Tuesday Tech Talk

Executive Summary: Mentions of StumbleUpon and the Newseum; playing up the iPhone 3G and the Kindle.

Wow, you must be really interested in what I write about, or just really dedicated, to be reading my blog on a holiday. Of course, I’m thankful you’re here. To be reading blogs on a holiday, you must be a little bit of a geek, like me. So here are some tech-related mini-posts that I’ve aggregated to come up with today’s post. Also today, as you can see, I’m unveiling a new feature on Capsun’s Corner: an Executive Summary, which is meant to help readers get a quick snapshot of the entire entry, regardless of length. Hopefully, this will allow you to skip to the section that most interests you; I realize not everyone is a nerd like me and looks for more reading to do.

Capsun’s Corner

First, a note about this blog. Thanks to StumbleUpon (a social network-like service that discovers websites based on users’ interests), I got my busiest day of site traffic, registering 177 hits on Saturday. Of those hits, 140 came directly from them. So thank you to whichever user(s) added my site. And welcome to any new readers I may have attained from that StumbleUpon referral. Finally, I just want to note that since Day 3 of this blog, I have been releasing my posts at 7:45 am, if you want to plan your visits here.

Newseum

With last week’s historic vote electing Barack Obama, copies of newspapers breaking that news the next day were in high demand. If you are still looking for the New York Times or Washington Post, or even The Honolulu Advertiser from that day, the front pages of those and other newspapers worldwide are available at the Newseum’s website, which I read daily. You can download it as a PDF file and keep it in perpetuity, like I plan to do. And you won’t have to worry about the paper yellowing because of the acid. I first heard of the Newseum from a fellow blogger’s post, but I can’t remember who it was, so sorry for not being able to give credit where it is due. But I didn’t realize that they kept archives of the front pages, until a Twitter friend pointed it out, so thank you to him.

iPhone

I am a big fan of the iPhone 3G from Apple; I went to two stores and waited a total of four hours to get mine on the July 11 launch. It took so long that my fiancee and I were late to our own joint graduation party with our friends (I had to go to a meeting at work, so couldn’t leave until mid-afternoon, for which I took vacation time). According to a new report, looks like I’m not the only one smitten with the iPhone 3G, which was the most popular handset purchased in the U.S. in the third quarter. Maybe it’s because it’s the most reliable mobile device. And I don’t pronounce this the best smart device lightly; I’ve tried lots of different PDAs and smart devices (HP Jornada, a Palm V, 3 Handspring Visor models, a Palm Zire, 3 Treo models, the original iPhone), and even without cut and paste, the iPhone 3G blows the competition out of the water.

I’ve pointed out to many in the past that Apple’s business model is that of a hardware company. It’s software (like iTunes) exist to sell more hardware and are expected to pay for its own upkeep. With that in mind, Apple seems to steer customers to buy a new computer every two years, which is far more often than a PC user would. And, if this year was any indication, it looks like they are steering customers to upgrade their iPhones every year. I’d better save up to buy my new model next summer. I wonder what great things Steve Jobs will have to unveil next year. This is all speculation, but a geek can only hope.

Kindle

Kindle

The last item I wanted to talk about was the new Amazon Kindle, which was named Oprah’s Favorite New Gadget last month. And the Twitterverse is abuzz with people talking about their Kindles and how much they love them. I have a friend who has one and I’ve played with it on several occasions. As much as I love my iPhone 3G, when it comes to reading an actual book, the iPhone is just not built for it. The Kindle feels far more comfortable and very natural, displaying pages in a format that looks like a real page that results in less eye strain. I get most of my information online or from the TV, so I don’t think I’ll get one, but if I were going to read a lot of books, I would definitely spring for the Kindle.

Well, thanks for letting me share. I’m sure my Newseum tidbit will be most useful to people, but I hope you might consider some of the other items I wrote about today.

Mahalo!

Tagged as: iphone, kindle, newseum, stumbleupon