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About Me
I'm Michael Koby, and I love technology. I'm also a programmer, currently doing Ruby on Rails development for a small Houston startup. Here I talk about technology, programming, politics, movies, music, and anything else I feel I need to talk about. If you would like to know more, you can check out the About page.Popular Series
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Tag Archives: reading
Got a Kindle
Yep, I broke down and finally bought a Kindle. The latest generation of the Kindle just finally sold me on getting one. The price was right, and the recent changes to the overall design were nice too. Why did I get a Kindle over the “magical” Apple iPad? One reason, I wanted a device specifically for reading. Sure you can read books on the iPad, but it’s a brightly lit LCD screen, plus the iPad is a little weighty. The iPad is a nice device for what it is, but for something to read long term on, it really isn’t up to snuff. I wanted to read books and I wanted it to have a true page like feel to what I was looking at. Continue reading
Consulting Consultants: Writing is a Valuable Skill
When you are a consultant, writing becomes an important part of your daily routine. Everything from proposals, emails, to instant messages get written. You need to make sure that you can communicate effectively through your writing even if it is just a simple instant message. Continue reading
Get Your Reading On: Recap
Over the past week or so, we looked at using technology to help you read more. Since reading helps the brain grow along with one’s vocabulary and general knowledge, reading more is an important task. Hopefully you learned a thing or two that you didn’t already know while reading the series. If you missed the series or a part of it, below you will find links to all the articles from the Get Your Reading On Series. Continue reading
Posted in Books, Technology
Tagged Books, reading, series recap, Technology
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Get Your Reading On: Social Networks for Readers
Today, in our final post on using technology to further your reading, we will look at some social networks that are centered around the readers of the world. For those that are new to the idea of a “social network” just think of a social network as a country club (without that stereotypical snobbiness) that is centered around a particular concept. Website likes Facebook and MySpace are social networks to the fullest extent in that, they center around your social circle, whom you know and how. There are other social networks out there like Digg (news), Flixster (movies), and even Twitter (conversation) are all extremely social and centered around something very particular. So now that you understand what a social network is (at least in a very general sense) we can look at the two social networks centered around reading (I’m sure there are more than 2 but the two I’m looking at are the most popular). Continue reading
Posted in Books, Technology
Tagged Books, goodreads, reading, shelfari, social networks
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Get Your Reading On: eBook Readers
In our last post (Get Your Reading On: eBooks), we looked at exactly what electronic books are and some of the advantages to using eBooks. We only touched on how to read electronic books by mentioning the MobiPocket Reader for PC and mobile devices. We mentioned some hardware electronic book readers but didn’t really go into too much detail. This post is going to change that. Today, we will look at electronic book readers, both software and hardware based. Continue reading
Posted in Books, Technology
Tagged ebooks, eink, electronic books, kindle, mobipocket, reading, sony
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Get Your Reading On: eBooks
To further explain, an ebook, is a file that contains the contents of a book in a computer file. An ebook can come in several formats including (but not limited to) text, HTML, LIT, PRC, and even Microsoft Word’s format. While many purchased ebooks are going to be in a proprietary format specific to that vendor (or reader), there are places to download free ebooks. These can either be in the vendor’s proprietary format, or they can be in an open format that would allow you to read the book using a web browser or one’s favorite text editor. Continue reading
Michael Koby 