As a new owner of a Kindle DX, I was really hoping to fall in love. We’re on the verge of heading to Cape Cod for a family vacation, so I was looking forward to carrying my personal library in a highly portable 1-pound package.

Friends have been singing Kindle’s praises for several years. The recent advances in screen sharpness and contrast persuaded me that the time had finally come to buy a Kindle for myself. So a week ago I bought the latest DX model, one that offers a 9.7” screen and a 50% improvement in contrast.

At over $400 with tax, this larger Kindle is quite expensive, so I expected a lot from it. Perhaps too much. In the end I returned it, for a variety of functional and aesthetic reasons.

Given its price I felt Kindle had to become, if not my primary reading medium, at least one that I’d be willing to use on a regular and frequent basis. So I decided to test it out, to see if it might become my preferred reading device, or an away-from-home alternative that would be more convenient than carrying printed books.

My Issues with the Kindle DX

Practical, Not Lovable

If you love the UI of an iPhone, the Kindle’s interface seems klunky and dated. It’s utilitarian, and gets the job done — but doesn’t leave you feeling delighted. Fortunately, it takes little time to learn.

I was never able to figure out how to delete unwanted books or samples, or how to organize things into collections. (Or even if those features are available.)

I did successfully transfer a PDF from my Mac to the Kindle; however, I did not like the fact that there was no easy zooming or scaling function that would enable me to resize the PDF page to fit within a single Kindle screen. If this feature exists within the Kindle’s UI, it’s hidden somewhere.

Not Easy on the Eyes

Over the course of a week I used my Kindle for a minimum of 30 minutes at a time, at multiple times during the day and in varying lighting conditions. Despite the vaunted improvements in screen contrast, in every case I had to put on “computer glasses” to see the screen clearly.

I don’t wear glasses to read books or magazines. That said, I was unable to work with the Kindle for more than a few moments without putting on glasses.

Even with the glasses I suffered some degree of eye strain every time I read from the Kindle for more than 30 minutes. (I read printed books for hours at a time with no ill effects.) After reading from the Kindle, I almost always experienced eye strain, followed by a mild headache.

There’s no option to manage contrast or brightness, so if the setting doesn’t work optimally for you, there’s nothing you can do about it. Although my friends don’t comment on this, my husband complained about eye strain after reading a magazine for an hour or so…

Design Limitations

No Typography. As someone who loves the look and feel of a well-designed book, I struggled with Kindle’s limited feature set when it comes to page design and layout. Although you can vary the size of the characters, there’s only one font. Therefore all books look the same.

Unlike web browsers, where you can change the default serif and sans serif type choices, the Kindle supports a single typeface. The font is nicely designed, but it becomes boring after a while.

Having said that, the character shapes are crisp and clear. I suspect this is the best that Kindle can display for this generation device.

No kerning or word spacing. Unfortunately, for books laid out with a justified right margin, Kindle’s primitive word spacing produces rivers of white space down the column of text. I found all this white space between words to be distracting. Sadly, this seems to be the most common design format, at least for the books I tried.

Manuscript-style page layouts. It’s also clear that Kindle is optimized for simple mass market paperbacks.

If the Kindle is able to render pages designed with sidebar content, the mark-up structure must be too inconvenient for publishers to use.

As a result my husband’s and my experiences reading periodical material were quite disappointing. We saw text only, no sidebars, no images in context. We didn’t see teaser articles. Instead you have to scroll through all the articles sequentially in order to decide which ones to read.

Having said that, we were reading niche publications, like sailing magazines and Le Monde. Perhaps some magazine publishers are investing the time to optimize their publications for Kindle; if so, we did not happen to download any of their samples.

Whenever my husband and I read periodicals, we found each article’s sidebars inserted within the main text column — making sidebars far less effective at supplying supplementary information or perspectives.

Only 16 shades of grey. There’s no color, and only 16 shades of grey. That means designers have few options for organizing books or magazines using a “visual language.” Again, this leaves the impression that you’re reading manuscripts — because even today’s paperbacks feature subtle grey-scale design elements to distinguish chapter heads or section dividers… I missed that kind of design finesse in books ported to the Kindle.

