Year: 2011 Page 5 of 18

Sites I Love: Lendle

On September 21, 2011

When I was young I would tear through books. Then when I got to high school and college I had to do a lot of reading for school which mostly killed my delight in reading. Reading went from a pleasure activity to a rush to keep up.

The Kindle has completely changed the way I read. It reinvigorated my desire to read for fun. It opened my eyes to all the amazing books out there. I don’t even mean Amazon’s Kindle device. I do all my reading on an iPad at home or the iPhone when I used to take the subway to work. Despite owning a Kindle, I haven’t actually seen it since the day we got it, my wife entered her credentials and said, “This is my kindle now! See? It says Annie’s Kindle.”

My renewed love of reading did not come with a budget to match so I turned to Lendle to borrow Kindle books so I don’t have to pay for everything I read. Amazon announcing they would allow lending of Kindle books for two weeks was a partial answer. Just because Amazon was allowing lending of books doesn’t mean I could find people to borrow books from. Lendle has filled that gap in a really simple and elegant way.

What is Lendle?

Lendle is a free book lending service. It is the online equivalent of handing a physical book to a friend.

How do I sign up?

You can join Lendle by signing up via email or using a Facebook or Twitter account.

How much does it cost?

Lendle is free to use. You can sign up and start borrowing books for free. When you lend books, Lendle will actually pay you per book lent a small sum to urge you to continue to lend. There are other book lending sites that require you pay them for the privilege. Lendle is not other book lending sites. Lendle is completely free.

How does it work?

To understand Lendle, you first need to understand Amazon’s Kindle; both the device and applications.

Lendle only works with Amazon’s Kindle eBooks. No Nook, no Sony eReaders, and no plain PDFs are supported.

For the book to be lent through Lendle it has to be a currently available title on the Amazon Kindle Store and the publisher has to have enabled the lending rights to the book.

Most books Amazon sells through the Kindle store are lend able. The only exceptions being books which the publisher or the author have specifically asked not be lend able because they’re still living in the dark ages of technology where the internet is scary.

Amazon will allow you to lend each eBook one time for two weeks. ((This is an Amazon limitation, not Lendle’s.)) While this is nowhere near as good as handing them the physical copy but it attempts to replicate the experience.

Lendle’s role in all this is a middleman putting those who have books to lend together with those who want to borrow books.

How does the Lending work?

When you sign up, you are given a several Borrows. This is the number of times you can request a book from other users. You search Lendle by author, title or keyword for books you want to borrow and click the Borrow button.

When you select a book to Borrow, Lendle looks at the list of people who have made the book available to lend and will email the borrow request to a number of people. The Lender will click a link in the email taking them to an Amazon page to lend out the book.

They complete the lend and the book is sent to the Borrower’s account on Amazon. The borrower is then notified by email the book has arrived and can download it to their Kindle, or a Kindle application running on any device. ((Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android device, or Amazon’s own Cloud Reader.))

Then in two weeks, when the loan has ended you will receive an email stating the loan is over and the book has been returned to your library and the Borrower will receive notice the book is no longer available to read. The entire process is completely painless.

How do I add my eBooks to Lendle?

Adding books to Lendle is as simple as searching the title, author or keyword of the book and clicking I Own it. The book is then added to your library. As a perk, you get additional Borrow requests for making more books available. In addition to encouraging growth by handing out more Borrow requests Lendle also pays you for each successful lend.

Wait, I can make money just by lending?

Yes. Lendle Pays You To Lend Books!

The money you earn is based on the value of the book lent. In addition to earning money when you lend, the site is completely free to use. Whereas some other sites will try to make you pay to get books lent to you, Lendle lets you join and borrow books for free.

What are you waiting for?

No really, why aren’t you at Lendle signing up?
Go to Lendle.me and you would be so kind, use my referral code NDI3KLZP. I get more Borrow requests, no cold hard cash or anything but it also adds you as my friend. And I like to think of us as friends.

Theory of Knowledge

By Carl

On September 12, 2011

In Introspection

When I was in high school I had the good fortune to take part in the International Baccalaureate program. Part of the program was a class called Theory of Knowledge. The entire purpose of this class was to teach us how to think. Is this even something considered in schools anymore?

