Common Paradox Tech Blog

“So that’s your advice is it? As my agent? On the week my book comes out in paperback, I should produce my own pirated version and give it away free? Why don’t I just punch my publisher in the face? That would be less work.”

My agent rocked back in his chair (a chair paid for with 15% of my earnings) and laughed. “I didn’t say it was my advice, I just said there’s nothing they can do to stop you.”

Before our meeting had taken its subversive turn, we had been talking about ebooks: a subject that’s on every publisher and agent’s mind this week after the decision by Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, to make his books available exclusively on the Amazon Kindle. Covey’s move has caused a highly effective shit-storm because he made it in direct defiance of his paymasters at Simon & Schuster who won’t see a penny from the deal.

The Barnes & Noble Senior VP of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Mary Ellen Keating, just confirmed to us that indeed some Nook orders were pushed back again. She claims that only a very small percentage of customers will not receive their Nook before Christmas though. B&N apparently offered affected customers both a holiday certificate in case the Nook was a gift and the $100 BN.com gift card we learned about from a commenter yesterday.

It’s hard to feel sympathetic to B&N. The bookseller obviously misjudged customer demand from the start, but inventory and supply management should have seen this latest shipping problem a lot earlier. Our tipster ordered his Nook back on November 12th and saw his order constantly pushed back at the last minute, which was no doubt a ploy by B&N to keep cancellations down to a minimum. All it takes to keep most consumers happy is timely, honest communication, not emails days after the delay is obvious.

The latest version of the self-hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.org) – version 2.9 – has just been rolled out to users.

This release is called “Carmen” and includes a number of notable additions, including the beginnings of a WordPress image editing tool (cropping, scaling, and rotating), simpler video embeds, and batch plugin updating that should save you a bunch of time.

Writing on the official WordPress blog, founder Matt Mullenweg says that this release saw a total of “over 500 tickets, bugs, and enhancements” addressed. The release comes a little more than six months since the last major WordPress release, version 2.8.

With a major snowstorm expect to blanket the east coast this weekend, thank Automattic for giving you something you can do indoors The release is available for download here. For an in-depth overview of what’s new, you may also want to check out WordPress guru Aaron Brazell’s 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.9.

Additional WordPress Resources

WordPress Themes: “Top 12 Stunning WordPress Themes“, “30+ WordPress 3 Column Themes,” “20 WordPress 4-Column Themes,” “30+ WordPress 1-Column Themes,” “10 Unusual & Original WordPress Themes”

Plugins: “50+ WordPress Plugins for Multimedia,” “30+ WordPress Plugins for Statistics,” “30+ WordPress Plugins for Comments,” “30+ WordPress Plugins to Get More Blog Readers.”

Miscellaneous: “WordPress God: 300+ Tools for Running Your WordPress Blog,” “The 7 Weirdest and Wackiest Uses for WordPress“

Reviews: WordPress

Tags: trending, Wordpress

Mobile tech blogger Tnkgrl had a few minutes with the new Google Nexus One phone. Her full report gives some new insight into the much talked about device, and also confirms some things we’ve heard before. She was not allowed to take any new photos, but we’ve all seen the phone by now.

First off, there is no multitouch in the browser or maps applications. We can assume it has the same multitouch APIs as the Motorola Droid has. The Android 2.1 interface has five home screen panes instead of the three seen on previous builds of stock Android. Any Android user will tell you that’s a welcome improvement. We can pretty well tell from this that the rumors about the “Google Phone” running the “real” Android were wrong. This clearly seems to be an evolution of the existing platform. The interface is also quite snappy, being described as “Faster than the Droid”

On the hardware front, the device is rocking a 3.5 or 3.7 inch OLED display of the same resolution as the Droid. Overall, the phone apparently looks very nice and is thinner than you might expect. The GSM radio is for T-Mobile 3G bands. It runs EDGE only on the AT&T network. HTC has finally moved to MicroUSB for the data/charging port. There are also some gold contacts on the bottom of the handset, these may be for a dock of some sort. Based on what you’ve heard so far, Is this a revolution or just another phone?

This week, the gang talks about the FTC’s lawsuit against Intel, the indefinite postponing of Larrabee as a consumer product, and Will’s AT&T woes. And with CES around the corner, we talk about our expectations from the mega-event. We answer a ton of listener questions as well. Plus, Gordon rants about Christmas lights. All that and more in the final episode of 2009!

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337–operators are standing by.

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Although there is hardly a shortage of desktop Twitter clients, the native client options for Mac users remain more limited. A few weeks ago, Realmac Software introduced Socialite 1.0, an app that manages Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and more.