Early Days

Kindle’s current limitations remind me of the very early days of digital publishing, back in the mid-1980s when laser printers had limited output capabilities, and people printed right-justified books or periodicals using MS Word or primitive publishing tools…

I imagine that Kindle’s screen rendering capabilities will someday overcome these limitations, at a reasonable price point, but that time is probably years off.

Apple’s iPad is an obvious alternative to try; however, some of my geeky friends say eye strain will occur with iPads too.

After this experience I’m not rushing out to buy one…

A francophile friend is eagerly trying to buy French books and periodicals for her new Kindle DX. She splits her time between Seattle and France, and would love to consolidate her reading materials electronically for practical reasons. Fueled by optimism, she bought a third generation Kindle last Friday.

She loves Kindle’s promise, but disenchantment is already setting in… For reasons that aren’t clear, the usage scenario she has in mind is not well supported by the current market environment. She has spent hours searching www.amazon.fr, to no avail. No French books to speak of, and hardly any periodicals.

Her trial subscription to Le Monde has revealed a number of usability issues. There’s no teaser format that enables her to skip to the articles that most interest her. No images, text only.

En Français, S’il Vous Plait

Her dream: read French novels, newspapers and magazines on a conveniently portable device like the Kindle. Current releases, not just 19th century public domain books. Because she’s passionate about perfecting her French comprehension and pronunciation skills, she’d love to read while listening to a simultaneous playback via MP3 (or equivalent).

French is not her native language, so she wants to be able to select unfamiliar words on the Kindle, thereby launching a built-in dictionary whose entries explain their meaning. She’d also welcome the option of viewing French-to-English translations of unknown words and slang (a must-have for people whose French is less fluent than hers.)

She’s very interested in Kindle’s text-to-speech option, especially if it doesn’t sound like a robot. Needless to say, she expects the text-to-speech option for French content to produce words pronounced correctly in French, rather than listen to a techno-voice trying to pronounce French words as if they had been written in English.

Before ordering the Kindle, my friend did some research which revealed that Amazon had released a digital publishing platform for French language authors in January. That sparked her purchase of a Kindle. Surely, she thought, there’d be French ebooks in the marketplace by now, 6+ months since Amazon released its multi-language publishing platform.

Hélas! She’s learned there are few contemporary books in French for Kindle. And no linked dictionary for French content as there is for English language content.

Too Early, Or Too Unusual?

Her big question: is she just suffering early adopter pains, and if she waits patiently, will someday have the opportunity to read French books and magazines on a Kindle? Or is she an outlier, a member of a niche market of French readers who would welcome electronic books, but who are too few in number to motivate the French publishing industry to embrace the new digital formats?

And what about the French government’s continuing quest to promulgate the French language around the world? Will France succeed in ensuring a steady demand for French language publications beyond French borders? And if so, surely digital formats would make French publications more easily accessible to a broader global audience if booksellers could avoid the brick-and-mortar challenges of inventory forecasting, shipping costs and other import-related challenges.

To help you get more value from my postings, I added the LinkWithin widget to my blogs today. This widget can automatically suggest, for any new post, related stories found elsewhere within the blog. I’m still getting a feel for what it considers to be “related” — and am already chuckling at some of its whimsical results.

What You See

At the bottom of each post, the LinkWithin widget displays links and thumbnails for up to 3 related stories within my blog.

You’ll see the benefits of its “intelligence” at the end of this and all other posts in this blog.

How It Works

LinkWithin chooses related stories based on their title, tags and content, according to the developer’s FAQ.

Having said that, I’ve found some of the choices to be quite amusing: it sees linkages that a human editor would never consider. Take a look at the post “Indicators of Waste Heat” as an example (LinkWithin’s results appear at the bottom).

How did LinkWithin “see” the connection between our cats’ heat-seeking behavior and a yoga retreat in Provence?

Well, it turns out the yoga retreat took place during a heat wave in southern France. There was no A/C in the yoga studio or in the 16th century hotel where we stayed. Temperatures hovered in the high 90s and above for more than a week.

LinkWithin must have detected words relating to heat in both posts, even if their subject matter is largely unrelated. Both posts were written with a somewhat wry tone, although I doubt LinkWithin could detect that subtle aspect to the content.

