First, we’ve got two great bits of news on the e-book frontier:

In the left corner: It looks like photos of the second revision of Amazon’s Kindle electronic book device have hit the web.  Of course, as with any “Internet leak” you have to take it with a grain of salt.  Amazon tried (with mixed results) to buzz up the original Kindle,  but if you’re not familiar with the original device, I can’t really blame you – but you can check it out here.  Could this leak be another attempt at generating some buzz?

The Boy Genius Report has a photo gallery with photos of the purported second version of the device.  It seems to be merely an incremental update: some cosmetic changes, new controls and keyboard layout, and USB charging instead of relying on an AC adapter.  Of course, there’s only so much one can infer from looking at photos, so we’ll have to wait for more official word to hear what other features may be built in.  No word on when this might be available; Amazon has previously claimed there wouldn’t be a new Kindle this year.

The new kindle is rumored to still use EVDO wireless as the first edition did.  This wireless functionality is pretty cool: it works with Sprint’s cellular EVDO network, so you can pick up a signal in nearly any populated area and find and download content to read on the go.  Amazon foots the bill for this; so there’s no need to be a Sprint customer or to pay any monthly access charges.  (Content however, often comes with a cost.)

In the right corner: Sony has announced their new e-book reader, the PRS700, at a press event this past Thursday.  It’s a follow up model to their acclaimed PRS505 reader, and it adds some really cool features.  It’s got a sleek look, a touch screen that lets you flip through pages with the swipe of a finger, more memory, more processing power, and a front light to allow you to read in low light situations.  It has five different font sizes and a new zoom feature to make reading easier on the eyes.  The biggest news out of the press event however isn’t even the device itself, but rather Sony’s new commitment to the e-book market.  They will be carrying the device at 3,000 locations U.S. wide (up from 700 currently), have hired a sales force of 1,000 to give in-store demos, and plan to have 100,000 titles available for download in their digital book store by year’s end.  The device is slated to be available in November, so with Sony’s new marketing position, you can expect to see this around when you’re out shopping this holiday season.

Both of these devices are of course based on electronic ink display technology.  Electronic ink is a ground breaking technology using actual ink particles to display text and graphics on amazingly thin (and even flexible) screens, and the ink particles are controlled by means of the electronics in the device.  It makes for outstanding battery life – the only time power is needed is when you change the page.  You can keep text on the page indefinitely however, without sucking up any more juice.  That means these devices have battery life on the order of days or weeks, rather than hours.  This does means you still need to read under comfortable lighting.  While there have been add-on accessories akin to book lights, the new Sony device brings a built in light to the game (expect battery life to decrease while you’re lighting up your screen.)  Electronic ink displays are black and white only at this time, though the readers out there are getting pretty good at displaying images in grayscale with many shades of gray.

They’re still a niche product – probably because of price – with the current Amazon Kindle clocking in at $349 (no word on pricing of the new version yet), and the Sony device expected to be $399.  This will hopefully change as years pass and electronic ink advances.  Industry experts have been predicting that electronic ink will take over old fashioned paper and ink for years now, but with each new device it seems we’re taking a step closer.  The time is near when Universities will likely mandate or provide these for students, and they’ll be able to carry an entire college career’s worth of textbooks in a single device, with the ability to note-take and annotate as well.  Just think of all the trees we’ll save…

While we’re on the topic of electronic books, I thought I’d give a shoutout to two new software applications I’ve been trying out recently that I’ve found particularly useful.  (Note, my “daily driver” is a MacBook, so these are Mac OS X applications – sorry Windows users!)  More after the jump…

The first is Yep!:

Yep! bills itself as the “iPhoto for PDF.”  I think it’s more like an iTunes for documents… but either way, you get the idea.  Yep! will scour your computer for PDF files, and gather them all in one place, regardless where they are on your hard drive.  It has powerful tagging functionality that allows you to not only find your documents quickly, but can automatically show you which documents are related or similar to the one you’re looking at.  It has search capabilities similar to the already built in OS X Spotlight, and includes a number of ways to organize, categorize, and preview your documents.  My favorite feature (simple but important): it remembers what page you were on, so if you’re reading a document and stop only to come back later, it will open up right to where you’ve left off.  You can try Yep! for free, but the full version will run you $34.

