Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Ashwin Kumar]

On 29 October 2010 11:01, divya manian  wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 9:32 PM, ss  wrote:
> >>
> > My uncle Google tells me that Kindle currently displays only 16 shades of
> > grey.
>

someone mentioned color ? - http://goo.gl/RoDU

this is tempting.

~ashwin

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[divya manian]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 9:32 PM, ss  wrote:
>>
> My uncle Google tells me that Kindle currently displays only 16 shades of
> grey.
>
> I am a serious reader of "heavy" books and get caled to do book reviews now
> and then. For that I make *copious* notes and annotations. It that possible on
> the Kindle?

There are facilities to annotate and create notes. However, you are
limited by the keyboard that is available. The keys are tiny for
anyone who has average to large fingers (I don't!) It is possible that
you might get used to the keyboard and type as fast as you do on your
desktop keyboard (but this requires use of different set of fingers so
it might take a while).

What I really like is the feature to see popular annotations.
Sometimes, you wonder what it is that made people note a certain line.
Or be enlightened. Either way it is food for thought.

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[ss]

On Friday 29 Oct 2010 7:32:27 am divya manian wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 6:33 PM, Deepa Mohan  wrote:
> > I don't have an iPad or Kindle or Nook...you mean, they don't have many
> > books with illustrations?
> 
> It is hard to read an illustration heavy book like Tintin or Asterix.
> It needs a touchscreen for comics to be readable.
> 
My uncle Google tells me that Kindle currently displays only 16 shades of 
grey.

I am a serious reader of "heavy" books and get caled to do book reviews now 
and then. For that I make *copious* notes and annotations. It that possible on 
the Kindle? 

shiv

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[ss]

On Thursday 28 Oct 2010 11:31:53 pm divya manian wrote:
> I strongly think a kindle is not something a kid would warm up to.
> 

On the other hand I think every Indian school child should get a Kindle so 
that his textboks can be uploaded on to the machine and he does not need to 
cary a ton of books.

shiv

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[divya manian]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 6:33 PM, Deepa Mohan  wrote:

> I don't have an iPad or Kindle or Nook...you mean, they don't have many
> books with illustrations?

It is hard to read an illustration heavy book like Tintin or Asterix.
It needs a touchscreen for comics to be readable.

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Deepa Mohan]

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 2:01 AM, divya manian wrote:

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Thaths  wrote:.
> > How about well-written applications on the iPad? I saw this awesome
> > version of Alice in Wonderland including illustrations on the iPad
> > that looked visually beautiful and had excellent UI (sort-of like
> > pop-up books).
>
> It does look good, but I don't think an iPad has the strength to
> withstand being a child's toy (Kindle does I think). As a child, I was
> delighted to be able to trace these illustrations, or tear them and
> stick them into my scrapbooks. I am surely outdated by now, but I
> think these shouldn't be replaced with a kindle or an e-book reader :(
>

I don't have an iPad or Kindle or Nook...you mean, they don't have many
books with illustrations?

Even today...I derive a lot of joy in reading the text and then looking
carefully at the illustrations.  Let's not talk only Tenniel. William books
with illustrations by Thomas Henry Famous Five with Eileen Soper the
details in the text are so faithfully reproduced. Even as a child, I knew
the illustrators' names as well as the authors.  In fact, I've often thought
that some "adult" books and novels would also be vastly improved with
illustrations.

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[divya manian]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Thaths  wrote:.
> How about well-written applications on the iPad? I saw this awesome
> version of Alice in Wonderland including illustrations on the iPad
> that looked visually beautiful and had excellent UI (sort-of like
> pop-up books).

It does look good, but I don't think an iPad has the strength to
withstand being a child's toy (Kindle does I think). As a child, I was
delighted to be able to trace these illustrations, or tear them and
stick them into my scrapbooks. I am surely outdated by now, but I
think these shouldn't be replaced with a kindle or an e-book reader :(

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Radhika, Y.]

I grew up with an uneven and highly catholic taste in books largely because
I read what my mom read and had around in the "penthouse suite" (sole room
on the terrace). Sidney Sheldon battled with Alex Haley and Alexander
Solzhenitsyn for supremacy and my Lit professors were convinced that I had
not developed sufficient discrimation as a result.

My kid will most certainly face the limitations of his parents' reading
habits. But what I hope he would do is step outside the box sooner or later
on his own. I don't think giving him a Kindle will promote either his sense
of initiative or his habit of reading merely by giving more choices anymore
than a library would give.

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Thaths]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 11:01 AM, divya manian  wrote:
> I strongly think a kindle is not something a kid would warm up to. As
> a kid (3-9), I really loved books with illustrations a lot more than
> text heavy books. I think a kindle will not be as interesting as a
> graphic book at that age. But, for someone who is 14 and above a
> Kindle would be a good addition.

