This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at accredited online colleges about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5@gmail.com.  If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

With the dawning of the digital era, printed texts and written books are being replaced. While there was a huge uproar from book junkies and purists over the digital switch early on, much of that has faded now. Paper books are still popular, but many people (including the initial objectors) have hopped on the eBook bandwagon and are generally happy with the experience. Kindles and Nooks have won the heart of many literary purists who at one point swore reading on screen could never provide the literary experience that paper pages does.

One thing that the eBook industry has struggled with from the start is the lending process. Books have a wonderful way of uniting reads because friends can share meaningful reads with one another. You can pass a beaten up and worn out book to a friend and it can really mean something. What many kindle users (including myself) may not have known when they first started using their device is that you too can share your kindle buys with friends.

How to Lend Kindle Books

The first step in lending a book you’ve purchased on your Kindle to a friend is making sure that the book you have is lendable by the publisher’s standards. As eBooks become more popular, more and more publishers will get with the program when it comes to allowing lending. However, as it stands the lend-ability of eBooks can be spotty. When you link to your Kindle Library from your Amazon account, you can look at the details of each book you’ve purchased to see if they are available to lend. Do this by clicking the + sign button near each of the book icons. This will display a window that explains that a book can either be loaned out or cannot. If you can lend the book, there will be a button that says “Loan this book” next to it.

You can also check to see the lending status of a book from you Kindle when you are purchasing a book in the Kindle Store. The product detail page will show whether lending on that purchase is “Enabled” or “Disabled”. If the book that you want does not have lending “Enabled” and you know you’ll really want to lend it you, you can wait to see if the publisher changes their policy. However, this may take a long time or may never happen at all.

Loaning it Out: When you find a book that is loanable all you have to do is click the “Loan this book” button in your Amazon account page for the book. A pretty self-explanatory window will appear where you enter the recipient’s email address, name, who it’s from, and a personal message if you like. The person you are sending to has up to seven days to accept the loan, but only 14 days to keep the loaned book to read.

While lending is not available on every purchase you make from your Kindle more and more publishers are catching on to the craze. If e-books are truly hoping to replace paper books, then they are going to have to offer the same things paper book offer plus some. While they certainly have the “plus some”, the lending process is one area that e-books have been behind on for several years. Amazon’s lending policies are a huge step for e-books and a wonderful way to share your e-reads.

This is a guest post by Joe Pawlikowski. He edits BBGeeks, a site dedicated to helping BlackBerry users get the most out of their devices. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

When you announce a device in September for an anticipated first quarter release, you’re setting yourself up for abounding speculation. Research In Motion tried to get out ahead of the tablet market in 2010 when they announced the BlackBerry PlayBook. But even then they admitted that it would be a while until the official release. In the interim we heard rumors galore, some good and some bad. Yet one struck me at the time as a wonderful idea that had zero chance of happening.

At some point in early 2011, we learned that the PlayBook would support Android apps. The rumors were vague at the time, but sources pointed to two possibilities. The first was what actually happened: RIM would create an Android Player and allow developers to easily port their apps. That’s not a terrible solution, especially for a platform that lacks for apps. The only problem is that the number of apps available to RIM is necessarily limited:

Key features which will be unavailable to Android apps running under the compatibility layer on the PlayBook and future BlackBerry devices include Android’s famed battery-sucking Live Wallpaper, SIP and SIP VoIP, anything built using the Native Development Kit, apps containing only App Widgets, and apps containing more than one activity tied to the Launcher.

In addition, any packages which rely on Google Maps, in-app billing services, Android’s text-to-speech engine, or the cloud-to-device messaging system will all be rendered unusable under the company’s runtime system.