Combine Yep! with a document scanner, and imagine the possibilities.  Take all the paperwork and clutter in your life and turn it digital, allowing you to find anything at the touch of a button.  Imagine being able to check your home theater manual, find an invoice or recipe, check out last year’s water bill, etc, in seconds.  (Remember to back up though!)  There’s dozens of document scanners on the market with some pretty affordable price points these days, so this combination could be a godsend for some folks.  We use a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M here at the office which will eat a thick stack of papers alive, front and back simultaneously, churning out an indexed and searchable PDF file in a matter of minutes.

Second, we have Audiobook Builder:

This is a super simple to use app that will turn any type of existing audio file, or audio CDs, into “m4b” files.  An m4b file is like a regular AAC audio file, with some extra features thanks to meta-data that can be stored in the file.  An m4b lets you combine multiple files/tracks into one single file that includes markings to delineate chapters.  When played on a supported device, like an iPod, you can then skip around between chapters in a book, view the cover and illustrations in the book, and save your place to pick up listening where you’ve left off.  iTunes and iPods treat these as separate types of media, so you won’t have to worry about transitioning from an upbeat dance tune to chapter 7 of a philosophy book when you’ve got your device on shuffle.  The killer app for me: iPod’s speed feature.  An iPod allows you to speed up playback of m4b audio files by 25%.  Listen to 75 minutes of an audiobook in 60 minutes time.  Don’t worry about the reader sounding like a chipmunk; this is pulled off without changing the pitch of their voice.  (You can also slow down the speed if you’re really trying to absorb the material, but the speech unfortunately sounds a little weird when you do this.)

The speedup feature is pretty little known, and that’s probably because it only works with m4b files.  m4b files are little known, probably because the typical means of acquiring them is to buy commercial audio books through a store like iTunes’.  Audiobook builder bridges that gap and lets you turn anything into an m4b.  Now you can turn any MP3 podcast for example, recorded lectures, radio show recordings, et cetera into an m4b file, and fill your head with 25% more information.

Another plus?  Registering your copy of Audiobook Builder will only set you back $9.95.

This has a few important implications.  Above the Earth’s atmosphere, solar power is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The energy is available in its most concentrated form, without any of it having been diffused, absorbed, or reflected by our atmosphere.  There’s no such thing as cloud cover above the atmosphere.  With the ability to transmit it wirelessly, it can theoretically be beamed down to any location on Earth, powering up otherwise hard to reach places, underdeveloped areas, or potentially restoring emergency power during a disaster.

The NSS has created a 2 minute video demonstation of the wireless transmission technology:

The downside of course, is having to launch massive objects into space that would dwarf even the International Space Station.  NSS is confident this will be possible, and possible soon.  With the issue of wireless power transmission solved, the last major hurdle is cost-effective and efficient launch vehicles.  Just a few days ago, another commercial enterprise SpaceX was granted license to use the Cape Canavral launch site.  It’s nice to see private enterprises pushing space technology forward, looking for ways to put it to practical use, and most of all, to see that for a change the government isn’t hindering the process! So while we’re not 100% there, there are pieces falling into place that might make big ideas like this a reality.

The NSS conference this morning was to raise awareness of the technology, and to plug Discovery Project Earth: Orbital Power Plant, which airs on the Discovery channel tonight at 10PM EST.  If you’re interested in seeing more about this tech, you’ll probably want to tune in, as the NSS project will be the topic.

NASA has also published an informational DVD about solar power in space that you can watch in its entirety free of charge here care of NSS & Google Video.

What’s missing from all these ideas and plans being thrown around?  How about some cold hard facts?  Some actual numbers?  When they say “we have huge wind and solar resources,” wouldn’t it be nice to know what exactly “huge” meant?

