I needed the sepia option to make reading comfortable, the contrast between the black and white gave me a bit of eyestrain.

New iPad lies about its battery being full (and the 'glitch' can leave users an HOUR short )

Battery 1.7 times bigger than iPad 2
Gadget claims it is full when it's only 90% charged
Difference due to huge power demands of new gadget

By Rob Waugh PUBLISHED: 11:42 GMT, 27 March 2012 | UPDATED: 11:52 GMT, 27 March 2012

When Apple's new iPad tells you that it has 100% battery, it isn't always telling the truth.
The gadget starts to say that it is 'full' when it's at 90% - a difference that can cost users 1.2 hours' usage.
The reason, says ZDNet, is that the formula used to calculate when the device is 'full' is slightly out - a safety mechanism used by Apple to prevent people overcharging their gadgets.

I didn't know the iPad had this option. How does it compare to e-ink?

Anyone know much about the kindle fire? I don't have a computer and I'm thinking it may be a nice (and $169) way to keep up on something easier than a smartphone.

Anyone know much about the kindle fire? I don't have a computer and I'm thinking it may be a nice (and $169) way to keep up on something easier than a smartphone.

E-books spur reading among Americans, survey shows

(CNN) -- E-books aren't just becoming increasingly popular. They also appear to be promoting reading habits among American adults.

So says new research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which states that about one-fifth of U.S. adults have read an e-book in the past year.

And if you expand that to include Americans over 16 who have used an e-reader device or app to read news articles or magazine-style features, the figure jumps to 43%.

E-book users tend to read more often than people who read only print material, Pew found. In particular, they read more books. A typical e-book user read 24 books in the past year, compared with the 15 books reported by typical non-e-book users.

Next-gen E-Ink Kindle could get illuminated screen

Amazon’s next-gen e-ink Kindle may come with a front-lit screen, according to TechCrunch, which claims to have caught a glimpse of an early prototype. The e-ink display offers a more comfortable paper-like reading experience, but like paper it can only be read during the day or in well-lit conditions.

Apparently, Amazon has been considering introducing glowing screens to its Kindles for awhile as it had quietly purchased Oy Modilis, a leading company in light-guide technology, back in 2010. The company has several patents for display lighting technology, one of which appears to be the one that will be used in the new Kindle.

From what could be seen on the prototype, the illumination of the next-gen Kindle is a soft glow compared to the harsher brightness of back-lit LCDs. The light is turned on by tapping the screen and dragging a slider to the right. At this point, the color is still bluish white rather than a warmer off-white associated with books being read under lamp lighting.

I would consider an e-reader if they could make a feature to make all books narrated by Alan Rickman

Barnes and Noble Nook Simple Touch Now Offers GlowLight Feature

Let’s stick to the facts. The Simple Touch weighs less than seven ounces, has built-in WiFi and a battery that lasts through a month of reading on a single charge, even given that new light. It also has a 6-inch touchscreen—with a touch, users can turn pages, look up works or change the font size. They can also shop from the Nook and download more than 2.5 million books, magazines and newspapers.

The Nook’s GlowLight also makes it as good for outdoor use—where women are particularly inclined to read, according to its survey—as in low-light conditions.

As of April 12, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, priced at $139, became available for pre-order, with B&N promising it’ll arrive in time for Mother’s Day (May 13).

Product Description

Book Four of Robert A. Caro’s monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Times of London to acclaim it as “one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece.”

The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career—1958 to1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassin’s bullet to reach its mark.

By 1958, as Johnson began to maneuver for the presidency, he was known as one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, the greatest Senate Leader in our history. But the 1960 nomination would go to the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Caro gives us an unparalleled account of the machinations behind both the nomination and Kennedy’s decision to offer Johnson the vice presidency, revealing the extent of Robert Kennedy’s efforts to force Johnson off the ticket. With the consummate skill of a master storyteller, he exposes the savage animosity between Johnson and Kennedy’s younger brother, portraying one of America’s great political feuds. Yet Robert Kennedy’s overt contempt for Johnson was only part of the burden of humiliation and isolation he bore as Vice President. With a singular understanding of Johnson’s heart and mind, Caro describes what it was like for this mighty politician to find himself altogether powerless in a world in which power is the crucial commodity.

For the first time, in Caro’s breathtakingly vivid narrative, we see the Kennedy assassination through Lyndon Johnson’s eyes. We watch Johnson step into the presidency, inheriting a staff fiercely loyal to his slain predecessor; a Congress determined to retain its power over the executive branch; and a nation in shock and mourning. We see how within weeks—grasping the reins of the presidency with supreme mastery—he propels through Congress essential legislation that at the time of Kennedy’s death seemed hopelessly logjammed and seizes on a dormant Kennedy program to create the revolutionary War on Poverty. Caro makes clear how the political genius with which Johnson had ruled the Senate now enabled him to make the presidency wholly his own. This was without doubt Johnson’s finest hour, before his aspirations and accomplishments were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam.

In its exploration of this pivotal period in Johnson’s life—and in the life of the nation—The Passage of Power is not only the story of how he surmounted unprecedented obstacles in order to fulfill the highest purpose of the presidency but is, as well, a revelation of both the pragmatic potential in the presidency and what can be accomplished when the chief executive has the vision and determination to move beyond the pragmatic and initiate programs designed to transform a nation. It is an epic story told with a depth of detail possible only through the peerless research that forms the foundation of Robert Caro’s work, confirming Nicholas von Hoffman’s verdict that “Caro has changed the art of political biography.”

Book Four, The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson) by Robert Caro is released on May 1. Yesterday's NYT Magazine had an article about Caro's life's work.

First, a major change in the software's (iOS 6) map app is expected. Google Maps, long a mainstay of the OS, is expected to be replaced by an Apple offering that will sport 3D technology developed for the defense industry and turn-by-turn navigation. That feature is offered by Google and incorporated into its mobile operating system, Android, but which Apple has chosen not to implement on prior versions of its iPhone line.

The move to ditch Google won't surprise anyone that's been watching Apple acquisitions for the last three years. In 2009, it bought Placebase, which developed technology for enhancing maps with information from public and private databases.

In 2010, it scooped up Poly9, which had some Google-Earth-like technology, and in 2011, it added to the fold C3 Technologies, which makes 3D maps that are so arresting they look like aerial photographs.

Add to that Apple has been collecting traffic data for two years to create a database for a potential traffic map app, and the handwriting really appears on the wall for Google.

Maybe we will like the Surface. An OS where practically every application runs and finally a tablet with a SD-Card slot.

Microsoft, meh. I don't believe anything from them until I actually see it working.

The Nook Color and Tablet have SD card slots, and are available today.

I'm more interested in the Nexus 7 that Google just announced. Ars Technica has one for review and at first glance, it looks good.

Microsoft, meh. I don't believe anything from them until I actually see it working.