Amazon Kindle the iPod of books ?

Amazon has a new electronic book reader dubbed the Kindle. It weighs in at 10.5 ounces is slimmer than a pencil, sleek in design and holds about 1000 books. Kindle books can be directly downloaded wirelessly using the device, in less than 3 minutes for a book. The device does not use Wifi but acts like a cell phone for downloads.

The cost of a kindle book is usually in the range if USD 9.99 being much cheaper than print version or even ebook versions. As on date there are 230,000 kindle books available for download. You can also download periodicals and Newspapers via a subcriptions at USD 9.99 to 12.00 per month. All purchases made are retained online by amazon and you could delete the same from your Kindle and get a backup when required.

The cost of the device is USD 369.00 at tha amazon store . You can see reviews of the same at Kindle 2 demo

Last year 2008, sales of e-books rose 68.4 percent from the year before to $113.2 million, even as overall book sales fell 2.8 percent, according to the Association of American Publishers. Much of that growth has been driven by the Kindle’s popularity.

Kindle devices do not support flash, javascripts at the moment. Does not play music and is black and white. Estimate to have sold 500,000 in 2008 according to this article.

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Q&A with God

What’s your religion?

Are you a guy or a girl?

Is there healthy competition amongst all the Gods that people know?

Everyone says there are 9 people in the world who look alike…….do you do this based on continents or

randomly?

When do you sleep? Most importantly, who backs you up when you do?

How do you prioritise prayers? Is there any room for corruption?

I know this whole vaporisation thing about rain….what’s your story?

If you live in heaven because the Earth is not such a great place, how come you let your children live

here…….what’s all the parent-child relationship mumbo jumbo?

If there is life after death and we need to live even when we are up there……then why is there death?

If people go to heaven because you need them there then why send them here at all. And by the way,

what good do grand parents do for you?

Did you inspire someone to make the credit card….I want to know the truth

What’s the confusion with tomatoes….are they fruits or veggies?

Why can’t people be kids longer?

Is there life on Pluto? Send me a pic.

If you actually make unique people how come all parents react in the same way over the same things!

Are you good with maths? I’m asking cause everytime I looked at a sum and didn’t know what to do I said

to myself “Only God knows what this must be”

Why are we taught to write your name with a capital ‘G’?

What happens when you are really mad at someone?

Do you cry?

What’s your favourite song?

Where’s the pub….in heaven or hell?

When is the Earth going to be over once and for all……..I don’t trust these scientists

What were you thinking when you made ants?

Who is smarter than you?

What’s your favourite colour?

This thing called friendship

Getting started with blogging….and I just did not know what to start writing about. I chose my safest bet….Friends. We all have them….we all take them for granted but when you see them stand by you in the worst times of your life you know how blessed you are. It’s been a while since I have sat down with what we call as the ‘Core Friends’ group and chatted my heart out. We discuss everything….life….love life…..work life….no life….life after death…life at its worst….life at its best…life on the moon…life on the run. After every session, we just go back home and then start a talktathon over SMS about how one of us said something that has made everyone else laugh!

I am sure, all of us have such a group of people who we call friends. And also equally sure that most of us have always kept this group on some sort of back burner because we have something pressing to do….something more important than being who we really are.

We don’t talk unless there is something really life threatening. We don’t meet unless it can be done on a weekday within lunch hour or on a weekend in between naps. We don’t realise what they mean to us unless you lose them somewhere down life.

But the best part is that there is something that binds us all together……it’s that thing called friendship….it’s better than love……it’s better than most virtues…..it’s more addictive than the wildest of dopes and well, it is the only thing that grows older and richer with you!

This one’s for my friends and for all of you who haven’t spoken to a dear friend for a very long time…..call now…..who knows maybe your friend needs you and you don’t know!

File sharing solutions

Checked three file sharing solutions:

www.yousendit.com
www.mediafire.com
www.rapidshare.com

All the three offer a free service of upload of files up to 100MB. We are evaluating yousendit. I find the following features useful for us. Business Plus Acct- USD 29.95 per user.

– Allows secure file upload , receipt acknowledgement and tracking of the downloads
– Can brand the site in a limited way
– Has a feature for drop box. This URL can be sent to our customers to directly upload files using an email metaphor
– Can also embed this URL into the website so that clients can upload files directly to the drop box

Cloud Computing

Business processes are moving to the web. ( salesforce, CRM etc). There is now a trend of using the cloud for storage and applications ( Amazon, Google Apps etc) . Open source and web based applications are taking on many functions of the desktop. Businesses should start exploring these areas and tools to get the total cost of owner ship down for hardware and software.

We are also seeing the start of computers with minimal hardware but connectivity to the web ( netbook computers ) being used for most tasks . As mail, messenger and internet form majority of normal usage of the computer this may become a trend.

– Google docs will allow businesses to use excel, word and powerpoint type applications for free. Gears from Google will allow you to view ( excel and powerpoint) and view and edit ( doc files ) offline