Of lately I've heard lots of people expressing opinions about which is better - ipad or kindle. To me I don't see them in the same category or catering to the same use-cases. The latest kindle at $139 is great for people who read a lot of paperback novels etc. It has great battery life, light, rugged and has space for practically all of your books (of that form factor). Kindle and it's kind of e-ink devices is also appealing to people who say reading on LED screen is a pain. To me, the fact that it doesn't have color and it's built-in pdf etc readers aren't very flexible w.r.t page layout rendering is a pain point. Also, search and flipping of pages fast is a key requirement for me. Organizing, browsing, bookmarking of books also matter. These functionalities are not very well done (compared to ipad). iPad, apart from being a good book reading device, it has lots of other features that makes it worth the money for someone who doesn't already own a small ...

At the end of the episode named "Unity" (S3E17) in Star Trek Voyager S3E17, Chakote and Janeway have this conversation: "They saved us from that cube, and they let you go." "But they didn't hesitate to impose their collective will on me when it served their interests, did they?" "No, they didn't." "I wonder how long their ideals will last in the face of that kind of power..." That made me think about how the political system really works around us. With the influence over masses, political leaders kind of form collective which is supposed to be based on some ideology shared by all members of that collective. But once such collective is formed it gives them immense power. And in the face of such power it's hard for the ideology to still hold. When the leaders who wield such power deviate from the ideologies even if some raise voice against them it is far too easy to coerce or induce them to fall in line with such collect...

Alan Siegel is a well-known name in branding world. In this short  brilliant talk at TED he explains why simplified plain language legal documents are necessary and even gives a concrete example of a credit card agreement to show how it can be done. Read his piece on clarity in government here .