Don't Say Geek! Say Syntux!

Big companies like Amazon, Apple and Sony are fighting for the best device to deliver digital books and I’m loving that as it will only increase get consumer more features for less but yet content is everything I care about.

I’m a book geek, I don’t mind reading on iPhone, my Mac Book or buy an eReader as long as I can get the content I’m interested in.

Kindle is more than a device

Kindle seems to have advantage over any current competitor or even the rumored one, Apple tablet. The advantages as I see them are in the large collection of books that amazon have plus the new publishers program, add to that the Soft Kindle on Windows, iPhone and Mac (Coming soon). Basically you should look at Kindle as a service accessible everywhere unlike any other devices that are just devices.

We don’t know much about the rumored Apple tablet but the competition would be to get more out of those who fancy getting an eReader rather than using the Soft ones.

I like the idea of getting a device but I also want the luxarious ability to resume whatever I started reading using the eReader on my MacBook too, would that be offered by the rumored Apple tablet or Amazon Kindle when they release the soft Kindle for Mac?

Another thing, I would love to see integration between Questia.com and Kindle or Apple tablet. It’s going to be sad to buy Kindle or Apple tablet without being able to access my favorite library on Questia.

The world’s largest online collection of complete books, journals and articles, searchable by word, phrase, title, author, or subject.

Hope the war will end soon for the consumer benefit and hope to see Questia part of the benefits.

Tags: amazon kindle, apple tablet, macbook, consumer benefit, favorite library, ereader, mac book, digital books, iphone, collection of books, competitor, publishers, sony, magazine, newspaper, journals

I just switched to Mac two months ago and to be honest, I’m enjoying it to the max. Of course, switching to Mac isn’t that easy, switching to another operating system include a lot of phases. First you should familiarize yourself with the general system use, finding reliable applications to get the job done and digging deeper to understand the system, which I haven’t reached yet.

One thing I noticed about the switch, once you’re a Mac user, you’re apps consumer! Seriously, you will start considering purchasing applications that works, unlike the philosophy behind GNU/Linux, in Mac you got to pay for apps; which is fine, but you don’t get the source, with few exceptions.

On the other side, the usability of Mac is a scene of inexpressible beauty. Everything is well studied and planned, you will even find things that you wouldn’t expect that someone thought of. Aside from the apps usability, the hardware is beautiful, yes Mac is Intel now and everything is Intel these days, but it works as advertised unlike my two fancy-on-time-of-purchase Toshiba laptops and dead-six-months-later.

There are plenty free of charge applications for Mac, but some apps are really unique, basically an art and therefore you have to pay for it if you really want it. So my first Mac tip would be to keep an eye on some Mac bundles, discounts and offers websites.

• http://www.mupromo.com/
• http://themacbundles.com/
• http://dealmac.com/categories/Computer/Computer-Software/124.html
• http://www.macheist.com/

Personally, I haven’t purchased any application yet but I have list of apps that I’m interested in, I will give it some time and if I couldn’t find a decent replacement then buying it is the choice.

Tags: toshiba laptops, purchase toshiba, mac tip, gnu linux, switching to mac, mac user, usability, computer software.exceptions, six months, operating system, intel, philosophy, toshiba, linux, job

RMconverter is a simple interface for the lame package.

Real Media Converter is a multi threaded gui that takes advantage from the mencoder and lame packages to generate wav and mp3 formats from real media files (ra, rm, and ram) and wav files.

Real Media Converter may become a complete front end for the lame package which is a program that can be used to create compressed audio files.

Requirements:

· Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.6
· mencoder
· lame
· w32codecs

Get RMconverter now

Tags: real media converter, java runtime environment, mp3 formats, w32codecs, that takes advantage, ra, rm, interface

I have always been jealous of RoR but I did not to switch and kill my passion to PHP at the same time there was no PHP framework that satisfy my needs to RAD so I stopped looking until recently I was introduce to Symfony Framework but didn’t had the time to dig much into it as I’m not full time programmer anymore but I kept an eye on it and kept digging it as a Todo.

Couple of days ago I got The Definitive Guide to Symfony and unlike many other technical books it’s authored by the author of the framework and the framework documenter which is a great plus when buying a technical book.

If you are not used to MVC frameworks then you should understand that learning curve in Symfony is a pain that worth going through and it will heal any pain you used to get when developing without a framework, nevertheless the guide book makes it way easier, the book is well written in an easy language

I will keep you update as I’m reading the book.

Tags: time programmer, learning curve, easy language, ror, definitive guide, technical books, couple of days, full time, passion, symfony

Allow me to repeat myself here, Life is never ending installation festivals & conferences at least when it’s about your freedom Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team will be at the Open Source Day Organized by Jordan University of Science and Technology.

This event we will be packed with our new member Advocate Omar Eltaweel who will be giving a 60 minutes presentation about Legalizing your IT infrastructure and Of course Mr Khamis Seksek who will be speaking about Linux as an investment.

No speaker slot for the poor me this time but I will be handling the Installation festival, hopefully we will be able to distribute more than 200 CD although the estimate number of visitors goes beyond 5,000, we are still hunting for a sponsor if you think you can sponsor us please leave a comment as we are in big need for more CDs

Tags: Ubuntu, Jordan, LoCo Team, Jordan University, Science and Technology, Installation festival, speakers, conference, legalizing IT infrastructure, advocate, investment