{"id":1346,"date":"2010-07-02T19:23:42","date_gmt":"2010-07-02T23:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1346"},"modified":"2010-07-02T19:27:01","modified_gmt":"2010-07-02T23:27:01","slug":"odd-lots-117","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1346","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>The $35 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atlantiswordprocessor.com\/en\/\">Atlantis word processor<\/a> (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1314\">my entry for June 18, 2010<\/a>) installs effortlessly under Wine and runs without a glitch under Linux. (It has a Platinum compatibility rating, and they don&#8217;t get any better than that.) If you&#8217;re doing or considering ebook development under Linux, it generates a very good EPub file, and is quite fast and extremely low-profile. (1.5 MB!)<\/li>\n<li>Doesn&#8217;t <em>Popular Science<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5577125\/global-blimp-network-will-deliver-our-goods-by-2020\">tell us this<\/a> (and just as emphatically) every three or four years? I&#8217;ll believe it when I actually see zepps flying over my house.<\/li>\n<li>From Bob Fegert comes word that <a href=\"http:\/\/bits.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/06\/18\/ray-kurzweil-vows-to-right-e-reader-wrongs\/?ref=technology\">Ray Kurzweil hopes to shake up the ebook business<\/a> with his still-unreleased <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blioreader.com\/\">Blio reader<\/a>. I&#8217;ve known of Blio for some time; what&#8217;s new is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.electronista.com\/articles\/10\/06\/29\/software.to.come.preloaded.on.notebooks\/\">the partnership with Toshiba to create a Blio ebook store<\/a> supporting PDF, XPS, and EPub books. However, what may make Ray the new kingmaker in the ebook world is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eschoolnews.com\/2010\/06\/30\/feds-make-ereaders-accessible-to-all-students\/\">a recent Federal requirement that universities make their e-readers accessible to the blind<\/a>. Blio will do that very well (as you might expect, given Kurzweil&#8217;s history) and the reader is capable of rendering textbooks to an extent that most other ebook software\/hardware combos simply can&#8217;t. Much to watch here.<\/li>\n<li>Having just spent a great deal of money changing out my glasses to a new prescription, I think <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2010\/07\/02\/mits-android-optometry-app-could-help-you-stop-squinting-all-th\/\">this Android eye-test app<\/a> is clearly and crisply brilliant.<\/li>\n<li>From the Words-I-Didn&#8217;t-Know-Until-Yesterday Department: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/cyberlocker\">Cyberlocker<\/a>, a cloud-based file-hosting site. The term is generally used of sites like Rapidshare, which are coming to be seen by Big Content as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zeropaid.com\/news\/89528\/paramount-exec-cyberlockers-real-threat-not-p2p\/\">the greatest single offenders in the file-sharing wars<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Just as <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/WN\/shrek-boosts-vidalia-onion-sales\/story?id=11047273\">Shrek is selling Vidalia onions<\/a>, I heard from a reader that Wallace &amp; Gromit not only put the Wensleydale cheeses on the map, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wensleydale.co.uk\/shop\/miniature-cheese-truckles\/wallace-and-gromit-wensleydale-truckle.html\">with the power of cartoon branding<\/a> brought the cheeses&#8217; producer back from the brink of bankruptcy.<\/li>\n<li>Rich Dailey N8UX writes to tell us that the original <a href=\"http:\/\/www.idle-tyme.com\/\">Idle-Tyme rolling ball clock<\/a> is back in production again, after 25 years. I saw one in a store window I don&#8217;t know how many years ago and giggled a little at the product&#8217;s inherent audacity, but it had a following, and I bought a plastic knockoff in the late 70s. The clock broke, but I still have the balls in a drawer somewhere. Read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.idle-tyme.com\/history.html\">the history page<\/a>; the inventor (like a lot of inventors) was a very interesting man.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The $35 Atlantis word processor (see my entry for June 18, 2010) installs effortlessly under Wine and runs without a glitch under Linux. (It has a Platinum compatibility rating, and they don&#8217;t get any better than that.) If you&#8217;re doing or considering ebook development under Linux, it generates a very good EPub file, and is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[17,37,73,59,14],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-ebooks","tag-food","tag-language","tag-linux","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}