a new group with its own benefits and strengths. If you’re on Twitter, look and see who the people you follow follow…watch to whom the people you follow send @replies… they see something in these people—find out what! It could be very valuable to you.

This time out I’d like to introduce you to the LapDawg. It’s a laptop “desk” with two aluminum legs that each have three positional locking joints. This enables you to “pose” the LapDawg to suit your [...]]]>

It’s been a while, but it’s time I posted something from the backlog of “stuff I dig.”

This time out I’d like to introduce you to the LapDawg. It’s a laptop “desk” with two aluminum legs that each have three positional locking joints. This enables you to “pose” the LapDawg to suit your needs be it laying in bed tapping out a blog post or sitting at a desk…tapping out a blog post.

Have a look at some of the configurations on the LapDawg site and then forget them—you can do better. I’ll post a picture of my perfect LapDawg setup when I get a chance, but it is nothing like any of the rudimentary poses shown on the site. I’ve been using the LapDawg for a few days now and I’m really liking it a lot.

It sells for $130, which is a bit on the steep side but I think the products versatility justifies its cost.

Note: My Twitter Lexicon follows

If you read many tech blogs you must have read at least one by now that has mentioned something about Twitter. Positive reports generally make note that Twitter is hard to explain and that you either get it or you don’t. Those that criticize Twitter might [...]]]>

Note: My Twitter Lexicon follows

If you read many tech blogs you must have read at least one by now that has mentioned something about Twitter. Positive reports generally make note that Twitter is hard to explain and that you either get it or you don’t. Those that criticize Twitter might just be categorized as those who simply don’t get it. I’m realistic and open enough to acknowledge that Twitter isn’t for everyone and the fact that even those who do like it can rarely agree on why speaks to its enigmatic appeal.

I like it.

How do I define it? I believe it was intended as method by which users could share whatever it is that they were doing with whoever chose to follow their exploits on their computer or cell phone. Tweets were intended to be nothing more than globally accessible status messages, but they have grown beyond that now and will continue to grow beyond what they are today as Twitter’s userbase continues to expand. New features are being added as the population grows and perhaps one day tweets will no longer be restricted to 140 characters of unformatted text. But I think there is a certain challenge to expressing yourself within the confines of this simple condition. I hope that particular limitation stays.

Like most online social experiments, a vocabulary and a sort of etiquette has emerged and developed. Twitter is still young enough that these terms and protocols of politeness haven’t completely gelled yet, but you can see the unwritten rules forming in the moral dilemmas users are faced with and how they voice them over the service itself.

There is also a pecking order developing. For the most part, people who are “internet famous” elsewhere bring their popularity with them to Twitter. Many are the A-List bloggers and podcasters with hordes of followers, few but revered are those who actually reciprocate Twitter friendship and engage in conversation with their myriad followers. Follow the right collection of twitters and you will witness them holding court at various times.

Services such as Twitterholic will help you quickly determine who the Twitterati are, whether or not they follow as much as they are followed (see Reciprocal Following) and how much they actually post (see Twitter Lurker). Twittervision marries Google Maps with Twitter showing you a sampling of the public list while also pinpointing the location of the twitters themselves.

Twitter has quickly become one of those topics that every blogger seems to have to talk about at some point. Like spam, “why I haven’t posted in so long”, our pets and blogging itself, it has rapidly graduated to the status of “ubiquitous blog topic.” Well, count me among the rest of them who have blogged on this mysterious social experiment.

I’m not a member of the Twitterati, I don’t reciprocally follow you if you follow me and I wouldn’t suggest you start D’ing me without getting to know me first, but I hope my posts are rarely self-absorbed and I’ll try to keep the "Look at me" tweets to a minimum.

Here are a few Twitter terms I have picked up in the last months of using Twitter. Thank you and happy tweeting.

Twitter Lexicon

@
A reply sent to the public list in regards to a single twitters tweet using the "at" symbol followed by the username of the twitter to whom one is replying followed by the reply. A series of @s between twitters constitutes a Twitter Chat.

"Classic" Tweet
A tweet that simply answers the question "What are you doing?"

Fake Twitter
A twitter who poses as a real or fictional person and tweets in character. Darth Vader and Steve Jobs are popular Fake Twitters.

D
A direct message to a twitter or the act of sending a direct message to a twitter (i.e. @RickMacMerc – I just D’d you)

L:
A method by which a twitter can inform the Twittersphere and sites such as Twittervision of the twitter’s geographic location (e.g. L:home=02134)

"Look At Me" Tweet
Found on the opposite side of a very thin line between it and Twitter Spam, these tweets direct twitters via web links to the tweet poster’s own website or to web content that promotes that poster in some way.

