Apple's new iPad tablet takes ebooks to new level

Apple revealed it's new iPad tablet yesterday to mostly great reviews from the tech crowd, now let's see how it'll impact the rest of us.

The iPad is designed to fit the niche between smart phones and laptops allowing users to view email, surf the internet, listen to their music (like iPod application), and a whole bunch of other useful applications already available on the iPhone. The iPad itself is due for release in the next 60-90 days depending on which version you're interested in. Apple has redesigned many of the iPhone apps specifically for use on the iPad, including maps, calendar, contacts, etc. as well as created new user interfaces including their iBooks feature. This iBooks application is built similarly to the iTunes store allowing users to "one click" purchase (download to their iPad) the book of their choice. No word on pricing of books yet, but expected to be in line with Amazon's Kindle prices (i.e. $9.99 per title and up). The cool design of the books on the iPad is a "bookshelf" graphic representation of your "books" with their cover art showing. (See pic above)
 The Apple website reports: "Once you’ve bought a book, it’s displayed on your Bookshelf. Just tap it to start reading. The high-resolution, LED-backlit screen displays everything in sharp, rich color, so it’s easy to read, even in low light." 
This technology is different and more user friendly than the Sony e-reader, the  Kindle, and Barnes & Nobles' Nook. Those readers show only black text and "turning the page" is cumbersome, slow, glitchy (especially in the case of the Nook, which also shows a flash and a delay when the page screen changes which can be annoying and interrupt the flow of one's reading). No such problems with what we've seen of the iPad so far. Using the Mac's OS seems to be super fast and capable of handling these issues easily. Plus the size of the device, with virtually the entire face a glass screen, is larger at 9.5" X 7", yet light at under 1.5 pounds. Oh, and the great thing is the battery life is approx. 10 hours on a single charge (much better the best laptops at around 5-6 hours of battery life).
The iPad also does much more than simply download books, it plays video, it operates much like an iPod for music, and it comes with (among many other apps) iWork, Apple's version of word processing and spreadsheet functions, installed. 
I predict many people who only use a computer for email, picture viewing / sharing, gaming, and simple word-processing will use this device instead of a full laptop or desktop computer. Unfortunately, no camera or phone for now. However, Apple will surely add these in the future. We'll report more when the iPad is available for purchase sometime in March or April. Starting price is $499.00 with internet plans at $14.95 p/month. Considering the Kindle is now priced at $259 and offers only the 'book' feature, this seems a bargain.


More details at the Apple website>>>

'Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger dies

Reprinted from USA Today:

By Deirdre Donahue

The reclusive writer who gave literary voice to the emotional and psychological anguish of teenagers throughout the world is gone.

J.D. Salinger, 91, author of the 1951 masterpiece Catcher in the Rye, died of natural causes at his longtime home in Cornish, N.H., said the author's son, in a statement from the author's literary representative.

Catcher in the Rye was the only Salinger novel released in his lifetime, but it is an acknowledged masterpiece and established the author as one of the most influential writers of the last century.

His carefully structured novel centered on an unhappy 16-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield. Expelled from prep school, Caulfield narrates the story after an apparent mental breakdown.

More significantly, the novel was the first to capture the post-World War II alienation of youth: the idiomatic slang, the rage against the hypocrisy of the adult world and the fury at the inevitable loss of innocence that growing up demands. Holden's deepest feelings are for his little sister, Phoebe, and his dead brother, Allie, who died of leukemia.

Although published in the early 1950s, the book's themes foreshadowed the youthful rebellion of the 1960s. It remains controversial more than half a century later because of its sexual content, questioning of traditional ideals, and language.

Read the entire article>>>

Best-Selling Books: The top 100 for 2009 / Twilight Series 1-4 top spots

Well this proves that 12-15 year-old girls buy a lot, and I mean a LOT of books.
Here's the top 20 bestselling books of 2009 (or how Stephenie Meyer is getting rich).

