Kindle could be new page

The Digital Age has taken us beyond many forms of traditional media. Records and CDs have been replaced by MP3s. VHS videotapes and DVDs are on their way out in favor of digital downloads.

One traditional media that technology has not been able to get a firm grasp on is the book.

For years, companies have tried to develop "digital readers" that would replace the stacks of hardcovers and paperbacks that consumers have collected over the years. The promise of converting those stacks into digital form is enticing, but the technology has never been there. Reading text on a display has never been as comfortable as a properly typeset page in a book.

Amazon hopes to change that with its new eBook reader, the Kindle— a portable device that weighs less and is thinner than a paperback.

Other devices, such as the Sony Reader, rely on a Windows-based PC for purchasing and getting the books to the device, whereas Kindle has embedded support for the high-speed EVDO wireless data network, which is used in many cell phones.

Users can wirelessly purchase a new book on their Kindle wherever they are, making it the first portable bookstore.

If anyone can succeed at digital distribution of books, it would be Amazon — the company that pioneered selling books online. Unfortunately, eBook readers won't be the next digital revolution until they decide on a standard for delivering books.

Both the Kindle and Sony Reader use separate proprietary file formats to deliver purchased books. Sony has had a reader out for over a year, and sells books through its Connect store in the BBeB (Broadband eBook) format. These digital books are incompatible with the Kindle, which stores its books in the AZW (Amazon Whispernet) format. Users who switched from one device to the other would be forced to leave their purchased books behind with their old devices.

This isn't the case with music, which has long settled on MP3 as the standard format for digital music. MP3s were ubiquitous long before the iPod came to fruition in 2001. If another manufacturer debuts a better music player, the music I've already ripped as MP3 will sync with the new device because MP3 is the standard.

For digital books to succeed, Amazon and other eBook manufacturers must adopt a standard, device-agnostic, file format for book purchases.

PDF has become the established way of sharing documents on the Web because it can be viewed on a variety of platforms and devices. It would be an excellent format for distributing book purchases.

With no assurances that Sony and Amazon will be in the eBook reader business in a decade, I'm not exactly comfortable shelling out $10 to $15 for a digital copy of a book I might not be able to read in a few years because the hardware is no longer available.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press

1Password is good tool to manage accounts

Ask anyone who knows the basics of computer security, and they'll recommend having a unique password for each Web site — it creates an extra layer of protection should a given account be compromised.

Unfortunately, most people have accounts on dozens of sites, and remembering a unique password for each of them isn't easy. I've been using an application on my Mac called 1Password (www.1password.com) to help manage the more than 200 accounts and passwords I have scattered around the Web.

1Password allows me to keep track of multiple logins for the sites I visit. For instance, I have multiple Paypal accounts, and I can store each account's password in the application for later reference.

1Password is both a stand-alone Mac application and a browser plug-in. Its usefulness shines when you see how it integrates in your Web browser. The application adds a toolbar button to Safari, Firefox and all other major Mac browsers that will detect login forms on a Web page.

When I go to the Paypal site, I can click the 1Password icon in Safari's toolbar and select which account I want to login with. 1Password will then pull the respective login and password from its database and automatically log me in. It is such a timesaver.

Beyond just passwords, I'm also able to store my identities (business and personal) and credit card information in 1Password for easy retrieval when I want to purchase items online. I'm more trusting of an application on my Mac to store my credit card information locally than I am keeping it stored at various online stores around the Web. It's also easier for me to update my credit card information if I lose my card or it expires, because I have a single place to edit it.

There are similar solutions for Windows users. RoboForm (www.roboform.com) offers an excellent alternative to 1Password for the Windows platform. It seamlessly integrates with both XP and Vista machines and is browser neutral. RoboForm integrates with Firefox, Internet Explorer and several other browsers available for Windows.

RoboForm is great for mobile users because it saves passwords and identities to Windows Mobile- and Palm-based PDAs. 1Password can also synchronize with Palm-based PDAs, as well as Apple's iPhone.

RoboForm offers both a free and pro version. The pro version has the added benefit of letting a user store more than two identities in the application, among other features. Most home machine users will be fine with the free version.

Both RoboForm Pro and 1Password retail for $29.95 and offer a free 30-day trial. Just as we've become accustomed to relying on our cell phone's address book rather than remembering individual numbers, after using a password and identity management application for a few weeks, I find it's hard to imagine using a computer without it.

Send e-mail to Justin Williams at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in The Evansville Courier & Press

Google enters mobile market

For nearly a year, there have been rumblings in the tech industry about a Google-branded mobile phone that would be a serious competitor to Apple's iPhone and other handsets on the market today.

The rumors of the gPhone were only partially true, as the search and advertising giant made a mobile announcement Monday, but it wasn't a handset. Instead, Google announced its new mobile operating system and platform, Android.

Android is a Linux-based mobile platform that Google hopes will be adopted by mobile manufacturers around the world.

To ensure Android's adoption, Google announced partnerships with established manufacturers Motorola, HTC, Samsung and LG. Google also established carrier partnerships with Sprint and T-Mobile in the U.S. and several providers worldwide.

