Amazon has had an overwhelming lead in the eReader market for a while now, as its closest competitors – Barnes & Nobles’ Nook and the Kobo reader simply couldn’t integrate their ebook stores into their eReaders as well as Amazon.
E-ink is one of the more unusual technologies to spring up in recent years. It’s both more expensive and less versatile than LCD, a long-established product seen in everything from iPods to TVs. It’s incredibly specific, but also incredibly good at its one job: reading text.
E-ink e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook offer, in the opinion of myself and many others, the best digital book-reading experience available. The battery life is astounding (the new Kindle gets up to a month of battery life. An entire month!), they can be used outside without glare, and they quite simply look more like printed, physical ink and paper than any other display ever created. You can lose yourself in e-ink, which is about the best compliment I can give to a digital reader.
On the other hand, LCD devices in a similar package, including tablets like Apple’s iPad, offer a passable reading experience on top of a whole host of features e-ink will never, ever be able to handle. E-book readers are better for books; tablets are better for everything else. So tablets and e-book readers exist in an odd sort of stalemate right now: neither can quite replace the other.
But I do believe that LCD and other, more modern displays (including Pixel Qi, LED, AMOLED, and countless other acronymic display types) will advance to the point where they offer a reading experience at least comparable to e-ink. Some have already been made–the iPad’s IPS LCD display is better than expected in outdoor use, for example–and that’s the wave of the future. And at that point, e-ink will die.
E-ink will die mostly because it fundamentally can’t compete with tablets. But color and interface are hardly the only obstacles e-ink has to overcome to compete with tablets: Its refresh rates make video largely impossible, it can’t cram in enough pixels to make still photos look any more crisp than a day-old McDonald’s french fry, and, most damnably, it’s still extremely expensive. By the time e-ink catches up to modern-day LCD (and that’s assuming it ever does, which is a hefty assumption), LCD will have advanced as well.
Amazon showed that the way to make e-book readers sell like blazes is to lower the price to near-impulse-item territory. Its new $140 Kindle sold out of pre-orders almost immediately, and there’s been more buzz around the next version than can be explained through hardware upgrades alone. It’s a great reader, don’t get me wrong, but its incredible sales numbers are due in large part to the price cut.
Color and touchscreen e-book readers would require a substantial increase in price, to accommodate the new technology. But that’s exactly the wrong way to advance e-ink–the price needs to remain as low as possible.
Why is E-Ink pretending that features like color and touch interfaces are important, necessary, or even desirable for its product? E-ink readers like the Kindle offer the best digital reading experience on the market–why muck it up with expensive and useless features?
E-ink may not have a long future, but until LCD can learn some very difficult new tricks, it’ll survive. Diluting that purpose for half-baked progress to compete with tablets is the wrong direction for e-ink.
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Siddhartha is a novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of an Indian man named Siddhartha during the time of the Buddha. This is a brilliant work, teeming with symbolism within characters, plot and various events that take place during the lifelong spiritual journey of Siddhartha, a Brahman’s son.
Siddhartha’s journey of self-discovery seems to be based on the life of Buddha, who set out to search for enlightenment. He wished to come to understand the causes of human suffering and he achieved his goal. It appears to me that Siddhartha came to see the main cause of misery in human beings just like Buddha – that one thing happens to be desire. The stages and phases of Siddhartha’s life lead him from a beggar to one who lives the over privileged life, filled with material riches and wealths. During this period, Siddhartha gets high off the adrenaline rush of gambling, gambling, gambling…and winning over and over again – it isn’t for money’s sake. Siddhartha comes to realize the riches and wealth the world has to offer make him unhappy. In fact, it appears he, in all honestly, was happier as a beggar.
I noticed several morally problematic scenes that are not well answered in the novel. Siddhartha makes no real sacrifice in his quest for wisdom. He chooses his path and runs roughshod over the lives of those around him. For example, the Ferryman tells Siddhartha that his 12 year old son can fend for himself in the forest and world. Even in the world Hesse has constructed here, Siddhartha’s actions are nothing short of criminal negligence. When you step back and look at the entire book, you realize the immense selfishness of Siddhartha in relation to his friend Govinda, his parents, his mistress, his fellow merchants, and even his son.
