eBook Discounts for January 7, 2009

I didn't plan it, but it truly amuses me that we start the new year with rules for men and women. In between we have rules for the anyone who wants love. . . Fiction is all about marraige (but is that love?) and just to round it all out--a murder mystery. Enjoy any or all of these discounted titles when you use coupon code A9JG4 at checkout. And have a Happy New Year!

The Bro Code eBook edition by Stinson, Barney Everyone's life is governed by an internal code of conduct. Some call it morality. Others call it religion. But Bros in the know call this holy grail the Bro Code. Historically a spoken tradition passed from one generation to the next, the official code of conduct for Bros appears here in its published form for the first time ever More Info List Price : $11.99 Your price $9.23 (Using your 10% discount and $ .49 points in eBook Reward points)

Revolutionary Road eBook Edition by Yates, Richard From the moment of its publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. It's the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. More Info List Price : $14.95 Your price $12.78 (Using your 10% discount and $ .67 iin eBook Reward points)

How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You eBook edition by Lowndes, Leil Here, from bestselling author Leil Lowndes, is a surefire guide to love for anyone seeking romantic bliss. In How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You readers will find 85 techniques based on scientific studies regarding the nature of love . . .By using these pragmatic, down-to-earth strategies, anyone can turn new or casual relationships into lasting ones--or make current relationships deeper. More Info List Price : $14.95 Your price $12.78 (Using your 10% discount and $.67 in eBook Reward points)

Scarpetta eBook edition by Cornwell, Patricia Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital¿s psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard. . . More Info List Price : $27.95 Your price $21.51 (Using your 10% discount and $1.13 in eBook Reward points)

All the Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right eBook edition by Fein, Ellen The two bestselling phenomenons now together in one timeless, definitive edition. In their #1 New York Times bestseller, The Rules, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider shared their time-tested techniques for finding the man of your dreams. Controversial and effective, these 35 rules changed millions of women's lives all over the world. In their sensational sequel, The Rules II, the authors showed readers how they could follow The Rules in even the most difficult situations. More Info List Price : $9.99 Your price $7.69 (Using your 10% discount and $ .40 in eBook Reward points)

Our guarantee: If you have bought one of these titles from eBooks About in the last 15 days -- we will gladly offer you a rebate on the book; just contact us

eBooks and Screen Technologies

So a lot of power is wasted in displaying the images on our current cell phone screen. That makes building batteries that are compact enough and light enough but still powerful enough difficult. Now the technical whizzes who brought those tiny phones down to a size where you can lose them in a purse are fixing that problem. The eInk display and other power sipping device types are appearing in full color glory in prototypes today.

The article in the NY Times technology section today is only one source of this news. We are reading more and more about the power saving capabilities of various new technologies. This may actually be the year when some of these ideas turn into real phones. Reflecting light from outside sources selectively is the basis of some of these technical marvels. That makes the display brighter in sunlight than it is in a shady spot nearby.

The display design by Qualcomm based on MEMS technology is particularly interesting because it uses tiny mirrors that selectively reflect red, green or blue light. The amount of power used by this screen can be as low as one mw (milliwatt) versus over 200 mw in your current screen. This type of screen is not backlit and thus will need a frontal light source if you are addicted to using it in the dark.

A higher energy use backlit screen but one that is still substantially lower than current technology uses LED lighting and tiny shutters to display images. This version of the future uses around 50 mw to supply a bright color display but is not as useable in daylight as the lower power choices. All of this technology is aimed at solving the recharge problem that plagues any serious cell phone user.

I’m still anxiously awaiting the new technology that allows me to read on a five by seven inch display for up to fifty hours without recharging my phone once. Of course it will still have to fit in my pocket so it should fold up or roll up when I am not using it. Ideally we ought to be able to build these displays so that they can generate power for recharging the whole device from ambient light like a calculator so we never have to plug the damn thing in at all.

Posing nearly impossible problems for engineers to solve is more fun than adapting to their latest and greatest idea in the form that it finally reaches the market. eInk is still slow and not available in full color. MEMS technology is still in the future. Flexible displays are still largely fantasy but reaching the realm of the possible quickly. I expect my ideal display will appear by the end of this decade if not sooner.

Electromechanical marvels like 300,000 tiny shutters on a small display do amaze me a bit. But then I think about all of those huge old monitors that are on the scrap heap today. We are living in a totally flat panel world now, and that happened in less than ten years. The pace is constantly accelerating and new technologies are competing for our interest daily. EBook dedicated readers will not survive long in this world.

That they appeared at all is a statement about how inefficient markets can be when they move this fast. Of course the truth is the gadget happy among us are driving this rate of change faster and faster. At what point can this all slow down enough to make it possible for me to learn how to use all of the features in my new phone before it is obsolete? Maybe that is just not important after all but it would be nice wouldn’t it?