It's easy to see why Google wants to enter the mobile market. Google has a stranglehold on search, advertising and services on the desktop-based Web. Giving Gmail, Google Maps and Google Calendar users access to their data while away from their desktop computers ensures that they will stay inside the Google circle and see Google-branded advertising wherever they are.

The company is no stranger to the mobile space. It has long offered Java-based versions of many of its applications for a variety of mobile phones, but they work and interact differently on each phone. By releasing an open source operating system that any mobile phone provider can adopt, Google can ensure its applications function in the same fashion across multiple devices.

As part of the Android announcement, Google said that it and 33 other companies have established the Open Handset Alliance or OHA. The goal of the OHA is to help shape the Android project going forward.

Short of a paradigm shift by big business, I'm skeptical that a 34-company committee will have any success overseeing a shared suite of mobile software. The mobile industry has never been about openness and interoperability. If that were the case, transferring numbers from one phone to another wouldn't be such a chore for most people.

Noticeably absent from the Android and Open Handset Alliance announcements were Apple, Palm, Nokia and Microsoft — the four major mobile platforms currently on the market.

Apple is used to being a closed provider, having locked its Mac OS X operating system to its own hardware. Nokia, Palm and Microsoft each offer their own mobile operating systems, from which they earn royalty revenue for each device sold running on their respective platforms. Abandoning that to embrace Google's dream of an open platform is about as likely as Apple dropping its own desktop OS in favor of Windows Vista.

At this point Android is nothing but a public relations move. Handsets based on the platform aren't scheduled to be released until the second half of 2008. Google plans to release a preview of its software developer kit so that developers can begin building applications for the platform, but I can't think of a developer that would shift its focus from iPhone, Palm or Windows Mobile for a platform that could be as much as a year away. I know I wouldn't.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in The Evansville Courier & Press

Mac upgrade has put real polish on the OS X experience

Apple, the small computer company in Cupertino, Calif., released five versions of its flagship operating system, Mac OS X, in the time it took Microsoft to transition from Windows XP to Vista.

Apple has now released the sixth version of OS X, Leopard — its answer to January's Vista release.

Leopard initially was scheduled for release in spring 2007, but it was delayed because of other products in production at Apple — particularly, the iPhone.

The iPhone and AppleTV both run the same Mac OS X core as the Mac desktop or laptop. Uniting three products from a single foundation is no simple feat.

The first thing you'll notice when you purchase Leopard ($129) is that there is a single version for all users, home or business.

Unlike previous revisions of OS X, Leopard doesn't have a must-have feature, such as Dashboard, Expose or Safari. Instead, Apple has spent the 21/2 years since OS X Tiger polishing the Mac experience.

That's not to say Leopard is without new features.

Time Machine, the new backup solution, is widely touted as the major feature of this release.

Usually, backing up computer files is seen as a chore or an out-of-sight task, but Time Machine has been designed to be something you want to use. It requires an external Firewire or USB2 drive, and automatically backs up your hard drive throughout the day.

When you need to restore a file, clicking the Time Machine icon gives the desktop a space motif with a day-by-day history of the hard drive so you can navigate back in time and restore files as appropriate.

My favorite feature of the new release is Quick Look, which eliminates the need to open applications such as Word or Excel to look at the contents of files.

Each Finder window has a Quick Look icon that opens a semitranslucent window containing an instant preview of the file.

After 30 seconds of using Quick Look, you wonder how you ever lived without it.

Quick Look supports all major document and image formats out of the box, and developers have the ability to add support to their applications in the future, which will make the feature infinitely more useful.

Much to the chagrin of 14-year-olds everywhere, blocking MySpace has never been easier. Apple's new parental controls offer easy-to-use functionality for limiting how and when a child uses the family Mac.

Parental controls sets up usage limits by time of day (separated by school nights and weekends) or a total number of hours a day.

Sites can be restricted, as well as e-mail and chat.

And let's not forget Boot Camp, which allows Intel-based Macs to run Windows. Though available as a beta in Tiger, this is the final version.

For most cases, I use VMWare Fusion to run Windows on my Mac, but if you're a gamer or use more resource-intensive applications, Boot Camp runs Windows as fast as it would on a regular PC.

Additional, smaller changes, such as the addition of notes and to-do functions in Mail, a system-wide grammar checker and the new Finder make Leopard an excellent upgrade.

If you have a G5 or Intel-based Mac built in the past four years, Leopard should run just fine.

After using both Leopard and Vista, the dichotomy between Apple and Microsoft is blatantly apparent.

Microsoft hasn't done anything interesting with Windows since XP and has offered nothing to entice XP users to upgrade.

The number of Vista users is growing only as fast as new PCs are shipped with the new OS.

Apple, on the other hand, has a new operating system that is not only better than previous revisions, but it offers more than enough features to warrant the upgrade fee.

It's a good time to be a Mac user.

Justin Williams is the owner of Second Gear. You can purchase his new book, "Getting StartED with Mac OS X Leopard" at your local bookstore or Amazon.com.

Originally published in The Evansville Courier & Press