We looked into philosophy and art history and theories in science and mathematics. The brunt of the class was a series of essays and associated presentations. The essays most self-directed but something which explored a deeper connection and meaning to work. I remember writing at length about the similarities between Nine Inch Nails and Edgar Allan Poe’s work. I recall writing about Dave Barry and Weird Al Yankovic’s style of humor and entertainment.

When we weren’t writing, we were talking. Not just talking but discussing and arguing. We were putting forth ideas and theories and shooting them down or supporting them.

There were not a lot of rights answers in Theory of Knowledge, TOK for short. The class was about thinking and drawing our own conclusions and examining how we arrived at them.

This all came flooding back into my head tonight as I read James Shelley’s post Like, the Post-Literate Society.

1984 is a great book because it is just as timely as it is timeless. It is a tale on control and media and influencing entire populations through fear and censorship. ((Sound familiar?))

Donâ€™t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgottenâ€¦

Sounds a bit like social media doesn’t it? Like. #Tweet. Reblog.

In my thinking about TOK I remembered reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I cannot tell you what this book is about. Only that is keeps within the theme of thinking and learning.

The author says this about his work,

Franz Kafka once wrote to a friend that the only books worth reading are those that “wake us up with a blow on the head” and send us reeling out into the street, not knowing who or what we are. According to thousands of readers I’ve heard from, this is exactly what Ishmael does for them. What makes Ishmael important is not what it’s “about” but rather what it DOES to you–and this is what you need to share with your friends. (Source)

As much as I love Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook they tend to be echo chambers. The same links, stories, ideas tend to circle round and round ad infinitum. I find myself craving new information. I want to think about new things and I want to explore again.

I have spent many hours on introspection because I feel it is important to look inward to best understand myself.

With that, I am going to buy Ishmael, and the two followup books having lent, lost or sold my copies years ago. I am going to re-examine how I think. I need something to wake me up with a blow to the head. I am ready to be a pupil again.

“Teacher seeks pupil, must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.”

Read Ishmael.

Then perhaps you can answer,

“With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?”

Windows Apps I Love: Greenshot

By Carl

On September 3, 2011

In Observations

I have become a fan of Prefs.org which got me thinking about apps I love and how I choose to use them. Being a geek, when I get a new application one of the first things I do is go into the settings or preferences and see what I can tweak. I talked about Greenshot before in an earlier Things I Love post.

I work in IT Support and user’s kept requesting Snag-It, a commercial screen capture application. I wanted to find a free alternative since most people don’t need the advanced features Snag-It provides. Greenshot fit the bill perfectly. ((I think Lifehacker ran a small article about it and I liked it more than the alternatives I found.))

Greenshot is a free, powerful screen capture application for Windows. It allows capture of a region, full screen or single window.

I speak English but the application is available in a hand full of languages. I register the hotkeys to make screen grabs easier. It is also vital to launch Greenshot at startup so it’s available when I need it.

I prefer to Show flashlight so I know a screenshot has been taken. I usually keep my computer muted or if I am listening to music, I don’t want the camera sound to play.

I hide the mouse pointer so it doesn’t mess up my screenshots. I don’t need the delay when I grab the screen so I don’t use the interactive window capture mode.

After the capture, I like to keep all my screenshots in a single folder sorted by date and copy it to the clipboard so I can drop it into an email or a document. Since I do a lot of documentation write ups and walk-throughs this saves me a step.

Since I never know when I might want the screenshot again, I like keeping them organized by date and time so I can go back and look for them.

I store each image in a Screenshot folder and as I mentioned they’re named based on date with a trailing number since the hours, minutes and seconds made the file names too long.

I have a personal preference for png. The application also supports gif, jpg and bmp. I ignore the jpeg quality setting because I have no need for it.

I never print our my screenshots so I’ve left all the printer default checked. Something about 72dpi images printed out makes me cringe.

My 140 Character News Network

By Carl

On August 27, 2011

In Observations

Where were you Tuesday afternoon shortly before 2pm? I was standing in the lobby of a building on the National Institute of Health Campus waiting to get my ID Badge. I was about to get into an elevator and head to the badge office. However, when the ground began to shake I was standing in the lobby.

I was confused at first. At first, it felt like a very large truck or a subway train passing by. Then I felt the floor shake back and forth. I had never felt that before and I knew something was up. As I stood in the hallway with two co-workers, one suggested we head outside so we did. ((Clearly us East Coasters have no idea what to do in the event of an earthquake.))

