It should come at no surprise that staring into a bright light for an extended period of time will keep you awake longer. So, it didn’t surprise me when I saw the article below in the LA Times discussing sleep habits and E-Reading, but it got me thinking. Since acquiring my iPad last year, I have downloaded and read 16 e-books for the B&N, Kindle, and iBooks apps (I like to see the different versions in action), in addition to the dozen or so paper-bound books. In essence, I’ve more than doubled my reading, mostly before bed, getting in an extra hour a night because of the backlit screen. Usually, I will nod off after 10-15 minutes of reading a paperbound book. That’s 4 hours a night during the weeknights, which at my average pace (around 250 words per min) with the averaged sized novel (let’s say 100,000 words) results in about 60% of my reading time. Not bad – thanks Apple.

So, in response, to the LA Time article, I’m not sure I apply to the expert advice. My sleep quality hasn’t changed, of course, my retina will probably have permanent burn-in where I can read text with my eyes shut.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/04/ipad-kindle-ebook-sleep.html

Publisher: O’Reilly
Title: Mobile Design and Development (paperback)
Author: Brian Fling
Copyright: 2009
Rating: 4/5 stars

Brian Fling has written a very engaging overview of mobile design and development. For anyone looking for background into the dynamic and rapidly expanding mobile industry, this book provides a strong primer despite its release over a year ago.  Much has occurred since the publication – Android 2.2 (Froyo) has been released, Android 2.1 has already shown significant growth in the U.S., Windows Phone 7 may be coming out at the end of this year, and iPhone4 with OS4 is picking up market share outside the U.S. (over 70% in Japan?).  Still, Fling’s book provides the basics needed to understand many of the linked resources above; opening up review with a more global vision of developing markets outside of the U.S., and explaining the potential for significant growth given the lack of established infrastructure in those areas. [Read more →]

As the first post to my blog, I think the best topic I can cover is one that helped build this site – motivation.  Motivation to finally own a blog site, to get my thoughts in writing, and to share ideas with anyone willing to challenge me.  Also, to learn WordPress, which was definitely more complicated than I originally thought, and with this being my second site (my mobile hobby blog was built first to track my project progress), I continued to “press” forward with a different theme, widgets, etc. until I was completely satisfied.

At first, I was going to write a small introductory blog touching on the idea behind motivation in general, and close with George Carlin’s perspective on the topic:

But, then I came across the following by Dan Pink, author of, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.”   [Read more →]