In so many words, Gizmodo blogger Kat Hannaford suggests that the free Kindle app for Blackberry is a stupid idea.

Actually, those are Hannaford’s exact words.

A Blackberry user herself, Hannaford argues that unless you’re using a Storm, a Blackberry’s screen is way too small for more than occasional eBook reading, particularly since you’ll need press the “next page” button so often. She also questions what the frequent scrolling will do to the device’s battery life. She concludes with the suggestion that “really, it’s about time the industry takes a leaf out of the Blu-ray Disc Association’s book, and explores the idea of providing digital copies with every paperback sold.”

Matthew Miller over at ZDNet is more bullish about the app becoming available, noting that it’s basically about time, since Kindle for the iPhone has been around for a while and he says “it is great to see Amazon expanding to other popular smartphones. I would love to eventually see an Android application as well since I still have Kindle books I purchased back when I owned a Kindle and would love to read them on all my smartphones.”

Miller goes on to note that the Kindle app — which you can download from Amazon or directly to your Blackberry by typing “amazon.com/kindlebb” into your Blackberry browser – permits you to shop for books in the Kindle store (magazines and other content are not currently supported), about which Hannaford raises the question about whether Kindle book downloads for the Blackberry ought to be cheaper than they are for the actually Kindle – many New York Times best sellers and new releases currently sell for $9.99 for both devices.

Is the ebook user experience on a Blackberry too frustrating for a significant investment in ebook costs, or would you be willing to get used to the expeience? And what do you think about the pricing scheme? Should downloads be priced differently for different platforms? What do you think? Your comments about this post are most welcome.

Image source: Amazon.com via CNET

You’ve no doubt heard the irrepressible statistic that there are more than eight million people living in New York City, but you may not hear as often that more than six times as many people are using Skype.

It doesn’t take more than a New York minute to see why. The app can turn almost any Mac or PC into a phone, permitting you to call someone else’s computer for free and chat via a microphone or Bluetooth headset. And if all your loved ones haven’t already dumped their landlines, Skype lets you call those for a nominal fee. Maybe you know all this, so what more is there to say? Well, like any other app ever created, Skype can do a lot of tricks you may not know about.

In a post on Skype 4.1, DownLoadAtoZ notes you can easily import contacts from your e-mail address book. And since businesses large and small use Skype for their day-to-day, too, they are no doubt finding it handy to use the “send contacts” option to share connections with other Skype users.  The post goes on to recommend that you tweak your privacy settings so that only those you authorize can Skype you.

One of the post’s more debatable tips is using a headset with a built-in microphone and encouraging your fellow Skypers to do the same, though with beans has found that Skype sound quality can vary according to well, variables, including what operating system you and your fellow Skyper are using and the respective quality of your headsets. Also, your computer’s built-in mike (assuming you can find it) will often work as well as or better than a headset microphone.

And if you think you can handle the truth, there are many more Skype tips out there. Maximum PC does out 20 good ones, including how to make Skype calls with your smart phone, how to have Skype give you a wake-up call, and how to unleash Skype’s “hidden emoticons”  — well, maybe that one was best kept secret.

Image source: Skype

When it comes to a netbook, “to buy or not to buy” is likely no longer the question because if you’re predisposed to cute gadgets and low price points, chances are you already bought one.

You went into the purchase with your eyes open, knowing full well that it was not a full-powered laptop, but probably hoping that you could treat it like one, at least from time to time. Lifehacker blogger Jason FitzPatrick has pulled together a good post on tricking up your netbook that includes such tips as selectively tweaking your netbook, and that might include shelling out “$30-60 [to] upgrade the 1GB of RAM to 2GB of RAM.” You’ll also want to consider stripping your machine of “bloat and crapware,” using a tool like PC Decrapifier. FitzPatrick includes the caution that once you start weeding out junk, restrain yourself from going overboard. And let’s face it, we’ve all been on the verge of going over the side. He recalls:

“On my Asus Eee netbook there were two very similar programs with similar Eee branded names. One was a useful aggressive battery monitoring application designed to squeeze even more life out of my 6-cell battery and the other was a fairly useless application dock only for Eee netbook apps. Had I blanket nuked all the installed apps, I’d have kicked out the useful battery tool with the rest of the junk.”

Along these lines you’ll want to put your netbook apps on a diet, too. FitzPatrick notes “that you may use Firefox loaded down with 1,001 extensions on your quad-core home computer but opt to run Firefox with only one or two critical extensions or Google Chrome on your netbook.”

Another good suggestion is that you avail yourself of your netbook’s keyboard shortcuts so you don’t depend more on its cramped keyboard than necessary, a point that underscores the best tip of all if you’re a netbook owner:  “Netbooks are limited and you can’t be happy using one unless you accept that.”

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

If you travel in certain circles, “tower skin” is a name for a vinyl slipcover one can use to dress up a drab computer desktop tower. In other circles, the term has come to describe a skin with a similar function, although for a slightly more ambitious goal: sustainable public architecture.

The latter kind of skin is a mesh textile “transparent cocoon” that can slip over the top of and effectively “re-skin” a building to not only improve its aesthetics but also, according to architects from the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA), act as a “micro climate” that generates energy with photo‐voltaic cells, collects rain water, improves day lighting and uses available convective energy to power the towers’ ventilation requirements.” The skin has not yet gone beyond “concept land,” as Gizmodo put it, but if the architects have their way the prototype would cover the University of Technology Broadway Tower in Sydney, Australia.