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The Sad Tale of Shrinking CD Sales: Will Books be Next?

There was a sad little tale in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the decline in music CD sales. Seems that sales declined for the seventh time in the last eight years. Even more devastating was the fact that sales declined a full 20% over the last year.

The Journal states that the industry has ben decimated by illicit online downloading.

Wait a minute!  I haven't bought a CD in several years but I have legal access to each and every song that I have downloaded in those years. 

It is hard to fathom the stupidity inherent in that statement.  I guess the writer doesn't get out much.  If he did, he would see that there are a whole lot of places that allow you to buy the song of your choice for 99 cents. Perfectly legal and legit -- not illicit in any regard.

I don't know about you but I doubt I will ever buy a packaged CD again.  I mean why?  I have a legal Napster account that lets me listen to (and carry around) almost anything I want for one low monthly subscription fee.  And if I want to burn it on a CD and make my own mix I can buy the song for 99 cents.

Besides, everyone knows, that on every CD there are two or three songs you love, several you tolerate and if you you are really lucky only one or two you hate. 

Back in the good old days, when music came on records, it was too much hassle to get up and risk scratching the vinyl to skip one of those songs you hated.  You just suffered through it. 

Tapes were a little better, but still a hassle.  You could at least fast forward.  And then came CD players and even better CD players with remote control.  Once little press of the button and the song was skipped forever.  You still had to pay for, but at least you didn't have to listen to it.

That was the thing that finally convinced me to replace many of my tapes with CDs.  Mind you, I had replaced records with cassettes -- very costly and was really hesitant to do it all over again with CD.

And finally MP3 downloads.  I actually adopted this technology pretty quickly once I figured out I could subscribe to a service, carry one tiny little device to the gym and hear hundreds of my favorite songs. 

Does it get much better than this?  I can listen to almost anything for my monthly fee and decide what I like. Then I can decide what tracks I like well enough to want on a CD and I can burn them at will. Mostly there aren't many.

Most of the songs I buy and burn to CD are presents for people I love.  People like my friend Laurie who is a technophobe or my mother and her sisters. 

So what does all this have to do with eBooks? 

Well, publishers (and some authors) have a huge level of paranoia about piracy.  All of the hassle with DRM (90% of our support issues are because of DRM issues) are a direct result of this particular paranoia.  I am sure that many of them read the article and saw it as vindication for their position. 

Unfortunately, this particular vindication is patently absurd.

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Lady Luck's Map of Vegas eBook edition by Samuel, Barbara

Barbara Samuel is an insightful and graceful author and  Lady Luck's Map of Vegas is an incredible story about love, loss, fear and a road trip.

This is not really a romance so much as it is a quiet family drama that starts slowly and grabs you by the throat.  The first few chapters are choppy as the narrative jumps between India and Eldora.  The styles are very different and the first couple of transitions are jarring.  But as the story builds, the transitions work to move you through the plot.

This novel explores family secrets and how they effect future generations.  What happens when a parent specifically obscures their past?  How important are genetics? What are the ramifications of choices made and roads not taken?  How do you live with the results of the choices made -- especially when they don't necessarily turn out well? 

I suppose I am going to overuse my allotment of cliches about families here, but somehow for this book they seem right.  So here goes:  Love is messy, complex and scary; nothing in life is certain;  relationships and families involve an incredible risk and much forgiveness. 

The synopsis below gives you the story line, but doesn't convey the emotional punch this book delivers. All I can say is grab your Kleenex and settle down to enjoy an incredible road trip.

And as side note (if you aren't up for the story)the book is worth reading just as a guidebook to New Mexico.  Samuel beautifully captures the landscape and the wildness of the west. 

Oh yeah, one more thing, look for Samuel's new book --The Lost Recipe for Happiness which is due out next week.

Here is the publisher synopsis:

A successful Web designer, forty-year-old India has a fabulously hip life in Denver and a sexy Irish lover in New York who jets out to see her on bi-weekly visits. The long-distance romance suits India just fine: Though Jack is the only man who has ever made India feel truly alive, she doesn’t want things to get too serious. But then her father passes away, and India must honor the promise she made to him: to look after her mother when he’s gone.

Suddenly India finds herself back in Colorado Springs with the woman who both intrigues and infuriates her. Eldora is sixty something and exquisitely gorgeous, but her larger-than-life personality can suck the air out of a room. True to form, Eldora throws India a curveball, insisting that they hit the road to look for India’s twin, Gypsy, a brilliant artist who lives a vagabond’s existence in the remote mountain towns of New Mexico. It looks like India can’t avoid her mother’s intensity any longer, especially after she discovers stunning secrets from Eldora’s past.

