Quick thoughts about Google's new eBookstore

The Google eBookstore is open for business, and I've downloaded the app to my iPad. Three quick observations:

• One of the best features of the Kindle on iPad is the ability to highlight book passages and take notes. As far as I can tell, that option doesn't exist at all in the new Google book-reading app.

• Neither does the ability to read a book in landscape mode -- which is kind of annoying, as that's my preferred way of book-reading on the iPad. However, as Macworld's Jason Snell points out, the Google reader does let you opt for reading the scanned pages of the original old books -- see the photo above. This does lend a certain charm to the otherwise often-sterile e-reading environment.

• Then again, the prices on the books in the Google store don't appear significantly different than other online bookstores, so I'm not sure what advantage Google possesses at the moment. The company is pitching the product as being device-agnostic -- you can read on your computer or a tablet or your phone or most e-reader devices. That's fine, except I can do that with Amazon and Barnes & Noble's e-reader offerings, too. It's one of the reasons I opted for an iPad over a Kindle, in fact. I would've expected Google to wow me out of the box. Instead, it seems a half-step behind the features I want in an e-bookstore. 

Nina Simone: Mr. Bojangles

This is what Pandora brought me this afternoon:

Should Obama face a primary challenge?

Well, that's the discussion at Huffington Post today

The pursuit of the war in Afghanistan in support of a certifiably corrupt Afghan government and the apparent willingness to retreat from his campaign commitment of no further tax cuts for the rich, his equivocal and foot dragging leadership to end DADT, his TARP for Wall Street, but, equivocal insufficient attention to the unemployment and housing foreclosures of Main Street, suggest that the template of the 1968 challenge to the reelection of President Lyndon Johnson now must be thoughtfully considered for Obama in 2012.

I don't have a problem with primary challenges. The more democracy, the better! But angry liberals should understand this: sitting presidents who face in-party election challenges always lose. Always: LBJ, Carter and Bush I all left the presidency after serving a single elected term. Mount a primary challenge to Obama and you're probably conceding the presidency to the Republicans. If you think there's *no* difference between the parties, then it's no big deal. But while I'm frustrated with the Barack Obama presidency, I feel reasonably assured that President Sarah Palin would be worse. Really.

Macworld: Frenzapp updates with new Facebook, Twitter features

An app-recommendation service for the iPhone has been updated with deeper Facebook integration and, for the first time, the ability to suggest apps to friends via Twitter.

via macworld.com

My latest, small contribution to Macworld.

Today's coffee thought

Today's coffee mugs - like everything else in American life - are huge. But I've started using some old (much smaller) hand-me-down cups that take about have half as much coffee as my newer mugs. Sure, it means more frequent trips to the coffee pot, but it also means that the coffee at the bottom of the cup is more likely to be warm.

Weigel on Obama's surrender on taxes

Dave Weigel, via slate.com:

And this is why liberals can't stomach a compromise on tax rates. They were promised by Obama -- by every Democratic candidate, really -- that the tax rates would be restored to pay for social programs. They thought they proved in the 1990s that these were fair tax rates under which the economy could grow wildly, and that Bush proved in the 2000s that lower marginal tax rates for the wealthy didn't spur real economic growth. It was an important debate, and they won it. They have polls telling them they won it, and most Americans are find with restoring the top rates. And here's Obama, about to throw the game, affirming the conservative line that tax cuts of any size at any time are good for the economy.

Monday morning Prokofiev

This is what Pandora is offering me this morning: