Scott Allan’s World

I have two new favorite websites you should check out, eReader.com and MotionBox.com

I have been interested in the Amazon Kindle reading device but I just cannot bring myself to spend $359 for it. I then realized that I should be able to read books on my cool Windows Mobile Sprint Touch phone which I already own. So briefly looking around I discovered eBooks.com and MobiPocket.com which I thought were really cool. I could not only read the book on my phone, I could also purchase it from the phone. The Kindle promotes the fact that you can download their books from anywhere as well. It has built in 3G cell phone technology. The biggest problem is that if you buy a book in the MobiPocket format for your phone, you can’t read it on a Mac computer which means you’d have to buy it again in a different format. Another problem is that Kindle format cannot be read on any other device either. From what I read in some forums, Amazon, who owns MobiPocket, has no interest in making a Mac or iPhone reader. This is a really bad business decision as far as I am concerned and then I read a recommendation for the aforementioned eReader. This site is great. I can read their books on any device I own. They don’t have Blackberry software yet but at least they say they are working on it. Besides I’m not a Blackberry guy. Windows Mobile is much cooler. They also have an iPhone reader for those interested. Reading on my phone allow me to read in the dark due to the backlight which the Kindle does not have.

My other new favorite site, MotionBox, is a video hosting site that is WAY better than YouTube. For just $29.95/year, they will host files of an unlimited size and length. And the quality is unreal. You can get fullscreen High Definition video streamed across the internet. They will host up to 700mb for free too, but that is far too little for what I plan to use it for. I videotaped my son’s first wrestling tournament and had over 3 1/2 hours of video which I uploaded and shared with the team. The parents can easily find and select a section of the video their son using a “Filmstrip View” and send it to a relative or they could send it to me and I could make them an individual video of that clip to download and keep. I have already used this technology a few times on my blog and I will be using it a lot more. I would also like to note that MotionBox Customer Service is excellent! Quick responses and very helpful.

Take the time to check these out and tell me what you think.