* “Long Lost”:amazon by Harlan Coben. Coben takes his Bolitar character into dark and personal territory. As always a fun adventure. Bolitar in Paris is great. Amazon says 3.5 stars, I’d up it to 4. * “Gone Tomorrow”:amazon by Lee Child. Another fine Reacher tale. Tho I start to feel that Reacher needs some depth – the Bolitar character in the Coben is more interesting because of his personal relationships. Reacher could benefit from some commitment – personal or professional. Amazon says 4 stars but I’d drop to 3.5. * “House of Suns”:amazon by Alastair Reynolds. In a far distant future, the galaxy filled by humanity and it’s offspring, a galaxy-threatening crisis. A fairly typical form, some interesting elements, but ultimately somewhat forgettable. Amazon says 4.5 stars, I’d say 3.5. Maybe 3.75. * “Judas Horse”:amazon by April Smith. A nicely layered tale of an FBI agent deep undercover. No one is quite who they seem, no one is a pure hero or villian. The agent’s struggles to maintain her own identity are nicely handled. Amazon says 4.5 stars, this is clearly the star of this crop of books.

Ann Arbor News abandons print, goes online.

Apple’s quarter (NYTimes): “We’re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding”…“unexpectedly strong sales of Macintosh computers and a surge in iPhone purchases pushed Apple’s profit up 15 percent in the third quarter”…“PC shipments for the industry fell 3 to 5 percent over the last three months. But Apple said it sold 2.6 million Macs in the quarter, up about 18 percent from the 2.2 million it sold in the previous quarter”…“overall gross profit margin grew to 36.3 percent, from 34.8 percent in the year-ago quarter”…“Revenue rose to $8.34 billion, from $7.46 billion last year”.

MSFT’s quarter (NYTimes): “has been humbled, both by the recession and by problems of its own making”…“Year-over-year revenue and full-year sales of Microsoft’s flagship Windows software dropped for the first time”…“29 percent drop in net income”…“17 percent drop in quarterly revenue”…“warned that people should not expect a major bounce-back in technology spending when the economy recovers.”

Hmm. Apparently the economic downturn is worse among PC buyers than among non-PC buyers.

* Solar Camping Lantern – I remember the old coleman lanterns using white gas, the pumping, the mantles. What a pain in the a$%. This looks way simpler. * King Cobra wristwatch – awesome looking. Tho I have completely given up on wristwatches. * Carabiners make everything better. So true. * Denture ice cubes. Seriously awesome. * Resistor cheat sticker. I can never remember how to speak resistor. * Antitheft lunch bags – brilliant. * Woven wood chairs. Beautiful. Probably uncomfortable as hell.

Rich points out that we may have some progress on using micro-usb as a universal device connector. That would be awesome. I carry the most disastrous bag of wallwarts and cables now to keep everything going.

On the other hand, a new connector type for HDMI is coming. Sigh. The A/V connector/cable world remains a disaster.

Many good refs on the net for cable and connector types. Just discovered Hardware Book for instance.

2009 CFN Ohio State Preview and Who’s the bigger BCS bust. Looking forward to seeing the team on the field. Will be at the USC/OSU tilt, hoping for better results!

Why Seattle VCs don’t blog - TechFlash: Seattle’s Technology News Source – John Cook wonders why we don’t blog. Obviously some of us do – myself, Rich. We do it for personal reasons, not motivated by our business – we’d be blogging if we were still at MSFT, if we were running a vinyard, etc. As such, our blogs reflect 85% our personal interests and a little bit of business interest.

John asserts that “…there’s opportunity for a VC in town to explain what is really going on in the venture industry in clear and concise terms with no BS…” However, this is not our business. Our business is investing, and to motivate a VC-focused blog, you’d have to be convinced that such a blog would a) improve your deal flow, or b) improve your exits. Not obvious to me at all.

Additionally you’d have to be certain you could sustain the blog – the examples of abandoned blogs that John mentions seems to be a bad outcome.

* “Enclave”:amazon by Kit Reed. A wellmeaning nutjob tries to create a perfect closed society, which of course fails totally due to Murphy’s Law, hubris, and selfishness. Amazon says 4 stars but I thought this was quite weak, paper-thin characters, clumsy forcing events. * “Heart-Shaped Box”:amazon by Joe Hill. Stephen King-esque tale of a ghost with murderous intent. Longer than it needed to be, where was the editor? Amazon says 4 stars but I’d only give 3. With good editting there may have been a 4 star book in here. * “Inspector Cadaver”:amazon by Georges Simenon. Ah I love Maigret. He ambles into a situation, stirs the pot a little, and lets human nature take its course. Detection by judo – he exerts little force himself, he takes advantage of the inevitable foibles of all around him. Agree with 4.5 stars at Amazon. * “The Last Colony”:amazon by John Scalzi. Final in a series of 3, humanity struggles to expand in a crowded galaxy. Intra- and inter-race politics dominate. A solid tale, perhaps not quite worth the 4.5 stars Amazon bestows, but solid.

