The Kindle, the popular ebook reader from Amazon may be coming to college and university classrooms near you.

According to a story on Seattle PI, Amazon is designing a new Kindle that will be optimized for use with text books.  The college text book industry generates over $5.5 billion in revenue annually, and 95% of the books are offered in an ebook format already, but there has been no optimal reader for them. The new Kindle will supposedly be bigger, making it more suited to the text book format.

This hopefully will come to be as this will cut down on the amount of paper consumed, but it could also kill the used textbook industry in minutes as no one will have anything to sell any more.  If the book companies were smart, they would sell the Kindles at a greatly subsidized price, the current versions sell for $395,  like cell phone companies do, and lock the students in to a contract with them for their future book purchases.

The thing I fear the most is we won’t see any reduction in the price for the texts though they will be highly more profitable for the publishers.  The chances of that being passed on to the consumers is slim to none, but you can always hope.

Will it actually take off?  Only time will tell, but having lugged around giant textbooks, nothing would have made me happier to have something the size of the Kindle to carry around instead.

There is no doubt that Apple makes ridiculously cool products, but there is a definite art to knowing when to purchase them.

Almost as soon as any new Apple product is released, Apple fans begin the countdown to the next iteration of the product.  In the case of the iPod Touch, which was first released in September of 2007, it was almost a certainty we would see an updated version around the same time the following year.  The reason for this is that Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, loves to launch new versions of the iPods just before the holiday shopping season,

The mild surprise this year seems to be that it looks like that not only the iPods will get updated, but from a letter leaked to AppleInsider, it looks like the Mac Books and Mac Book Pros will also be getting an update at the same time.  The letter informs resellers to expect inventory problems within the next week, which means Apple is clearing the decks for new models, and they should stock up with at least 4 weeks worth of inventory.  This puts us at early September… which for the past two years has been when Mr. Jobs has introduced new iPods.

If this sounds like a headache to play a guessing game, it can be, but it is also soemwhat predictable.  If you’re uncertain when a product came out, there is a very handy guide at buyersguide.macrumors.com that tells you the last time an Apple product was updated, and how imminent they think the next update is.  In short, I wouldn’t recommend buying any iPods or Mac Books right now.  September is the magic month for the new products in these lines.

I was prompted to write yesterday’s post, Electronics And Storms, because of all the storms and flooding we’ve been having in my area.  Well, one important thing I forgot to talk about was phones.

While we have discussed the wonders of VoIP before, and people have cordless phones coming out their ears, all of these items are useless in a power outage.  We lost power for approxiametly an hour last night, and while I have an old style phone in my house, we do not have one in the warehouse for our company, and we also do not get cell reception inside of our metal building.  While I was able to use the old phone in the house to call the power company to report the outage, I had no way to reach my parents who were spending a late night in the warehouse.  I finally drove up to the building in the downpour to check on them and bring them some flashlights.

We are digging out an old phone immediately for just such an occasion, but it is always good to remember that just because technology does make our life easier, it doesn’t necessarily solve all of our problems.  If you do not receive good cell reception in your house, it’s always a good idea to have a traditional, non-electric phone, somewhere you can easily access it.

We asked previously “Will MobileMe Be For Me?“, and the answer is: I’m not sure.

I now have it fully set up with my iPod Touch, and it is very nice to have all my calendar events and contacts updated constantly.  However, for a lot of people in this world, I highly doubt they will have much use for it.  How often do you really update your contacts?  Is it worth having your calendar updated every 15 minutes if it costs you $99 a year?

For me, yes, I need these features, but not everyone is going to need this.  Add in that I do most of my calendar work on Google Calendar, I would find this totally useless if it wasn’t for Google Sync keeping Outlook and Google Calendar constantly updating each other.

Overall I like MobileMe, but I do find it lacking in some areas, and I hope they will be fixed in coming updates.

- Does not sync with Google Calendar.

- Syncs bookmarks with Internet Explorer and Safar, but not Firefox.

- Seems to use battery life a bit faster.

I’m still glad I took the plunge, but would like to see some changes to it down the road.

GPS is my new friend.

Everyone who knows me knows I have no sense of direction—I can get lost going in a straight line with no turn possibilities. For that particular reason I have come to rely on my OnStar in my car and maps from various sources.

I am on the road and in my car more hours than I do anything else so I must have decent simple directions in a hurry –I can’t read maps while I am driving so I need an alternative. Now, as much as I love OnStar there are times when it just doesn’t get me where I am going due to certain route requirements set up by the provider. The operators have trouble sometimes routing me in a simple manner such as fewest turns, no interstates or gas stations located in front of me not 20 miles behind me!

So I decided to look into a technology I had used before but had set aside for OnStar—GPS. WOW!! How times have changed!! Done all in color, voice rendered directions and a wealth of information readily available—my dream. I purchased a Garmin NUVI 750 and I couldn’t be more pleased. I can change my route easily, find a gas station at midnight, locate food in a small town—and I really don’t have to look at the screen as my new friend “ Chatty” tells me where to go and when to go—heaven!!

I have only one complaint and that is the book of directions left a lot to be desired and I do mean a lot. I worked with the unit for several days and learned so much—I wasn’t afraid of it and I didn’t let it win and now we have a comfortable relationship in my techno zone. There will be more to come on this subject as I learn the basics and the fine points of my new best friend.

Now that you have either upgraded your iPhone or iPod Touch to firmware 2.0, or bought a device with it pre-installed, what the heck are all these “apps” and what is the “Application Store”?

