Web Site of Rajiv Pant

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini was as enjoyable to read on the Amazon Kindle as it would have been in a printed book. I started reading it on the plane during my flight back to NYC from Charlotte after speaking at a conference there. It took two evenings to complete.

The story is gripping and emotional: It makes use of back references and coincidences that fit in well for such a story touching Eastern cultures and societies. The descriptions of Afghanistan make you feel like you can relate to the place that is foreign to many of us. The depiction of the immigrant community in the San Francisco Bay Area feels like a genuine experience. Even though the author relates the storyline to Afghan history giving the tale a realistic feel, he does not dwell much into narrating the actual historical events like a part-history book. Instead, the book focuses on the characters and the plot, making it a thrilling experience to read throughout. The story isn’t a light read: It describes some of life’s gruesome realities. Overall, while he does employ cultural stereotypes, the author has captured the essence of different cultures and represents them well.

In most parts, the story feels real, as if it was someone’s amazing autobiography. Some coincidences do, however feel too eerie to be true. I recommend it with 4/5 stars.

Below is an introduction to the book in a video interview with the author.

The Amazon Kindle mobile reading device comes with their NowNow service included, where you can ask any question you like and you get a response from a paid human researcher. I asked a question and got the unexpected answer below.

I do believe this was an honest mistake by a researcher trying to be helpful. NowNow is a very useful service.

—–Original Message—–
From: NowNow [mailto:ask@nownow.com]
Sent: Tue 1/22/2008 10:48 PM
To: Rajiv Pant
Subject: RE: What are some good places to learn Spanish in evenings and/or weekends in Manhattan New York City?

Your Question:
What are some good places to learn Spanish in evenings and/or weekends in Manhattan New York City?

Answer from NowNow:
Get a job at any restaurant and work in the back.

Get a job in the back of a restaurant and you will make money and learn spanish from your co-workers.

Source:
Opinion
———————————————————————————–

NowNow, let us not be racist

If they had said instead a Spanish or Mexican restaurant, that would have been acceptable, but in the back of any restaurant? That’s presumptuous.

If you’d like to suggest a better answer to my question about learning Spanish, please feel welcome to leave a comment here.

The Amazon Kindle is an excellent reading device. It is a good example of a product that serves its purpose well. Like a paper book, it you can use it in bed, bathroom, bus and boondocks.

The E Ink display presents an experience quite close to that of reading a book on paper: It is easy on the eyes and can be read indoors or outdoors in sunlight. It is lightweight, about the size of a paperback book and simple to use. It has excellent battery-life so you can enjoying read without worrying about recharging it often.

In some reviews people have criticized the Kindle as a Web browser and email client. As a satisfied user of the Kindle, I respectfully disagree with those criticisms: It is not meant to be a general purpose notebook computer or tablet PC nor a web browsing or email client. It is for reading books and documents, allowing you to focus on the content while providing you an experience equal to or better than reading on printed paper.

In fact, if Amazon had made web browsing too easy with it, it might end up being counter to the purpose of the Kindle, which is to read books: to learn or for the enjoyment of being engrossed in reading. Many of us prefer our book readers to not offer distractions like web browsing or email while reading. While I love the Web and its hypertext links, there are times I just want to focus and read a book or a document.

The Kindle enables you to be more environment-friendly by saving trees. Many books, newspapers, magazines and blogs are already available on it. You can also transfer your own documents to it for convenient reading without printouts. (You email your document to a special automated email address for conversion. Amazon gives you two options to have it on your Kindle: One for a small fee where your document is wirelessly sent back to your Kindle, the other for free where they email it back to you and you need to copy it over from a computer to your Kindle using USB. You can also download free software to convert documents on your own computer.)

You save paper, yet still can carry your document to read in a convenient, lightweight, portable and easy to read medium. As a bonus, your document is searchable and your bookmarks, clippings, highlighting and notes can be transferred to your computer.

You don’t need a computer at all to take advantage of all the main features of a Kindle, but a computer does allow you to get even more value from your Kindle: You can use it instead of printouts and you can copy audio books and music to your Kindle for listening via its speakers or a headset.

As an educational tool, the Kindle comes with another useful and time-saving feature. You can ask a question using the Kindle which is answered by an Amazon-affiliated human researcher at no additional charge. The Kindle not distract your reading with Web browsing or email and it gives you a way to save some time which you would have spent researching yourself via Web searches — and we know how that can be: Sometimes you go the Web to look up something and end up wasting time on other things. With this Amazon Kindle’s research service called NowNow, you send your question via the Kindle and a human expert does the research for you and sends you the answers they find.

