Archive for 2010
Brisingr 11 Mar 2010
Eragon got some stick because the plot so closely mirrored Star Wars and both of the previous books have taken their fair share of flack about the lack of originality.
I’ve enjoyed the series, though the books are a little childish, but Paolini was only young when he started writing them (and is still only 26) [...]
E-Book Pricing 1 Mar 2010
I’ve read a couple of posts about e-book pricing of late. The latest was from The NY Times, which has a decidedly US slant (as you’d expect), but previously was one from the BBC. I’ve written about this before as well, and stated that the three things that are stopping e-reader and e-book [...]
Will Natal Change the Game? 23 Feb 2010
The ever-excitable Jason Bradbury has posted a written and video review of his experience playing with an early prototype of Microsoft’s much anticipated Project Natal gaming interface (check out the videos on the Natal YouTube channel here). I’m not much of a gamer, though Natal does hold some interest in the same way the Wii [...]
Queste 20 Feb 2010
I obviously forgot to put up a review for this book. This is the fourth book in the Septimus Heap series I’ve read (you can find links to the reviews of the others on the Reading page). My memory of it is rather vague as I read it some time ago, but from [...]
Snooping at School 18 Feb 2010
I thought this sort of thing was limited to storylines in books by overly paranoid others, but where you hear about how a school used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home you have to worry.
The Rise of the SIM 17 Feb 2010
The end of the video in an article from the Mobile World Conference (about mobile tech) by the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones brings up an interesting point I was thinking about recently.
Let’s say we all embrace cloud computing, it means we have to be connected all the time to have access to our documents and media. [...]
Mobile DTV Brings TV to Mobile Devices 15 Feb 2010
I remember the days of the portable TVs, with their little 1- or 2-inch CRT screens and how bad they were, so it’ll be interesting to see how this new generation of mobile TV devices get on and whether there is actually demand out there.
Will E-Books Mean Cheaper Textbooks? 11 Feb 2010
So I’m reading an article over at CNN where ten tech luminaries (their words) are commenting on the future of reading and I stumble across this from author Jeannette Walls:
I think electronic readers and tablets are going to have a huge impact on the textbook business. Some textbooks cost more than $100. What student can [...]
Einstein’s 1905 chronology 10 Feb 2010
Talk about a busy man, I have trouble achieving anything let alone breaking new ground in a scientific field that often.
Alan Turing and the Ace computer 8 Feb 2010
Yet more interesting reading on Britain’s contribution to early computing.
[Ace] ran for the first time on 10 May 1950. By modern standards it was sluggish but in its day was the fastest in the world.
And, whilst investigating how it could be used, the team uncovered another problem that looked set to dog greater use of [...]