IT Masala

A Tech Curry with a Pinch of Indian Spice

7th April 2007

Read books on your cellphone with Wattpad

Don't have time to read with your book wherever you go !! Then Wattpad is to your rescue . Itswattpad.png one of the best ways of reading your favorite books on cellphone . Wattpad maintains a community-built library of texts: novels, essays, joke collections and the like. You can also upload your own. There are several ways to get books onto your phone, including an app that enables direct downloads. When users have the client installed on their devices, it makes it possible to download additional stories and read them offline.

You can send the stories by sms or by email to  your cellphone and you get to read the whole text on your cellphone.

The application is a free download, either by mobile or on site . Huge list of books are available for reading and surprisingly all the books are with full text.

Wattpad is free, but it works by downloading the text a few pages at a time over your phones data connection - which is a constant expense. And we still need better phone screens sizes and resolution for reading. Some of the new phones - N73 and N95 for example and Samsung M610 are pretty darn good and have nice broad screens and even Blackberry 8800 and the new Windows Mobile devices. My friend used to read ebooks using lit reader on his Nokia N-Gag, it was bit irritating but when you want to read , you don't think of anything else other than the text in your display ! 

enjoy reading ! 

[ Wattpad ]

25th March 2007

The Books That Made A Difference To 14 Leading Technologists

IEEE Spectrum asked 14 leading technologists to name the novel that influenced them thebooks_that_made_difference.jpg most. You'll be surprised at how often they agreed.

- Vinton Cerf ,Chief Internet Evangelist, Google , Founding father of the Internet, helped develop TCP/IP standards

Novel: The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (3 volumes, 1954–1955)

- Donald Christiansen,Former editor, IEEE Spectrum; President of Informatica

Novel: War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk (1978)

-  David Mindell ,Frances and David Dibner Associate Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, MIT

Novel: Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon (1973) 

- James Isaak ,Assistant professor of information technology, Southern New Hampshire University, in Manchester

Novel: Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner (1968)

- Samuel C. Florman,Principal and owner, Kreisler Borg Florman General Construction Co., Scarsdale, N.Y.

Novel: A Single Pebble, John Hersey (1956) 

- Vernor Vinge,Retired professor of computer science, San Diego State University

Novel: Between Planets, Robert A. Heinlein (1957) 

- Danny Hillis,Cochairman, Applied Minds, Glendale, Calif. Cofounded Thinking Machines, pioneer of massively parallel computer architectures

Novel: Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Robert A. Heinlein (1958) 

- Barrett Hazeltine,Professor of engineering emeritus, Brown University, Providence, R.I.

Novel: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) 

- Nick Tredennick , Editor, the Gilder Technology Report, Great Barrington, Mass.

Novel: Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (1957) 

-  Steven W. Squyres, Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy, CornellUniversity, Ithaca, N.Y.

Novel: Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon (1973) 

- Jaron Lanier,Artist, composer, and Fellow, International Computer Science Institute, BerkeleyComposer, artist, inventor;

Novel: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), James Joyce 

- Henry Petroski,Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University, Durham, N.C.

Novel: A Single Pebble, John Hersey (1956) 

- Jon Rubinstein, Key developer of Apple’s iPod, now chairman, Immersion Corp., San Jose

Novel: The Mad Scientists’ Club, Bertrand R. Brinley (1965)

- Owen K. Garriott,Engineer and former astronaut

Novel: Rocket Boys: A Memoir, Homer A. Hickam Jr. (1998) 

[ Read full article @ IEEE