Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks  E-readers are becoming more and more popular and that’s sparked some price wars. Barnes and Noble dropped the price of their Nook to $149, and Amazon responding by promptly dropping the price of the red hot Kindle to $149 and introducing a sleeker, less expensive DX with a better screen. Borders got into the game too with its $150 Kobo and Sony has it’s own line of e-readers. Oh, and the iPad? Doesn’t count. Yes, you can read books on it but an e-reader it is not. Between it’s many distracting features (apps, videos, games, music, the internet), glossy screen that’s impossible to read in the sun, hefty weight and even heftier price tag, it does a great job as a portable internet tablet and a lousy job as an e-reader.
While the price wars have increased sales tremendously (I myself took advantage of Amazon’s price drop to upgrade from my trusty original Kindle to the Kindle 2), the other price war is annoying readers and has the potential to either revolutionize the industry or severely damage it. I’m talking of course about e-books. One of Amazon’s original selling points was that NYT Bestsellers and most other books would be $9.99 or less. Unfortunately the publishing industry, blinded by ignorance and stubbornly clinging to the notion that e-books are evil and HURT sales when statistics show the complete opposite is true, have been determined to force Amazon to break that promise. When the iPad was announced Steve Jobs fed the flames by offering an agency model for the iBooks Store that let the publishers set the price. This led to a fight with Amazon, books being yanked from the site, and then returning at price points of $12.99 and up for some publishers. That leads me to wonder, what good are falling e-reader prices when the publishers are determined to jack up the price of ebooks? I will never understand why they hate ebooks so much. Everyone I know who has an e-reader says they actually read MORE books since getting it. Sales of Kindle books outdid sales of hardcovers on Amazon. Overall sales of ebooks have skyrocketed while sales of traditional books have shown much less growth. Yet publishers are still doing everything they can to crush e-books. It started with their war against the text to speech function on the Kindle. Outraged, they claimed it would hurt sales of audiobooks, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Kindle plays traditional audiobooks and that the text to speech feature, while convenient, is far from the audiobook experience. The voices are faintly robotic, devoid of emotion and tend to mispronounce things-for example “Dr. Watson” would be read as “Drive Watson.” The greed and foolishness of the traditional publishing industry does seem to have one silver lining though. It’s resulted in a whole new kind of publishing as many authors turn their backs on the traditional publishing routes and instead publish their books themselves as Kindle e-books using sites like Lulu or Amazon’s own publishing platform. This allows them to get published fast and keep more of the profits for themselves. This has resulted in a lot of promising new authors being able to get their work in front of readers that otherwise may never have discovered them. Gives a whole new meaning to “By the people, for the people”. Are you a fan of ebooks and independent authors? Why or why not?
Read [PCWorld] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Computers, Security, Features  It’s a jungle out there. Every time you register on a website, buy something from an online retailer, do your banking, use Paypal, sell something on Ebay or Craigist, or do any of the online things most people take for granted, your personal info lands on the web. Scammers know this and are constantly coming up with ways to steal it. Info like account logins, passwords, credit cards numbers, and more are highly sought after in the booming underground business of spamming, hacking, and scamming. I’ve seen ads offering high feedback, active Ebay accounts for $299 each, and ads offering various logins, lists of credit card numbers, and huge databases of email accounts. Scammers don’t just steal your info so they can clean out your bank account or go on a shopping spree with your credit card, they also steal it to sell to other scammers.