See what you think…

I’m delighted to get back some control over my privacy settings in Facebook. Unlike Facebook’s founder, I believe I own my relationships, and I should be in complete control over who gets to see what.

Having said that, I’m upset that Facebook forces me to waste so much time monitoring my privacy settings and profile options. And just when I think I’ve got it under control, they go and change something.

I was shocked to learn (via the NYT) there are >50 places to toggle specific privacy settings in Facebook. I’m still overwhelmed at the complexity revealed in the May 12 New York Times’ infographic about Facebook’s privacy options. If it wasn’t obvious before, this infographic makes it clear that Facebook sides with the advertisers’ needs over those of the millions of people who entrust their personal information to Facebook pages and friendship networks.

Speaking of complexity…

And then there are the application settings, especially if you want to block unwanted apps or games that may be meaningful to your friends, but not to you. Farmville addicts with nothing better to do can clutter up your wall really quickly…

It took a few days, but I’ve finally learned how to block the unwanted posts about hungry, lost or neglected animals.

Sigh. It shouldn’t be so hard…

Lately I find myself engaged in conversations about people’s desire for a more balanced, nourishing, or purposeful life.

With friends, family or even professional colleagues, certain topics keep cropping up: exercise and wellness, yoga (or my friends’ passion for Nia), life/work balance, relationships that nourish, meaningful work. On the flip side: frustrations with dispiriting, soul-sucking jobs, heartless employers, broken promises, not enough “quality time” for family relationships and so on.

Based on my circle of friends and colleagues, wellness and life balance, or the lack thereof, are now top-of-mind. Like many Boomers in that regard.

We actively seek options, try out new possibilities, and explore self-help resources. Fueled with the best of intentions, we take steps toward getting our lives back in order. Book clubs, diets, gym memberships, yoga classes. We start with a burst of enthusiasm, keep our new commitments for a while, and then…

…Inertia sets in. Our good intentions fall by the wayside, buried under the pressures of overly scheduled lives, too much work-related travel, or the latest work or family crisis.

How can we get ourselves out of this predictable rut?

Are There Any Useful but Likable Resources?

One promising option is an online service called Mindbloom. Mindbloom, say its developers, is “an online wellness-centric life game.” Quite a mouthful…

To me it’s a “promise keeper” — a way to manage personal commitments, the actions “I should” or “ought to” take. It keeps me focused on tasks I often postpone or overlook, things that tend to remain on to-do lists indefinitely.

Mindbloom offers a useful but playful way to set good intentions, stay on top of your commitments, and follow through on your promises. It also helps you identify the parts of your life that need more attention to be paid. I’ve been using it since December, at the urging of colleagues who know the founders (it’s a local Seattle company).

My feelings about it are mixed, but I like it well enough to talk about it to friends and explore how they might use it.

How It Works

Mindbloom is an inexpensive online service that lets you manage key dimensions of life by yourself, or with the help of trusted friends, family members, personal coaches, etc.

The interface is playful, easy to learn, and not too time-consuming. It incorporates “game mechanics” if you prefer external motivation to reinforce self-discipline while getting your life back in balance.

Using trees and colors as a visual metaphor, Mindbloom helps you visualize goals and objectives, group related activities into a branch, and plan how and when to take action on your intentions. If you’re diligent about tending your tree, you earn the right to change the landscape and other aspects of your environment (like what you hear when you’re tending the tree).

Branches are an organizing principle; each branch represents an aspect of life, such as “relationships,” “health,” “money” or “career.” You decide which branches and how many leaves you want on each branch.

Each leaf’s color reveals how well you’re managing this aspect of life. Healthy, well-managed leaves are green and vibrant. By contrast, neglected ones turn yellow and then shades of brown.

When things are seriously out of whack, your leaves turn red. This can happen when you skip too many intentions, or don’t pay enough attention to an aspect of your life that you’ve chosen to manage with Mindbloom’s help. Clearly, Mindbloom’s developers want to dramatize the fact that this aspect of your life appears to be out of balance.