As the name implies, these new apps are applications that you can add to your iPhone or iPod Touch that will give you new functionality from the devices.  This can be anything from new games, to ways to access your Twitter account, making payments with Pay Pal or any other number of things.  At the time the Application Store launched there were already 500 apps available, so there is sure to be something for just about every one out there.

The apps range in price from free to $29.95, so be careful to check the prices before you go too crazy with your downloading.  As we get to play with them more here at StarterTech, we will be sure to let you know which ones we’re really liking, and which ones we think are duds.

Our one big caveat at this time is that each app adds another icon to your home screen on your device, so it could get a bit overwhelming with all these new things to click on.  Our suggestion is that since you can make new pages, why not make pages for the different types of apps?  Say, a page for games, a page for social networking, etc.  This may help you keep your sanity a bit more as you flip through, looking for that one app you want to be using.

A little while ago, I wrote up here on StarterTech about
Are Extended Warranties Worth It. In general I think they aren’t but AppleCare is changing my mind.

I started this story in a post on my personal blog about AppleCare, but it seemed fitting here also.  In short, I bought a slightly used iPod Touch off of a friend, and when he had bought it, he got the extended warranty with it.  It turns out they transfer with the device, so when I had a recent problem with it, related to the hard drive crash we talked about, I called them up and they started taking care of me.

In short, I have never had a more pleasant product support experience.  When my problem stumped the first guy, he passed me on the second tier of support, a gentleman named Rick, and he has been nothing but dilligent in trying to rectify my problems.  When he was stumped, he took the issue up with engineering, and he has kept me in the loop now for over two weeks.

I know two weeks sounds horrible to solve a problem, but it is truly that baffling of a problem.  All through it, Apple has been nothing short of ultimately professional and patient.  I may not change my general stance on extended warranties, but with Apple, I will certainly always consider it from here on out.

Once you’ve gone out and bought an iPod Touch or a BlackBerry, what are you going to do to keep your expensive new toy from being damaged?

While some gadgets, such as the afore mentioned BlackBerry, come with a manufacturer issued carrying case, they are usually cheap and useless.  In situations such as the iPod Touch, they come with nothing, so it is up to you to find anything to protect it from the get go.  No matter what the gadget is, you should defintely take it’s physical protection into mind when purchasing it.

So, what do you look for in a case?  For me there are two big factors: accessability to the gadget’s functions and the ability to carry it on my belt.  In the case of my iPod Touch, I went with a clear hard platic case from Griffin.  Though it didn’t have the belt clip I usually like, I liked how it thickened up the device, giving me more to grip, and it also gave me full access to the screen and all of the buttons.

In the case of my BlackBerry 8830, I went with a case that covered the keyboard, thinking it would do a good job of keeping them clean, which it does, but it also makes it fairly difficult to type.  I am sadly going to have to buy another case because I chose poorly, so my lesson is learned to ponder all aspects of the case before I purchase.  The new one I am looking into has no key obstruction at all, and has the belt clip I like, so hopefully it will work.

In picking yours, set your own criteria, and then if you are still unsure, search via Google for the name of the case and see what people are saying about it on message boards.  If the case is bad, there are sure to be some comments left out there as to why it doesn’t work well.

Here and there around the Internet you see mentions of people “jailbreaking” their iPhone. What does this mean?

Due to the fact that the iPhone is exclusive to AT&T in the United States, people with other carriers were out of luck on getting to use the phone.  Several groups of hackers worked on ways to “break” the iPhone so that it could be used with the carrier of their choice, and get to used custom built applications people were coming up with.  Every time a firmware update came out, Apple would defeat the jailbreaking… for about 2 hours.

However, with the new contract for the iPhone 3G, AT&T will be requiring either activation in the store, or at-home activation within 30-days of purchase or they will begin assessing penalties.  Until someone finds a way around purchasing the phones, jailbreaking the 3G will be useless as you will still be paying for a contract with AT&T to subsidize the purchase price.

So is there any hope for using the new iPhone with other carriers in the United States?  Doubtful this time around.  It is a shame that Apple chose AT&T out of all the carriers out there because everyone here at StarterTech refuses to use them for various reasons.  Was there ever a more iPhone-friendly crowd?  Too bad none of us will have one until AT&T exclusivity ends in 2010.

Apple is launching a new service in July named MobileMe, and it will be doing some interesting things that may be perfect for the small business owner, the self-employed, or even students on the move.

Big businesses have enjoyed services called “Exchange Servers” for years that allows them to update all their devices in one go.  These have been complicated to run, expensive, and out of reach of the every day person.  MobileMe will be changing this for people who love their Apple products.

Say you have one computer at home, another at work and an iPhone or iPod Touch for when you are on the go.  Keeping your contacts, emals and calendar all synced up with one another can be a difficult task.  With MobileMe, all of your devices will sync to one centralized system so that all contacts, emails and calendars are exactly the same on all systems.

Lets say you add a contact on your iPhone, MobileMe will update the other devices within seconds of you making the change and vice-versa.  For iPod Touch owners, you will need to be near Wi-Fi to take advantage of the syncing, but it will still be a big help.

What excites me personally is that you get all of this for $99 a year with the addition of 10 GB of online storage space that will allow you to access files on the go, or send them to friends and family.

Are there any potential drawbacks?  Yes.

- No word yet if you can use it in conjunction with your pre-existing email accounts.  I am not thrilled about setting up yet another email account.

- If don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch, it will be pretty pointless as you can accomplish the same computer-based tasks with numerous other applications.

- $99 is a bit high, I would rather see it around $60 a year.

They will be offering a free 60-day trial period, so it it will be worth giving it a try, but it will certainly not be for everyone.  It is, however, a step in the right direction for small businesses and the self-employed.