Here's a new free iPhone app called Float by Scribd, a social publishing site I've long admired. Basically, the Float app aims to solve the problem of digital reading fragmentation -- that pesky necessity to visit different sites and tolerate many different formats to read what you want to read. Float organizes the docs you want to read in a personalized feed - news, blogs, websites, documents - and does an amazing thing. It strips out all the clutter and presents it in plain text that you can customize (background, font sizes). That's right. No ads, no headers and footers, no website naviagation. Just the text, images, and hyperlinks. Yay!
I think it's a great idea and that readers and publishers are both going to be clamoring for more. They're floating a lot of content now, and adding stuff all the time, maybe even your site, book, blog... stay tuned.
Download Float from the iPhone app store and visit Float.com for more info. And here's the official press release.
Now we can concentrate on the scenery! The New York Times reported today that "Fighter pilots have long been able to view flight data projected onto jet windshields within their line of sight. Soon recreational motorcyclists and bicyclists will be able to take advantage of that technology. Motion Research, a Seattle company founded in 1993 by a former racecar driver, Dominic Dobson, said that next spring it would begin selling an inexpensive information display system to be attached to a motorcycle helmet.
People keep asking me what tools they need to create an online travelogue. It's a big list, and I'm co-teaching a class about it at the
I love my Sony VAIO but I carry my Apple iBook. Why? No dongles, external drives, and no Windows operating system, and its case is sturdy enough to take day after day of motorcycle travel. The System X operating system is wonderful, too; when you plug in your digital camera System X thinks "oh, you must want to download photos to your hard drive...hey, I'll open iPhoto for you!" I love that. You'll love that. The only sturdyness test an Apple laptop failed was
Consider that Apple's iPods come with up to a 40GB of storage. Then consider that, while you're on the road, you really need to backup your data. That's right. You can use the iPod as an entertainment system and for traveling data backup, storage, and transfer. Just plug the USB or firewire connector into any computer to transfer data: music, photos, documents, your address book...or just copy all the data that lives on your computer hard drive at home. Built-in features let you maintain contacts, calendar, and to-do lists. It's got a notes reader that lets you download text-based information and read it on its (tiny) screen. This could be the ultimate travel gadget. It has a sleep timer so you can fall asleep to your music, or wake you up with it. This is the third generation design, and Apple's really got the interface, connectors, and ease-of-use fine tuned. The feeling is that the
I'd love to take a GPS on my next motorcycle trip. CNET has just reviewed this hot new unit, the Garmin iQue 3600 Palm-based organizer with an integrated Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. They say that "Though the device lacks some of the software found on high-end Palm handhelds and could have better battery life, the iQue proved itself an all-around capable PDA and a top-notch copilot." Read the entire 
Recent Comments