That’s where Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air comes in.  This is a near completed book in progress by David J.C. McKay out of the University of Cambridge Department of Physics.  Skeptical about his motives?  Don’t be.  The book is for the most part free of agendas, politics, ethics, and is totally free of charge.  While still an unfinished work, you can download a draft in PDF format from his website right now.  This is simply an indispensable guide to one of the biggest problems humanity faces. This book is nothing but the numbers.  McKay asks the big question you never hear brought up: is it even possible?  Can we continue our standard of living, continue advancement of our civilization, and do it all sustainably?  What are the actual physical limits of renewable energy sources?  What are the hidden costs of different solutions, like land use, raw materials, and even safety?

McKay’s target audience with this book is quite simply everybody.  He breaks it all down in such a way that if you can handle some basic arithmetic, you’ll be armed with enough knowledge to put together your very own energy plan… getting there is another thing all together, but at least it’s a start, and certainly a way to help wrap your head around the problem.  Who knows, maybe some of our elected leaders can even understand it!  (If you can handle more than basic arithmetic, there’s several more technical appendixes to delve a little deeper into the physics of it all.)

The book is split into two parts.  The first is an itemized list of all the things we use energy for – and an itemized list of every way we currently know how to generate energy.  Everything is converted into the same units (kilowat hours, per person, per day, on the average) so that every last energy-using detail of our lives can be compared and contrasted in a no-nonsense apples to apples fashion.  Every energy generating technology we have is put into the same terms, along with the consequences of using them.  Some of the numbers will surprise you… and lots of the numbers show how we might be falling for hype or barking up the totally wrong trees in many ways.  In terms of absolute energy expenditure – would you be surprised to learn riding the bus uses less energy than the food calories (depending on your diet) you’d burn by walking the same distance?  Or that no less than 20% of the UK’s land mass would need to be covered head to toe in windmills just to equal the energy used in by average folks driving their cars there?  Not to mention, the sheer volume of steel and concrete to pull off such a thing is almost absurd to serve a daily-driver fleet that’s already more fuel efficient than ours in the U.S.

The second part of the book is where some answers start to roll in and we get to see what an energy plan needs to look like.  No matter the plan, the mantra is simply, “make it add up.”  Of course, a plan that doesn’t add up is doomed from the start!  McKay starts with the sum energy use from part one, and first attacks it with feasible ways to start increasing efficiency in the near term.  Since most renewable sources we have produce energy, the basic theme is to electrify things that depend on fossil fuels. He floats some pretty exciting and realistic ideas along the way to not only save energy, but to overcome some of the issues with the intermittent nature of renewables.  Imagine storing extra wind energy from a gusty period by pumping water up a hill into a reservoir.  If the wind dies down, let the water flow back down and spin hydro turbines.  (Granted, pumped storage isn’t an entirely new idea – it is already being used in some places.)  Or how about an even more novel approach: an electric grid that communicates with appliances – shift the AC frequency down a little when demand is low, shift it up a little when demand is high – effectively communicating with smart appliances that can detect those shifts.  Imagine your refrigerator sensing low demand, so it chills down a few extra degrees while power is abundant.  Demand rises and it backs off.  The net effect?  Something as ubiquitous as a refrigerator now acts like an energy storage device (aka, a battery) to help smooth out that electrical load.  Once efficiency is addressed, McKay puts together five example hypothetical energy plans combining all the sources of energy, and “makes it add up” to demand to show in plain black and white what it will take to meet those new and improved demands.  The hypothetical plans have different goals ranging from the totally green plan, to the bar none cheapest plan.  The range of these plans is the light at the end of the tunnel; we will have to compromise, but we do have options, and with this perspective we can quantify the compromises.

The beauty of all this is that the numbers are so easy that after going through this book, you can come up with your own back of the envelope calculation and illustrate your own plan.  Maybe you really oppose coal or nuclear?  Crunch the numbers yourself and see what it would truly take to get it done without them.  Point is, you’ll actually have some numbers, which is more than most of the “Hot Air” that’s been blown around so far has done for us (if that were a viable energy source, we’d have already solved this thing!)

So if you want to intelligently contribute to the energy debate, this is a must read… despite the fact the book isn’t even 100% finished yet. If you prefer though, you can sign up at McKay’s website to be notified when the final version is released and give it a read then. He promises that the completed version, like the current draft edition, will always be available free of charge.