Siddhartha is one-dimensional and barely seems human. As I said before, he does not feel an average person’s emotions. This is proven by how easily he leaves his father and his first-born sun, not shedding a single tear. However, Siddhartha does indeed show extreme perseverance and determination. Though this book is a mere 160 pages, it is no easy read. You need to decipher it by each threading sentence to understand the semi-complex symbolism – and it doesn’t always jump right out at you, either. And if you’re looking for a book with realistic characters who think the thoughts and feel the emotions of average people, look elsewhere. Often times, this is what I prefer in my reads, but this was a nice change from the most usually recommended ones like Chetan Bhagat’s and Twillight sagas.
Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin. Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:
> Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
> Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
> Printer-only versions of web pages
If your site contains multiple pages with largely identical content, there are a number of ways you can indicate your preferred URL to Google. (This is called “canonicalization”).
However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results.
Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a “regular” and “printer” version of each article, and neither of these is blocked with a noindex meta tag, we’ll choose one of them to list. In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results. There are some steps you can take to proactively address duplicate content issues, and ensure that visitors see the content you want them to.
Use 301s: If you’ve restructured your site, use 301 redirects (“RedirectPermanent”) in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, Googlebot, and other spiders. (In Apache, you can do this with an .htaccess file; in IIS, you can do this through the administrative console.)
Be consistent: Try to keep your internal linking consistent. For example, don’t link to http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page/index.htm.
Use top-level domains: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top-level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We’re more likely to know that http://www.example.de contains Germany-focused content, for instance, than http://www.example.com/de or http://de.example.com.
Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.
Use Webmaster Tools to tell us how you prefer your site to be indexed: You can tell Google your preferred domain (for example, http://www.example.com or http://example.com).
Minimize boilerplate repetition: For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details. In addition, you can use the Parameter Handling tool to specify how you would like Google to treat URL parameters.
Avoid publishing stubs: Users don’t like seeing “empty” pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. For example, don’t publish pages for which you don’t yet have real content. If you do create placeholder pages, use the noindex meta tag to block these pages from being indexed.
Understand your content management system: Make sure you’re familiar with how content is displayed on your web site. Blogs, forums, and related systems often show the same content in multiple formats. For example, a blog entry may appear on the home page of a blog, in an archive page, and in a page of other entries with the same label.
Minimize similar content: If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one. For instance, if you have a travel site with separate pages for two cities, but the same information on both pages, you could either merge the pages into one page about both cities or you could expand each page to contain unique content about each city.
Google no longer recommends blocking crawler access to duplicate content on your website, whether with a robots.txt file or other methods. If search engines can’t crawl pages with duplicate content, they can’t automatically detect that these URLs point to the same content and will therefore effectively have to treat them as separate, unique pages. A better solution is to allow search engines to crawl these URLs, but mark them as duplicates by using the rel=”canonical” link element, the URL parameter handling tool, or 301 redirects. In cases where duplicate content leads to us crawling too much of your website, you can also adjust the crawl rate setting in Webmaster Tools.
Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.
However, if our review indicated that you engaged in deceptive practices and your site has been removed from our search results, review your site carefully. If your site has been removed from our search results, review our Webmaster Guidelines for more information. Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.
In rare situations, our algorithm may select a URL from an external site that is hosting your content without your permission. If you believe that another site is duplicating your content in violation of copyright law, you may contact the site’s host to request removal. In addition, you can request that Google remove the infringing page from our search results by filing a request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Source: Google Inc
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The death of Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs prompted an outpouring of comments and tributes from political, technology, entertainment and business leaders. A selection:
BILL GATES, MICROSOFT CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN
“Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor.”
MARK ZUCKERBERG, FACEBOOK FOUNDER AND CEO, ON FACEBOOK
“Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.
BOB IGER, CEO OF WALT DISNEY CO
“Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined. Steve was such an ‘original,’ with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started.”
MITT ROMNEY, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL, ON TWITTER
“Steve Jobs is an inspiration to American entrepreneurs. He will be missed.”
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, FORMER CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR, ON TWITTER
“Steve lived the California Dream every day of his life and he changed the world and inspired all of us.”
INVESTOR MARC ANDREESSEN
“Steve was the best of the best. Like Mozart and Picasso, he may never be equalled.”
PAUL ALLEN, CO-FOUNDER OF MICROSOFT
“We’ve lost a unique tech pioneer and auteur who knew how to make amazingly great products. Steve fought a long battle against tough odds in a very brave way. He kept doing amazing things in the face of all that adversity. As someone who has had his own medical challenges, I couldn’t help but be encouraged by how he persevered.”