While these limitations don’t render the Android Player completely useless, it does mean that eager PlayBook users will be disappointed when they finally see what’s available. The pressure is back on RIM to attract developers that can fill out its library and replace many of these incompatible apps. That’s going to take some time, and RIM doesn’t exactly have a lot of time. The PlayBook is already six months old, and it doesn’t even have email, calendars, and contacts yet. By the time RIM gets all these updates out, it will probably be time to start thinking about the follow-up product.
The second rumors tantalized at the time, and in hindsight it absolutely should have been the path RIM took. The rumor: The PlayBook would be an Android tablet. This likely wouldn’t have been a pure Android tablet, as we saw in the spring with the Motorola Xoom. Instead it almost certainly would have been more along the lines of the Amazon Kindle Fire. That is, it would have run Android, but it would have been distinctly a BlackBerry tablet. That’s really the beauty of Android: anyone can build code on top of it and create something distinctly their own. RIM would have benefitted greatly from this, in a number of ways.

Read more: What BlackBerry Needs To Go High-End

First, it would have given them a viable product at launch. When RIM launched the PlayBook, seven months after announcement, it came with little fanfare. Some BlackBerry users enjoyed it because of its integration with a BlackBerry smartphone. That is, they could get email, contacts, and calendars by bridging their two devices. But even then, it took a while for the PlayBook app library to grow. If they had launched with Android they would have had a full app library, plus all of the email, contact, and calendar features of Android. Gmail users would have loved it, and even those who don’t use Google services would have a number of external email options. It would have been a complete tablet.

In the meantime, RIM could have continued to work on its own tablet offering. As we’re starting to see, they do have something going with the BBX platform. Heck, it was easy to see that they had something going with the PlayBook. Despite its incompleteness, the PlayBook clearly has the potential to compete in the tablet market. But if RIM had released an Android tablet in early 2011, they could have been far along on their own tablet platform by now. In early 2012 they could have released a BBX-based PlayBook, complete with email, contacts, calendar, and, with a little luck, a relatively large catalog of BBX apps.

It’s easy to understand why RIM wanted to release a tablet in 2011. They had fallen behind in the smartphone race, and the tablet market was just starting to develop. By getting out ahead of the pack they might have made an impact. Yet I can’t help but think that they would have been better off creating an Android-based tablet to start. They would have then had enough time to work more on their own model, making sure that it was a complete product at launch. Unfortunately, they’re still running out an incomplete product. Even when the native functions drop, I have to say that I’m more excited about the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It’s a shame that RIM couldn’t have jumped on that Android bandwagon, both for the present and for the future.

This is a guest post by Paul who believes in the importance of using VoIP. He can also help you with the best internet and phone packages. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

Decades ago, when the ability to make phone calls to people from all over the world was announced, it heralded a great new world. People were so excited at the kind of progress we have made and very few people could hardly believe we would be where we are today.

Then, it was very difficult to make phone calls, and only the rich could afford having a phone in their home. How things have changed. Now, we can make phone calls and even see those we are calling through the 3G technology. Over time, a lot of new things have happened, and one such thing is the introduction of the VoIP technology. This article will be giving you 4 benefits of using VoIP technology instead of a mobile plan with your ISP.

Benefits Of Using VoIP

1. Cheap Call Rates

One thing about making phone calls is that it has always been expensive. Developing a technology for people to make phone calls isn’t something just anybody can do, and the few ISPs who controlled the system either charge excessively for it or make people go through ridiculous long-term contracts. Communication is an essential part of our lives, and if not free, I believe it should be relatively cheap. If you’re tired of the excessive price you are being charged just for using the mobile calling system then you need to start using the VoIP technology. Most VoIP services allow you to make cheap calls to any part of the world for a cheap monthly, or yearly free, and there are even VoIP services that allow you to make a limited amount of free calls every month.

2 .Save Money on Mobile Purchases

A lot of us spend more money on devices that help us make phone calls than we can ever imagine. We spend money buying the right mobile phone, we spend money on the sim cards we need to make phone calls, we spend money on activating and recharging our mobile phone regularly, and some of us even spend money on long-term ISP contracts. This isn’t a problem as far as the VoIP calling technology is concerned. You can easily get high quality calling services to suit your needs for very cheap prices.