This practice is frowned upon by some twitters and exercised by some of the most popular twitters.

Mass Follow
To add large numbers of twitters to ones friends list in order to take advantage of Reciprocal Following and, thus, increase ones ranking on Twitterholic. Approximately 20% of the people one adds to ones friends list will reciprocate. Therefore, if one adds 7,000 twitters to ones friends list, 1,400 will reciprocally follow.

It is largely believed that those who Mass Follow do not pay much attention to any tweets on the Twittersphere. Those who reciprocally follow them eventually grow tired of the lack of response and feedback they receive from the Mass Follower and soon remove them from their friends list.

/me Tweet
A tweet written in the third person and formatted in such a way that it is understood that it is invisibly prefaced with the twitter’s username. (e.g. is posting to his blog) These tweets are similar to IRC posts such as "/me is posting to his blog" where the tag "/me" is replaced with the username when it is displayed by the IRC service.

"Non Sequitur" Tweet
A tweet that doesn’t answer the question “What are you doing” but expresses a random thought unconnected to the greater thread of the Twittersphere.

Nudge
To figuratively poke at a twitter to remind them to tweet.

Private Twitter
A twitter who does not tweet to the public list but only shares tweets with twitters he or she has added to his or her own friends list. You may add a Private Twitter to your friends list but you will not receive his or her tweets unless the Private Twitter adds you to his or her friends list.

"Quote" tweet
A tweet that quotes a line from a movie, television show or song. This post may or may not reformat the line to make it better answer the question "What are you doing?"

Reciprocal Following
A practice among twitters to add to their list of friends anyone who follows them.

"Self-Absorbed" Tweet
A tweet that has no meaning to anyone but the twitter who posted it. Most tweets potentially fall under this heading depending on the particular twitter.

Tweet
A post made to Twitter.

The act of posting to Twitter.

Tweet Fiction
A fictional tweet.

Twitter
A service that poses the question "What are you doing?" and affords you a method by which to answer the question, in 140 characters or less, and share that answer across the internet with others via SMS, web, chat and various desktop applications.

Also, a term used to describe one who uses Twitter.

Twitter Chat
A series of tweets between 2 or more twitters that forms a conversation.

This practice is frowned upon by a majority of twitters.

Twitter Character
See Fake Twitter.

Twitter Chat Fragment
The incomplete portion of a Twitter Chat that one receives due to having not added all members of the Twitter Chat to ones own friends list.

Twitter Lurker
A twitter who rarely if ever tweets. John Edwards and Amber MacArthur or popular Twitter Lurkers with thousands of followers but only a few dozen tweets.

Twitter Purist
A twitter who only posts "Classic" Tweets.

Twitter Sheep
The followers of members of the Twitterati. This term is often used derogatorily.

Twitter Snob
A twitter who seldom if ever replies to @s or Ds sent by those outside an elite subsection of their friends list. The term is often undeservedly applied. Twitter Snob is an epithet that is often attached to Twitter Purists.

Twitter Spam
Posts typically of the same nature as email, comment and other spam that are submitted to the Twittersphere to taint the public list. All tweets are accessible from Twitter.com and are scanned by Google, so any link posted to Twitter serves to bolster the linked website’s Google ranking.

Twitterati
Twitters who have a strong influence on the Twittersphere with many followers and posts.

Twitterbot
A twitter who uses scripting or other method to automatically tweet or even a manually updated Twitter account that serves as a presence on the Twittersphere for a website, podcast or other such entity. Twitterbots commonly post weather information, website status or news updates from RSS feeds.

Twittersphere
The Twitter public list, Twitter.com, all sites (such as Twitterholic and Twittervision) which present the vastness of Twitter for easy consumption, and of course the Twitters themselves.

URL reduction
A function of Twitter that automatically replaces long URLs with URLs from TinyURL.com.

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It is basically [...]]]>

You’ve seen my my knives. Well, I’m growing my collection slowly and, in its current state, it does not fit in my humble knife block–too many chef sized knives. So wandering through Linens-N-Things, I can across the iGo Kapoosh Universal Knife Block and the answer to my knife block problems.

It is basically a hollow knife block with the cavity filled with a bazzillion black plastic rods that get out of the way when you pass a knife into them and hold firm once the knife is in place. Brilliant!!

Amazon has no thumbnail for this product, so I snapped a few pics and threw them at my Flickr account.