Anyway rather than give yet another review of the device (which I love) I thought that I would put down some of the things that I have discovered since getting the device at then end of last year. Some of these will be obvious, others not so, I hope but all will give you food for thought before you get your own eReader.

1. Cannot register with Adobe Digital Editions on a Mac

Until recently this wouldn’t have bothered me but now my primary machine is a Mac it was a real pain that in order to associate my reader with ADE I could only do so on a Windows machine. Once you have done this you are fine to use the device with you Mac. All this is a consequence of DRM and is quite unnecessary. It’s a real throw back in time to where we were five years ago with digital music downloads so I guess that the book world will have caught up by 2015.

2. Cannot feel how far through a book you are

The first book that most of us have is a cloth one that rather than read you feel, chew and dribble over. Nevertheless it still has pages that you turn and works like a book. Given that most of us start early using a book is straight forward and intuitive. One thing that I had learnt to do was to assess how far through a book I was through feel – the amount of pages in my left hand compared to the amount in my right hand. You cannot do this with an electronic reader other than look at the page numbers and do a quick calculation which can be tough on the brain.

3. Cannot think “I’ll just read to the end of the chapter”

Actually that statement is not true as you can think that but with an eBook you have no idea how far away the end of the chapter is. With a physical book you can flip forward a few pages and think “that’s manageable before I switch out the light”.

4. "Now, where was I?”

Because I am a casual reader it can be a number of days between reading sessions and I forget where I am. With a physical book I can flip back a few pages and skim read to refresh my memory. Boy is that tedious on an eBook reader. The eInk technology is great for simulating the page of a book but it is slow to turn pages.

5. Can carry more books than you ever need at any one time

I can now carry around with me about 350 books which, at my current reading rate, would take me more than 15 years to get through. So why bother? Well if I am going away then I don’t want to be carrying around a number with me. Also I have a short attention span and like to flip between several books at once – the eReader is perfect for this.

6. Can never lose your place by dropping the book and the bookmark slips out

Of course if you drop your eReader you probably would have more than losing you place to worry about. That screen looks awfully fragile.

7. Can lay on your side in bed and not have to swap sides to see both pages of a book

I suspect that for many people this simply won’t be an issue. You are probably thinking that I should just sit up or go and sit in a chair but actually I quite like to read lying down and previously had to keep swapping sides – no longer.

8. Will be the death of charity shops – no loaning to a friend

Books are going to be around for a very long time. You seem to have a much more personal relationship with them than, say, a CD. That said there is no doubt a rise in the number of people who are reading books via an eReader. I have started to see others on trains and in coffee shops with their Kindles. And as this uptake increases the number of books in circulation will inevitably decrease. The consequence of this is that charity shops, so long the place to pick up a cheap paperback, will lose a source of valuable income.

9. It’s a novel idea

That said the current crop of eReaders are really only any good for novels. Any type of book with graphics, a cookery book for example, or a technical guide and it is very difficult to read and see the images. Could this be the reason for the iPad?

So, in conclusion eReaders are great and have a convenience about them that you just don’t get in the physical equivalent. However, there is just something about a book that is great to have and to hold and I think it is going to be a great shame if we lose that. What do you think?

Perfect Evernote bliss has finally been achieved!

The reporter, Dan Simmons, looked pretty embarrassed about having smashed the screen of the device and Somin’s CEO laughed about it and everyone is blogging about it but “unbreakable” it obviously isn’t.

You can see the video of destruction here.

So why bother? Well Twitter is one driving force. With only 140 characters to play with a full length URL like that shown above would leave you very little to play with. Stats is another reason. Using a shortening service it is possible to get a great deal of useful information on the times and places the link is being clicked. Very interesting for a webmaster.

But what if you don’t want to use a third party service? Well if you run your own website you can install one very easily. There are a number about but my favourite is yourls which cleverly stands for Your Own URL Shortener. This requires a few things: a web server, PHP, a MYSQL database and, crucially, a short domain name. The latter is the important bit. Fortunately the company that I work with already has a short domain in 2ls.com and I had a reasonably short domain for personal use in dsktp.net.

Yourls setup was a breeze as it is in use. There is even a bookmarklet that allows you to shorten links direct from your browser which is great. The only thing that I haven’t been able to do is to get yourls to generate random links rather than sequential ones. This is not the end of the world but would be nice if I could get it sorted.

As you can see from the graphics below you get some great looking charts and information detail allowing you to see where the traffic is coming from. Which from a SEO perspective could prove invaluable.

So if you are in need of a URL shortener then why not roll your own rather than submit to the big boys? Does anyone else use their own service or have you get random links working with yourls? If so leave me a comment and let me know.