3. Save When You Travel

A lot of us love to travel the world and see cool places and people from other parts of the world, but aside from all the expensive airline tickets and travel fees we have to pay, we also have to go through the ordeal of paying excessively to communicate with our loved ones during our travels. One disadvantage to using your ISPs mobile calling technology when you travel is that you get to pay roaming fees; you have to sign special contracts and do some other irritating things. If you decide not to use your ISP you might end up paying excessively to use another ISP in the country you are travelling to and all that ends up sucking a lot of money from our pockets. With VoIP, you don’t have to worry about all that since you don’t need a sim card or an ISP. The only thing you need to make VoIP calls is an internet connection, and you can easily get that from any part of the world.

4. Get Better Quality Calls

Many people will think that VoIP calls will be of a worse quality because of how cheap it is, but that can only be farther from the truth. VoIP calls are generally known to provide a better experience than most mobile calling technology, and you also don’t have to pay heavily to enjoy better quality calls.

This is a guest post by Joe Pawlikowski. He edits BBGeeks, a site dedicated to helping BlackBerry users get the most out of their devices. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

There was a time when the BlackBerry was not only the highest of high-end smartphones, but it was one of the only practical smartphones on the market. Competitors such as the T-Mobile Wing and the Motorola Q came and went, but none matched the relative completeness of the BlackBerry. Their dominance extended into 2007, when they released their 8800 line, which at the time was state of the art.

And then along came the iPhone, which made the BlackBerry seem primitive by comparison. Year after year Apple released a new model, each one creating more distance between the iPhone and the BlackBerry. In 2008 Android entered the game, and by 2009 Android, too, had surpassed the BlackBerry in terms of practical usability.

Both Android and Apple represent the high end of the smartphone market. As Simon described in a recent guest post, the BlackBerry has been relegated to mid-range. That’s a tough place for the former kind to reside. Yet the BlackBerry’s placement is indisputable. Even with their new devices, which contain high-end hardware, they remain behind both the iPhone and Android platforms. It raises a weighty question: what would make RIM high-end again? Here are a few things they need to do with their future phones to make it happen.

BlackBerry Needs To Go High-End By

Attract Developers

One place where both Android and iPhone pummel the BlackBerry is in software. If you browse through the Android Market, the App Store, and App World, you’ll see the first two filled with popular, useful apps, while App World lags far behind. So many of the apps in App World are local radio station apps and e-books. Those inflate the overall numbers, but detract from the quality.

Part of the problem with previous BlackBerry platforms is that they weren’t attractive to developers. It wasn’t just the declining market share. The platform itself didn’t really attract developers. If RIM wants its future phones to gain any clout, they’ll have to make it attractive for developers. That means, first and foremost, avoiding Android’s issues with multiple device sizes. But it also means making it easy for developers to get devices and APKs ahead of releases, so they can create new apps and update their existing ones.

The main point:

if a smartphone lacks the hottest apps, people are going to ignore it. BlackBerry, Palm, and Windows Mobile learned this the hard way. If RIM is going to succeed it needs to make apps and software a priority.

Installing The Best Hardware

Thankfully, RIM has already shown signs that they’re minding the hardware. Starting with the AT&T BlackBerry Torch 9810, RIM has released a series of device with processors that rival the best on the market. Their screens feature improved resolution, and the devices themselves feel full and durable.

This is quite a departure from previous BlackBerry models. Even in 2010 RIM was releasing underpowered devices  that  couldn’t take full advantage of the device software. But clearly that has changed.

The status quo — even the higher-end status quo — will not hold. RIM needs to keep up with the market and continue creating devices that contain the best hardware the market provides. They do seem on this track. Not only does their  latest line have improved hardware, but they’re talking about dual-core chips in their next line. That will keep them    on a level with Apple and Android.

There is more to a device than hardware, of course. But a modern smartphone line cannot succeed without high-end  hardware. As long as RIM evolves with the market, they should be fine on this front.