Alone or Together

So far I’m using Mindbloom as a solo endeavor (perhaps a reflection of a New England upbringing). Mindbloom has been designed, however, to encourage people to work together. The developers have incorporated a number of “social” hooks so multiple trees can be managed within a family or network of friends.

Some of my friends are chatting about adapting the ideas they like best from the Weight Watchers program to share with each other via Mindbloom. (Apparently, they’ve had uninspiring Weight Watchers coaches, so this “social” approach seems more attractive.)

Mindbloom’s founders have learned that professional life and wellness coaches are intrigued by Mindbloom’s possibilities. These coaches are envisioning how they could graft their frameworks onto a Mindbloom context so they can facilitate online interactions with their clients.

What I’ve Learned So Far

There’s an art to designing and structuring your tree: deciding what to tackle with Mindbloom, and what to manage with other approaches.

I’m still working out the kinks of what to manage with Mindbloom’s help, and what to tackle elsewhere. It’s easy to end up with an unhealthy tree if you choose too many or the wrong things to manage.

With my tree, I chose to manage goals and objectives like:

• To-do items that are captured on PostIt notes, but disappear before they’re acted on — things like scheduling a medical appointment for preventive care or routine maintenance for my car;
• Ideas that lurk in the back of my mind, often tinged with guilt or anxiety, but rarely set down on paper — like “lose # pounds this summer”;
• Things I intend to do daily, but may skip when feeling lazy or pressed for time (flossing, going for a walk, meditating, etc.);
• Things like phoning parents or friends on a regular basis, making time to meet colleagues over lunch — just to “catch up.”

For now my tree is very simple, with just the “leaves” that most need attention, so I can tend it with just a few minutes of effort each day.

Things to Avoid, Lessons Learned

At first I intermixed professional and personal intentions within my Mindbloom tree; however, I discovered it’s better to keep Mindbloom centered on key aspects of my personal life.

When it comes to managing work or career intentions, I already have effective systems and tools for those purposes. Adding those goals and objectives (and date commitments) into Mindbloom became duplicative, and therefore easily neglected. Inadvertently this made my Mindbloom tree appear sicker than it actually was.

My take: For commitments you already manage effectively with Outlook, a GTD system, online to-do lists, etc., there’s no point in duplicating your effort with Mindbloom.

Having said that, the parts of your life that don’t lend themselves neatly to PostIt notes, Outlook reminders, iPhone to-d0 lists, etc., are good candidates for Mindbloom.

It’s also wise to avoid setting up leaves for activities that are really being managed by someone other than yourself.  For example, I pay the bills and manage household finances; my husband manages our investments. When I made the mistake of defining investment-related leaves, they quickly turned yellow and became sickly. Due to that role mismatch, those leaves needed to be “pruned” and removed from my tree.

There are things about the UI or the way you “schedule” intentions that I find annoying or awkward. But I won’t list them here as I’ll be providing feedback directly to the developers.

Net net. If you’re looking for a way to get your life back in balance, take a look at Mindbloom. Perhaps it can help you focus on the areas that most need attention, or that would bring the greatest joy to you, your family and friends.

Today I managed to have fun while working. At long last I set up a personal Facebook page and uploaded some family photos. At the same time I transferred files and apps from a 2-year-old MacBook Pro to a brand new MacBook Pro (one of the models released earlier this week). I got the first 15-inch i7 model sold by Apple’s Bellevue location.

My office has several Macs side by side, so it was easy to work on multiple parallel tasks. When the file/program transfer process finishes, my husband will be the lucky recipient of a Mac laptop that also runs Windows 7.

Transferring Files & Programs to a New Mac

When you have hundreds of gigabytes worth of stuff on a Mac laptop, the process of transferring from one to another takes a couple hours over a Firewire cable. But it requires no supervision once the process is underway. (Hence the Facebook project as a productive use of time while transferring files.)

Every time I go through the process of transferring files and programs from an older Mac to a newer one, I’m reminded of how well Apple has simplified this process compared to what you experience when facing a similar challenge with Windows PCs. The Mac transfer is almost flawless — especially if you remember which programs (like Adobe’s Creative Suite) need to be deactivated so you don’t get into license conflict.

