New Kindle

It hasn't been in headlines too much lately, but Amazon's Kindle has been doing really well in sales. Looks like the device may get an update shortly. Rumor is the announcement will be made at a NY library, which is kind of weird considering the device's library-unfriendly user agreement and proprietary file format. Still, cool is cool and people will want this.

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New Kindle

It hasn't been in headlines too much lately, but Amazon's Kindle has been doing really well in sales. Looks like the device may get an update shortly. Rumor is the announcement will be made at a NY library, which is kind of weird considering the device's library-unfriendly user agreement and proprietary file format. Still, cool is cool and people will want this.

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FCC and DRM; two great acronyms that go great together

Here's a post on the gaming blog Blue's News about digital rights management. It seems the FCC is seeking consumer input about the use of technologies that impede the use of the materials they're bundled with. I have a few examples I may send in. It's surprisingly easy to get hit with the DRM stick. One example is downloadable books. While the actual audio books may be fine, the DRM often causes problems for people trying to use those books here at the library. It really is a consumer nightmare.

Is Blu-Ray passe?

Here's a NY Times story via the blog HardOCP. It takes a look at Blu-Ray, which was expected to bloom as the HD format bowed out of the high-def format war last year. The problem is, people don't seem to be snatching up Blu-Ray in the droves Sony imagined. While the price of players has finally become reasonable, there seems to be a real sense that downloadable high def movies are just around the corner. In other words, the new disc-based media may have simply come too late. Meanwhile, there are only just over a thousand titles available on Blu-Ray. Already, one Web-based service offers 1,400 titles as high-def downloads. Could DVDs outlive Blu-Ray simply by being "good enough"?

is open source viable?

Is open source just a fad?
According to the tech blog HardOCP, some projects aren't as healthy as their popularity indicates. Here's the post. Apparently OpenOffice only has 24 active developers working on it. When you consider how many apps are included in that package and how frequently it's updated, that's not many at all. In some ways this should probably be expected: It's hard to get people to work on something that doesn't have a traditional revenue stream. While OpenOffice is backed by Sun, many open source projects don't enjoy regular funding or are maintained by volunteers. The products are solid enough to make the commercial equivalents work for their money. But in the long run, might that be a bad thing? If open source squeezes the market, especially where small developers are concerned, but then proves unviable, could it lead to stagnation?

Be your own tech support

Ever tried getting tech support from some of the newer gadget companies out there? Probably not more than once.
Some of them really do try. But if you're like most people, you lack the patience to put up with the abysmal support that has become the norm for so much of our tech.
Here, via the blog lifehacker, is a list of some go-to sites to get real help from real people. Most of these are forums. You just leave your question and the masses weigh in. It's a mixed bag, sure, and you have to remember these folks aren't actually affiliated with the product at hand. But if time and user-friendliness are of the essence, online forums beat the pants off official tech support.