That story comes from a blogger and author named Bob Sutton, titled Larry Page, My Wife’s Lament, and Reading on Books vs. Screens. It echos somewhat what Time says (or Time echos it I guess), but it includes a personal story, and cites some more research. The author also says that he will often buy two copies of the book- a digital one and a physical one.

I can’t say I’ve noticed worse reading comprehension while using the Kindle; however, when I buy textbooks or reference books I do opt for the physical book. I prefer to have a copy of  those kinds of books next to me when needed. The research Sutton presents also covers reading speed, not comprehension, as Sutton himself points out. I’d be very interested to see more on this topic, as there can be any number of reasons for this. Digital devices like the iPad or a computer can be more distracting. Or perhaps, in the case of the Kindle, it could be due to smaller screen sizes.

What I do know for sure is that print books should come with a digital copy; in my opinion this is a no brainer. I think  this would really help the sales of print books and it would be much more convenient for the user. They do it with Bluray discs, and you have the ability to digitize CDs. Why should it be any difference, in today’s society, for books?

What do you think? Have you  notices a a degradation in reading comprehension while using e-readers? What about reading online?

It talks about potential employers and schools asking for access to view facebook/twitter accounts either by logging in during an interview or by friending an official.  This is not OK; it shouldn’t be happening on any level and the fact that it’s going on is an invasion of privacy.

If you go through the time to set certain things on private, they should stay private. If you can’t ask personal questions during an interview, Facebook should be off limits as well, so long as it’s set to private by the user.

Everyone should be aware of what’s happening and of your rights in these cases. Unfortunately, there isn’t a law against this yet (unless you can make the argument that it answers illegal job interview questions) but you can always ask the interview why they want access and how it applies to the job. If they can’t make their case, kindly refuse their request and remind them about the kind of questions that are off limits during interviews.

If you’d rather not deal with that kind of confrontation, you could always say you don’t have a Facebook account, or create a “professional” one that you use to show interviewers. The point, however, is that employers and schools should not be asking for this information in the first place.

I really don’t like studies like this; they are comparing something people enjoy using to 2 very addictive substances. Possibly the biggest flaw here is that people are asked to gauge their own desire. In a world where people say, “Today, I had to have a serious talk with my boyfriend about his Miley Cyrus obsession. FML” (src) and a meme exists citing “First World Problems,” people probably cannot accurately gauge their feelings/desires. Desire is relative to personal experience. It’s like how college students call themselves alcoholics because they drink every weekend. Some are kidding, but some really mean it. But I’m a little off-topic now.

My point is that studies like this (and statistics in general) really do not show us anything useful data. Of-course people are going to use Facebook and Twitter more than cigarettes and alcohol. There is no law prohibiting minors from the use of social networks (not  that I’m opposed to that). Plus, Facebook and Twitter are free. (To be fair, that latter point was cited in BGR’s article.)

Until people start neglecting their responsibilities to use Facebook and Twitter, we can’t say that social networks are more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol especially.

It’s pretty astounding to me that journalists can get away with writing about things they don’t understand, at all. Take Washington Post journalist and author of this post, Hayley Tsukayama. She is a blogger and has a Master’s Degree in journalism. She is not a lawyer or a technologist, but she’s writing about a technology company’s legal agreement. And to be fair, the FAQs article that I link to is more or less fine, but there are a couple of things that people are extracting from her article that are being interpreted the wrong way, probably by design. The biggest offender is this one:

Can I opt-out?: No.

People are making a huge deal that they can’t opt-out of this new privacy policy when in reality, there is nothing to opt-out of. Google is just telling us the new ways they are going to use data that they already have. They don’t even have to do that- not as publicly as they did anyway. They aren’t making us add anything new, or use some new system. In short, they aren’t doing anything now that they couldn’t do before. They are just making it easier to do it.

Then there is this fantastic quote by Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a  privacy advocacy group:

There is no way anyone expected this

That is a pretty piss-poor statement for director of a privacy group to make. I think anyone with half a brain and a Google account could have expected this. Google is in the business of data, and they offer all of their services (or most of them) for free. Of-course they are going to leverage that data to provide what they say are better services. There is of-course, a simple way to prevent this.

Get rid of your Google account. And your Facebook account. Twitter; Linked-In; MySpace (huh?). No one is forcing you to use this stuff. You can still use Google search without a Google account and it will work just as well (maybe even better). So if you want to keep your information private, don’t go screaming it on a crowded street. Keep it to yourself.

What has seemingly become a tradition on this blog is my annual “Favorites of” post, where I recap some of my favorite things of the year. Even though the posts on this blog have slowed in recent months, I would like to keep that tradition, so here they are!

Tech Favorites

First and foremost, I am a tech nerd. That means I have a few technology related favorites I’d like to share with you. While I always get new gadgets and try out new services, I did add a new category this year simply titled, “Technology,” which encompasses anything that wouldn’t fall under gadget or app. This could be a programming language, like PHP, or a new technique, like Responsive Web Design.

Favorite Gadget: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus. As usual, the competition was pretty stiff since I purchased quite a few technological goodies this year, from a Macbook Air to Google TV and even a new tablet (which I love), but the [dubious] honor of my favorite gadget this year has to go to my new phone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It’s super slim and light, the camera has no shutter delay, and oh yeah, it’s the first phone to run Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. My full review of the device is coming soon over at android.appstorm.net.