Now another new Mac native client has entered the ring — Kiwi by YourHead. Kiwi doesn’t do multiple social networks like Socialite — its focus is Twitter. It’s a deceptively simple-looking client, but under the hood, the real audience is the power Twitter user.

Look & Feel

Similar to apps like Twitt and Bluebird, Kiwi offers users a number of different themes — they can even create their own. Kiwi’s theme API uses HTML and CSS, which makes creating and altering themes pretty easy.

YourHead is a big player in the RapidWeaver community and already some other RapidWeaver theme designers have created themes for Kiwi. The built-in selection of styles offers lots of different options for the customization junkie.

The first thing I noticed about Kiwi as an application is that it is FAST. Like, extremely fast. Switching from one account or group or saved item to another felt seamless and instantaneous.

For power users that don’t like to leave the keyboard unless it is absolutely necessary, Kiwi has a ton of keyboard commands. Creating tweets, going to replies, direct messages and favorites, selecting accounts, retweeting and more can all be done from the keyboard. Speaking of retweeting, you can do it the official way, and there is also an option to edit and retweet. One really nice feature — you can view a user’s timeline instantly or in a browser from their tweet.

When composing tweets, you can easily append pictures and shorten URLs before hitting send.

Groups, Account Types and Regular Expressions

Kiwi 1.0 does NOT support Twitter Lists. The feature was simply rolled out too late in Kiwi’s development process — but YourHead says it is planned for a future version — probably Kiwi 1.1.

That said, there are lots of options that can create a list-like effect. Kiwi is designed to be used not only with multiple Twitter accounts (if you have them), but with multiple types of accounts. For instance, you can group together a bunch of different Twitter followers’ timelines into one group and then view updates from all of them together. You can also add certain searches or certain search rules to these groups.

In addition to grouping those items together, if you want to keep a certain search term on tap for easy access, you can add it as an account type. Kiwi has a slick little quick account window that you can choose to have open that lets you switch from one account or search term to another.

Perhaps the most advanced feature Kiwi possesses is support for rules and regular expressions. This has tremendous potential, especially if there are terms and phrases you want to keep tabs on. For instance, you can create a rule to automatically hide tweets containing a certain phrase (so if there is a popular twitter meme you want to avoid, you can just add that hashtag to a rule and all of those tweets will be hidden from view). You can also create rules to highlight and color-code content so that you are able to spot it in your timeline.

Other Thoughts

Kiwi is a really impressive Twitter client. It takes the same vertical menu design that has been popularized by the earliest desktop Twitter clients and adds in a lot of features without cluttering things up. Other than lacking List Support and Growl notifications (that’s being worked on, too), this is easily as advanced as any other Twitter client, regardless of platform.

My biggest takeaway with Kiwi is that it is fast. Really, really, really fast. Switching between timelines, searches and search combinations is quick and easy, and updates come in elegantly and without any sense of slowdown.

Kiwi requires Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It’s $14.95, but you can download a free trial and see how it fits into your work flow.

Reviews: RapidWeaver, Socialite, Twitter

Tags: kiwi, mac, twitter, twitter client

It’s just after 12 o’clock here on the left coast, which means Operation Chokehold should now be in full effect. What that means (if anything at all) is still up in the air — which is why we’re turning to you for a status report.

For the uninitiated: Operation Chokehold is a sort of cyber-protest against AT&T, as conjured up by some dude playing a dude disguised as another dude. For one solid hour between 12 and 1 Pacific, angry iPhone owners are supposed to gobble up as much data as they can in an “attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees.”

If Apple ends US iPhone exclusivity with AT&T in 2010, could Verizon handle the handset that currently crushes service in data-dense cities like San Francisco and New York? BusinessWeek scored the quote from Verizon Wireless Chief Technology Officer Anthony Melone:

“We have put things in place already. We are prepared to support that traffic.”
[...]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Verizon Prepared to Handle iPhone in 2010 — If Exclusivity Ends with AT&T

MobileCrunch brings word that, according to Impress R&D [Japanese language]:

[The iPhone 3G is] commanding 24.6% [of the domestic smartphone market], while the [iPhone 3GS] contributes another 21.5%. The 3G was introduced in Japan in summer 2008 (the 3GS followed earlier this year). Sources in Japan say that the iPhone user base in Japan [...]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Captures 46% of Japanese Smartphone Market

Does it really matter whether Operation Chokehold shuts down AT&T’s network today? Even if every iPhone user in the country dials up video highlights of “Pirates of Silicon Valley” exactly at noon Pacific time — and somehow the bits keep flowing and the phones keep ringing — it’ll be too late: Operation Chokehold has already put the squeeze on the U.S.’s second-largest wireless carrier.