Friday, March 6, 2009

Yet more ways to strain your eyeballs

Still working on those India photos, I swear. There are just a ton of them. Look, here is a down payment.

Pasty whiteness meets pristine white marble at the Taj Mahal.



So there you go. Just be patient.

Now, on to the main event. Today a Kindle app was released for the iPhone. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it's always good for writers to have more platforms for their words. On the other hand, who wants to read a book on a 3.5-inch screen?

Actually, I know someone who does this. And she is normal in every other way, so maybe I'm just out to lunch on hot new trends. It wouldn't be the first time, writes the guy who once wondered what the point of blogs was.

So I guess I shouldn't judge. At the very least, this app is a step in the right direction from iFart and HoldOn!.

2 comments:

Scott Parker said...

That reminds me! As an author, do you have any thoughts on the recent Author's Guild vs. Amazon Kindle news?

Being a tech nerd, I certainly have thoughts, but then the closest I've come to being published was when a love note fell into the wrong hands in fourth grade. So I have a natural bias, I suppose.

Damn those girls and their note-filching ways.
-Scott

Gerry said...

it's an interesting question, scott. I'm a member of the author's guild, so I have been getting updates on the legal action.

in the end, I think is a pretty good compromise: writers do rely heavily on subsidiary rights (like audiobooks) and the kindle's planned functionality would have essentially turned every book into an audiobook, albeit of limited quality.

on the other hand, you don't want to deny vision-impaired people a chance to experience your work. to quote the most recent e-mail I got from the guild: "One important consideration in those recommendations will be to ensure that visually impaired people have access to this technology. Book authors have traditionally authorized royalty-free copies in specialized formats intended for the visually impaired, and copyright law has long provided a means to distribute recordings to the blind."

on girls stealing notes, though, I have no insight.