Amazon advertises Kindle’s ability to playback audio files while reading e-books. However, consumers are unable to read e-books purchased from Amazon’s Kindle Store while listening to audiobooks purchased from Amazon’s Audible Store.

The Kindle 2 was my first e-book reader. Excited to test its much hyped features, I purchased several items from Amazon’s Kindle Store, including Stephen Hawking’s A Briefer History of Time e-book. I wasn’t too thrilled with Kindle’s disjointed Text-to-Speech synthesizer. So, I purchased the professionally narrated version of Hawking’s masterpiece from Amazon’s Audible Store.

Amazon advertises Kindle’s ability to playback audio files while reading e-books. I really wanted to read my new e-book while simultaneously listening to the audiobook. I followed Kindle’s instructions to copy the Audible .aax file to my Kindle via the USB cable. Success! I could hear the professionally narrated version Hawking’s best-seller.

Now, to read along. But wait…I can’t hear the e-book anymore! Kindle’s User Guide says that Alt-Space and Alt-F control the background audio playback while reading an e-book. To my surprise, these keystrokes have no effect.

Thirty minutes later, I gave up and called Amazon Kindle Support. At last, “Chris C.”, a Kindle Specialist, was able to understand my problem. He suggested that I move the .aax file from the Kindle “Audible folder” to the “music folder.” This, however, caused the Kindle to no longer recognize the audiobook. He then concluded that I would need to convert the .aax file to an .mp3 file. He casually noted, however, that neither Audible nor Kindle has a direct mechanism to do this. In other words, I was out of luck. I can’t listen to Amazon Audible files while reading on my Kindle 2.

Is that fair? Should consumers have the burden of making Amazon’s Kindle operable with Amazon’s Audible files? Your thoughts are always appreciated.

I recently addressed this question in a presentation to prospective Computer Engineers at the University of Florida.

Have you ever wanted to add a specialty Google search box for your website that only found mp3, xls, doc, or other files of specific extensions? Well using a little JavaScript and tweaking Google's code, it's very simple to add a specialty Google search box to your website.

Here's an example of a search box that only finds mp3 files.
Try searching for Daft Punk

Amazing, so how did I do this? Here's the original JavaScript from Google to add a standard web search box to your website:

Here's a little JavaScript you need to find only mp3 files. Notice, I am just using the "intitle" and "-" syntax to narrow the search results.

In the above code, document.gs.query.value is just what the user originally typed.
Here's the revised Google search code that implements the above JavaScript to make a specialty Google search happen:

If you wanted to make some money, you could modify Google's Adsense Search Box to search for only mp3, mp4, mpeg, etc... However, that would violate the Google's Adsense Terms of Service.

Flixya is a start-up video sharing service, much like YouTube and Google Video. Unlike its competitors, Flixya provides user incentives to share and upload videos. Flixya's Revenue Sharing program offers a 50/50 split of all revenue earned from Adsense, Google's Pay-Per-Click advertising program. The more video links you provide to Flixya, the greater your chances of making PPC revenue on the site.
Google's Program Policies, however, state the following rules regarding incentives,

Web pages may not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads (ads=referals too). This includes encouraging users to click on the ads ... as well as drawing any undue attention to the ads.

Google's Policy also states the following about labeling ads,

Publishers may not label the ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements.

For purposes of these policies, “referral buttons are considered to be 'Google ads'". Yet, before and after users sign up for accounts with Flixya, they are shown several advertisements that direct them to sign up for Google Adsense as a direct incentive to make money. It seems apparent that instructing users to "Sign up for Google's Ads to Share In Flixya's Revenue Sharing Program" and labeling referral ads with the phrase "Sign Up" are violations of Adsense TOS. Adsense users should be further concerned that using Flixya's Revenue Sharing Program and viewing videos on Flixya will cause an increase in page impressions with Google Adsense, which is a per se violation of Google's TOS. What's the likely penalty? Goodbye Adsense account.

This past weekend saw the 9th Annual Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition in San Diego. Twenty-one collegiate teams pitted against each other to complete three tasks: finding a docking station, inspecting a pipeline, and surfacing in a recovery zone. The University of Florida's SubjuGator Team retained the top title for the second consecutive year in this prestigious international competition sponsored by the United States Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). The University of Florida (UF) defeated teams from MIT, Cornell University, as well as international contenders from Japan and Canada.

Before the AUV Final Round, Dr. Eric Schwartz, advisor of Team SubjuGator, updates UF students via e-mail from San Diego, "We are doing pretty well so far...We are the only team to dock with the docking station. It is apparent that ETS (Ecole de Technologie Superieure, from Canada) is our biggest threat...There are several other teams with very well built subs that could sneak up and beat us, but I believe the [SubjuGator] team is feeling good about our chances." And Dr. Schwartz was right. Team members Carlo Francis, James Greco, Kevin Claycomb, Matthew Koenn, Sean Cohen, Sean Matthews, Michael Gregg, Jacob Collumns, Gene Shokes, Greg Cieslewski, and Adam Barnett walked away victorious.

The SubjuGator is designed to operate underwater at depths in excess of 15 feet and weighs about 40 lbs. The mission behavior of SubjuGator is controlled by a network of I2C modules. This system includes sensors, motor controllers, more than 10 microcontrollers, and vision systems. A single-board Pentium M based computer running Microsoft Windows XP Embedded provides processing power for the vision system and advanced signal processing.

Hawking and Hertog call their theory 'top-down' cosmology, because instead of looking for some fundamental set of initial physical laws under which our Universe unfolded, it starts 'at the top', with what we see today, and works backwards to see what the initial set of possibilities might have been. In effect the present 'selects' the past.

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TheLinuxStore.ca has started a new project. A project that will give away free Linux disks of your favorite distribution (SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Gentoo, Debian, Knoppix). Have a look, give feedback, donate to the cause, and request a disk.

According to a recent article from auctionBytes,

eBay is banning sellers from requesting payment through Google Checkout. The online auction giant updated its Safe Payments policy this week to add Google's new payment service, Google Checkout to its list of online payment methods not permitted on eBay.

From eBay's standpoint, eBay is probably fulfilling a duty to maximize their shareholder's wealth. Blocking Google seems to be a logical step to ensure marketplace dominance. So, why shouldn't eBay be allowed to block Google?

The answer is simple: eBay's unchecked control hurts consumers. Instead of making the auction experience better for the online community, eBay is only looking out for eBay. Instead of embracing choice and welcoming competition, eBay seeks absolute power. Here's a reality check, eBay: You can't quash Google. More importantly, depriving consumers of meaningful choice only plants seeds of backlash.

But, eBay probably enjoys their absolute control over the auction experience. Right now, eBay capriciously suspends users' auction accounts and PayPal accounts without any explanation. With a marketplace competitor, eBay would actually need to provide real customer service and develop equitable business policies. But, why compete when you can just ban anyone in your path?

Smaller online payment processors, such as StormPay, have been unable to raise sufficient capital to challenge eBay's monopolistic tactics. Google, who's motto has always been Do No Evil, will hopefully step up to the plate and put eBay in its place. If such a day does arrive, it will truly be a victory for the consumer.