My E-book Reader Dilemma

With the multitude of tablets being released almost everyday, one would have been excused for thinking that the days of e-book readers were numbered. And I was among the many who thought so. But as one delves deeper into the tablet-world, one is bound to realise something, that tablets arent really a replacement of the good old Kindle-esque devices.

The very fact that most tablets become virtually useless out in the sun, is a huge minus in the tablet category. None of the tablets, expect the Notion Ink Adam has the capacity to make itself readable under the sun.

So what do I go for, a tablet or an E-book reader? Check out the flowchart below:

Okay so now I hope you have decided what you need. If its a tablet, there are a million of them, and basically it depends so much on individual tastes and needs, that its impossible to recommend something for everyone. But generally speaking, iPad and the Galaxy tab are safe bets. Notion Ink Adam is a great choice but it will not have access to the Android Market. Or if you want a more customised tablet friendly OS, then I think its better to wait for the release of Motorola Xoom.

If however your choice is an e-book reader, read on...

There are primarily 2 major e-book readers in the market right now. The Amazon Kindle and The Nook (the Nook Color being the latest). Amazon Kindle has released a newer version a few months back and quite confusingly its called...the Amazon Kindle, again. It has a better contrast and a better battery life (almost a month of usage after charging once) than older Kindles, not to mention the faster speeds.

The Nook Color though is a different product altogether, its more of a tablet than an e-book reader. It has the capability to display "coloured images", has a touchscreen interface and the glare-free screen. (The Nook has been quite famously the target of various developers, aka hackers, who have hacked the device to run Ubuntu on it!) However these features does take its toll on the battery life of the device and its battery life is substantially shorter than the Kindle (many users report the battery life to be around a day at the most, which is quite unsatisfactory for an e-book reader).

Hence, Nook is more of a wannabe tablet and less of an e-book reader. But then again, if you want a really cheap tablet, maybe the Nook is your bet. Beware though, there arent many apps around, so forget about playing Angry Birds on this device (although I hear someone has infact rooted the Nook to run Angry Birds! But its not officially supported, so basically if you manage to brick your device, be ready to pay some hefty bills to get it back in running condition).

And finally, the Indian market has a few e-book readers as well. Most famously, the Infibeam Pi and the Wink. (Pi being the one immediately below this text)

But these e-book readers have their faults and that is pretty evident with a little bit of googling. The Pi lacks 3G and Wifi. Wink has the Wifi but I believe their 3G version will be releasing later this year. However one of the biggest positives of these devices is their ability to read Indian fonts/languages. Infibeam and  Wink both have amassed a vast collection and wide range of e-books.

Finally I guess after going through everything, it all boils down to personal preference. If one is more into reading Indian texts, it makes little sense to go for the Kindles and Nooks. Again, if one is in pursuit of a quality product which will be your "gadget of the year", Kindle and Nook are irreplaceable.

(As for me, I have decided to go for the Kindle)

The tragedy of Indian comedy

Indian television never really usghered in terms of quality comedy. Sure there were great comedians who did movies, but none of them were interested in television or make a mark on the small screen. The early 2000s was the era od forced mindless laughter, pioneered by the great Navjot Singh Siddhu and his partner in crime Shekhar Suman. These silly comedy shows gave rise to some quality comedians after a long time, Raju Shrivastav being one of them. However to be fair, he never really made it big on television. Maybe the Indian tv producers were stuck in the reality tv cliche. Or maybe they didnt like laughing.

And so Indians had to satisfy their comic thirst by tuning in to 'phoren' tv personalities, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel and others in that league. And even then we remained largely ignorant of some of the greatest comedians of our time. Ricky Gervais, the famous group Monty Python, among the many. It was only when the phenomenon of youtube came into effect that we got a taste of what we were missing.

Why am I saying all this? Well the other day I say Vir Das on star world (Ripping the decade). I cant thank those guys at star enough for having the courage to telecast something like that. Stand up comedy has been very boring, out of context and...very boring in this country. I dont know if Vir can change that but he sure has talent. Watching his show made me realise what stupid entertainment we are being forced to watch. Dolly Bindra's madness and Rakhi Sawant's imbelice stupidity. What sin have we committed that producers and directors of these shows think that the audience doesnt have any amount of grey matter?

I would love to believe that the appearance of people like Vir Das in a stand up comedy format has stirred up some lazy dumbass tv channel arses.

Yahoo to shut down Delicious

It has now emerged that Yahoo will be shutting down some of the services that it deems unproductive. Surprisingly among those services to be axed is Delicious, the very popular social bookmarking service.