How can you protect yourself? Common sense is the key, and here are some rules to go by: Don’t do any online banking or bill paying at public hotspots. Their public nature means they are usually unprotected, making it easy for a hacker to intercept your info. Always remember to log out of shared computers. You’d be surprised at how many people log into their email or Facebook accounts at the library, internet cafe, store displays, and other public places and then walk away without logging out, leaving their personal business wide open for the next person who uses that computer to see! Be very careful about using thumb drives and other portable, removable media on public computers. Many of the newest forms of malware spread via usb drives, so be very careful. Don’t access the drive on your home computer without running a virus scan on it first. Think before you click! No matter how legit an email may look, remember that NO legit company will ask you to email them your password or other personal info. If it asks you to click on a link, don’t! Instead, let your cursor hover over it and look in the info bar to see where it REALLY points to. Think before you “Like” something on Facebook or install an app. Ever since Facebook revamped their “like” feature scammers have been exploiting it. For example, say you’re looking at your newsfeed and see that a friend likes something such as “eating brownies in bed and reading trashy novels”. You think that sounds cool and click “like” too. Chances are very high you’ll be sent to a page full of games or other interesting looking things to click on. Doing so however will send you into ad hell. This is a click fraud scam. The scammers trick you into visiting their ad page so they’ll make more revenue, and they spam the wall of everyone on your friends list-in your name. Oh, and those apps that claim they can tell you which of your friends visits your profile the most or who has you blocked? More scams. It is not possible for any app to give you that information because Facebook won’t allow it. Instead, it steals your info and spams all your friends. Register wisely. Most sites require you to create an account, whether you want to leave a comment on a blog, participate in a forum, create an email address or buy something. Most will require you to not only create a password but a secret question as well, and provide you with some helpful suggestions like your mom’s maiden name or where you went to high school. The problem with this is you are turning over some valuable personal info, and info that in many cases could be found out about you online. For example, say you chose your high school as your secret question. Sarah Palin did for her Yahoo email account and a hacker was able to easily find that info out and change her password. It’s crucial to supply answers that no one could possibly know but you-even better, lie! Make up the answer rather than give the real one. Just make sure you’ll be able to remember it, and beware of scams that try and trick you into giving it out. Last year a popular game swept Twitter. Called “Porn Star Name” it sounded rather harmless. Take your Dad’s middle name, your mom’s maiden name, and the name of either the street you grew up on or the name of your high school and that’s your porn star name. Tweet it and encourage your friends to do the same! The problem? Those pieces of info are the most commonly asked secret security questions asked by websites when you’ve forgotten your password! Sneaky, huh? Keep your Facebook account under wraps. While it’s tempting to leave it public so people can find you easier, don’t. Not only can it get you in trouble if your boss or potential employer sees a photo or status update you posted in a moment of questionable judgment (that’s a whole other post!) but think about all the info you’re revealing to the web at large. I and many of my friends share our birthdays, phone numbers, family photos, email addresses and other info on our profiles, and I bet you do too. That’s not stuff you want the whole world reading, is it? Didn’t think so. Lock your profile down so that only those on your friends list can see your info, and be careful what friend requests you accept. My rule of thumb is if I don’t know you, we have no mutual friends and you didn’t include a message with your request explaining who you are/why you want to be friends, I deny the request. Buy wisely. When it comes to buying online, make sure the site is legit. If you heard about it via spam, it looks sloppy or very generic, and/or there is no lock icon or https:// on the checkout page, beware! I hope these tips will help you and your personal info stay safe and secure! Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops 
India has developed the world’s cheapest laptop at a remarkable $35 price tag. Developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru, the tablet will run on Linux and can powered by solar power or a battery. The device will also come with 2GB of internal memory, video conferencing capabilities and internet browsing. Kapil Sibal, India’s Human Resource Development Minister, unveiled the prototype today and stated that it will be given to 110 million schoolchildren. It won’t be until later next year that the device will be made available to students in higher education. Considering the price of the iPad, this could actually be a viable option for those of you considering purchasing a tablet in the not too distant future. “The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India. We have reached a stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything,” Sibal said.
The device has been created to increase the digital market in India and provide as a boost for the country’s economy. In addition, it is in an effort by the Indian government to achieve a standard of education by the end of the year. Studies show that India’s literacy level is roughly 63% which makes the country stand far behind other developing nations such as China whose literacy rate is at 93%. I foresee a future where students will no longer have to carry around ten pound text books and everything will be centered around a mid-sized portable device designed for mobility. Then again not everyone has $500 sitting around. It looks like India is onto something good here… Read [Guardian]  Full Story » | Written by Tarun Kunwar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Web, Web Browsers 
Since we’ve had browsers with tabs, there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in terms of how the tabs are presented to the user. Google Chrome introduced the idea of each tab being a separate task, but on the UI side, the biggest change was that the tabs were on top. Aside from that, Opera offers thumbnails of tabs open, but for the most part tabs are the same across all browsers. We have all the tabs in a window open in one bar, and if we want to separate them we open new windows. Not so with Tab Candy, the new feature that could be coming to Firefox soon.