Favorite App: Spotify. I figured this category would be interesting this year because not only did I start writing for 2 app sites (android and web) but a bunch of new services launched this year, including Amazon CloudPlayer and Google Music. I feel Spotify is the clear winner, however, for a few reasons. Despite the fact that its ads are pretty annoying, the service does allow you to listen to all of music you want for free; it also gives you a way to disable ads, if you’re willing to pay. You might remember a couple of years ago that my favorite app was lala, which Apple bought and subsequently killed in 2010. I’m glad to say that Spotify has filled that void.

Favorite Technology: Responsive Web Design. As a web developer, I enjoy seeing what new things are emerging for me to try. 2011 was the year of responsive web design. Not a totally new concept, the idea behind it is to leverage HTML5 and CSS 3 to customize your single website design based on the media it’s being viewed on (desktop, tablet, smartphone, super-secret spy watch…well maybe not that one…yet). With the constant stream of new devices of all shapes and sizes, responsive web design is an incredibly important technology/technique that anyone in the web development field should become familiar with.

Media Favorites

This year in media was huge for me because I got into a very big, very beloved franchise: Harry Potter. in 2011 I read all of the books and watched all of the movies for the first time; those books and movies could easily take the cake for my favorites, but in the spirit of variety, I didn’t choose them for every category. Besides that, I’m really late to the party on both the books and the movies, so it’s not exactly like I’m making a recommendation here, and I kind of put Harry Potter in a league of its own since there is a ton of depth to the world.

Favorite Book/Book Series: The Hunger Games. Let me just say: Wow. This book series was absolutely incredible. I flew through all three books in a fairly short amount of time because of how thrilling and encapsulating they were. The series has everything: action, suspense, depth to the characters, and a bunch of twists. It’s a book series I strongly recommend, especially with a movie based on it coming out in March 2012. Here’s the book’s description from Amazon.com:

Katniss is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, “The Hunger Games.” The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When Kat’s sister is chosen by lottery, Kat steps up to go in her place.

Favorite Movie: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This movie just beat out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 for the sole reason that while I read both books and loved them, Dragon Tattoo was exactly like the book. I wouldn’t change a thing about it; it was perfect. David Fincher (Social Network, Fight Club) is probably my favorite director and he’s got himself another gem. I strongly recommend this if you haven’t see it. (PS, this was my favorite book in 2010!)

Favorite TV Show: How I Met Your Mother. You should know this about me by now. I’m late to all of the awesome parties. The same thing goes for How I Met Your Mother, which I just got into this year. Man-o-man this is a funny TV series. I thought I’d be hard pressed following something up with Dexter (which was my favorite last year, and CRAZY this year), but HIMYM is fantastic.

Favorite Music: Blink 182 (Neighborhoods). Blink has been my favorite band since high school and when they got back together I was really excited. This year the released their first new studio album in 8 years. I had high hopes, and those hopes were met. Neighborhoods has remnants of old Blink that have been influenced by the other projects they were part of since the break up. Is it their best? Maybe not, but it’s definitely a great album and it did not disappoint.

There are tons of CDs to  help you learn languages, so I  went to Spotify and searched, “Learn Italian.”  Low and behold, a bunch of CDs came  up for me including Let’s Learn Italian!. And Italian isn’t the only language that’s there. You can do the same for Spanish, (some) French, and even Chinese.

If you’re not on Spotify, you can sign up for free.

Magic Kingdom by Day

This is a pretty nice photo if I do say so myself. I have the whole castle, the lighting is good, and it’s framed pretty well. The main reason is that this photo is taken in the middle of the day (well, it’s actually around 9:30am). The sun was out, I was close enough, and the little zoom I did use didn’t adversely affect the photo. Plus, for the main reason I took this pic, uploading it to Facebook, the size is perfect. Now let’s take a look at a photo taken about 12 hours later, from around the same spot:

Magic Kingdom by Night

This was taken during Magic Kingdom’s amazing fireworks show. You can see I don’t capture nearly as much (granted, is it night), the image is grainy, and I’m a little late. As a matter of fact, it took me a lot of shots to even get that. This isn’t the best photo I took of the night, but not of them were really good.

This is not a knock against smart phone cameras- they obviously take nice photos in the day and it’s amazing to even have an 8MP camera inside of your phone. However, hardware restrictions make it difficult to take a really nice photo in any other condition besides sunny. I love taking firework/night photos, and usually will use a good one as my desktop wallpaper. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a really nice photo of any of the firework shows due to the limitations of my smartphone camera.

Anyone who has used both a point and shoot and a smartphone as their primary camera will know the differences are pretty obvious. Here are the main ones:

• Specialized hardware for a better lens, with higher resolutions and faster shutter speeds.
• A number of different shooting modes, including day, night, sports, and yes, even fireworks.
• A battery built for constant photo taking, and nothing else.

The last one is a big one. While I’m super proud of my phone for lasting 12-15 hour days without charging it, neither my brother (who has an iPhone), nor I used our phones as freely as usual because we wanted to conserve battery life as both of use were using them as a camera. The iPhone even died a couple of days (to be fair, my brother texts much much more than me).

So after this experience I’ve done a complete 180 from my stance in November. I’m going to California in August, and you better believe I’ll be purchasing a point and shoot for the trip.

I also did a couple of write-ups for Web.Appstorm.net about Amazon’s new Cloud services:

• Amazon Cloud Player Puts Your Music in the Cloud
• Amazon Cloud Drive: Backup and Access Anywhere

As if you needed another reason why both of these guys are awesome. Alec a little more so.

GeekTool Desktop, originally uploaded by jcasabona.

Did this up using Geektool and an awesome Atari background. It was featured on Appleviews last month.