Fantastic. I started on an Olympia portable typewriter although didn’t learn to touch type until my third computer. I noticed the reporter in the video wasn’t using all her fingers and was looking at the keyboard.

[via Retronaut]

PressPausePlay from House of Radon on Vimeo.

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

This is an amazing film, really worth making the time (an hour and 21 minutes) to watch. It’s well thought out, well shot, well edited, and the message is nuanced, not a slam dunk for digital or against it.

[via PetaPixel]

“We see the library as not being in the book business, but being in the learning business and the exploration business and the expand-your-mind business,” he says. “We feel this is really in that spirit, that we provide a resource to the community that individuals would not be able to have access to on their own.”

This is the spirit of a community computer user’s group, I love it.

In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men — many of them illiterate — to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It’s called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.

[via wimp.com]

Unfortunately both of my saws were in the shop when the big storm hit us so I borrowed a neighbor’s saw to do a bit of the cutting I had to do and then got my big saw back for the bulk of it.

When I picked up my saw the mechanic who fixed it asked me what kind of gas I used in it and I told him regular (87 octane) with the 40:1 mix gas:oil. He recommended that I try 89 octane, the mid grade of gas at most stations.

So, I dumped my 87 octane gas (and some old mix) into my truck and went to the station and filled the truck up with 89 octane and filled my gas cans up too. Anne filled her Jetta up with 89 octane too.

My report is that it makes a significant difference: the saws are running better and the truck and VW are running a lot better.

I’ve run nothing but regular through every car I’ve ever had except my first car which was a Triumph TR4A and it took premium. Today I stepped up to 89 octane and I feel better already.

Seriously, I’m concerned about my power tools working well and not needing carb work all the time and I may have found a piece of the reason they’ve been tough to start at times. A season or two will tell.

Marco Arment (creator of Instapaper) has done a very nice comparison of the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks on the iPad. He’s comparing availability of content (books and periodicals) less usability of the various tools.

By the way, Instapaper on the iPad is an incredible way to read articles that you’ve stored there. It caches the articles so they can be read offline and has many of iBooks’ reading features like type size and face control and more.

Person 1: “Anyone know: what planet or star system is Jeff Bezos from?”

Person 2: “Kindle.”

Brilliant!

In all seriousness, the Kindle Fire looks like a very interesting device.

The iPad and Kindle Fire are two different things and will appeal to two different types of users. My guess is there will be plenty of room for both devices: the iPad will continue to grow its already large user base and the Kindle Fire will grow a large user base as well, some of which will be iPad users who want both devices.

It’s not all or nothing, one or the other. Framing it that way is a mistake. There will be room for many devices and different operating system styles in this category.

These types of devices are the first steps toward replacing general purpose and cumbersome computers with smaller, cheaper, and much less cumbersome tools for doing the same things. I use my iPad in places I would never carry the MacBook Pro and have used a MacBook Pro for many years in many places where one could not use a desktop computer. The fact that these devices are getting smaller and cheaper coupled with the fact that access to the internet is getting cheaper (free in many places) and more widespread seems to me to be a leveling of what used to be a rather tilted playing field.

I like the fact that people are tweeting the Green Revolution from the streets of Iran (with smartphones) and these tablet devices are another category of device that allows computing anywhere.

Never sell Jeff Bezos short, he may not be as charismatic as Steve Jobs (his laugh is hilarious) but he’s done amazing things with Amazon and I’m pretty sure the Kindle Fire is the beginning of something important for the industry and for us users, whether we ever buy one or not.

At larger stores cash registers are connected to an inventory server either locally or in the cloud. At some point someone’s going to write an app that allows an iPad to hook into that system.

I’m reminded of what Apple does in their own stores: employees carry around small devices that allow the entire transaction (including credit card swipe and signature) to take place anywhere in the store wirelessly.

Then we have “near field communication” and the ability to pay for things with a smartphone by simply having an account and being near a terminal and saying “ok.”

This is just the beginning of a new way of transacting business, how it looks ten years from now will be quite different.

Many years ago a friend and I cleaned out a very old barn in Woodbury, Connecticut. Inside we found thousands of cedar blanks which we found out later were blanks for making pencils. This barn was well over 100 years old and the pencil operation had been run by water wheel. I still have many of the blanks although I use some each year as fire starter for my wood stove.

This is a fascinating video of the more modern version of the same process.

[via core77]

Design for less developed nations is incredibly difficult to do well. You can’t just transplant highly developed materials and constructions, as tech almost always requires a support and maintenance structure to keep it working. So how do you help billions of people improve the way they carry, to improve their efficiency and reduce their injuries? Vikram Dinubhai Panchal has a carry idea that just might help.

Spectacular idea.