The Buie Knife

Video Games that Teach; Interactive Textbooks

Can anyone recommend video games that teach history or other stuff? Tired of watching my son while away his time with killing games.Top Ten Games that Teach You Something http://t.co/yLCe3JSL

Several friends respond and offer good suggestions on my Facebook page.

Cheaper, Interactive Texbooks in Students' Future: Apple Brings Textbooks to IPAD.
http://t.co/k6E1vZHV

Introducing Programming to Children

 

 

Advent of Kindle and IPAD Means Reading Books Has Become Popular Again

Since the arrival of the Internet, I (and I bet, most people) read fewer books. The devices we currently access the Internet with are not comfortable for long-form reading of text that's much more than 1,000 words. The Internet and TV infotainment have exacerbated if not created massive attention deficit disorder and shallow understanding of public issues. (See "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.") But now, with the introduction of the Amazon Kindle and the IPAD, long-form reading has a chance to make a comeback. E-book sales are skyrocketing. There are even signs that the depressed newspaper and magazine industries, as well as blogs, will find new revenue streams and subscription models on these inexpensive, light-weight, hand-held devices. 

These thoughts were inspired as my son Alex, 13, received an Amazon Kindle, a generous gift from his aunt and uncle, and declared that he intends to read a book a week for the rest of his life. (His video about the Kindle.) Ordering books for the Kindle is so simple, and cheap, I ordered a couple of books for myself, and they downloaded instantly. 

Another feature of the Kindle I like is the ability to download the first chapters of most books as free samples. There's also the Kindle for the Web feature, allowing you to read a book section without downloading the Kindle software, and a number of other apps (for phone, etc).

Update: After less than two weeks of the Kindle, we've ordered $72.89 in downloads, or 10 books. I admit that three of the book orders are mine, and the rest are my 13-year-old son's orders. He calculates that in two weeks, he has read seven books totaling 1,730 pages. 

His grades have improved markedly since we banned the computer and TV. Too much virtual reality is killing kids' brains. Regulate them!

If we lived in the states, we'd be spending more time at the library. But since we are in Turkey with no English-language bookstore or library nearby, we have to depend on the Internet for our reading material. If we keep this up, we'll be buying and downloading 260 books a year.

When I expressed concern among Facebook acquaintances about how much my son is spending on ebooks, a friend pointed out that ebooks are generally "cheaper than a movie and last longer."

Drill Deeper:

• Amazon's short video about the Kindle.
• The Rebirth of Books.
• Free Ebook Software for Laptops, Desktops.
• Ebooks are the new frontier of green technology.
• Ebook sales are up 193%, representing 9% of all book sales sold to date in 2010. If trends continue, we can project ebook sales will represent 18% of all book sales in 2011, maybe 27% of all book sales in 2012, and then sales will plateau at some point.
• Ebooks and the ease of self-publishing, by J.A. Konrath
• How Writers Can Turn Their Archives into Ebooks, by Carl Zimmer. "I would never bother reading a 30,000 word blog post. An article of that length would be too long for a magazine, and too short for a traditional book editor. The numbers just don't make sense for either industry. But if you're an author with an ill-fitting piece of writing you think is good -- good enough that people might want to buy it -- you can just publish it yourself and put your hunch to the test. No warehouse required."
• Amazon Launches "Kindle Singles" -- compelling ideas expressed at their natural length.
• Amazon Self-Publishing Options
• Nine million people own or plan to buy an ereader. New opportunity for newspapers to monetize content.

Placing a Monetary Value on Online Content

Do you gain value from the blogs, online newspapers and magazines you read? I do. Because I appreciate the hard work and professionalism that has gone into many things I've read online, I've joined Kachingle.com, which allows me to quickly and effortlessly distribute micro-payments to sites I visit regularly. I joined Kachingle for $5 a month, or $60 a year subscriber. Since I've eliminated all my print publication subscriptions, the least I can do is pay $5 a month to read good stuff online. You can, too.

 

 

Join Kachingle.com and support the sites you love with just one click. Learn more.

 

Kachingle.com was "start-up of the day" at Ideabing.com.

Family Blogging from Egypt, Oman, Vietnam, Turkey...

