Monterey Bay Forum

Brains of children with and without dyslexia

To read, a child must distinguish  different shapes and do so quickly.  Now there’s some evidence that action videos may assist children with dyslexia.  It worked for a small group of Italian children and now they will try it with children speaking English.

“Playing fast-paced action  video games for 12 hours over two weeks markedly increased the reading speed of 7- to 13-year-old kids with dyslexia, with no loss of reading accuracy, says a team led by psychologist Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua, Italy.” Science News

Buyer beware of Amazon’s Kindle Fire!

Buyer beware when you purchase an Amazon  kindle!

Especially watch out if you are considering the purchase of a Kindle Fire.   A Kindle Fire has color, is easy to navigate internally  and easy to download books from Amazon.

The Kindle Fire is also lame.  And Amazon designed it  it that way.

Amazon does some dumb deeds. As the over sized  gorilla  in the jungle of eBook publishing, Amazon is not polite, civil or hold a  hand outstretched  to other eBook publishers.  There are many  eBook publishers of note including Smashwords.com.

And when Amazon acts stupidly it does it in a large animal way.  Like, get out of my way other publishers of eBooks as Amazon controls the gates.

Why such insults directed at Amazon?  Amazon makes it next to impossible to download  eBooks to a Kindle Fire  except through their Kindle book store.  You may not be able to do so although you think you can.

Say you have a BMW and want a new tire. You don’t have to go to a BMW dealership to get a tire.  However, if you got an eBook other than from Amazon’s Kindle store and want to read it on a Kindle — yes,  you can download the file — but just try to find and open it on Kindle Fire. Just about impossible to do.

So will these tactics work?  Let’s hope not.  Apple — which wants to keep everyone in the Apple universe — does make it easy to read mobi-pocket files which is the format required for Kindle.

Instead of trying to keep Kindle Fire buyers hostage,  let the winds of free markets decide which eBooks are better and on which eBook readers.  That would be a smart move for Amazon. 

For general information about the Kindles:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle

For computer related services for Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito County:  ComputerGuy Tom Fish   (831) 726-1951   or ComputerGuy@CalCentral.com

written by DrCameronJackson@gmail.com