Odd Lots
- The $35 Atlantis word processor (see my entry for June 18, 2010) installs effortlessly under Wine and runs without a glitch under Linux. (It has a Platinum compatibility rating, and they don’t get any better than that.) If you’re doing or considering ebook development under Linux, it generates a very good EPub file, and is quite fast and extremely low-profile. (1.5 MB!)
- Doesn’t Popular Science tell us this (and just as emphatically) every three or four years? I’ll believe it when I actually see zepps flying over my house.
- From Bob Fegert comes word that Ray Kurzweil hopes to shake up the ebook business with his still-unreleased Blio reader. I’ve known of Blio for some time; what’s new is the partnership with Toshiba to create a Blio ebook store supporting PDF, XPS, and EPub books. However, what may make Ray the new kingmaker in the ebook world is a recent Federal requirement that universities make their e-readers accessible to the blind. Blio will do that very well (as you might expect, given Kurzweil’s history) and the reader is capable of rendering textbooks to an extent that most other ebook software/hardware combos simply can’t. Much to watch here.
- Having just spent a great deal of money changing out my glasses to a new prescription, I think this Android eye-test app is clearly and crisply brilliant.
- From the Words-I-Didn’t-Know-Until-Yesterday Department: Cyberlocker, a cloud-based file-hosting site. The term is generally used of sites like Rapidshare, which are coming to be seen by Big Content as the greatest single offenders in the file-sharing wars.
- Just as Shrek is selling Vidalia onions, I heard from a reader that Wallace & Gromit not only put the Wensleydale cheeses on the map, but with the power of cartoon branding brought the cheeses’ producer back from the brink of bankruptcy.
- Rich Dailey N8UX writes to tell us that the original Idle-Tyme rolling ball clock is back in production again, after 25 years. I saw one in a store window I don’t know how many years ago and giggled a little at the product’s inherent audacity, but it had a following, and I bought a plastic knockoff in the late 70s. The clock broke, but I still have the balls in a drawer somewhere. Read the history page; the inventor (like a lot of inventors) was a very interesting man.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: ebooks · food · language · linux · software
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Blimps were an almost everyday reality for us kids growing up in Akron, Ohio. We would ride our bikes through the suburbs, following along (or quite often getting ahead of them). They would sometimes idle down to chit-chat with us, and throw down trinkets. We were suckers for Goodyear promotional stickers, or anything that was free and thrown from a blimp. Then they would nose-up and power on, usually toward the big hanger.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/6370
http://www.goodyearblimp.com/history/wingfoot.html