Changing The Game

Herein lies the biggest challenge for the BlackBerry, or really any smartphone brand that wants to compete. Why did the iPhone take the nation by storm? Because it redefined the smartphone. Why did Android eventually catch up? Because it provided features that the iPhone did not — and it evolved continuously while the iPhone remained static. If the BlackBerry wants to make a comeback, it has to redefine something we know about the smartphone. It’s not exactly an easy task.

Yet it’s something that BlackBerry will need if it’s going to again reach the highest end of the market. Filling App World with better and more popular apps is a necessary step along the way, as is stocking devices with high-end hardware. But there’s little chance that the BlackBerry will make a dent in the iPhone and Android dominance if it merely toes the line. Android and iPhone have already set the standard. Anyone who wants to compete with them has to raise the bar.

What can they do to change the game? That’s the beauty of all this: no one really knows until it happens. There are endless possibilities for RIM to ponder. But whatever it is, it has to be two things: 1) something that neither iPhone nor Android offers, and 2) something that people want, but don’t know that they want. If they knew they wanted it, we’d likely see it on smartphones already. But RIM’s challenge is to find something that’s missing and bring it to light. That’s what’s going to bring them back to the high end of the smartphone market.

No one said it would be easy. But the path is there for RIM to re-enter the high-end smartphone market. They’ll have to take pages from both Android and iPhone and then combine them with what has worked for the BlackBerry. But most importantly, they need to give us something new. Something that we didn’t even imagine possible. Otherwise they’ll be just another smartphone manufacturer that is constantly playing catchup with Android and iPhone.

While Google AdSense’s integration with Google Analytics works flawlessly for some, it is a PITA for others. I have been trying to  link my AdSense account with my Analytics account since the past 6 months and have successfully done so too, but unfortunately no data flows in and out of the two services. So today I decided to unlink the accounts and start the integration process again, from scratch. Unlinking an AdSense account with an Analytics account is not a straight forward process and cannot be done through the AdSense/Analytics dashboard. The unlinking process, though not manual, is fairly easy and quick. This is how you can delete the link between your AdSense and Analytics account:

How to unlink AdSense and Analytics

1. Login to your Google account

2. Head over to https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?hl=en_GB&contact_type=analyticsunlink

3. You will have to fill the following form.

Enter your Gmail Email ID, which has access to both the accounts, in the first field. Enter you pub ID in the second field. You can find your pub ID from your AdSense page. It can be found in the top right corner on every AdSense page.

4. Once you fill in the details click the submit button.

5. A new page will be loaded and it will tell you that your application will be review and you will be contacted by Email once the disintegration process is completed.

How Much Time Will It take?

Taking into account the fact that it was Google I was dealing with, I was expecting a waiting time of around a week, if not more. You can imagine my surprise when I received this mail 15 minutes after submitting the application.

Apple’s iCloud seems to have intimidate the folks at Box.net. As a part of a 50 day promotion, Box.net is offering free 50 GB Cloud space on their servers and an increased upload file limit size of 100 MB to all iDevice users. The 50 GB is not be limited to one’s iDevice, and users will be able to use it on their computer’s as well.  So you can even use the 50 GB on your Android mobile, just make sure to login once from an iDevice. A free account made on Box.net, without availing this offer, provides 5 GB of upload space with a file size limit of 25 MB.

The 50 GB offer is valid for the iDevices. Namely, the iPod touch 1G, iPod touch 2G, iPod touch 3g, the original iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, the iPad and the relatively new iPad 2. It’s quite a month for Apple fanboys. First iCloud and now this new irresistible offer from Box.net.

This is what you will have to do to get the free 50 GB’s and the new upload size limit.

1. This promotion only runs for 50 days
2. Visit the app store and download the Box app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch
   
3. Log in to your existing account or register for a new one directly from the app.

And voila! You are done.

Here’s a proof of it working. The image you see below is a screenshot from my iPod touch. I simply had to login using my existing Box.net account and was greeted with the following message without any nuisance:

It should also be noted that the box.net iPhone app is pretty sleek as well.