Thirty years ago, Eldora regaled her twin girls with glamorous stories about her days as a Las Vegas showgirl– stories of martinis and music at the Sahara, back when Frank and Sammy ruled the town. But the story of how she really ended up in Sin City, and the unsavory life she’d run from with her daughters in tow, is full of details she’s never seen fit to share–until now.
As mother and daughter sail down Route 66, the very road Eldora drove those many years ago, looking for Gypsy, while passing motels, diners, and souvenir shops, Eldora must relive a lifetime of memories that have tormented her before she can put them to rest once and for all. . . .

Award-winning author Barbara Samuel brings us a heartfelt story of second chances and unexpected detours. As two women come to terms with themselves and each other, the past unravels and the future spreads out before them like the open road.

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Happy New Year

GoodBye 2008!

I can't say I am sorry to be making the last post for 2008.  It has been an amazing year with terrific highs and lows. 

So, what is in store for 2009?  I checked my crystal ball and evidently it is broken since everything is cloudy.  Oh come on, it's a joke. . .

There are, however a couple of things that seem intuitively obvious to me: 

• Digital books will become increasingly popular and the percentage of books sold this way will double (from 1% to at least 3%)
• By January, 2010 the iPhone will up a more popular reading device than the Kindle

As additional "proof" for my predictions you only need to look at an article in the Huffington Post.  It shows that five of the six most popular Christmas morning Google searches were iPhone, iTunes, and iPod Touch-driven. All six are:

1. iTunes.com
2. iTunes download
3. iTunes store
4. stores open on Christmas day
5. www.itunes.com downloads
6. iTunes gift card"

Add to that that TechCrunch is reporting rumors about a 7 inch - 9 inch iPod screen due out next fall. 

I want one of these!

So, Goodbye 2008 (and pretty much good riddance!) and Hello 2009!

del.icio.us Tags: iphone,toch ipod,kindle ebook,iphone for books,ebook readers,digial reading

eReaders -- Have you considered a "Netbook?"

 

Last week Stacey Higginbotham wrote an interesting blog piece on notebook computing and what that might mean for the electronics industry.

She notes that notebook PC sales have overtaken the sales of desktop type machines.  This is the direct result of WiFi and the almost ubiquitous access to the Internet.

This is of interest to me, because Henri needs a new eBook reader.  It's time. . .

I figured that it would be a great Christmas present, so I started looking very closely at all the eReaders -- Kindle (never), Sony, Cybooks, Irex, BeBook and a few others. 

From my perspective the best available option is the Irex.  It has a touch screen, is able to connect by WiFi to the Internet and allows you to make notes and annotations.  It reads protected Mobipocket files and unprotected PDF.  All in all, contrary to my first opinion, it has turned out to be a great machine.  Or at least it is until you check out the price -- $700!!!

Well, let me think!  Here is a pretty much single use device that costs more than a fully powered, big screen laptop.  Too rich for my blood!

But the laptop thought triggered an idea.

I have been hearing about netbooks so decided to check them out.  Acer makes one called the Aspire One.  It sells at Costco for $349.00.  This is a fully functional Windows XP notebook with 1 GB of RAM, a160GB hard drive that is net ready and weighs about 2 pounds.  And it has a great screen with brilliant colors.

Heck, with that capacity, it is a lot more robust than a couple of the laptops we have laying around. 

Because it has the XP operating system it can read protected Mobipocket, PDF and Microsoft reader eBooks.  Because it is net ready you really don't need to buy an software.  All you need to do is access email and Google Docs are you are ready to go.

Of course, if you want to work offline, you can always load Star Office (for free) and have a fully functioning road machine. 

Sony and Cybook readers are in the same price range and do a whole let less. 

Rumor has it that Dell and a couple of other companies are getting ready to introduce lighter, faster, cheaper models next year.

I would love to finish this piece by telling you that I bought Henri a net book and we are both very happy. But that is not what really happened.  What really happened is that I put off the decision and the purchase for a couple of months.

And Henri, lucky man, got a new shirt. . . .

 

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Gail Fraser's Lumby eBooks

 

Got the holiday blues?  Looking for tradition and a simpler time?  Well Gail Fraser' has created exactly what you want.  All you need to do is take a trip to Lumby.

The Lumby stories are the perfect antidote for busy holidays.  You get to sit in your chair (preferably by a roaring fire) and travel to a far away town where neighbors are neighborly, problems are neatly solved and life is simple. 

These books are not my usual "cup of tea."  Too cute and too cheery for me.  But I got sucked in and I have to admit they were much more enjoyable than I ever would have thought.

I'd write more, but I need to get back to Lumby's Bounty and find out how it all ends.

This is recommended holiday reading and I know from personal experience that it really does block the background noise of cranky, over sugared kids.

Enjoy!

