Daniel Bartholomew » Article

Archos 5 Updates

Daniel — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:31:35 +0000

In my review of the Archos 5 (Linux Journal issue 178, Feb 2009) I slam it pretty hard for it’s lack of ogg and flac support. I’m happy to report that thanks to a firmware update, ogg and flac files play fine.

It still can’t play 720p video, or 480p for that matter. But hey, at least it can play my flac files. That’s something, right?

The Kindle – Two Months Later

Daniel — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:45:38 +0000

I picked up a Kindle a couple months ago to review for the December 2008 edition of the Linux Journal. At the time I wrote the review, I had had the Kindle for less than a week, so I thought I would let everyone know what the past couple of months have been like, now that the Kindle is thoroughly broken in.

First, I still use the Kindle every day. This is significant because I have several gadgets that I’ve used for a couple weeks and then not used very much afterwards.

Next, the I still think the screen on the Kindle is awesome. It works very well for long reading sessions.

And what do I read on the Kindle? Well, there’s a bunch of books from the Baen Free Library, a bunch of Cory Doctorow books, and several books from ManyBooks.net which in turn came from Project Gutenburg. The one thing all of these sources have in common is that the books are free (mostly as in beer, but also the other kind of freedom for some of them). Yes I’m a cheapskate. However, I haven’t read them all, and until I do I don’t see any reason to go buying more. I also have several documents I’ve converted using the @free.kindle.com conversion service.

The features of the Kindle that I don’t use are: the mp3 player, the picture viewer, and pretty much anything else that is not directly related to reading books. The Kindle is a book reader and it doesn’t work very well beyond that. It’s an excellent book reader though, so I can forgive its imperfections in other areas.

It’s an excellent product. If you are the type of person who does not read for fun, the Kindle is not going to turn you into someone who does. But if you are, get one.

New Article – Introducing: Simplify Media

Daniel — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 01:35:44 +0000

I have a new article up on LinuxJournal.com: Introducing: Simplify Media. This is a really neat little application+service, check it out!

New Article in The Linux Journal

Daniel — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 08:22:13 +0000

Hey all. I have a new article in issue 174 of the Linux Journal (Oct 2008). Be sure to check it out. This time it is on Inform 6 and 7, two really neat languages for creating interactive fiction (you know: Zork, Planetfall, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Lost Pig . . . . what? You haven’t heard of Lost Pig? Shame on you!)

Be sure to get the sources to the two versions of the epic masterpiece I wrote for the article and follow along with them. Here’s a handy link. (the link doesn’t appear to be live yet, but it should be soon)

New Article: An Overview of Twitter Clients for Linux

Daniel — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:33:18 +0000

I’ve got a new article up on LinuxJournal.com: An Overview of Twitter Clients for Linux

Enjoy!