Jorge Arango

This weekend I bought a Sony Reader (PRS-505) as an early Christmas present for myself; it should arrive within the next couple of weeks. When I moved back to Panama, one of the things I missed most about living in the developed world was having easy access to quality, relevant books. Panama doesn’t have any large bookstores like Borders or Barnes & Noble, and the less is said about our public libraries, the better. I’m hoping the Reader will help me fill this hole in my life.

Currently, I get most of my books from Amazon. This gives me a broad selection, but it’s expensive and time-consuming to have large blocks of paper shipped here. I also end up with a lot of books, most of which I read only once; I’d much rather check them out from a library than having to purchase them. There’s also an ethical problem: with the rising environmental, social, and economic costs of oil, transporting information in book form is becoming a moral dilemma for me.

Ebooks have been around for a while; I read quite a few them on my Palm during my commutes in the early 2000s. So why do I need another gadget to do this? I already do most of my reading on computer screens, and at the end of the day my eyes need a break. Reading long ebooks on a LCD is neither comfortable or practical. From what I’ve seen, the Reader’s Vizplex screen solves this problem in an elegant way.

I knew before ordering that Amazon was coming out with an ebook reader today; I’ve been researching the e-reader market for the last couple of weeks, and considered devices from other companies as well. I went for the Sony because I suspect that Amazon’s device is going to be closed to non-proprietary ebook formats. Also, due to its reliance on Amazon’s wireless network it’s probably practical only for folks living in the US. While the Sony Reader also uses a proprietary format (it’s a Sony, right?), it can also read plain pdf, txt and rtf files. There are also many freely available third-party tools that allow for the conversion between formats into Sony’s BBeB format. The Sony also seems like a simpler device. My hope is that the Amazon device will help spur interest?and competition?in the ebook market, increasing the amount of books available in ebook form.

I don’t have expectations that the Sony Reader will be the “end-all-be-all” ebook reader. It reminds me of the Creative NOMAD Jukebox I bought back in the day; at the time I just wanted something portable?and with large storage?to play MP3 files on. I knew that the devices would be getting smaller and better; the Jukebox was a sort of prototype of what the iPod would be in later years. I had no illusions then that the NOMAD Jukebox would be my last MP3 player, and I have no illusions now that the Reader will be my last ebook reader. I just hope these devices gain enough mainstream acceptance to eventually reduce my reliance on wood pulp for reading.

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Whoa. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to test it yet. (There’s a Mac version in the works, right? Right? Hello?…)

Update: An OS X version is in the works.

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We’re celebrating some interesting “firsts” this week! For one thing, the Internet turned 35. I’m sure that many of us wouldn’t recognize it as such if we were to board a time machine back to those formative years; before the networking effect kicked in it was just a couple of large remote computers connected to each other.

Another, more locally relevant, first: on Monday I had the privilege of attending the launch of Panama’s first Internet2 link. This event marked the completion of a multi-year project led by Panama’s Science and Technology Secretariat (SENACYT) with the participation of our major universities and the private sector. Hopefully this will usher in better ties with educational and research institutions abroad.

And yet another—and unrelated—first: today is the inauguration of Panama’s new president. Presidential terms in Panama last for 5 years, and presidents cannot be reelected. Although I spent most of the past 5 years living abroad, I know from friends, family, colleagues, customers, and anyone willing to discuss the subject, that the outgoing administration has been disastrous—in every sense of the word.

Most people I’ve asked about the new administration seem to be cautiously optimistic. I’m hoping there’s reason for optimism: so many things have been so badly mismanaged for the past 5 years and the fixes are fairly obvious (and urgent). Unfortunately, there is only so much that can be done here; our economy is extremely dependent on the US’s. Obviously, we are all very concerned with the upcoming elections there.

As it tends to happen here, the new president gave the day off to celebrate his inauguration—not the most encouraging way to start work for an administration that needs to work their butts off to help us out of the mess their predecessors left us in.

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I recently mentioned having problems with my current hosting provider’s email policies. The situation has gotten bad enough that I’ve decided to change providers, and the first of many sites to move will be jarango.com.

Over the course of the next weeks, I will be transferring the site to a new hosting provider. I will also take the opportunity to upgrade Movabletype to use a MySQL backend, and make many other improvements as well.

So now you know… if you see anything broken it’s because I’m tinkering.

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W3C: Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition. “This document reflects the three bases of Web architecture: identification, interaction, and representation.”

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