I thought the first generation of the Kindle was an interesting idea but overpriced and feature poor. With the new Kindle 2, Amazon has released a product that I believe is still overpriced but will get much wider adoption. The key feature is that the Kindle is always connected to the Internet allowing the download of fresh content 24/7. Since Amazon doesn’t charge users a monthly connection fee, they are out only the initial cost of purchase. The new Kindle is much thinner and now holds over 1,500 books. And Kindle 2 even reads to you, with a “Read to Me”, Text to Speech engine. But the sweetest detail that Amazon isn’t really marketing (still a rumor) is that the Kindle 2 will sync with mobile devices. This Whispersync feature will allow your iPhone or other mobile device to read Kindle content. The one showstopper for me however is that the Kindle 2 doesn’t allow users to upload their own content to the device.
New Features & Enhancements
- Slim & Lightweight: Just over 1/3 inch and 10.2 ounces
Books in under 60 seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
- Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for crisp images and text; even reads well in bright sunlight
- Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
- More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
- Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
- Read-to-Me: Text-to-Speech feature means Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud.
- No Wireless Bills: No monthly wireless bills, data plans, or commitments. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so you won’t see a monthly wireless bill.
- Large Selection: Over 230,000 books, plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines and blogs available
- Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise
Tags: amazon, kindle, product, review
Posted by: Jeff Owens in Rails
We completed our subversion setup in part three, now let's add Capistrano deployment to the mix. Let's go ahead and ssh into our server:
CODE:
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ssh -p 8888 deploy@your_linux_box.com
Add the following new directories to our server. This is where our staging and production factory websites will be deployed to:
CODE:
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sudo mkdir /var/www
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sudo mkdir /var/www/apps
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sudo chown -R deploy:deploy /var/www/apps
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Tags: capistrano, deployment, Rails, subversion
Posted by: Jeff Owens in Rails
If you've finished part two let's continue. In this part of the series I'm going to assume you have a working installation of MySQL on your local client machine that we will only need for testing purposes. If you've got a Mac you might look at installing MacPorts and using it to install MySQL for you. First we'll create a test rails project. I'm going to use the latest rails 2 sugar in setting up this simple test site. Open up terminal or iTerm and find a directory you want to use to create the test project. Here we go:
CODE:
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rails --d=mysql factory
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cd factory
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rake db:create
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script/generate scaffold widget name:string description:text
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rake db:migrate
Now let's test our site to make sure everything is working correctly:
Open up your browser and try the site out using http://localhost:3000/widgets.
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Tags: Rails, ruby on rails, setup, subversion
Posted by: Jeff Owens in Rails
We completed setting up ssh and ssh keys in part one, let's continue now with part two of installing a full Rails stack.
SSH into your server:
CODE:
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ssh -p 8888 deploy@your_linux_box.com
By default, Debian and Ubuntu have five package repositories called main, restricted, universe, multiverse, and commercial. You will need the universe package repository. By default, it may or may not be enabled. To check, edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file (note that if you didn't install the aliases in part one you'll use "sudo nano" instead of sn below):
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Tags: Rails, ruby on rails, setup, subversion