Google Chrome

A lot of my life is spent in a browser and this year I changed over from Firefox to using Google’s Chrome. Why? Because it is fast. In fact it is the faster browser I have used and speed is important to me. I don’t want to be spending time waiting for a page to render before I can get on with my job.

The other thing that I like about Chrome is the independence of the tabs. If there is a crash in one it does not bring down the whole browser – another neat feature.

Google Mail/Calendar/Reader

In Google’s browser I run a number of Google’s services. Mail, Calendar and Reader are the three that I use the most and have them permanently open. In fact I have two Mail tabs, one for my personal emails and the other for my work emails, for which I use Google Apps. I have to admit that I struggled at first getting used to Google Mail having come over from Microsoft Outlook but I really appreciate the ability to access my mail anywhere and there have been some neat extension that have made it a really great service.

Remember the Milk

I am a very task oriented person and previously used the tasks section within Microsoft Outlook. RTM has been a great way for me to be able to manage my working life and ensuring that the things that need to get done, actually do get done. Again I appreciate the ability to be able to get at my tasks no matter where I am be it via browser or on the dedicated iPhone application.

Evernote

Hand in hand with Remember the Milk goes Evernote, the note taking application. Previously I used Microsoft OneNote but the ability to clip notes from Windows, Mac, iPhone and web is a killer for me. And, once again, the ability to access these notes anywhere is invaluable. My only gripe is that I wish there was some integration between RTM and Evernote.

iPhone

The first thing on the list that is not a browser based application and that is my iPhone 3GS.  I have worked my way through four iPhones this year though faults and upgrades but my current one has never left my side since I picked it up in the summer. The call handling is rubbish and those people who complain about at&t should note that the problems are the same on O2 in the UK. That said it is no longer just a phone. Mine is a complete, pocketable, computer allowing me to work on-the-go. In fact I am able to access all the applications mentioned here from my iPhone and so can be productive anywhere.

The other aspect of the iPhone that I like is the photo and video capability. Already the iPhone has replaced my Flip as the primary quick and dirty video device and the photos it produces are perfectly acceptable for most uses. It’s all about having to carry only one device.

Unfuddle

Another web-based application, Unfuddle, is a ticketing system for, in my case, managing software development projects. I like it so much that I wrote an iPhone web-based interface to it that I (and anyone else) can use to access my projects anywhere. The great thing about Unfuddle is, being based in the cloud, it can be easily accessed by all our disparate team members in several locations in the UK and India.

Zumodrive/Dropbox

Cloud based storage services Dropbox and my personal favourite Zumodrive have been a real boon this year. Zumodrive I particularly like as it looks and feels just like any other storage on whatever device I choose to access it from. I wrote about it earlier this year. Dropbox is similar but the files get also held on your machine as well as in the cloud. This has the advantage of being available when you are not connected to the internet (how often is that these days?). We use this extensively for file sharing with offshore developers.

Windows Live Writer

Late 2009 I moved from a Windows desktop to a MacBook Pro and found that I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about the two seemed pretty evenly matched to me. However, there was one area where Windows has Mac beaten hands down - and the is in the off-line blogging application space. Nothing, but nothing, can beat Windows Live Writer for shear functionality and ease of use and believe me I have looked. In the end I had to resort to a virtualised version of Windows XP to allow me to continue to use WLR and I haven’t regretted it once.

Skype

This year Skype has come into its own for me in both a personal and a professional capacity. I use it extensively to talk to other team members in the UK and India keeping our call costs down and also ensuring that we have been able to chat whenever is necessary which means that problems get fixed sooner. On a personal level it has meant that I have been able to keep in touch with our best friends who have moved to Australia for a couple of years. We also used it to keep in touch with family and friends while we were away on holiday a couple of times this year.

Zoho CRM

The last one on the list is Zoho CRM, yet another web based service which really does show how things are these days. Zoho have a large number of services, some of which compete with Google’s offerings but the only one I use on a regular basis is their CRM offering. I use it extensively for managing and recording my customers interactions. Of all the ones on the list this is the one that is probably the most precarious – while it is a good service it still doesn’t cover all that I want it to do. For example I cannot seem to integrate it easily with my Google Mail account which means that I have to go to two places to track correspondence. Therefore, I do wonder whether it will still be there next year.

Honourable Mentions

There are some items that haven’t made it to the list that are also worth mentioning the first of which is my Netbook. This has travelled with me extensively this year making it to four continents and has allowed me to blog and communicate for everywhere I have been. The problem is that it has all but been superseded by a more recent purchase in the form of my Macbook Pro. I have no doubt that it is going to be on the list next year.

The two other services that I should mention are Twitter and Facbook both of which I have used regularly but they didn’t make the list simply because I don’t consider them to be essential. They could both shut down tomorrow and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. That said without Facebook I wouldn’t have got back in touch with quite so many of my friends from university but I guess that we would have found other ways. I wonder if either of them may become more essential to me over the next 12 months.