To be quite frank, this decision of Yahoo isnt surprising since they had revealed a need to cut down on employees. However that having an effect on its services, especially popular ones like Delicious is quite unexpected. There are only a handful of services from Yahoo which I find useful. Among them would be Flickr (the image sharing site cum community, which happens to have an incredible numer of professional photographers), Yahoo mail (yeah some of us still ue it) and Delicious. Yahoo search engine is nothing even remotely close to relevant, even the new Bing seems to have become more popular than Yahoo search (although Yahoo does contribute to Bing in a very complicated and weird way). So frankly Yahoo would be closing down one of its three most relevant services. Now thats really shocking.

Anyway the only thing one can hope is that Yahoo does get its act together and maybe integrates Delicious into one of its other social portals.

India's new climate policy - a layman's view

Image via Wikipedia

Cancun has turned out to be something of a surprise as far as climate change is concerned. The world seemed deadlocked in the 'no change in the stance of developing countries' debate, especially so after the Copenhagen fiasco.

And then came Jairam Ramesh. India's charismatic environment minister with a hairdo, even David Beckham might find hard to pull off. When the Cancun conference on climate change was heading the Copenhagen way, he announced that India was after all willing to change its rigid anti-emission reduction stance and enter into a legally binding agreement for the same.

India has for a long time held a view that the developed countries contributed more to global warming than the developing ones. Something which is factually true. However the US and the other developed countries were of the view that India shouldnt take the same path to development that others have taken in the past. Hence, a complete U-turn of India's stand does come as a surprise.

India is an emerging superpower, or in the words of the current US President, India has already emerged! Now a legally binding stand on reducing emissions will take a hit on India's economy and growth. In a country which still has a large number of people living below the specified poverty limit, can we as a country afford to think about saving the greens? Arent we being burdened by a problem which has been created by the West? Why should India suffer because of their mismanagement and failed planning of the West?

Well, we could go on arguing about these. But frankly this will lead us nowhere. Decades of such discussions, confrontations and negotiations have yielded absolutely no results. Unfortunately these have left us with little option but to act, with immediate effect. It is the responsibility of everyone regardless of their contribution to the present climate scenario to chip in with whatever they can. However balancing growth and reducing emissions will be a tough act which will have to be addressed by the governments.

Notion Ink Adam - Doubts and Confusion Abound

Image by darkpollo via Flickr

It has been a long time since Notion Ink started on their journey to create that tablet of dreams. A tablet to rival even the mighty Apple iPad and the now immensely successful Samsung Galaxy tab.

Slowly the technical specifications started rolling in. And astounding they were! Dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, Pixel Qi display, HDMI ports, inbuilt Adobe AIR/Flash compatibility, Android 2.2 and beyond compatibility, etc.

The company was however very careful in what it released. I never found a single video of the tablet in action. Everything from the boot screen demo to app functions were 'custom made' videos. Even pictures of the tablet being posted were either immensely photoshopped or had serious typographical/grammatical errors (check out this screenshot posted yesterday). Although this was indeed making me suspicious, it didnt really dampen my spirits especially since its an Indian made tablet which hopefully would be much better and cheaper than its Apple and Android counterparts.

Yesterday, after long and long and extra long delays, Notion Ink finally opened their 'store' to pre orders. However thats when things started to go wrong, horribly wrong. Notion Ink had promised the Notion Ink "family" that it would open its doors first to them and then to the world, 6 hours later. Many many 'members' then commented on the blog that they hadnt received the notification mail even when they were part of the Notion Ink 'family'. Later when the store opened up for everyone, there were payment faults, error messages, payments getting failed etc. Notion Ink has admitted now that there was indeed a problem with the servers.

To add to the slew of problems was Notion Ink posted their terms and conditions and warranty policies which not just shocked many but also made Notion Ink Adam a contender for 'scamware of the year'. To be short and precise, Notion Ink will charge you for every single manufacturing fault of theirs even if its within the warranty period and will deduct the shipping charges from your pocket too! I cant remember the last time I came across such insane warranty policies. Oh wait, there's more. Notion Ink Adam will apparently ship from China! (Yea even I was WTFed when I first learnt about it) And so, you will have to shell out $50 for shipping plus import duties regardless of where you are located.

Compare this to the support system of Samsung which gives you Samsung warranty without any such weird preconditions and shipping issues. I really dont mind shelling out the extra $$$ to get the largest selling Android tablet. Notion Ink's business just seems way too fishy right now. What a shame!