The Kindle can be charged using the A00 Tip with an iGo Adapter, which is great because you can carry it on hiking trips and to places where an electrical outlet is not conveniently available and charge it using two double-A batteries using the iGo powerXtender.

Want to take a break from Web surfing that encourages the attention span of a goldfish? Try the Kindle and enjoy being focussed and engrossed in a book. You can learn about all its features and benefits, watch videos and read its reviews at the Kindle page on Amazon.com.¹

1. Note & Disclosure: the links to the Kindle pages in this article tell Amazon that I referred them. If you happen to buy it in that session, I will get a commission but they will not charge you any extra. I like the Kindle and thus wrote this favorable, and in my opinion, fair review. It expresses my opinions and shares my experience with the Kindle. The purpose of this review is not at all to profit from selling Kindles. [↩]

I use an iGo adapter to power and charge my electronic devices when I’m traveling. The concept behind these is that you can use one adapter/charger for multiple devices like notebook computers, mobile phones, bluetooth headsets, music players, cameras and hand-held video game players. Having one charger for multiple devices cuts down on the clutter and makes it convenient to carry. iGo has been has been selling these for many years. Kensington and Targus also make similar universal adapters. Also, in the last couple of years, many phones and small devices have begun to support USB based charging.

Such universal charging systems have many benefits. For example:

• I have different makes and models of notebook computers at work and home. Sometimes I need to bring my work laptop home or take my home laptop to the office. With a universal charging adapter that can be used with either of my notebooks, I don’t have to carry a charger between home and the office.
• When I travel, I sometimes carry my work laptop. On other trips I carry my personal notebook computer. I can just keep the one (same) charger in my travel kit regardless of which laptop I’m traveling with.
• When I change my mobile phone handset, I only need to buy one tip (~ $10) for my new phone. I don’t need to buy a new set of chargers for my home, office, car and travel. The same applies to a new laptop computer.
• I love the iGo powerXtender battery operated charger which allows me to charge my mobile phone or iPod Nano using two standard AA batteries when doing outdoor activities like hiking or exploring a city walking.
• At places like Airports where there are not enough power outlets for everyone who needs to use one, I can charge up to three devices — my laptop, my mobile phone and another small mobile device (e.g. iPod, Amazon Kindle) while taking up only one power outlet on the wall. That’s a nice, friendly thing for my fellow passengers.
• If I happen to be carrying a compatible tip and a colleague/friend/relative of mine needs to charge their computer or phone, but doesn’t have their charger handy, I am able to help out.

iGo manufactures a number of different chargers. While they are great, they have one shortcoming: At present, notebook tips between different iGo chargers are not interchangeable. (Their sales agent informed me of this in our pre-sales conversations.) For people who only need to have one iGo charger (e.g. for travel only), this is not a problem unless they change their adapter. For e.g., to upgrade from the iGo everywhere85 charger to the higher wattage iGo everywhere130 charger to support their new Macbook Pro (which needs more power than most notebooks). In fact, the iGo Frequently Asked Questions page explicitly states:

No, parts including notebook tips and adapter specific cables can’t be interchanged between adapters. Each adapter falls within a certain electrical range. The parts are designed to regulate the amount of volts and amps that flow in and out of the product. Altering or switching parts can cause serious damage to your equipment.

It would benefit the consumers even more if the notebook tips (and cables) were interchangeable between different iGo adapters. For example, I’d buy 3 or 4 or more iGo adapters:

• One for travel that I’d take with me on trips and always keep in my travel bag. This would be a wall+car+airplane unit.
• One for home. This would be a wall-only adapter.
• One for the office. This would be a wall-only adapter
• I’d keep a car/auto-only adapter in my car all the time.

This way, when I am at home or in my office, I don’t need to carry or take out my travel adapter. I would only keep & carry the tip with each device (which is much lighter and easier than always carrying the device + tip + adapter).

Also, in the future, I may need to buy new adapters. Say, for example, if iGo came up with a very lightweight one for travel.

Given this situation, which I think is hardly unique to me, it would be useful if iGo notebook tips were interchangeable among different iGo adapters, present and future. It wouldn’t make sense if I had to buy new tips for each device when I get a new adapter.

Having said that, iGo adapters are still excellent.

Managing blogs and news content with WordPress is a Zen-like experience. The inner-beauty of a product is felt when it becomes almost unnoticed, allowing the site authors and editors to focus on publishing content and providing useful interactive functionality to their readers and customers.