1	New Moon	Stephenie Meyer	Young adult: Second in Twilight vampire love saga; movie (F)
2	Eclipse	Stephenie Meyer	Young adult: Third in Twilight vampire saga (F)
3	Twilight	Stephenie Meyer	Young adult: First in love saga: Isabella falls for a vampire; movie (F)
4	Breaking Dawn	Stephenie Meyer	Young adult: Fourth in Twilight vampire series (F)
5	The Lost Symbol	Dan Brown	Harvard professor Robert Langdon unravels the mysterious brotherhood of the Masons (F)
6	The Shack	William P. Young	Man reconnects with God after death of child (F)
7	Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw	Jeff Kinney	Children: Greg tries to toughen up to avoid military school; third in series (F)
8	Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days	Jeff Kinney	Children Greg’s summer plans include video games and no responsibility (F)
9	Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man	Steve Harvey	Subtitle: "What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment" (NF)
10	Going Rogue: An American Life	Sarah Palin	Memoir from the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate (NF)
11	Glenn Beck’s Common Sense	Glenn Beck	Subtitle: "The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine" (NF)
12	My Sister’s Keeper	Jodi Picoult	Teen helps cure her sister’s leukemia; movie (F)
13	The Associate	John Grisham	An associate at the world’s largest law firm is forced to hide a secret (F)
14	The Time Traveler’s Wife	Audrey Niffenegger	Story of a couple who cope with husband’s "time-traveling" disorder; movie (F)
15	Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto	Mark R. Levin	Talk radio host presents manifesto for the conservative movement (NF)
16	Three Cups of Tea	Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin	Subtitle: "One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time" (NF)
17	Outliers: The Story of Success	Malcolm Gladwell	Why some people succeed and others don’t (NF)
18	Diary of a Wimpy Kid	Jeff Kinney	Young adult: Diary from a middle-schooler, Greg Heffley (F)
19	The Host	Stephenie Meyer	Love triangle involving a man, a woman and the alien that possesses her (F)
20	The Help	Kathryn Stockett	A young white woman tells the story of black maids in 1960s Mississippi (F) See Full List>>>

"Tweet" why it's the word of the year!

from the washingtonpost.com:

Other outlets have already named words of the year for 2009 -- Merriam-Webster picked "admonish" (huh?) and the Oxford English Dictionary went with "unfriend" (hrmph) -- but the 121-year-old American Dialect Society thinks of itself as the granddaddy of them all, the first and last word in words of the year. Its hour-long quest must yield two words that are accurate, exciting and durable (never mind that their first-ever word of the year, in 1990, was the now-regrettable "bushlips"). Two words must satisfy both the crusty generation of veteran scholars and the giddy linguistic students whose jargon is a step ahead.

Read the whole story: washingtonpost.com

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Miep Gies, who helped Anne Frank hide from the Nazis and saved her diary, dies at 100

In this May 19, 2006 photo released by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 97 year old Miep Gies is seen. Anne Frank called them the Helpers. They provided food, books and good cheer while her family hid for two years from the Nazis in a tiny attic apartment. On Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009, the last surviving helper, Miep Gies, celebrates her 100th birthday, saying she has won more accolades for helping the Frank family than she deserved as if, she says, she tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland. The Anne Frank Museum says Gies, who helped the teenage diarist's family hide from the Nazis, died Monday Jan. 11, 2010. She was 100. (AP Photo/Anne Frank House, File) 


Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.

After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."

Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.

"The Diary of Anne Frank" was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in some 65 languages.



More in the Chicago Tribune article>>>

In New York City, a Chilly Library Has Its Rewards

In the pantheon of New York City jobs, many people face rugged extremes. Ironworkers brave fierce winds high on beams. Subway track workers traverse dank tunnels. Firefighters climb through flames.Under a little-known contract provision titled “Extreme Temperature Procedures,” unionized workers at branches of the New York Public Library can accrue compensatory time when the temperature inside dips below 68 degrees for a couple of hours. Similar clauses exist for libraries across the city.
More at the NY Times article>>>

'New York: The Novel': History has never been so fun to read

Looks good - can't wait to tackle this one after just finishing Tale of Two Cities. 

REPRINTED FROM USA TODAY

By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY

New York is a big city. New York: The Novelis an even bigger book.

Edward Rutherfurd has tackled big subjects in his fiction before. London, Russia, Ireland, to name but three. Now he turns his keen academic eye toward the city that never sleeps.

It appears Rutherfurd didn't sleep much either while putting together this massive "history" of one of the world's greatest cities. (Some have called him an heir to James Michener, who also wrote epics set in various locales around the world.)

Rutherfurd's research is exhaustive, taking the reader from the city's beginnings as an Indian village at the tip of Manhattan all the way to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

And while this book could be one big bore, it is not. As he has done in his other novels, Rutherfurd once again uses a variety of fictional families to weave this tale of one of the world's most fascinating cities.

You want George Washington? He's here. You want Babe Ruth? He's here, too, right along with so many Dutchmen you'd think no one stayed back home in the original Amsterdam.

But Rutherfurd's habit of also making up many of his characters makes this sweeping tale a much more fun read than anyone would suspect. This is history, but with a very readable story line.

It's even, well, a little naughty.

"Margaretha de Groot took a slow draw on the clay pipe in her sensual mouth, looked at the man with the wooden leg in a considering kind of way, and wondered what it would be like to sleep with him," Rutherfurd writes.

Once again, thinking big.