How about well-written applications on the iPad? I saw this awesome
version of Alice in Wonderland including illustrations on the iPad
that looked visually beautiful and had excellent UI (sort-of like
pop-up books).

Thaths
-- 
Marge: Quick, somebody perform CPR!
Homer: Umm (singing) I see a bad moon rising.
Marge: That's CCR!
Homer: Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
Sudhakar Chandra                                    Slacker Without Borders

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[divya manian]

I strongly think a kindle is not something a kid would warm up to. As
a kid (3-9), I really loved books with illustrations a lot more than
text heavy books. I think a kindle will not be as interesting as a
graphic book at that age. But, for someone who is 14 and above a
Kindle would be a good addition.

Also, the only book I have bought in one month of owning a kindle is
"The Girl Who Kicked The Hornests Nest". I dont think books are the
attraction for me with the kindle - it is the ability to read
long-form articles on the web that I find hard to read on my laptop or
desktop.

There is, of course, the added advantage of ePub books from, ahem,
trusted sources, working remarkably well on the Kindle.

I bought a kindle last-minute for a trip to Australia, and it has
served me very well there (mainly as my sole means of checking email
and twitter).

Those who have the propensity to buy books (as opposed to borrowing
from library) would be the people for whom a Kindle would be of
greatest benefit as a book reader. I am glad I have an awesome library
nearby so I do not have to do this, so Kindle has become the device I
use to "read with focus".

- divya

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Thaths]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 5:13 AM, ss  wrote:
> my requirement right now is for some
> form of technological device that will give me instant OCR and translations of
> Sanskrit and Kannada texts

Technically, this is two problems: OCR and translation. The latter is
easier to solve than the former.

1. OCR-ing of Indic texts is a hard problem. In my guesstimation,
OCRing of printed Sanskrit will probably be available in the next 5-10
years (considering how Sanskrit and Hindi have almost identical
scripts). Kannada is going to take longer. Just forget hand-written
texts.

2. Translation is easier to solve. You need a large parallel corpus
(i.e. the same text in two languages). For large languages like Hindi,
French, etc., it is easy to find such large corpora (documents from
the UN, EU, Indian Parliament, etc.) in a digital format. For
languages like Sanskrit, such corpora exist, but are widely dispersed
and in analog format. I have no idea about parallel corpora for
Kannada.

My bet for something like your dream device is a smartphone. If you
have access to an Android phone, check out the Google Goggles
application. Here are a couple of demos of the app:

http://vimeo.com/15024221
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgcE_EQRpdA

It is not exactly what you have in mind, but it certainly points in
the right direction.

Thaths
-- 
Marge: Quick, somebody perform CPR!
Homer: Umm (singing) I see a bad moon rising.
Marge: That's CCR!
Homer: Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
Sudhakar Chandra                                    Slacker Without Borders

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Badri Natarajan]

> 
> 
> form of technological device that will give me instant OCR and translations 
> of 
> Sanskrit and Kannada texts - of which I seem to have hundreds - some of them 
> writen by near ancestors. I wish I had a lens-like device that I can place on 
> a page of a Sanskrit text and have it read out aloud and translated. I 
> believe 
> I can do a lot more with my life if I had such a device and I would be 
> willing 
> to pay the price of a Kindle in India (or more) for such a device.
> 
> shiv
> 
> 

Still science fiction Shiv but give it 5 to 10 years

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Badri Natarajan]

I believe the details for the kindle are that it will allow lending for up to 
two weeks (during which the lender can't read it) once only per book IF the 
publisher allows it. And you need a kindle (or kindle app on another platform) 
to receive it. A step forward but nothing amazing. 

Having said that I love my Kindle 3 but it isn't replacing books for me. More 
of a supplement. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Oct 2010, at 13:32, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay 
 wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 5:55 PM, J. Alfred Prufrock
>  wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> The Kindle and the Nook allow 'lending' for a limited period during
>>> which the book disappears off the bookshelf/collection of the person
>>> lending.
>>> 
>> Wunderbar. Thank you.
> 
> Slight correction required here -
> 
> Kindle would start this 'soon'. Nook already does that.
> 
> -- 
> sankarshan mukhopadhyay
> 
> 

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 05:41:54PM +0530, J. Alfred Prufrock wrote:
> How does one borrow books on a Kindle?