Nestled in the Northwest is a quaint little town that its quirky residents are proud to call home. With charming shops lining its one main thoroughfare, Lumby is home to the oldest apple tree in the county and the smallest bank in the state. And though it's hours from the nearest big city, readers will always find Lumby close to their hearts

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eBook Discounts for December 23, 2008

It is Christmas time and Gigi is feeling generous. This week we are offering a 20% discount on these titles -- and believe it or not; these are the most popular in the last week. To get this great discount; use coupon code 8Xmas9 at checkout.

In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier (Adobe Reader) eBook edition by White, Thomas Have humans been sharing the planet with other intelligent life for millions of years without realizing it? This timely and important book considers the answers and implications, and encourages humans to reconsider our treatment of the species with which we share the earth. . . In this thought-provoking account, White relies on his more than fifteen year journey to understand the nature of dolphins More Info List Price : $90.00 Your price $68.40 (Using your 10% discount and $3.60 points in eBook Reward points)

The Christmas Sweater eBook Edition by Beck, Glenn If You Could Change Your Life by Reversing Your Biggest Regrets, Sorrows and Mistakes...Would You? #1 New York Times bestselling author and renowned radio and television host Glenn Beck delivers an instant holiday classic about boyhood memories, wrenching life lessons, and the true meaning of the gifts we give to one another in love. More Info List Price : $17.99 Your price $12.30 (Using your 10% discount and $ .65 iin eBook Reward points)

Younger You (Mobipocket) eBook edition by Braverman, Eric R. MD. Break the aging code and feel 15 years younger from the inside out In the constant battle to stay young and feel fit. Many even risk elective surgical procedures just to look young again. But you dont need surgery, pricey cosmetics, or starvation to look and feel 15 years younger. The secret. . . More Info List Price : $24.95 Your price $18.96 (Using your 10% discount and $1.00n eBook Reward points)

Charlemagne Pursuit eBook edition by Berry, Steve As a child, former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone was told his father died in a submarine disaster in the North Atlantic, but now he wants the full story and asks his ex-boss, Stephanie Nelle, to secure the military files. What he learns stuns him: His father’s sub was a secret nuclear vessel lost on a highly classified mission beneath the ice shelves of Antarctica. More Info List Price : $24.95 Your price $17.45 (Using your 10% discount and $ .92 in eBook Reward points)

Wind Engineering: A Handbook for Structural Engineers (Adobe Reader) eBook edition by Liu, Henry Wind – a powerful and often destructive force, which can instantly and profoundly alter the skyline or the shoreline of our communities. Structural engineers must be aware of its effects when designing buildings that have to weather its force. This volume provides wind engineering information that will lead to the proper understanding of present and future building codes More Info List Price : $63.00 Your price $47.88 (Using your 10% discount and $2.52 in eBook Reward points)

Our guarantee: If you have bought one of these titles from eBooks About in the last 15 days -- we will gladly offer you a rebate on the book; just contact us

"Of course, I've Read that Book!" or Readers Lie

Shocking news last week!

According to a BBC poll 46% of men and 33% of women admit to lying about what they have read. In other words about 40% of the population would rather impress you than tell the truth about their reading habits.

Seems men want to appear intellectual or romantic and women want to make a good first impression.  Men are impressed by women who read news sites and women are impressed by men who read Shakespeare.  Hmmmm!

Of course this brings up a question for me.  What do you do about those books that you just can't make your self finish?  You know, the ones you bought, read the first (and possibly the last chapter) and then quit.  Does that count as having read it?

This is my dilemma:  Is it necessary to read every word of a book to consider it read?  Does skimming count?

Did I really read A Thousand Splendid Suns?  I read the first three chapters, skimmed the middle and read the last chapter. . . I wanted to read it; but somehow I just couldn't make myself do it. My mind kept wandering.

Does it count that I picked up The Forgotten Man and after a couple of chapters found it too depressing to keep going on?

I mean, I really wanted to like My Jesus Year.  But unfortunately Benyamin Cohen is no A. J. Jacobs. And no matter how much I would like it to be, My Jesus Year is no substitute for The Year of Living Biblically.  I actually made it about half way through; did I read it?

Then of course there is the problem of memory.  As a life long prodigious reader, I would be hard put tell you exactly what I have read or not read.

And finally, there is the movie adaptation thing. . . Did I read The Hours or do I just remember the movie?  Actually this is one I know.  I read the first couple of chapters and threw the book in the trash in disgust.  Turns out, however, that I loved the movie.  Can I say I read it?

No matter how you answer these questions, the fact remains that the desire to look good will always trump the thirst for knowledge.  Always has, always will.  And not all books or writers are equal.  For every great best seller there is one that is "literary" and boring. And face it, some books make better movies than books.

And -- just so you know -- I almost never write reviews of books I haven't read.

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