6 Reasons I Love My Kindle (For Now)

I know, I know. The iPad is way cooler. Besides, both the kindle and the iPad are super expensive.  If it wasn't for Sarah getting me a kindle for my birthday I wouldn't have been able to afford it.

BUT:

Here are 6 reasons I love my kindle (for now).

1. I bought it used for $100 off.

2. I love that when I was in Mexico I could download books, newspapers and magazines, google and wikipedia for free when everyone else was complaining about international roaming charges.

3. I like to highlight and take notes. I like it even more when the kindle bundles all my notes and highlights from a book into one location and emails it to me as a separate document.

4. I thought I was going to miss the "holding a book and turning the pages" thing. Let me be clear: I don't and you won't.

5. Public domain books are available for free. Since my favorite author is G.K. Chesterton and he wrote in the early 20th century, nearly everything he ever wrote is now on my Kindle for free.

6. As primitive as it is, the e-ink reader technology turns about as many heads as the iPad does. It's still in the early phases of development but it is truly easy on the eyes (especially outdoors). To me, this is the one true advantage over the iPad.

To see where e-ink tech is headed in the near future watch this youtube video.

We should all get excited when there is a low cost device that has the iPad's versatility on a high resolution e-ink technology video touch screen like future kindles.

I give it about 2 years to come out.  4 years to be low cost.

See you in the future.

Interview with the President of Disney Animation

Recently The Economist did an interview with the President of Disney Animation.

If I were to guess, I'd say that most of the people reading this blog couldn't tell you who that is.

Don't feel bad.

His name is Ed Catmull. While you may not have known his name, you know his work since he's part of the original PIXAR team which means he's been a part of every PIXAR film ever made.

The interview, which I think is around 20 minutes long or so, was sent to me via facebook from John Wittig and can be viewed in it's entirety by clicking here.

Now, Ed's a little dry but a total genius. If you stick with it and have a lens for leadership you will come away with at least 3 or 4 gems that could change the way you look at your company, organization, etc.

Here are two quotes that really blew me away:

1. "In a creative culture it's better to fix problems then try and prevent them. If you try and prevent error you screw things up. And the natural tendency for managers is to try and prevent error and over plan things."

I mostly like that quote because I already agreed with it. So sue me.

2. "There is this illusion that this person is creative and has all this stuff, well the fact is there are literally thousands of ideas involved in putting something like [a film] together. And the notion of ideas as this singular thing is a fundamental flaw."

This quote, on the other hand, struck me in a new way that I had never thought of before. This idea has been especially true for me with the creation of Sparks. The initial idea of Sparks incubated through various forms and experiments for over a year. As it evolved (and I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near being done evolving before it dies sometime in the future) there have been literally dozens of ideas from dozens of people that came along and tweaked, fixed and enhanced the original series of ideas.

So sparks aren't an idea. They're a collection of ideas from many different people.

The iPad isn't an idea. It's a collection of ideas from a collection of people.

Ed ends this sentiment by stating that a leader's job is to draw out of a team the thousand ideas you're all going to need in order to be successful.

Genius.

Enjoy the interview.