Getting my documents and apps installed in the Windows partition of my new MacBook Pro will take far longer than it took to set up the Mac side of this computer. Tranferring the files is no problem, but I have to reinstall all the programs, which means looking through my office files for all the license keys and typing them in with no errors. (Not an easy feat.)

Proud Owner of a MacBook Pro i7

Luckily for me the Bellevue Square Apple Store’s business consultant treats me well. He knew I was interested in the new 2010 MacBook Pro models, and kept me informed about inventory status, as he knew I wanted to see the new high-res anti-glare screen before choosing which configuration to buy. His first i7 models arrived in the store today, so he contacted me this morning to let me know he had a few in stock.

There’s a lot to like about the new MacBook Pro with Intel’s i7 processor: fast and sweet. It has all the usual Apple fit-and-finish finesse, but with superior graphics, a terrific screen, and a big boost in performance, when compared to my older laptop.

After lunch I ordered a copy of Windows 7 Professional from Amazon, and took advantage of their local delivery option (for $2 more than it would have cost to receive the software on Saturday). It arrived in time for me to begin the install before supper time.

As I write this, I’ve set up Bootcamp, partitioned the Mac, have installed Windows 7 Professional (64-bit version), and am now installing Apple’s hardware drivers for Windows. Compared to how long this process took on my older laptop, albeit with the 32-bit version of Win 7, this install is just screaming fast. It’s so fast that I keep getting distracted from this blog entry.

Real Time “Social”

But the truly fun part about today was exchanging comments and photo tags with my niece Melanie, who was closely monitoring my Facebook progress. She lives 3 time zones to the east of here, so her workday has ended and she’s relaxing in the evening while I’m still plugging away. She made sure family members are getting tagged properly in my Facebook photo albums.

No sooner did I get a photo or two uploaded, but Mel had tagged the family members whose faces appear in the photo. Except she forgot to tag her father in one of the shots. I wonder if that was a Freudian slip, or if the image appears cropped on her computer, so she didn’t see his face…

So here I am, installing Windows, and exchanging comments with family back in New England. Juggling fun, social interactions, and work all at the same time. Thanks Facebook, thanks Apple, thanks Amazon (for same-day service on Windows 7). You all made my fun day possible.

My friends think I’m a closet geek and tease me for being somewhat technically adept (except when they want tech support). Today I was almost convinced of that myself.

I went off to an early morning class at Yoga Bliss, and then before changing out of my yoga wear, updated my business blog’s framework to the latest version of Thesis, a powerful theme manager for WordPress blogs. From the standpoint of Thesis, all went flawlessly, thanks to following the developer’s instructions meticulously.

The only hang-up occurred because my web hosting service (unbeknownst to me) had decided to beef up security controls: it refused my login  password while attempting to upload the new Thesis theme folder via FTP. It took a while to figure out what was going on, reset my password to something more secure (but eminently forgettable), and then upload the Thesis folder via FTP. So now I’m back in business, running a faster version of Thesis and hoping for speedier page loads as promised.

And maybe one of these days I’ll find the time to play around with the new Thesis controls, and tweak the look and feel of the blog. But for now, I’m glad the upgrade went smoothly.

And maybe one of these days I’ll shift this blog from the Cutline theme to Thesis…

As a busy yoga enthusiast, I sometimes wonder what would happen if yoga studios within a given metro area agreed to an “Open Table” model for class bookings. (Open Table is a centralized reservation service for restaurants that operates in major cities, including iPhone and other smartphone apps.)

In an ideal world I’d take 6-8 weekly classes in succession from the same teacher at the same studio, to benefit from her careful class planning and sequencing. But in 2 years of taking classes I’ve never been able to attend all 8 classes due to family or work-related schedule conflicts. As a result I’ve joined a second local studio to have an alternate place where I can take classes when I face a conflict with my primary studio. Each one uses MindBody for booking purposes, so I have two separate accounts now.