UPDATE: Since the publishing of this post I have realised that desktop syncing is not available for free accounts and to be able to use a Box.net desktop client the user will have to upgrade to the Business Plan which costs $15/user/month.

With my Open Letter To facebook, I had made it pretty clear that facebook was anything but stable. Since then, they have improved by great deal. So much so, that they have now even started predicting the future. If my sources are to be believed, then, this idea struck Mark Zukerberg while he was busy behaving awkwardly at f8. It is being said that Mark desperately wanted this feature — partly because he wanted to see what kind of spams and hacks facebook might have to face in the future, but mostly because he didn’t get any notification even after refreshing the homepage two hundred thousand gazzilion times.

So, together with Hrithik Roshan ‘s genius  father Rohit, from Koi Mil Gaya, Mark built a time machine which they have named [REDACTED]. Technical specs of the machine were unknown at the time of writing this post, but what is known is that the machine makes use of what the Neutrinos told us a few weeks back. While Mark was unavailable for comments, CERN conveniently decided not to respond to the several mails that were sent and calls that were made, asking about facebook’s new [REDACTED]. Below is a screenshot which proves that the time machine _does_ exist and is in fact working and predicting the future, if not saving it.

Let’s analyse this a bit

Sorry! You Entered An Old Password

Your password was changed at: Tomorrow at 152:am

If you don’t remember making this change,click here.

Call me a Grammar Nazi, if you may, but the typographical error where they forget to give a space after the comma “…making this change,click here” is the only thing that bugs me since we have already established the fact the machine exists.

UPDATE (2:00am, 14th October 2011): My account was hacked today. Exactly at the time facebook predicted it would. Thank you facebook?

When we compare mobile phones we seldom think about the range of recepton the provider offers. This is because most mobile phones are sold in the big population areas within reasonable proximity to a mobile phone tower and good coverage is to be expected from the major network providers. It is another thing altogether when you live out in the bush where the towers are limited. In this case the range of operation becomes very important to your considerations when making comparisons. This is probably the reason why Australian researchers are at the forefront of trying to establish a mobile phone network without being reliant on expensive towers.

New Technology By-Passes Towers

Australia is a vast continent with many areas sparsely populated and it is in these areas where mobile phone signals are impossible to pick up. This becomes a real problem for travellers, as well as people living and working in such areas, and in need of a reliable communication system. For this reason researchers at the Flinders University in South Australia are trialling new technology, which if successful, will solve the often encountered problem of being out of range of a mobile phone tower.

The answer is not in having to compare mobile phones to each other, or their service providers, but by using their already existing Wi-Fi technology. It appears that all mobile phones have a certain Wi-Fi capability even though its distance is limited, but when a developing software can allow individual phones to transmit calls between each other without the need for a tower this connectivity can be spread over a large area.

Software Based on Wi-Fi Capabilities

The team at Flinders University, which is led by Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen, has developed such software which can create this connection. This software is able to detect other mobile phones within its Wi-Fi area and can place calls through each automatically, without the need of an operator, therefore creating its own network, free of the need to construct expensive towers. Put simply, this new software will allow each mobile phone to act as a small cell tower. Each phone will be able to receive and transmit another person’s call until it reaches the desired destination.

At the moment all is OK if there are sufficient mobile phones in the area to give you a reasonable spread but it still has the problem of limitation in the vastness of the outback. The development will have great application however in areas that have been devastated by natural disasters such as cyclones, earthquakes and violent storms that have destroyed previously existing mobile phone towers, but the surviving population still has a vast network of mobile phones from which to create a network.

It is a start and it does show that a future without the need for expensive and unpopular mobile phone towers is possible, in the meantime, the need to compare mobile phones will shift from the provider’s transmission distance to that of its Wi-Fi capabilities.

Image Credits

We all have entered some weird stuff while trying to pass CAPTCHAs/reCAPTCHAs. CAPTCHAs are still fine; they aren’t sadists. But reCAPTCHAs? Oh boy, they are like pissed Nazi soldiers at a torture camp. They will do anything to make your life hell and then some more, just for the heck of it.  Ergo, more often that not, reCAPTCHAs come up with pretty weird shit they expect you to type. I mean how in hell’s name can you expect a user to write superscripts to subscripts usually prefixed with a sigma sign? I can barely type my name without looking at the keyboard (that’s a lie, get the hint).

