Dammit

Kobologists Shocked By Kobo Aura HD

Around the world, the two people who still pay attention to Kobo were awakened from their slumber when the company announced a new eInk eBook device with a hi-res screen and premium pricing, shockingly called the Kobo Aura HD.

I joke a bit. Kobo doesn’t make the waves of Amazon or have the Deathwatch popcorn-eaters of Barnes & Noble/Nook Media.

I am surprised they’ve done a new eInk device, however. I wonder what Nook Media and Amazon make of that?

Sizing them up:

Kobo Aura HD: 6.91″ x 5.05″ x 0.46″ – 8.4658 oz
Kindle Paperwhite: 6.7″ x 4.6″ x 0.36″ – 7.5 oz
Nook GlowLight: 6.5″ x 5.0″ x 0.47″ – 6.95 oz

What would have excited me is if this had been based on Android. But there’s no sign of that in the specs. Having Android would have put a big hurt on Nook Touch sales.

Update, Monday April 15, 2013: Kobo has a promo video. See it after the break.

Superstorm Sandy Co-Op Lawsuit

Staten Island Sandy victims sue co-op in St. George

Ten residents whose first-floor apartments were flooded and severely damaged in the massive October storm recently filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against the co-op, its managing agent and board of directors.

The above photo is a co-op unit photographed the day after Superstorm Sandy (note that it might not be owned by one of the plaintiffs).

To see more damage, click here and here or go to the complete index.

Transcript: Writer Derek Raymond Rare TV Interview

Thanks to Laura Fullton for doing this.

She notes:

The interviewer is talking at light speed (she really needs to slow down!) and Cook has a heavy accent, so I had to listen to some parts over and over to catch everything, and I’m still not sure in a few places. I also asked a native French speaker to listen to a few bits that weren’t clear for me, but that didn’t make much difference.

After the break, first the English and then the French.

Some Blog Changes

Avatars in Comments were supposed to be Off. Settings showed them as Off, but they still appeared. Maybe this time they will really be Off.

I’ve pared the Sharing options down to a handful of the most popular and changed those buttons to all-text.

I finally found the way to delete that damned floating Follow button WordPress added a while back.

If there are any objections, Comment.

This Page Is Why The Internet Sucks

James Bond was orginally called Barry Clams [Note: Typo in original headline at post time.]

Go look at it.

According to Letter Count, the entire item people are meant to read — including headline — is just 415 characters.

Saved as a plain text file, that’s just 423 bytes (according to Windows XP Properties on a plain text file from WordPad).

Yet if you save that page as HTML, it’s a whopping 1.59MBs!

Over a megabyte and a half of absolute crap — ads, links to extraneous stuff — to deliver what can be read in less than ten seconds!

Advertising on the Internet is worse than it’s even been on TV.

And no, I don’t have a solution. I’m just fed up with bloated web pages and point to this as one of the worst examples.