The Darden School of Business at University of Virginia just released their thoughts and findings on their Kindle DX pilot program participation. Their verdict? Not ready for prime time, if by “prime time” you mean academic reading. Check out the press release here.

Charlotte and her world record rubber duck collection had their TV debut last night in a great piece on King-5’s Evening Magazine. “Dr. Charlotte Lee is an engineering professor at the University of Washington. Super smart, driven, commands attention. But when you arrive at her house, there are not so subtle hints that there’s something unusual going on inside.”link She was also featured in the Fremont Universe blog. Go Charlotte!!!

This post comes from Skip Walter, an affiliate member of HCDE and a major technology geek.  Skip got his new Apple iPad on Saturday the 3rd; what follows is his original report on his experience with the iPad on the 3rd and 4th: When I originally ordered the iPad about a month ago, Apple said it would ship on April 3rd and would arrive probably on April 8th.  In a wonderful example of underpromise and overdeliver, the product shipped on…

This is a lengthy but worthwhile read on what the Google Book Settlement means for authors, readers…well, everyone, I suppose.  I don’t entirely agree with the article, but it’s thought-provoking in ways that may surprise you. It will be interesting to see how Google’s online bookstore competes with Apple’s iBookstore and Amazon.com.  Ahh, the future!

Perhaps the iPad will find an audience with children…seems quite plausible, in fact. I wonder whether the next big thing will be a waterproof sleeve for the entire iPad…hmm. I have to agree with much of what this writer says about the potential of the iPad.  We’re having our first child in June and I’m thinking that I’d rather have 1 iPad instead of a portable DVD player, row after row of bulky, expensive children’s books, and a pacifier.  Well,…

“A Lament for the Bookshelf” – The Globe and Mail An interesting read! Russel Smith takes a walk down memory lane as he explains what his [paper] books mean. Here is an interesting quote from his article, describing the tumult his books have been through: “They have been moved from student room to disastrous relationship to shared house to storage locker for 20 years now, and they have not suffered, indeed they have proliferated as they migrated, like a great…

Charlotte, Alex and I all attended the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Savannah, GA a few weeks ago. CSCW focuses on the intersection of technology and collaboration, and is one of the key venues for our work. Charlotte and I attended a workshop on The Changing Dynamics of Scientific Collaborations. Charlotte was one of the organizers of the workshop, along with Cecilia Aragon, Jeffrey Heer, and Claudio Silva, and we presented a position paper on Stakeholders in…

The convergence of different types of functionality and platforms continues to generate interesting new devices.  While the iPhone remains one of the stand-out devices that converged loads of stuff in one place, it’s still not an ideal gaming platform.  Other phones that attempted to offer high-quality gaming experiences never caught on for a variety of reasons, so maybe the solution is to start with a gaming platform instead! Enter the Nintendo DSi XL.  It will include e-reader capabilities, but in…

Charlotte, Matt, and Alex are at CSCW 2010 in Savannah, GA right now (early February).  You can view the proceedings here, including the poster that Alex, Charlotte, and Matt produced from the group’s Google Calendar study. The proceedings include the 2-page extended abstract; at the conference, Alex presented the proper poster from the research. Fast fact: The first CSCW conference took place in 1986; Jonathan Grudin wrote an interesting piece in 1994 describing the earlier days of the conference, as…