When I say “bookshop” do you think of an Aussie store or an American website? For many people the term is now synonymous with www.amazon.com, an innovative online bookstore. As part of their marketing, they introduced their own ebook reader in 2007. The Kindle, was released in Australia just a month ago.
I’m sure nothing can replace the feel and pleasure of a good printed book, but the Kindle is a much nicer device to use than, say, a laptop computer. It uses a “digital ink” display which does not have its own light source. It works well in bright sunshine. Because of this low power technology, the battery lasts for days. The device is about the same size as a paperback.
It has a very clever approach to downloading books. No computer is required, and no cables. Out of the box, it finds and uses the 3G mobile phone network... but the user is not required to set up an account. All of this is organised by Amazon: the cost is buried in the price of each book.
You can sit on a beach reading a novel, and if you want to buy the sequel, you just use the menu to connect to the Amazon Kindle store. Search for the book you want, agree to the price going on your credit card and the book downloads immediately. The NIV Bible took me about forty seconds to obtain. Books range from a few dollars (for “free” out of copyright books) to more normal prices. New book “specials” are around $10.
The reading experience is quite pleasant. Bookmarks are automatic, and you can add notes and mark spots. There are various other features including a quite impressive “read to me” computer based text-to-voice option.
This certainly does not spell the end of the printed book... but it does provide a viable alternative for those would rather carry a library and a bookshop with them.
“How anything can be predicted”
by Ian Ayres
I have a nephew working on a PhD in data mining. This book has been a great help in my desperate attempts to at least have a clue about his speciality. It is written for the general reader, and is full of interesting stories about what is being done with large scale data sets. The world’s data warehouses are currently groaning with data picked up from our daily transactions. Storage is being discussed in terms you may not even have heard of... not gigabytes or terabytes but petabytes and exabytes.
Why do we need to know about this? Apart from curiosity (and those of us with data mining nephews), we are all aware of the astounding rise to prominence of the Google company. The world of massive data accumulation and “mining” is Google’s world. How is it possible that Google maps now shows constantly updated traffic density on Sydney’s roads... and why do they give this away free? One answer at least is that data is the new currency. Google gives away useful information to get more and more people using their services, thus providing more and more data for other uses.
I found this a most engaging read from the opening story about Aorly Ashenfelter who shocked wine connoisseurs by using data sets to predict the dollar value of particular vintages. The book is worth a solid end-to-end read but you can equally well dip into it randomly for a peek at this new world of digital wonder and ethical challenges.
