Kat with a K

Flickr via RSS

This is so obvious that I'm embarrassed it took me so long to think of it, and you probably have all been doing this for years. But! It suddenly occurred to me the other night that you could probably keep up with a Flickr stream - of a person or a pool - via RSS. And you can! If you scroll to the bottom of, say, the White House flickr stream's main page, you'll see the little orange RSS logo with "Subscribe to The White House's photostream." Click on the logo, and then paste that URL into the "add" section of your RSS reader, and there you go! Whee. Now I have no excuse for not keeping up with other people using the same brand of lunchbox as me. No, really.

E-books, or not.

The publishing world is in something of a tizzy because Amazon announced that its e-books are outselling hardcovers. There are two pieces of data I'd like to see before taking this with more than a grain of salt:

1. How do the numbers compare on the same titles? If people are buying a lot of 99 cent e-books, but still buying bestsellers in hardcover, that's important to note.
2. And how do they compare to paperbacks? The fact that only hardcovers are included here suggests that they're using the numbers they need for a more sensational headline.

So I'm not ready to proclaim the death of print just yet. But I wanted to say a little about my own experience. I've been doing a lot with the iPad - using it for Twitter, Web browsing, to do lists, crosswords, games, weather forecasts, news, music, and more. But what I haven't really done on it is read e-books. I downloaded iBook, Apple's free e-book app. It came with Winnie the Pooh, and I downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which is public domain and therefore free. I've looked at them both, to see how things work, but I haven't really read either. And it wasn't a conscious decision - I didn't decide I wasn't going to switch to e-books or anything. I just . . . haven't bothered. I'll let you know if that changes.

Conflict Minerals and Electronics

I don't find it terribly surprising that minerals used in the production of computers, iPods, and other popular electronics often come from the Congo and fuel conflict there, but honestly, I'd never really thought about it. Until now, thanks to a takeoff on the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads that features the ever-charming Joshua Malina:

Read more about the issue here.

Chrome Has My Number

When you start up Google's Chrome browser, it helpfully shows you the eight sites you visit most so you can just click on the image of the site to go to it, if you want. It occurs to me that that paints a pretty accurate picture of my online activity and, well . . . me. Here are the sites:

IMDb
My public library
My blog's dashboard
Blogger
Brizzly (Twitter client)
YouTube
Gmail
Netflix

(Nota bene: It doesn't register Google Reader or Google Docs because they're subdomains of Google. If it did, they would definitely be on the list.)

Net Neutrality Bleg

So, I know there was a big decision yesterday, and it's supposed to be . . . bad? For . . . us? The Internet? Everyone? Yeah, obviously I haven't been following this story the way I should But I'm sure some of you have! Can anyone point me to a good summary of the issue and recent developments? Thanks!

Buzz!

Thank you, Mr. Google! If anyone wants to follow me, my ID there is katelinnea. Let me know yours.

Dear Mr. Google,

When rolling out your new Buzz service, I think it might be nice for you to prioritize faithful users of your other services. I bought an Android phone. I changed my number for Google Voice. I use Google Groups. I practically run my life out of Google Calendar and Google Docs. I signed up for Wave, although I still don't know what to do with it. I all but abandoned AIM for Google Chat. I pretty much live in Gmail and Google Reader.

I still don't have Buzz.

What more do you want from me?

Love,
Katie

Google Buzz?

Okay, I'm kind of excited about the prospect of Google Buzz, especially if it works as a Twitter client. Or something. But, of course, I don't have it on my account yet. Anyone get it yet? Did you try it? What do you think?