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That is what my daughter exclaimed, after learning that we purchased Kobo eReader from Borders and mishearing the name. She came to this natural conclusion after seeing that our new device prefers ePUB books to feed it’s appetite for content!

If you have a Borders store closing near you (sadly, they are struggling with bankruptcy – which seems inevitable, in retrospect) you should be able to pick one up for just $60 as well. I wasn’t even sure about this price, with company going bust. But, it reads EPUB and PDF format, even if Borders were to decide to discontinue their online store as well. Though, I think it is more likely that they will keep that business or sell that unit to someone. And why not, it’s virtually free money, as almost no overhead for operations there – just online servers to sell digital downloads and manage DRM. Seems no brainer – a business with no complex warehousing or shipping, and no chance of “overstocking” or “under-stocking” a title.

We only had it for one day, but so far works as advertised! Like Kindle, it is eInk (so black and white and no videos, naturally) and should last for almost a month on a single charge. Ours came preloaded with about 100 classic titles, and I didn’t even realize at first that it also lets you read Free eBooks From Your Local Library!!! Plus, it should let you read various languages through loading up your own specially formatted PDF or EPUB files, though I haven’t tried that yet. Here is full features recap from Kobo eReader site.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Looks like timely news on shaky state of Barnes and Noble today. I like their stores, but I also must admit that in the last year hardly been there, or bought anything.

Yesterday, while reading an article on USA Today, my eyes gazed over to prominently displayed “News Stories” on the right side of the page. Clicking through seems to reach respectable site, apparently presenting TV affiliated news site, complete with anchor photos, videos and long authentic looking article.

Except all of that is just an elaborate scheme to try and get gullible consumers to trust this fabricated article. Fancy backend algorithm generates random people names (sometimes for same photos, as I confirmed clicking on similar Ads from another page) and even articles themselves change depending on the area your IP is coming from, to try and get you to think that local reporter is bringing you this important news “information”. Of course the content of the article itself is also mostly fake, and so are all the other links on the page, purporting to be other categories of this “news site”. In reality, these links are just a cheap-trick, redirecting people to unsuspecting sites which are probably paying for “click through”, hoping for quality leads but instead getting ripped.

In one of the links I landed on a site claiming to be New-York’s WSVI television station. Of course in reality it is just another site scammers generated, and I wonder what real ABC affiliated WSVI station, which actually broadcasts in Virgin Islands, would say about this?

The wares they are peddling are suspicious or worse. The Work-At-Home scam is especially nefarious and I found earlier reference to similar tactics, even infringing on CNN’s trademark logo.

I am pretty sure the $5 cream they are peddling is either unsafe for your skin, or completely inert. And the $9 a week miraculous Insurance they are promising – I calculated that I pay less with respectable Travelers insurance, instead of their “unidentified” company.

How can (supposedly) respectable USA Today newspaper and online site stoop to such low quality advertisement sham? I literally felt that I need to run and tell my children about yet another evil on this planet that they need to protect themselves from.

But I also tried to take a step back and consider if I am overreacting. Perhaps this is the future of online Advertising? Should we just adjust our expectations that anything and everything we click on the web may end up directing us to Insurance site (regardless if we have a car) or maybe Viagra-like cheap pills offer (regardless of….). After all, how else are quality sites like USA Today can support their staff of professional journalists? We always knew that everything we find on the Internet cannot be trusted, right? Why would we ever use Wikipedia at all?

You have to draw your own conclusion, and talk to your own kids. Meanwhile I am uninstalling USA Today app from my iPhone and will think twice before clicking on any link leading to USA Today site – I hope the advertising revenue they got from AdBlade was worth losing all those readers over.

Yep, my iPhone 4 arrived via FedEx today and so far all I did was Shamelessly Fondle It all over. It is in the long process of synching with iTunes, and filling it up with Apps and Stuff.

So, Not much to report yet, but you know now that I decided to lock myself in with Apple and AT&T again, for perhaps as much as two years. Yes, Android EVO 4G from Sprint was really tempting option and I even tried to have educated discussion about it on Twitter. But my big concern was battery life and with my heavy usage it most likely wouldn’t last a full day even…

Versus advertised 10 hours video and Wi-Fi surfing on iPhone 4 with their custom CPU! And yea, there’s an App for almost anything, hard to resist that aspect also. And Gazillion games, many of which I paid for and now get to enjoy on two devices.

The new packaging is small yet still impressive – see picture with Sprite for perspective.

Stay tuned for actual usage reports!

So, we picked up this nice HP Photosmart Plus All-in-one. I can’t speak to the printer quality much, only time will tell, but I can report my initial observations around setup process:

• Without any option or checkbox anywhere, it installed HP/Yahoo Co-branded Internet Explorer Toolbar! What GIVES!? I hate those thing for so many reasons! Since when is it Ok to bundle Toolbars with Printer Drivers? Seriously, why does reputable company bundle what can only be called AdWare in a box with (supposedly) premium printer?!
• We invested a little more specifically to get Wireless capability. So I set it up in the corner of the room, on dedicated little desk. Guess What – You can’t complete Wireless setup without “temporarily connecting it to a computer via USB cable”. Huh!? Am I supposed to drag it across the room to set it up, and then back?? Luckily laptop was available, and helped the situation by installing on it first. I must say that once connected to a PC, it installed quickly and painlessly, transferring proper wireless setting to the printer over USB.
• Apparently (per documentation) only 5 home computers can use it over network. I don’t like limitations, especially Artificial Ones!!!
• They still haven’t figured out wireless scanning – if I try to click “scan to a computer” on the printer, it simply says “try doing this from a computer”. Brilliant user experience, no question.

Well, I will report more in the future. Our previous Epson all-in-one printer lasted for 4+ years, if not more. We’ll see how this one does. So far I tried printing single photo on their provided photo paper sample – unimpressive. But, I didn’t really buy it for photos, just regular round the home printing, and for kids school projects.

On a side note – I am going to resume blogging, apologies for long delay. I seem to spend my spare time Facebook games these days, and what may be accidentally left over goes to WoW.

I am posting this courtesy of my good neighbor, who willfully provided a password to his wireless network to save us from going completely crazy and self-destructing as a family.
You see, we are over a week now without Internet!!!!
It feels that almost every aspect of our family life is crippled, and thus far Comcast seem to have done little to resolve our issue. After their tech didn’t show up for an appointment (which we already waited almost a week for), they said that all they can do is schedule us for Next Saturday….. All our pleas on the phone and even via twitter, didn’t help the situation thus far. Worse yet, it is pretty clear that outage is outside our home, and most likely affecting other houses.
But onto the main topic — Is Internet a Luxury or basic utility of our times? From school assignments even for our youngest new K student, everyone expects use of Internet on daily basis. Without going too much into longest list, it feels like every other moment we are reminded that something cannot be accomplished because there is NO INTERNET!
I ask myself — Is Internet really a Luxury and our family is just spoiled here and too centered around it? Or are we the new norm, where most activities, whether for school/study/work/shopping or after-hours gaming and video viewing, require fast Internet connection?
If Internet indeed such an integral part of life and such a basic utility, should any self-respecting provider allow themselves outages for weeks at a time? Would you agree to live without Water for a week? Or Electricity? Of course I would understand if there were a major storm and some serious damage that took time to repair, but this feels like simple incompetence where overloaded lines caused entire neighborhoods to loose signal, and no-one cares…
There, rant done! Weigh in on how you see things and whether I should seek immediate “Internet Rehab” for entire family or instead consider switching to new provider (which may be available all over town!).