Wired Reading - What Fun!

With Maria studying in a paralegal program now, we have had less time together. Tonight we got out for a great budget meal at Laughing Planet and followed that with a visit to Barnes & Noble where Maria picked up some reading material (where she gets the time for leisure reading I don't know). We decided to head over to Vivace, one of our favorite coffee shops to read. I brought along a novel by James Rollins called Black Order. But after sitting down, I brought out my new phone, a TMobile Dash, aka the HTC Excalibur and browsed over to my Google Reader where I read some interesting blog entries, most notably one by Adrian Holovaty, a programmer-journalist, a citizen journalist who developed ChicagoCrime.org and EveryBlock


Reading what Adrian is doing, creating mashups that serve local communities, I had a moment where I realized that what I was doing was a completely different take on the passive art of reading. Holding a lightweight phone (with a small but very clear screen by the way) in my hand, I could absorb news or opinions from anywhere in the world instead of limiting myself to the one book, one author of a hardcopy book. Ya this is nothing new but the act of reading took on a more exciting, electric feeling for me.

I was brought a little back to earth when I then tried to write a blog entry about this topic right on the phone. Unfortunately, Blogger required me to send a message to an email address they provide, get back a code and then when I get back to my computer, go to Blogger and give it the code which it sent to my phone. Not exactly a simple write and publish, one-stop process!