wow factor

View 1. Roy Blount Jr. NYTimes.com decries the fact that the new Kindle 2 reads to you mechanically and avoids paying professional readers any Audio Rights.

What the guild is asserting is that authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2’s version of books. For this, the guild is being assailed

View 2. He may be comforted by David Pogue's review of Kindle 2.

they sound oddly Norwegian, sometimes — and, of course, they’re incapable of expressing emotion. They read Hemingway the same way they read Stephen Colbert.

Roy Blount should be congratulated for his defence of professional reader's livelihoods. I do think his Guild will eventually be steam rolled by technology. A little like the newspaper he's published in.

View 3. Meanwhile, XKCD has other uses for his Kindle 2.

...the cellphone app store takes the trophy as the Tech Idea of the Year.

It’s a Pogie - NYTimes.com

David Pogue lists a fine array of contenders and I agree with his selection of the "cellphone app store" as the winner.

Without spending more than $30, apps have transformed my iPhone into a powerful netbook. So much so that my next "real computer" will be a desk bound iMac.