Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Don't mourn the demise of books just yet

I'm still catching up with e-mail from the last few days, so I just read David Pogue's article in the New York Times last week about the Sony Reader. It sounds like a nifty gadget, but still too pricey for me. Still, it's a fascinating idea. As the technology improves and the price comes down, I could imagine using an e-book, especially while traveling. I always take way too much reading material when I travel. I guess I have a horror of being stuck in an airport or someplace and running out of something to read. So I always have a couple of magazines (meaty magazines, like the Atlantic Monthly, that take a long time to read) and a couple of books besides my Bible. The downside of this approach is that my luggage is awfully heavy. So this gadget could come in handy someday.

Speaking of books, Katy has found a very nifty thing: Shelfari. It's sort of the social networking answer to letting your friends browse your bookshelves. I may just have to do this, too.

As you may have noticed, I'm sharing my music, sort of. I finally posted a chart from my last.fm profile that shows what I'm listening to. But since I'm only on a computer connected to the Internet from roughly 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, if you look at this blog at other times the chart will not be updated. Oh well.

My brother Jim and I have been playing a maddening little game online: Funny Farm. It's a word association game and it looks pretty easy, but it gets hard really fast. It allows collaboration and we've made some progress, but it's slow going. Anyone think they want to give it a try? Leave a comment or e-mail me and I'll explain it to you.

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