Tab Candy offers a better way of organizing tabs, by dropping users out into an Exposé-esque screen. Users are able to sort through tabs by breaking them into groups of varying size. Groups can be named for easier management, resized, and placed anywhere within the window. Opening a group will show only the tabs within that group in the tab bar. To switch groups, in the current alpha prototype build, click on the Tab Candy button and zoom back out to the group view. The idea is that you can focus on tasks more easily by putting them into groups rather than having to sort through all the tabs to find the one you want, or being distracted by other tabs when trying to work. Tab Candy may be built into into a future version of Firefox, but for now can be downloaded in alpha prototype form. The download is actually a Minefield browser, which is a prerelease version of the Firefox 4 beta 3 with Tab Candy enabled. So you can choose to try out Tab Candy, but it may not be the most stable browser you’ve ever used. Future features mentioned include Tab Candy search, sharing groups with friends, and a section to place pages that you want to read later. Especially with being able to mark tabs for later reading, Tab Candy may just cause me to switch back to Firefox after spending so much time with Safari and now Chrome. Or maybe Google can bake something similar into one of the next Chrome releases. Read [Aza Raskin’s blog] via [TechCrunch]  An Introduction to Firefox’s Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo. Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Web, Websites  Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) has introduced a bill that would require internet casinos and gambling sites to be licensed by the government if they want to do business with U.S.customers. The bill seeks to strengthen and clarify the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, a law that was passed 4 years ago but only recently took affect due to years of administrative foot dragging. The law makes it illegal for banks to process deposits and withdrawals made by customers from and to online gambling sites but was so poorly written that it is for the most part impossible to enforce, largely due to the fact it didn’t bother to make clear exactly what constituted unlawful internet gambling and did not provide banks and other financial institutions with a list of illegal gambling sites.
The bill has support from 69 other representatives and Frank says if passed could generate as much as $40 billion in revenue. Read [PCWorld] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Communications, Smartphones  RIM has begun to release details of its highly anticipated OS 6 and so far it looks like a winner. Features include a podcast service, improved music library, photo features, new social networking and YouTube tools, and perhaps what most users are looking forward to, an all new user interface and WebKit browser. Many BlackBerry users have long been complaining about the sometimes clunky web browser and dated user interface, especially since BlackBerry smartphones made the leap from top of the line business tools to hot consumer item.
I have a BlackBerry and I am looking forward to the new OS. The interface never bothered me because of all the high quality themes available but the new browser and other tools look exciting. RIM says the new OS should be released later this summer. Stay tuned to Gadgetell for a full review! Read [PCWorld] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Websites  The 2010 American Customer Service Index is out. It surveys over 70,000 people to measure their satisfaction with a variety of businesses and websites. This year, Facebook came in almost dead last, with only MySpace fairing worse. That’s right, according to the survey people like the IRS site better than Facebook. The most common complaints involved the ever changing privacy policy, annoying ads, app notifications and interface changes. The site has tried to address some of these issues-for instance they no longer allow apps to send notifications and have introduced a new format for the gazillion wall posts many games generate that groups them all together with a link to expand and see the all if desired, but it’s clear its not enough.
“Facebook is the dominant social network,” Dan Olds, an analyst for The Gabriel Consulting Group, said. “The site definitely has been hurt by the turmoil surrounding their privacy policies but there really isn’t a strong alternative right now. So even though their customer satisfaction scores suck, users are going to continue to flock there because Facebook is where their friends are.”
I am an avid Facebook user and enjoy it. I, like many users am not happy with the privacy changes like being forced to display certain personal information in the directory, but overall I am satisfied with the site. How about you? Of the 30 sites included in the survey, Wikipedia came out on top. Twitter was excluded because of the amount of users that access it through third party apps instead of the main site. Read [PCWorld] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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