E-book proposal

Whilst wandering about the net today, I discovered this post at Thunder and Lightning about an idea about eBook futures.

In short:  Save eBooks online, and access them wirelessly from your e-reader, thus eliminating the ‘my e-reader just broke and now I lost all my books’ problem.  Have a list of people who can read-only view the books in your online library, thus eliminating the ‘but I like borrowing and lending books’ problem.

Hit up the link for a more detailed explanation:  [Thunder and Lightning]

Also:  Windows Live Writer seems to think ‘ebook’ is spelled with a capital B.  Interesting.  Does anyone know why, or if eBook is more proper than ebook?

Piriform Speccy

Brought to you by the same people who made Defraggler, CCleaner, and Recuva, Speccy tells you everything you wanted to know about you hardware and quite a bit you didn’t really need to know.

Pros:
Tells you –in great detail – about your OS, CPU, RAM, Motherboard, Graphics, Hard Drives, Optical Drives, and Audio.  For instance, it turns out my hard drive’s model is WD1600BEVT-00ZCTO

Cons:
Tells you more than you needed?

Rating:     9/10

Get this great program here, and have fun.

The window

About the ratings: 
I copied Wired Magazine’s rating system because I like and I think it works well.  Here’s the key:
1 = A complete failure in every way
2 = Barely functional – don’t get it
3 = Serious flaws, proceed with caution
4 = Downsides outweigh upsides
5 = Recommended with reservations
6 = A solid product with some issues
7 = Very good, but not great
8 = Excellent, with room to kvetch
9 = Nearly flawless – get it now
10 = Metaphysical product perfection

PStart

A “Personal Start Menu,” you can customize what shows up in it and assign your programs into groups and folders for easy access. Ideal for managing any portable apps you may have.  All in all, pretty cool.

Pros:
Works just as advertised. Has a ‘scan for executables’ option: point it to a folder and it shows you all your .exe files, which can then be moved into groups or folders to you like.  Can also, I think, show files.

Cons:
Bland look.  To keep groups from nesting you have to add separators.  Sometimes required wiggling to move items from one group to another.

Rating:    8/10

Grab this program here.  Enjoy!

About the ratings: 
I copied Wired Magazine’s rating system because I like and I think it works well.  Here’s the key:
1 = A complete failure in every way
2 = Barely functional – don’t get it
3 = Serious flaws, proceed with caution
4 = Downsides outweigh upsides
5 = Recommended with reservations
6 = A solid product with some issues
7 = Very good, but not great
8 = Excellent, with room to kvetch
9 = Nearly flawless – get it now
10 = Metaphysical product perfection

New homepage

I’m tentatively moving my blog to WordPress ‘cause I’ve heard lots of great things about it and it seems pretty cool.  If I like it, you’ll no longer be able to get to my blog at http://ramblings-robert.blogspot.com as of Jan 1, 2010.  If I don’t like it, the URL won’t change.  I’ll let you know either way.

Wish me luck!

Oh, yes.  The new URL is http://ramblingsrobert.wordpress.com.  Note the lack of a hyphen between ‘ramblings’ and ‘robert'.

Please comment and tell me what you think of it.