Reardon recommends Computational Science and Engineering. OCW links.

* “City of Glass”:amazon by Paul Auster. Very murky story of mystery, identity, sanity. Hard to identify with the characters but nicely paced and very odd. Amazon says 4 stars, I’m ok with that. * “Motorman”:amazon by David Ohle. Ugh. Unstructured self-indulgent mess. Not sure why I picked up. * “Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine”:amazon by Stanley Crawford. Odd engaging metaphorical tale of a relationship. Very thinly reviewed on Amazon, I like the book. 4 stars. * “Finding Oz”:amazon by Evan I. Schwartz. The story of L. Frank Baum and the creation of the Wizard of Oz. I do love the movie and the book, and this is great material on its creation – fascinating to see how the events and people in Baum’s life crept into the story. Amazon says 5 stars, I enjoyed, I’d say 4 stars. * “The Tall Book”:amazon by Arianne Cohen. Father’s day gift about the trials and tribulations of being tall. Good news – higher lifetime earnings, respect, and the ability to reach the top shelf. Not so good – some cancers are more likely, airplane seats, movie theatre seats, etc. The health info was interesting, the whining about seating etc less so. Amazon says 5 stars, that is a reach. 3 stars. * “Run”:amazon by Ann Patchett. Events force an unlikely family to coalesce. The children’s fortunes and paths are irretrievably changed. OK but not that memorable. Amazon says 3.5 stars, the story has already mostly faded in my mind, I’d say 2.5 stars.

An underexplored genre. To be fair, France did try to surrender in the first quarter - Dr. Saturday… - NCAA Football - Rivals.com.

An aha moment for me recently. Two unusual books I have read recently have significant online presences. Rant has a fairly rich site with a lot of content related to the author and the book. Nothing that really changes the book experience, but some useful supporting materials.

The Raw Shark Texts is a much deeper experience – Steven-Hall.org. I can see now that reading the book has only given me a facet of the story, there is a tremendous amount of additional discussion and material online, some of which may be very material to the story and the experience. The physical book is truly just the tip of the iceberg.

I just happened to stumble on the Raw Shark Texts web info, I was looking for the author’s email to send him a note asking about the quality of the Kindle version.

And now I wonder why the Kindle version can’t be more than just a rerendering of the physical book. Why can’t it be a subscription to the ongoing content stream? I’d pay more.

FT.com / Reportage - A library of the world’s most unusual compounds – would love to visit this library/museum.

Had a great father’s day, got some cool photo tools, some books that look great, and a couple of games since I have played Left4Dead and Fallout3 to death. Here’s some stuff I didn’t get and probably for good reason.

Physical Stuff:

* Faux fountains via Scott Loftesness. Cool looking and an inspiration for Halloween. * IP PBX tips for home. I was all excited about this several years ago but increasingly not so…having resident phone technology seems so backwards * Projects Watches wristwatches. Cool looking but increasingly I have given up on wristwatches. * Television emulator. I don’t know, I think the dogs would prefer to watch real TV. * Olympus PEN. Having just hauled the Canon up and down a mountain Sunday morning, the idea of a smaller form factor camera with great lenses is appealing. * Super Duper Denon pre-amp. Just can’t face all the cabling problems tho of disconnecting my current and connecting in a new.

Virtual Stuff: * Mint.com. Like the idea of automated analysis of my financials, but I am just not going to give another party access to all my financial credentials. They should license these tools to financial service firms for use on their own websites. * Cisco Network Magic. Nice review. Congrats to the former Pure Networks team. * Filemaker Bento iPhone app. I regularly get sucked into thinking I need a database and this app is sucking me in again. I know tho I will enter 7 records and abandon the damn thing so I am holding off.

* Single sheet plywood design contest. I’ve made a lot of single-sheet coffins for halloween, here are some other cool ideas * Etched glass storage jars – I have old chemist bottles I bought from various sorts, here is how to fill out your mad scientist lab. * Cosmic nightlight. Just looks cool.