Chris Bosse, LAVA’s director, goes on to say that “the reskinning technology could be easily applied to other buildings in need of a facelift such as the Colliers Wood Building and the Barbican Centre in London, and the postindustrial abandoned buildings across Hong Kong. We can quickly and cheaply enhance their performance and aesthetics through this minimal intervention.”

LAVA also figures it can fabricate and install the skins cost effectively and quickly by using standard, computer-generated components that are produced offsite, a potential process with implications that ought to make other architectural firms sit up and take notes.

Image source: LAVA

If someone told you could get Internet service on your laptop without connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot, purchasing a cellular Internet card, or paying additional fees through your Blackberry’s wireless network you’d want to know the catch, as well as the cost.

The only catch is that you need to already have a Blackberry with a flat-rate data plan, the USB cable that came with it, and fifty bucks. That’s how much it’ll cost you to download Tether, an app that once installed on both your Blackberry and laptop, will permit you to tether the two devices with the USB cable and start surfing the Web on your laptop.

Seriously. It works. Simply connect the two devices with the cable – make sure your laptop’s wireless card is disabled, because you won’t need it – and fire up the app on both devices. Status windows on both will acknowledge the connection and you’ll be ready to surf. That’s it. Tether connects via Bluetooth, too, but the wired way yields a more reliable connection. So Tether up and enjoy the ability to surf anywhere where your Blackberry already gets service. The first place we’d recommend? On a quiet bench at the park, blocks away from that stuffy coffee shop with its pay-per-minute Wi-Fi.

Image source: Tether.com

Smart phones have turned every idle minute into an opportunity to catch up on e-mail. But you’ve probably noticed something. Say you were in line at the bank when you started catching up on your messages, but then after your transaction’s done, you decide to sit down and finish e-mailing. Had you really intended to use that time to deal with your mail? Same goes if you’re waiting for a child or a friend to show up — how often have you made that child or friend wait so you can finish sending your message?

Start using the “doctor trick.” When doctors have one patient after another throughout the day, they don’t take every phone call as it comes in or return every call the second they see the little pink message slip. And you know this is true if you’ve ever waited for a doctor to call you back. Many doctors will wait for those little message slips to pile up, will return them during a quick break, and then will get back to business until they have time to deal with the next message pile. Sure, your doctor — as well as you — needs to deal with emergency messages as they come in, but as for the rest,  just because a call or e-mail is actionable, that doesn’t mean it has to be acted on the second you receive it.

Experiment. Set aside two half-hour blocks during the day to check your messages, and you might find that you won’t be keeping people waiting and you won’t risking your life checking your messages while crossing the street. And not incidentally, only checking your e-mail during designated times does wonders for productivity in the home or office, too.

This simple strategy has been known to change people’s day-to-day lives dramatically. Leave a comment if you’ve tried this approach, or if you have a different timesaver tip you’d like to share.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Sending photos back and forth as e-mail attachments never seems to be a problem until the worst possible moment, typically around the time you need to exchange high-resolution images with a client or colleague and you discover that one or both or your e-mail systems can’t handle the size of the photos. Or, you figure out that you can send photos one at a time, but by the time your client sees your e-mail with the subject line “Photo 17 of 25,” you can assume his patience is long gone.

Enter Picasa, a killer app that allows you to share photos without transmitting them. Say you have a folder of 25 very high-res photos on your desktop. After downloading Picasa, you can add your photo folder to the easy-to-navigate window that opens once you start the program. Then, you can sync that folder to a public Web album. Once synched, a URL is dedicated for that folder – the naming convention would be something like http://picasaweb.google.com/name of your Gmail account/name you gave the folder#. At that point you can send your client the URL corresponding to that folder and have him download the photos himself.

Making this transaction even easier is that you can caption each photo and alter the captions before or after you sync the images. Likewise, you or your recipient can add images on either side; just let each other know to check the public folder again to see the changes. For any photographer, art director, editor, or other businessperson who handles images, this is a timesaver you don’t want to do without for too much longer.

The tech media seldom get more excited than when the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) comes to town, and that was certainly the case this year when Oh Gizmo helped lead the charge, no pun intended, with news of the RCA Airnergy WiFi Hotspot Power Harvester.

Simply put, it’s a free energy game changer. The battery, about the size of a shoe brush, harvests WiFi signals from the air and converts them to DC power. A USB cable attached to the top of the battery can them be plugged into your power-needy smart phone – BlackBerry users appear to be the target demo here.  According to the rep Oh Gizmo interviewed at CES, as your phone is charging, the tethered battery starts recharging itself with WiFi signals even as it’s draining. How well and how fast it works depends on how close you are to WiFi signals, says the rep.

While detractors including Slashdot are skeptical about the harvester’s effectiveness, gadget hounds may find one aspect of the product hard to resist: the projected price point. Oh Gizmo reports that “the USB charger will be available this summer for $40, and a [smaller, OEM-sized] battery with the WiFi harvesting technology will be available soon after.”

RCA isn’t the only manufacturer to attach itself to cool green products, of course. The iGo family of chargers is certainly worth a look, especially if you’d like the luxury of leaving some of your gadgets’ device chargers at home. And if you enjoy the news and buzz that comes from shows like CES, bear in mind that the Greener Gadgets Conference hits New York City’s McGraw-Hill Conference Center at the end of this month.

Image and video source: Oh Gizmo