Irrespective of trade publications or study manuals it’s been years decades since I picked up a book. This is about to change. Current media consumption consists of:

video – Netflix, Tivo and SageTV
audio – Podcasts (Buzz Out Loud, NPR, Rocketboom)
web – syndicated news feeds [RSS]

Wishing to add books, specifically eBooks, here is what I know. There are numerous books from many genres and freely available within the rules of public domain copyright. These will keep me absorbed for awhile. Use Calibre, a very full featured content and library management system to maintain and transfer books to your portable device du jour. Of several choices, I use the Stanza app on my smartphone.

For short stories / articles on the web use Instapaper. This is an excellent application which harvests almost any clip from the web which you direct it to fetch. Instapaper neatly scrapes the content including inline graphics while leaving the adverts and fluff behind. The main attraction is that your clipping is nicely formated for your eReader (e.g. iPhone, iPad, Kindle…) AND time shifted to that device for reading at your later convenience. Example: Here’s the skinny on the Iran Hitchikers from the perspective of Outside Magazine. I stumbled upon this story while browsing but not wanting to interrupt my surfing I easily snatched the journalist story (think Instapaper) for another moment and place.

Oh so little time…