I say this as someone who has been immersed in web content management for major news media companies since 1995. I have spent over a decade leading teams evaluating, implementing, maintaining and developing content management and publishing systems, including some industry award winning ones. My teams (including me personally) have been working closely with writers, editors, designers, photo/multimedia staff, sales and marketing folks at companies whose livelihoods depend on publishing content. I’ve also maintained my personal web sites since 1994.

It is impressive how well WordPress has worked as a CMS for the blogs and pages on this site. It is simple to use and painless to configure, manage and upgrade. It minimizes overhead and maintenance work.

WordPress plays well with others. It doesn’t require you to convert all your static content and pages powered by other CMS systems and custom scripts into WordPress. This allows you to conveniently migrate content to WordPress over time, preserving the URLs and keeping your site functional.

No wonder so many non-technical people and technologists alike use it for their sites: I switched to WordPress inspired by reading the personal blog of a colleague and CTO at another major media company who had also switched to WordPress. It is one of the best solutions for personal web sites and small to medium size organizations.

WordPress also powers the blogs of several major media companies with millions of daily page views. It has an well-designed architecture that makes it an excellent choice for large-scale use. It is used by a large and growing number of sites, including CNN, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, General Motors, Southwest Airlines, People Magazine, Apple Computer, Sony PlayStation US, C|Net, NY Times, Ziff Davis, Xerox, Delta Airlines and many others.

WordPress is a great choice because

• Simple to use for writers and editors
• Quick and simple to install, maintain and upgrade for systems administrators
  • E.g. automated daily backups to remote systems using a plugin
• Good architecture for programmers to extend functionality if needed
• Search engine-friendly and people-friendly URL structure
• Dynamic publishing model of content managed in and served from a relational database. Content management and delivery are seamlessly integrated.
  • Presentation, as in design, is well separated.
  • This is a superior approach compared to other blog / CMS systems that recommend publishing static files.
    • In the file publishing model, those files are then served directly by the web server or processed by a web application server / CMS. That architecture, used by other blog platforms does not scale well and has been found to be error-prone, especially under heavy publishing/editing/commenting use.
  • If needed, external caching¹ can be used that provide all the benefits of static file publishing without the drawbacks.
• Excellent content management in a relational database
• Rich feature set for advanced web publishing needs
• Large and growing user base, well-supported and actively developed by the community
• A large and growing number of plugins that add functionality to WordPress
  • WordPress is used by so many people that it is often likely that someone has developed a good solution for what you require. The WordPress directory is teeming with plugins, themes and other extensions developed and given by the community.
  • For example, support for OpenID as a client and server, site usage tracking with web analytics.
• Plethora of third-party commercial support options available if needed
• Free of license costs. Simple to operate and operate. Low total cost of ownership. An economical solution.
• Reliable. Good performance. Scalable. Secure.
• Open source

What WordPress currently lacks

• A simple, standard way to place a widget in the main content area of a blog post or WordPress page. Currently plugins that need to place a widget there require putting in some special markup whose syntax varies with each plugin. Many use an HTML <!–comment–> syntax in the Code editing mode. Some use a syntax of [commands in braces] in the Visual editing mode.
  • A good solution would be for wordpress to allow widget placement and manipulation completely within the Visual content editing mode. Behind the scenes, in the code view, all plugins would use consistent markup syntax and it would be editable using a menu option in the Visual editing mode.
• A way for certain widgets to only appear in the sidebar(s) of particular WordPress Pages or particular blog posts.
  • A good solution would be to have the ability to place a widget only on certain URLs that match a regular expression. Also, the edit form should have an option to include a widget only on a particular post or Page.

Alternatives

Another excellent choice for a blogging CMS is MovableType. I’ve had extensive experience with it and like it a lot too. MovableType and WordPress are the two leading products in their category.

If you are looking for a full-fledged content management system, consider Drupal or Plone. After a successful run for many years, my own Java-based Cofax is heading towards retirement.

If you need to build your own custom CMS, build using frameworks like Python with Django, Ruby on Rails or Groovy with Grails.

1. E.g. content delivery network like Akamai, an accelerator/cache like Squid or Varnish [↩]

I just completed Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner and found it an interesting book. (I listened to the unabridged audio book edition.)

Parts of the book, especially the Chicago gang stories from the sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh are gripping like a novel. I recommend it to anyone. You will enjoy it.

I enjoyed the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. (I listened to the unabridged audio book edition.)

The book is insightful and makes you think about thinking. Since childhood I’ve believed that intuition and emotions are the result of our minds doing subconscious analysis. The book does a good job of describing the benefits and perils of people’s split decisions and reactions.