I’ve had this particular site tagged for quite a while, but never got around to letting people who didn’t know about it (yet read this) know about it.

Manybooks has quite an assortment of books, available in a number of formats!

The typical way I would work with this site is, download a bunch of files into a directory, slap in one of my SD cards, and then copy the files down to the SD card – Put it into my Kindle and BAM! I now have all of those books available and ready for me on the Kindle!

Very little work on my part, it’s a win-win situation all around!

This site has an amazing assortment of books, including most if not all of the Project Gutenberg library as well. I highly encourage you to check it out, whether you have a kindle, iphone, pc or any other method in which you’d like to read an assortment of books – You may be surprised at what is available!

Yep, that’s right!
So, I said that the Kindle was $399.00 before, well that story has changed! PRICE DROP!

Feels like the iPhone a bit! (So much that, I have contacted the Kindle folks to see if those of us who were early adopters are entitled to Kindle-Credit!) I’ll let you know if I see anything happen out of that.

Nonetheless, the further validation of this device as a useful and wonderful bookreader and more has been made by the market with a lowering of price! I’m sure competition, economics, recession and a number of things are to ’cause’, but it primarily says “We got something good going here and it works, so we can lower the price tag to make adoption even easier!”

Those of you who haven’t checked out the Kindle before, I encourage you to give it a shot and check it out!

If history has shown us anything, it isn’t going anywhere, and it’s only going to get better!

So, be sure to check out the Kindle here!

Fusion-IO has released the ioDrive rather recently, and apparently is backordered! oh my!

This thing looks cool on the surface!

Although it has tiny sizes of 80, 160 and 320gb, nonetheless the possibilities seem rather cool. This can definitely be a great boundary for high-speed disk for small data-sets.

Certainly I have initial concerns around the raid-ability of the disk and the potential losses, albeit it does predict protection from moving disk components – Nonetheless if you’ve never experienced solid state disk failures (As I have) you’re likely to find them to be a realistic problem to need to address.

I’ll personally be watching this one going forward, as they seem to be breaching a boundary of availability and feasibility in the SSD market, especially with the practicality and the sizes of SSD being even easier to deploy (and cheaper!)

If their product works as well as it is proposing to operate, I don’t imagine they’ll be able to survive on the open market for long without getting snatched up!

I have to give it to Sony for tossing their hat into the e-ink book-reader arena.

(Available on sale at Fry’s for a weekend deal of $299.99 limit one per customer!)

So, it looks like they took a lot of the feedback which came out of the Kindle community of what is the good, perhaps the bad and the ugly. Pro’s and Con’s of this happens to be, that they roughly ignored a majority of that feedback!

Disclaimer: I do not have a Sony Reader (I’ve had the old ones not based upon E-Ink technology)
Secondary disclaimer: I do have a Kindle, an XO and have infact had an Etch-A-Sketch!

Similarities:

Differences:

• The hold/grip and feel of the Sonyreader looks to be far less awkward than using the Kindle itself (which we’re all prone to accidently changing pages without meaning it). Though beyond being less awkward, it doesn’t introduce any innovation, function or benefit in the big picture. So it’s almost like a plus, but more of an ‘eh’.

But taken at face value, and not comparing it to the Kindle, I would honestly have to say, it seems like a half-baked attempt at entering a market with an introduction to E-Ink technology. The support doesn’t seem to be entirely there in the big picture, the look and feel isn’t much more beneficial than that of a book, it doesn’t appear to really ‘innovate’, more of a bad knock off of something else someone might try to do. I’m sure with some proper market studies, innovator backing and an action-plan on hook, as opposed to what appears to be a “re-action” plan, this could easily turn into a great product, regardless of the “It’s a Sony Product” stigma which would otherwise be associated with it.

I’d happily give one a try and test-drive the hell out of it, but once you’ve seen the “Best of Breed” which itself appeared to be a ‘testbed’ idea, how can you go with second place to a beta?

Kindle +1, SonyReader – 0

We all knew on the docket that after 3 years, there would be a need to re-certify in order to continue maintaining the “Certification” status for the new Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist, Microsoft Certified IT Professional and the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer.

We accepted this as the MS Certs going the way the Cisco Certs, but then – The rules have changed again!

The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), MCITP, and MCPD credentials—Microsoft certifications for new technologies—are aligned with the Microsoft product lifecycle, and will retire when Microsoft discontinues mainstream support for the underlying technology. When a certification that you have earned retires, the record of your certification remains on your transcript, allowing you to retain documentation of your certification history.

This is great news for those of us who want to upgrade our certs WHEN we want to, instead of by some cycle as if we’ve suddenly forgotten our skill-sets!

So once again, thank you Microsoft for listening to the industry and providing an path of excellence for others to follow!