AMAZON KINDLE

AMAZON KINDLE

The latest nerdy toy on the block is the Amazon's Kindle 2, but its not only for nerds, the ladies are going gah-gah over it. Its a nifty gadget that does for books what the Apple iPod does for music. Kindle2 is a battery powered tree friendly ebook reader, that simulates a page of a book, but its much lighter and thinner than a book, (depending on the book you reading of course). It can store some 4000 books, documents and magazines on its SD card (subject to available space).

Like the Apple iPod connects to iTunes, so does Kindle connect to Amazon via 3G wireless to download complete books at the fraction of the printed version in mere minutes. It has inbuilt PDF support and connects to the Internet wirelessly to access the quarter million books currently available for download. Apparently Kindle2 is also MP3 savvy, but I will best stick to my iPod. Kindle is in a sense is a very large iPod with 3G wireless. My trusty iPod can do it all, so who needs wireless when the iPod interfaces with the aggregator. Kindle2 has an auto-rotating screen and can rotate its image from portrait to landscape much like the latest touch screen cellphones and GPS unit do (my samsung omnia), but it has no colour, only 16 shades of gray. It is boasted that it makes text look clearer and images sharper but I'm almost certain the Kindle3 will be in colour. Seriously, who wants to read a glossy full colour men's magazine in 16 shades of grey. Neither will the ladies appreciate a chocolate or fresh cream cake ad or even a sexy underwear ad in black and white.

I'm not knocking it, I love this device because I see Kindle technology as "freedom of write" like "freedom of speech" meaning that anyone and everyone can publish their own books. Save it PDF format (encryped cf course), email it to some Kindle owners top roof read, edit and Voila! No need for type setting, imagesetting, lithgraphic artwork, printers, publisher nor distrubutor and warehousing, caws you can brand it and sell it yourself via the internet. Kindle has cetainly spedup vanity publishing (self-publish) tremendously and authors can now finally gain financial success and not just settle for the royalties.

Anyway, the Kindle2 has a mate called Kindle DX, its has a larger screen, both have built in text-to-speech processors, (like Text-Aloud computerised voices) and can read back articles and pages when driving in your car.

I wonder it it will impact on the sale of school books, considering the cost of the Kindle may exceed the cost of all the books in the first place. However, its time to go techno, so all you book worms.... go on, go donate all your books to the local library.

DIGITAL IMAGES

DIGITAL IMAGES

The bible reads "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images" .... and the second commandment concludes "Thou shalt not bow down to them nor serve them", which implies the prohibition against idolatry, but man in his heightened zeal to disobey the commandments and to glorify his own image, sprang into making carvings of himself and his surroundings, since time immemorial. These graven images has changed somewhat in its form to the virtual and the digital kind of today. Will this invariably be the cause of his destruction or his higher elevation? Man has termed all his clever tricks that he mentally conjured up technologies but are these not mere "ploys by Satan" to distract mankind from worshipping God?

After centuries of statue mouldings and wood carvings, man has come to preserve his own image by creating the crude box-camera and the film to accompany it. Vigorously perusing betterment over time, we today, have interchangeable 35mm cameras that beats its more modern digital camera in picture density hands down. The single slide projector of old gave way to carousels, superseded by silent 8mm projector, then ones with sound. Progress in motion photography gave rise to 16 movie projector, then 32 mm cine projectors and its other industrial incarnations. These amazing technologies were even further superseded by Television, and video recorder, as exhibits and storage places for man's images. CD/DVD writer and computer hard drives today, are to the most popular and the cheapest form of mass storage for any kinds of information.

Just imagine where this is all going to end, we already have digital kids, who have digital kidz, playing in digital playground with nerdy toys, trading with digital cash, in virtual space in the Web 2.0 world -the latest hype. Virtually every cell phone today has an embedded camera and the ability to record several frames per second, viz, digital video cameras.

Essentially Web 2.0 refers to the "second generation" of web development, technologies and design. It better facilitate Internet communication, data uploads,  information sharing and world wide collaboration on virtually every subject. Web 2.0 gave rise the development and evolution of web-based communities collaborating through social-networking sites where video-sharing and picture sharing, is the order of the day. The porn industry has more than flourished because of this and pervades the Internet to the point that school going kids are sending selphy's of their pink parts to others to evoke a response.

So I ask you, has image creation reached a new level of evil?