gmosx

Amazon Kindle International Edition

by gmosx, at 07 Oct 2009
My main hobby is reading. Reading newspapers, magazines, sites, blogs, PDFs and books. I especially like reading books. I am really pleased to see that as of today, Amazon Kindle is finally eligible for international orders.


To tell you the truth, I would prefer to get the DX version (PDF or an equivalent open standard is the future of e-reading if you ask me).

But I can't help it, I have to place my order right away!
2 comments

Aggregates

by gmosx, at 14 Dec 2008
Inspired by a recent Wired article (Kill your Blog) and given the fact that my hectic daily schedule prohibits such leisures as free time, I decided to experiment with a new blogging format, which I call 'Aggregates': collections of 2-3 short and succinct stories in a single article combo. Without further ado let me continue with the first such 'Aggregate'.

--

Don't get me wrong, I truly admire Google's technical achievements. However, I am afraid that Google's '20 percent time' scheme may have negative side-effects. Different teams work in isolation without a solid engineering framework. Their output is often convoluted and incompatible: multiple VM's (V8, Dalvik), inconsistent coding conventions and different implementation languages, overly complex specifications (OpenSocial), non standard approaches to common problems, NIH syndrome, etc. Have a look at Amazon's (AWS) services for a stark contrast: well engineered, standards compliant APIs, 'genetically engineered' to work together. A developer's nirvana.

--

I was blown away by the first promotional videos of the forthcoming Nokia N97. The hardware looks irresistibly sexy: the screen 'pops open' with a clever and efficient mechanism, the diagonal button is an ingenious touch, and (being an old hacker) I love the full-size keyboard. But the real surprise is the software: I strongly believe that an iGoogle style (and allow me to say 'Wii channel'-like) User Interface is the way to go. The old 'desktop' paradigm used by Android belongs to the 70's.