Don't know about the Kindle, but anything with a browser
and a pdf/djvu reader can just go to http://free-books.dontexist.com/

> One of the best things about growing up with friends was that our personal
> collections were effectively pooled.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl http://leitl.org
__
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 5:55 PM, J. Alfred Prufrock
 wrote:
>
>>
>> The Kindle and the Nook allow 'lending' for a limited period during
>> which the book disappears off the bookshelf/collection of the person
>> lending.
>>
> Wunderbar. Thank you.

Slight correction required here -

Kindle would start this 'soon'. Nook already does that.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[J. Alfred Prufrock]

>
> The Kindle and the Nook allow 'lending' for a limited period during
> which the book disappears off the bookshelf/collection of the person
> lending.
>
> Wunderbar. Thank you.
(A reasonable part of our "personal" collections were built on the Mark
Twain model)



>
> --
> sankarshan mukhopadhyay
> 
>
>


-- 
J. Alfred Prufrock

"Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?"

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 5:41 PM, J. Alfred Prufrock
 wrote:
> How does one borrow books on a Kindle?
> One of the best things about growing up with friends was that our personal
> collections were effectively pooled.

The Kindle and the Nook allow 'lending' for a limited period during
which the book disappears off the bookshelf/collection of the person
lending.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[ss]

On Thursday 28 Oct 2010 2:06:36 pm Udhay Shankar N wrote:
> Thoughts?
> 
> Udhay
> 
> http://in.news.yahoo.com/columnist/amit_varma/28/kindle-your-children
> 
I am tempted to buy a Kindle for myself. Not for my kids though. My kids are 
already readers. 

Kids learn to read by watching their parents (or some other similar figure) 
reading. Early reading is often with picture books, so I think a child should 
be at least 8 or 10 before he is able to comfortably graduate into "words 
only" books. 

The other thought I have is about reading in general.  Written words are,  
after all a "translation" of the senses (sights, sounds, feelings) into a 
transmissible format. Comics, movies and TV are often more expressive and 
concise, which is why they have eaten into the space that books occupied. 

After I read Amit's article I Googled for the price of the Kindle in India and 
imagined what I might do with it. Imagination is not necessarily the same as 
experience but it occurred to me that my requirement right now is for some 
form of technological device that will give me instant OCR and translations of 
Sanskrit and Kannada texts - of which I seem to have hundreds - some of them 
writen by near ancestors. I wish I had a lens-like device that I can place on 
a page of a Sanskrit text and have it read out aloud and translated. I believe 
I can do a lot more with my life if I had such a device and I would be willing 
to pay the price of a Kindle in India (or more) for such a device.

shiv

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[J. Alfred Prufrock]

How does one borrow books on a Kindle?
One of the best things about growing up with friends was that our personal
collections were effectively pooled.
-- 
J. Alfred Prufrock

"Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?"

Re: [silk] Kindle your children?

[Kiran K Karthikeyan]

On 28 October 2010 14:06, Udhay Shankar N  wrote:

> Amit's latest column is thought-provoking. I agree with the basic
> premise (reading is good, getting kids to read is excellent), but have
> a fairly major quibble: having effectively infinite choice is more
> likely to induce gridlock than exploration. This may not be true for
> everyone, of course, but it is something to consider. There are a
> couple of ways around this I can think of - but would rather see what
> Amit (and others) have to say first.
>
> Thoughts?
>
I found a lot of resonance with the idea of giving them a budget and letting
them buy any book they want. My uncle who was an English literature prof
followed a similar approach with me, though I had the luxury of an unlimited
budget. Everytime he visited, he would take me to the only decent bookstore
in Cochin at the time, Pai and let me buy any book I wanted.

Infinite choice, I feel, is something anybody who grows up with Google,
torrents, and rapidshare has an instinctive way around anyway and you don't
need to enforce it in any way. I wasn't exactly spoiled for choice at the
Pai bookstore in Cochin, I admit, but public libraries and the university
library when I moved to the US at 11 years old were very vast. Then there
were card catalogues, today there is Google and keyword search.

Kiran

[silk] Kindle your children?

[Udhay Shankar N]

Amit's latest column is thought-provoking. I agree with the basic
premise (reading is good, getting kids to read is excellent), but have
a fairly major quibble: having effectively infinite choice is more
likely to induce gridlock than exploration. This may not be true for
everyone, of course, but it is something to consider. There are a
couple of ways around this I can think of - but would rather see what
Amit (and others) have to say first.

Thoughts?