I though I was human, until now.

But then,  in reCAPTCHAs you can type in whatever shit you want and it _will_ accept it. Because that’s how reCAPTCHAs roll. Yes, it is unethical since it is against the whole goddman concept, but give us a break, we are mere mortals.

Getting back to the point. Today was different. It wouldn’t be wrong to term it as very different, though I will not. I was on Pottermore, trying to reset my password which I had quite  foolishly obviously forgotten. Now there are days when you enter a recpatcha while listening to music, then there are days you frown a little – zoom in and enter the required word, then there are days when you scream and pull out your hair after looking at the reCAPTCHA, and then, after all those days comes a day when you simply laugh out loud,  somewhat at the mind-boggling CAPTCHA but mostly at your inability to solve it even though, after all those bad deeds (yes, I know what you did last night), you are human. You can always reqeust a new CAPTCHA, but then where is the fun in that?

Today was on of one of those days. Pottermore asked me to type a word in a language which I haven’t even written since the past year and half, leave alone typing it.

स्येतानि? Seriously? And then, on top of it, स्येतानि is raised to the power zero, on the wrong side of course. Ask  Voldemort to solve that thing and even he will turn up his nose at you. Oh wait.

This is a guest post by Amber. She show us a great example of an educational video game to spur creative thinking: free credit card simulator by Credit card Finder. It teaches kids (and adults) on how to sepnd money wisely and turns learning into fun!  If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

Anyone who thinks that playing a modern video game is a brainless activity has definitely not tried to maneuver their way through a digital landscape in a very long time.

If you’ve having any difficulty holding your class’s interest or motivating them to master intricate concepts, consider a few ways that video games actually help students learn.

1. Frequent Feedback

Video games give instant and detailed feedback (scores) to tell the gamer how their performance rates across many different aspects of the game. At any point in time, they know exactly what works and what doesn’t so that they can change their strategy. Just as quickly, they know if the changes produced the desired results.

Compare that to receiving a test grade back days, or weeks, later. Even worse than a delay is a general score. A “C” might be a passing grade, but it certainly doesn’t tell the student where they excel or what areas need a little work.

2. Live Testing

Instead of just reviewing the code and launching the product, video game designers actively test their new games with a group of live participants. This quickly reveals any defect or bug.

Many teachers try to just convert their classroom material into an online curriculum. Sometimes this works well, and, other times, not so much. Online professors should watch at least one student as they take the actual course. It would quickly tell them what works and what needs to be changed.

3. Goal-Oriented Approach

In video games, the gamers always understand the ultimate goal. As they follow the storyline, their logic and other skills are tested within the context of the game. For example, in Tower Defense games, the player knows that he must block the enemy by strategically placing his towers to defend his territory.

Frequently, both classroom and online courses concentrate so hard on the specific skills the class is designed to teach, the teacher forgets to place the material in context with real-world tasks. By demonstrating that the specific skill has value, the student becomes excited about the learning experience.

4. Make it Fun

There’s a very good reason why video games are so good at teaching students a wide variety of skills from hand/eye coordination to managing resources to following complex instructions. They’re fun!

If online classes could make learning new material fun and interesting, students would be much more motivated to master the topic. After all, when you have a job that you love, it’s not really like work. The same holds true for the educational experience.

5. Encourage Creativity

Unfortunately, a lot of traditional learning environments do not encourage creativity. In fact, when they force the student to learn by memorization, it almost has the opposite effect.

On the other hand, video games encourage creativity by rewarding gamers who can think outside the box. While memorization will help a little bit in the video game world, the ability to adapt quickly to new situations makes an amazing difference to the gamer!

Next time you’re designing an online educational program, keep these tips in mind. Your students will definitely be back for more!

Image Credit