Once outside and away from the building, we heard the fire alarms going off inside the building we had just left and others nearby. There was no more shaking. I felt safe and it was clear we weren’t going back inside any time soon. So I turned to Twitter.

First of course, to add my voice to the chorus of tweets.

[blackbirdpie id=”106061817771593728″]

But more importantly to find out how big a quake it was.

I was surprised to find its epicenter was in Virginia. I was also surprised to see how far it had been felt. First, there was a flood of tweets from Richmond friends. Then people in North Carolina. Then even a tweet from Boston and a few New York City asking if what they just felt was an earthquake.

Wow. This was a bigger quake than I thought. It was also interesting to read today why East Coast earthquake are felt so far from their epicenter.

The last earthquake we had in Virginia was when I lived in Richmond. It was December 9, 2003 ((Happy Birthday Mom!)) when a 4.5 quake shook the Temple Building where I was sitting after having been up all night working on my advertising final project.

I remember being so sleepy I didn’t even realize the earth had shaken. I thought it was just me. I remember everyone else in class reaching for their cell phones and calling friends and parents. Meanwhile, I sat in my chair yawning and unable to comprehend the situation. Good thing I wasn’t in any danger.

Twitter was my first place for information. I don’t follow any news outlets except Bethesda Patch which is a hyper local news site in the Patch.com network which AOL runs.

The news and information I was receiving was coming in from friends and internet strangers who I trusted and followed. Their observations and retweets helped me comprehend what had happened, the scope of it and it was before any news outlet had put anything together.

Even 45 minutes later as I stood in the NIH Badge office awaiting my turn to get my information, photo and fingerprints taken the TV news was taking calls from locals to get their reaction and weren’t providing much information.

I was already well-informed. I checked out Facebook as well and shared what I knew and gained a bit more knowledge about the quake.

After I had checked Twitter, I texted my wife to make sure she was OK. Not that there was much of a chance of damage or danger, I wanted to be sure. My mother texted me shortly after that to confirm I was fine.

She had good sense not to try to call me. As soon as the quake hit, the phones were instantly flooded with calls from everyone else frantically trying to call their family and friends. Text and data seemed to be unobstructed while voice was nearly impossible to use.

Times really have changed when Twitter, SMS, Facebook and email are how I receive my information quickest and most accurately.

As we prepare for the Hurricane Irene, which by all indications is going to bring very high winds, many inches of rain and we could be without power for days, the news is talking about email and texting loved ones after the storm hits.

Twitter and the Internet have fundamentally changed how we communicate. While the storm to come is uncertain, it is good to know I can still receive reliable information from my hand-picked network of people located around the US and around the world.

Feeling Welcome

By Carl

On August 26, 2011

In Observations

I have a new job. I have left the fine folks of the Atlantic Media Company and joined Terpsys. I went go from supporting journalists, bloggers, designers, developers and other media company types to supporting scientists and researchers looking for a cure to cancer. ((In reality, I’ve spent the past few weeks learning policies and procedures and waiting for my accounts to be created and badge access. But one day I’ll get back to supporting people!))

I was very excited to join the company and they have made me feel welcome.

After receiving my job offer and accepting, I received an envelope in the mail from my new employer. It was a small envelope that couldn’t have held any official paperwork. ((I had already received that by email.)) Curious, I opened it.

Inside the tiny envelope was a Thank You card. And in the card was a Starbucks gift card.

They were thanking me for joining their team and offered to buy me a drink. ((Next up, find a Starbucks.)) I was touched with the gesture. It wasn’t something they had to do. It wasn’t even something I expected or had seen before.

They took the time and effort and money out of their day to hand write me a note and pickup a Starbucks card for me. This shows all their talk of customer service is not just talk. ((Terpsys is a customer service company that happens to work in Information Technology.))

This one seemingly insignificant gesture told me more about the company I had just joined more than a hundred meetings or a thousand Powerpoint presentations ever could.

If they treat their employees this well, then they must really care about their customers. And it shows.

It is always the little things that makes a company shine. Just as the small touches in a design can really make it shine, paying attention to the details and going above what is expected will always be appreciated and remembered.