Udhay

http://in.news.yahoo.com/columnist/amit_varma/28/kindle-your-children

Kindle Your Children

October 28, 2010

Growing up, I was a lucky kid. My father was an avid reader, and his
collection of books numbered in the thousands. It wasn't a surprise,
then, with books all around me, that I became a keen reader as well.
At an age when other children dream of being astronauts or movie stars
or cricketers, I wanted to be a writer. And I wasn't just reading Enid
Blytons and Hardy Boys -- at age ten, I discovered a book called The
House of the Dead, thought the title indicated a thrilling read, and
embarked on my first foray into serious literature. It happened to be
written by a dude named Dostoevsky, and while it didn't contain the
ghost stories I expected, it got me hooked. Dostoevsky was my first
favourite, and I admit that looking back on it, I find it a bit freaky
that I read all the major Russian novelists at age ten, and all of
Shakespeare as well. (I liked Titus Andronicus more than Macbeth, so
it's fair to say that my tastes weren't all that refined.)

My reading habit ebbed and flowed over the years. From a weird-ass,
serious geeky kid who read a lot, I turned into a rebellious teenager
who wore torn jeans, listened to alternative rock and didn't read all
that much. But one thing didn't change: the desire to be a writer.
After college, I wandered into copywriting, then into writing for
television, then journalism, then blogging, and then after years of
procrastination that I blame on my half-Bengali genes, I finally wrote
my first novel a couple of years back. None of this would have been
possible if my dad hadn't been such a collector of books, and if
serendipity hadn't started at home. Forget the fact that I am a
writer: I'd be an entirely different person if I hadn't been the kind
of reader that I was. My life would have been diminished.

As it happens, I have become a bit of a book collector like my father
was, and while he lived in large, spacious bungalows all his adult
life, I have lived in relatively small apartments in Mumbai for much
of mine, and the thousands of books I own have created a major storage
issue. The bookshelves are overflowing; all the beds with storage
space are filled with books; there are three cupboards filled with
books; the tables and sofas in my living room overflow with them. So
it's a surprise that I held out for so long before buying my first
Kindle.

One reason I didn't buy the Kindle earlier is that I like the feel of
books in my hand. (Not so much the much-touted smell of paper, because
years of sinus issues have ravaged my sense of smell.) Also, I used to
think that I wouldn't like the Kindle because one can't read off a
computer screen for too long. However, on using a friend's Kindle, I
discovered that the E Ink technology that the Kindle uses replicates
the look of print on paper almost exactly, and is easy on the eyes.
(No backlit screens and all that.) Also, the marketplace, which was
once a bit limited, has now expanded, and book prices are quite
affordable: often cheaper than you'd get in a real bookshop, and when
it's not, the premium is worth it in terms of convenience and storage
space. So I've gotten myself a Kindle 3, and I love the machine
already: it's lighter than a paperback, can contain thousands of
books, and the look and feel is just wonderful.

But I'm not writing this column to evangelize the Kindle as a device.
I'm writing, instead, because while browsing the online store, I
remembered my privileged childhood. I bought a handful of books on my
first day with the machine, but the vast majority of the hundreds of
books I downloaded in my first few hours with it were free. Every book
published before 1924 is in the public domain, and therefore free to
download. So there I was, reliving my childhood, downloading
Dostoevsky and Turgenev and Dickens and Shakespeare and Mark Twain and
even some of Agatha Christie and Wodehouse on my Kindle -- for free.
In half a day, I put together a collection of books that must have
taken my father years of perseverance and saving up to compile. To me,
that is a matter of great wonder.

For someone who doesn't like children very much, and chose long ago
not to have any himself, I will now have the audacity to give the
parents reading this piece a word of advice: kindle your children. The
biggest thing you can do for your kids is open up the world to them,
and reading is a great way of doing that. One can't force kids to
read, of course, but merely having book

Re: [silk] Fwd: disk space costs less than bandwidth, and both cost less than time

[Srini RamaKrishnan]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 7:49 PM, Jon Cox  wrote:

>  Given that the highest costs are in the absorption of the content
>  itself (reading/listening/watching), it probably makes sense to
>  put a heavy emphasis on how to get stuff into your brain faster.
>

The key to enjoying an unlimited buffet is not to eat faster, but to choose
carefully what you want to eat. (As tricks go 150% speed playback isn't bad,
I use it too, but at the end of the day it's good for finding the
interesting stuff, not for consuming it.)

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=herbert+simon+attention+economy

Herb Simon's research on the attention economy was largely ignored by all
except by marketers who've ever since engineered advertisements for maximum
attention grab. There's social awareness of the ills of spendthrifts and
gluttons, yet we spend our attention with abandon and consume every piece of
information in sight as if there's no harm in it.

I imagine my mind as having three roughly equal sized channels. One I use
for my day job, one I to pursue my passion or interest of the moment, and
the last I use for all the random tasks of life. At the end of the day I'm
interested in doing many things, but without some rule of thumb assessment
of my capacities I overcommit and under-deliver.

Cheeni