Finally, what do I think are the things that are likely to make the list in 2010? Well I have already mentioned the Apple MacBook Pro and I will almost certainly be adding the Sony Reader too. As for software and services I have just started to tinker with Google Wave and it will be interesting to see how that progresses.

So that is my list – what tech could you not do without in 2009?

For those that aren’t familiar with it the TweetNotebook is a notebook with a random selection of your tweets printed at the bottom of each page and with your Twitter icon printed on the front along with a customisable quote. A selection of pictures of mine are left and below.

Well mine arrived this morning and I have to say it is just fantastic and much better than I expected it to be. Why? Well for a start it is bigger than I thought it was going to be. There seems to be a paucity of information on the website about its size. I was expecting it to be the size of a moleskine when, in fact, it is about twice the size in A5 format.

Also the quality is better than I expected too both in the quality of the paper and printing. I guess that this is a testimony to the improvements in digital printing that allow such quality and a high degree of personalisation.

Anyway I have become quite attached to mine already and they would definitely make a great gift for any committed Twitter user.

One of my clients is going through a website refresh and was looking to put some screenshots on the home page but they wanted them to appear to be disappearing into the distance, rather like that shown in the picture to the left.

No problem I thought. I know how to rotate an image around the x & y axis so this is just rotating around the z axis, this must be possible and a quick Google would turn up the answer. Many searches later and I was till none the wiser. No amount of “3d rotate image” type searches turned up anything like what I was looking for.

Frustrated I resorted to phoning a friend who immediately said you can do that in Photoshop with the “perspective” tool. Bingo! Another search showed that not only could this be done in Photoshop (which I don’t have) but also can be done in GIMP and Paint Shop Pro. In fact, not only can it be done in Paint Shop Pro it has been there since at least version 5 which is over ten years old now.

So the moral of this story is that it is all very well having the worlds information at hand just a simple search away but if you don’t know how to describe what it is that you are looking for in a way that a machine can understand then you are lost.

I suspect that just as new forms of searching are emerging, such as searching by images, techniques will be developed to better understand the input that we enter and allow searchers to find what they are looking for when they don’t know what to call it.

To date all my iPlayer watching has been done on a computer of some description or another (or very occasionally on my iPhone). What was great about the wii was that I was able to hook it up to the TV and get access to programmes on the device they were originally intended for.

While the picture wasn’t broadcast quality it was certainly more than watchable and it was much, much better to be able to watch in the comfort of my front room rather than sat at my desk in front of the PC.

We have been intending to update our entertainment system in the lounge for a while now and I have been eyeing up media centre PCs that can hook up to a TV. Now a high priority on my list of requirements will be ensuring that anything we get can make use of the BBCs brilliant iPlayer.

Reading that back I realise that I sound like one of the people writing into Points of View in this Not the Nine o’clock News sketch - “I would willingly sell my house and all its contents to help the BBC”. I’m not sure I would go quite that far but they are great!

EPS files are great for high quality graphics and are essential for press ready artwork but viewing the files can be a real pain. Typically you need a high end Adobe product or a specialised viewer which I don’t want to have to install just for the odd occasion when I need to view EPS files.

Along comes 3M to the rescue with their online EPS viewer and it is just perfect. You locate and upload the file you want to view, press the button and seconds later you see it on screen. No fuss.

If you need to view EPS files I would say that this is pretty much the perfect solution. Access the page here:

http://promote.3m.com/eps_viewer/

I have to admit that while I really struggled with the point of Facebook but I have never got MySpace. Not at all. Ever. 

Potentially I can see Facebook being a real drain on peoples time (you need Responsinet to deal with that). I find the mindless games and quizzes that appear to be a waste of space and I still fail to see the business benefit but least people have stopped poking me. That said I do use it on a daily basis and it has proved to be a great way for me to get back in touch with a number of people that I haven’t seen since I finished my degree course. For which I am very grateful.

MySpace, on the other hand, I can say that I have been to only a handful of times and have never found any reason to sign up or make a frequent return visit. My visits to MySpace have been to an artists page, that of Justin Currie is a good example, there primarily to advertise the artist’s latest release and not frequently updated. I have absolutely no idea if MySpace can be used for anything else other than this promotional type page and there are no clues offered as to what else MySpace might, or might not, be able to do.

Now I realise that MySpace is not aimed at my age group but that isn’t really the point. I should, even as a casual user, be able to easily discover what the point is of a site for the access that I am granted.

There is an important business lesson here. If people cannot quickly and easily understand what you are about they will not stop long. And that is why, in my opinion, people are flocking away from MySpace to Facebook.

Do you use MySpace? I am particularly interested if this is a UK thing, which I suspect it is, and that the majority of MySpace users are in the US.