Great Business Use for Twitter

I just heard a story on NPR about a great use for Twitter. A food truck in L.A. uses Twitter tweets to tell everyone where it is. Look here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101881984

I can see this working with the Bookmobile, the UPS and FedEx delivery guys, the Good Humor truck, Peapod, etc., etc.

Kindle 2

My Reactions: Kindle 2

It has taken me a while to get to this as I have been finishing Kindle for Dummies. The Kindle 2 is definitely an improvement. Things I love:

• The thin profile
• The five-way controller
• The keyboard (mostly)
• The repositioned buttons
• Very long battery life
• Just start typing, and the search box pops up immediately at the bottom of the Kindle window.

I mean, you can leave the Kindle on for three or four days and it still works fine. It's amazing.

Things I don't love:

• No ability to create folders or organize anything
• No text editor
• No protective case; you have to buy one separately
• No SD card. Yes, I know there is a lot of internal memory. But the only way I have to transfer anything to a computer is through the USB cable. If I don't have the cable with me, I'm stuck.
• The @ key has been removed from the keyboard--I wish it was still there.
• When you press the SYM key, the @ key is not automatically highlighted.
• All the keys are in one single block; I want them spaced out more.
• The spacebar is oddly positioned.

Most of my objections are with the keyboard, I guess. My cell phone keyboard on my Treo is better organized than this one. But the Kindle 2 is a lot better, no doubt.

Webmail with your Kindle

I had trouble accessing my Webmail from my Kindle until I did two things:

• I made sure I was in Advanced Mode rather than Default Mode.
• I called my ISP (Speakeasy) and asked if they had a simple interface for Webmail. They pointed me to web2mail.com.

It turns out that my usual Webmail interface uses Java, which just doesn't show up on the Kindle. The web2mail interface isn't going to win awards for beauty or for orderliness--all the messages look like they are centered on the page rather than lined up in a neat row--but it works, and that's the main thing.