From a busy student’s perspective, it would be really great if I could book classes using a centralized reservation system that showed me all the classes available today (or at later dates) within, say, a 20-mile radius. For each class on offer I’d want to see information about the yoga style or tradition, the teacher, the relative difficulty of the class, prerequisites (if any), time, location, pricing, etc. Like the Open Table restaurant model it would be nice to see something comparable to menus and photographs of the venue, if it’s a studio I’m unfamiliar with. I’d also want to be able to filter the class listings by teacher name, yoga tradition (such as Anusara), difficulty level, etc.

This raises a larger question of the business model. Would I pay the central booking service, and have it disburse funds to the studio? (My personal preference as a student.) Would there be a finder’s fee paid by the booking service to the studio, with students paying for the class directly to the studio? I don’t know. Certainly from the student’s perspective, being able to book and pay online in a single transaction is the most convenient approach.

What I do know is, I’d take more classes if such a booking system were available, one that allowed me to book and take classes on the spur of the moment, as time permits. Such an approach could be financially beneficial to the studio owners, if they could fill up more classes… They might even offer specials on classes that are generally sparsely attended.

Perhaps this is something that Mindbody could explore.

We’re in the midst of refinancing our home, to take advantage of the current attractive rates. It’s been an eye-opening experience to see how the process has evolved since we last refinanced 5-8 years ago.

The lenders’ reliance upon web-based data collection services has certainly eased our burden, and saved us time in supplying the needed information. Interactions with the loan processing agent take place by phone (or less satisfactorily, via an online document tracking mechanism.) We deliver follow-up documents to the loan processing agent by scanning and emailing them, or rarely, by faxing them. (I believe the lender’s interactions with our insurance agents are still via fax…)

The last time we did this, faxing was the primary data delivery channel. This time, faxing is a hassle, as we no longer have a dedicated fax line, and the fax machine is connected to a phone line on an exceptional basis only. Scanning is more reassuring because we know what the document looks like before it gets sent.

The other huge benefit to this more technology-savvy process is its speed: it took less than a week to go from the decision, over breakfast on Saturday, to explore refi rates to the point at which we had received conditional approval in writing and a locked-in rate. The appraiser showed up 2 days later.

To our surprise our current lender did not offer an attractive refi package, despite our stellar track record at making payments; their rate schedule on what constitutes “conforming loan amounts” by county is years out of date. So they’re losing our business.

It’s a brave new world out there, for those lucky enough to qualify for refinancing. The rates are certainly attractive.

It’s that time of year again, time to review what worked (and what didn’t) in 2009, imagine new possibilities, dream, and set intentions for the coming year. I’ve been enjoying the process of setting some actionable goals for 2010, while identifying some larger aspirations that I’d like to translate into action.

To prepare my plan for 2010 I’ve been reading a bunch of books, magazines and online resources.

The challenge, of course, is how to make sure you follow through on the New Year’s resolutions, once past the early enthusiasm and first few weeks of good intentions…

At the advice of friends, I’ve decided to experiment with a new online service that helps people plan and track progress on their life’s goals.

I’ve subscribed to the online service called Mindbloom, to see if its playful technology-assisted approach can help keep me on track… The UI is fun and very easy to learn. Each of the leaves in the tree illustrated here represents a goal, a source of inspiration, and a set of planned actions with target follow-through dates. The founders believe that you can accomplish big goals by breaking them down into smaller actions, things you can accomplish on a day-by-day basis.

So far the service looks promising, although I’ve encountered a number of bugs. The service is very new, so it’s clear the software is still in the shake-down phase, the functionality stripped to the core essentials.

My cats like the sound track, a bird tweeting in the background, but after the first few encounters, I find it cloying and annoying. It’s now turned off.

There’s a conflict between a number of the service’s assumptions and my desires; at present there’s no way to make my personal preferences override Mindbloom’s defaults, so I’m not yet convinced I’ll stick with the service.

But for now, I’m hopeful that the Mindbloom approach will be more fruitful than endless cascades of to-do lists and Post-It notes, followed by forgetfulness, distractions and then regrets. I’ll give it a shot, and see if my track record for completed New Year’s resolutions in 2010 improves as a result.

It will be interesting to see if Mindbloom can function as a virtual “personal coach” to keep me on track, and gently prompt me to make good on my intentions. If so, 2010 will prove to be a way better year than 2009 has been. And that will be great for me, my family, my friends and my business.