Do you have family or friends living abroad and blogging about it? I feel like my extended family could jointly write a novel as a family saga like "Winds of War" or "War and Remembrance." My cousin Abe spent his junior year abroad in Egypt and blogged about it. He's spending the summer in the country of Oman, and is blogging about that, too. My cousin Megan is spending the year in Vietnam, and blogging about it. My wife, son, and I are blogging about Turkey.

Hope for Online Content Payments If Consumers Slash Overall Communication Costs

So The New York Times will start charging for content in 2011, for "frequent access to its website." I salute them for giving this another try after the demise of "Times Select" in 2007. The media industry needs to assert the principle that readers who come to a web site day after day after day, who depend on it and obviously gain significant value from it, ought to be willing to pay something for it. A healthy future for the publishing industry depends on this principle.

Public attitudes might be changing since "Times Select" failed. Readers, perhaps, are beginning to realize that the publications they depend on can't survive without financial support.

The Times is also smart to delay the requirement to pay until the recession is fully over and the economy is expanding again. By 2011, the convergence of computer, television, telephone and print technologies will be further along. Consumers might reap a significant windfall from this convergence, and might therefore be willing to pass on some of their savings to their favorite websites.

If consumers slash their annual costs for cable or satellite TV, Internet, land lines and cell phones, books, magazines and newspapers, that could free up money for paid online content. What do you think?

25 Products That Might Change the World

From Business Week. Click.

Convergence of TV, Computer Is Finally Here

Convergence of television and computer has been promised for at least 10 years. Now it seems to be happening. Cable Freedom, Aided by a Mouse, Is Just a Click Away. Living overseas, my family and I are far more dependent on our laptops than our television -- we rarely watch television. If only we could plug the laptop into the television to watch movies on a bigger screen. Since consumers may be able to get on the Internet nearly all of what they are now paying for on Cable TV, maybe there's hope that digital news sites, online magazines and blogs will be able to tap into some of the money consumers now pay to Cable companies.

Introducing Instant Computational Knowledge. After 'Gee Whiz' Factor, Will It Become Useful?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Could make Google look old hat!

Drawing on the world's online databases, this site gives you instant computational knowledge. Type in your location -- it'll instantly give you the weather, your longitude and latitude. It'll calculate the calories and nutritional value in just about any food. Type in "calories in Whopper," for example, and you learn not only that a Burger King Whopper has 730 calories, but 390 fat calories, and lots of other nutritional information. (Imagine having this capacity on your smart phone as you stand in line at a fast-food restaurant -- might make you walk out.) Ask who was the president in 1923. It'll tell you. I guess we'll eventually have a chip of this site implanted into our brains! Created by mathematical genius Stephen Wolfram, the site went live May 16, 2009. Some say it's out of beta too early, that it has flaws, and that it could make us stupid by giving us information we should calculate ourselves. Maybe so, but it's still cool to try it out.

How Restaurants, Lawyers, Plumbers and Other Small Businesses Can Use Facebook

The next phase for social networking sites like Facebook is for businesses to find added value in the site. Pizza Hut may be one of the first, with more than 800,000 fans or friends who receive special offers and new product announcements, and have the opportunity to order online. Interview.

The independent blog InsideFacebook.com featured several tips for small businesses:

• 3 Things Restaurants and Bars Can Do on Facebook.
• 10 Things Businesses Can Do on Facebook.
• 3 Things All Plumbers and Local Service Providers Should Do on Facebook
• 3 Things Lawyers Should Do to Market Themselves on Facebook.

Related:

• SocialMedia.com: Generating positive word of mouth about brands and products.
• Small Businesses Solicit Consumer Suggestions On Facebook

Future of Mobile Social Networking Is Here: Friends Recommend Nearby Restaurants On Your Phone

Om Malik, Business Week: "A clue to the future comes courtesy of a new Web- and mobile-based recommendation service from New York-based startup, Goodrec . It allows me to recommend books, restaurants, or places, then shares them with my friends on Facebook. The service aggregates the recommendations from my social network and puts them to use when I need some help making decisions. When looking for a restaurant recommendation in say, Dallas, I can pull up recommendations from my friends on my iPhone. These recommendations are an appropriate place to offer highly relevant advertising—whether it comes from the application developer or Facebook. My bet is that Facebook will start an ad network to target application developers such as Goodrec." Malik's article is entitled, "Why Facebook's Future Is Mobile: Facebook's mobile application brings together location-based data with social networking—and provides advertisers with pinpointed targets."