MICHAEL DELL, CEO OF DELL INC
“Today the world lost a visionary leader, the technology industry lost an iconic legend and I lost a friend and fellow founder. The legacy of Steve Jobs will be remembered for generations to come.”
LARRY PAGE, CEO OF GOOGLE, ON GOOGLE+
“He was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance. He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it. His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me.”
STEVE CASE, FOUNDER OF AOL, ON TWITTER
“I feel honored to have known Steve Jobs. He was the most innovative entrepreneur of our generation. His legacy will live on for the ages.”
SPIKE LEE, PRODUCER/DIRECTOR/ACTOR, ON TWITTER
“VISIONARIES are always called CRAZY in the beginning. A VISIONARY sees things that everybody else says is IMPOSSIBLE, sees a World that People can’t invision (sic)-MAC, IPOD, IPAD, IPHONE, ITUNES and PIXAR. I have nothing but Love for Mr. Jobs and Apple, they have always given me and my films L-O-V-E. Peace and Blessings to his family.”
Related articles
- Tech World Reacts to the Death of Steve Jobs (news.dice.com)
- Dell Founder: Jobs ‘Will Be Remembered for Generations’ (blogs.wsj.com)
- Rest in Peace Steve Jobs (shopify.com)
Cover via Amazon
Enormous amount of wisdom is covered here. I finished this thinking that this is one of the best books I’ve ever read on how to live in this world. I was shocked at the amount of principles covered in this story. I just wasn’t expecting what I got from this. The Monk who sold his Ferrari deals with an approach to live life simply with a balance of focus, discipline courage & self mastery.
The message in the book is such that it keeps on lingering in our minds. The ways and principles in the book are also dealt with authors, but Robin Sharma‘s fable format of saying things are really excellent which makes the reader feel impressed by the book.
Julian Mantle, a lawyer learns the value of time and how to develop utilize time at its maximum. The chapters are meticulously planned and flow seamlessly from one to the next. The book is well carved by Robin Sharma for everyone to read. The lifestyle of many is like that of Julian, who lives a life of flamboyance and extravagance. Earning more he lost his health. Just like health for wealth. After selling his Ferrari, Julian Mantle leaves to India and meets sage Yogi, who lives in Sivana, a small place located in the Himalayas, the land of rose covered huts, placid blue waters with white lotuses floating, youth and vitality, beautiful glowing faces, fresh and exotic fruits.
I initially refrained from underlining and marking up my book because I thought I might want to loan it out. So, I took notes. I’ve since decided that I’m gonna read it again and underline the great parts I want to revisit. Just when I thought this guy had covered most everything, he pulled out even more! This is an awesome book.
The best part of the book is where Julian Mantle teaches his friend John about the ways to live life happily and how to utilize time. The teachings which were taught to him by the sage in Sivana. Julian shares the transformation of life by yogi Raman. The other nice thing about this is each chapter ends with an action summary. I liked how this wraps up each chapter. So, you get the chance to think about what happened in the story, the points being made, and the great thing is it gives you the techniques.
The fable of seven virtues is really good and explains life in a simple manner. He also shares everything which he has learned from the sage. The book, for people who do not have time to spend more on books, this book is really a gift. This book is also for people who run after money and materialism, and for also who search life somewhere else when life is within. The book is a must read book and is also a book of wisdom.
I loved this book! This is one that I think can definately make a difference in your life. The thing about books like this is, usually people read it once, decide that there is something to it and maybe even make a few changes in their life and a little while later they slide right back into living the way they always have. Reread it, absorb it, and make lasting changes. Nothing less than brilliant and inspiring. Some random quotes…
- “Act as if failure is impossible, and your success will be assured. Wipe out every thought of not achieving your objectives, whether they are material or spiritual. Be brave, and set no limits on the workings of your imagination”
- “Never be a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of your future”
- “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience”
- “The quality of your life will come down to the quality of your contribution”
- “The best time to plant a tree was forty years ago. The second best time is today”
- “I am an artist at living – my work of art is my life“
- “The universe favors the brave. When you resolve, once and for all, to live your life to its highest level, the strength of your soul will guide you.“
& so many more ….
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