Sup everyone! Phil is here to satisfy your tech lust with juicy tidbits of info on the latest & greatest.

These wonderful little gizmos have taken the world by storm. With them we can surf the Net, read books, chat with our BFFs, and update Twitter and Facebook as much we want. So it’s safe to say we NEED these things right? Right! 🙂

Let’s start with the simplest of the bunch: E-readers. These serve only one function: for reading electronic books and magazines. The good thing about these is that they have loads of internal storage; you can put as many books and magazines as you want, so you won’t get bored the next time you’re on a five hour ride in a car with nothing better to do than to count how many power posts just passed by. Ugh.

Nowadays these come with Wi-Fi or 3G Internet, so you can buy/download books straight to the device without ever having to plug it into a computer. Nice, ‘eh?

One of these is called the Kindle. Being the most popular of its kind, it has the widest selection of electronic books available. It’s e-ink display is sharp and easy on the eyes, and you can read it under the sun if you’re out on the beach getting a tan 😉

Its competition, the Nook by Barnes and Noble, and the Kobo (you can get this one at Borders), are also very good readers at around the same price. These can display multiple file formats, so don’t worry if all you’ve got is a bunch of PDFs.

Higher up the food chain, we got tablets. These do a little more than just display e-books. You can surf, e-mail, chat, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and all the other ones that escape my brain right now. Sitting right up there at the top is the iPad. The sexiest of the bunch, this gorgeous piece of technology is available in 16, 32, or 64GB versions with Wi-Fi (that’s plain ol’ Internet sans cable) or 3G. The latter will fetch a monthly fee with the mobile carrier specified.

If Apple products aren’t your thing, fear not! There are PLENTY of alternatives, and among these are two of my favorites: the Samgung Galaxy tab and the brand spankin’ new Xoom from Motorola. These carry Google’s famous(or infamous?) widely used smartphone: OS, Android. Of course, all of these will perform all the functions I mentioned above, and perform them well.  So, next time you go tech shopping and think you’re spoiled for choice, you are! 🙂

~Until next time!~

The hook in lines of; “Peer pressure sucks. So do Vampires.” really sum up the contents of the book. Rachel Caine is an international bestseller with her Morganville Vampires series, and after mauling through book one in under 24 hours, I can totally see how this has come about.

Claire moves to Morganville for University and is having her life made into a living nightmare by Monica and her minions. Between having her laundry thrown down the garbage chute, and being pushed down the stairs, it comes down to either moving away or dying right there in the dormitory.

Glass House becomes her savior. Michael Glass and his other housemates, Shane and Eve, form a quick bond with Claire and they work together to keep each other safe from the bullies and the other dirty little secret of Morganville… Vampires.

I could not believe how quickly this book flew. Everything happened at breakneck speed and though some parts, the violence in particular, had me wincing in sympathy, I found myself at the last page quicker than I wanted to be.
I wonder what situations Caine lived through to make Monica so solidly psychotic? The research for that character alone would have been enough to give me nightmares.

As for the Vampires, they’re mobster-like organization was rather typical of so many vampire books these days. They’re all untrustworthy and, though there were still a few surprises to be found in Morganville, I don’t know how Rachel is going to keep the rest of her books from slipping into the stereotypical corruption that comes with a Vampire community like that.

I am going to be looking for the second book in the Morganville Vampire series The Dead Girl’s Dance, as soon as I can.

I’ve been bitten by the Morganville bug, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Glass Houses—Rachel Caine

Published 04/01/11 by Penguin Books Australia

Paperback, 372 Pages

Join the GoodReads group SOS (Serious Overload of Series) as they discuss Burn Bright as their May Book of the Month.

I have only been on Facebook for about a month… maybe a little more. I had been nagged, poked, prodded, invited, ordered and bugged to death to join for years, I tell you, YEARS. This insistence had been by family and friends, whom I thought loved me, and cared about my daily routine… Nope, they just wanted to point and laugh at my newfound addiction, just like the person who finally convinced them to join.

Anyways, I made the decision to sell my soul and  fill out the online form; and that was hard enough as it was. Do I fill out a regular profile, or do I fill out one that people ‘like’ rather than ‘friend’? Do I use an alias or my real name? Which email account do I want 50,000 useless emails going to every day?

After all that sweating and stressing over the account that will be there until the apocalypse happens, or the government finally bans FB – which for some people is pretty much the same thing, I then have to go and add information to my profile.

You generally have a bio of yourself, a list of TV shows, Movies, Books, Music, and other assorted useless factoids to accumulate. Then you start trying to friend people. In my case, because I chose an Alias, I got SO many refusals I was starting to feel like a Nigel-no-friends. But when I worked out you can put a message with your friend request, most of the time, I got an acceptance.

After finding enough friends to make myself feel like less of a loser, my brain started ticking over as to just how many people are on FB. I did some really wonky sums in my head and realized there is bound to be at least 5 people on here from school, 2 of whom might be the girls my entire science class saw getting changed outside the sports shed in grade 11, those girls that really weren’t very nice to me at all. The ones I want to see if they got all fat and ugly… just because I can. For the record, nope, they’re still beautiful. Damn it!

With stalker hour over with, I started getting used to putting up status updates and sharing information via my wall. This task still pings me off as FB seems to have a constant case of PMS. If I want to do something, it doesn’t want to let me. If I don’t want to go somewhere it’ll hijack me and throw me there. If I’d like to log out the thing sends me to contemplate my profile settings, which, as far as I can tell, is the online equivalent of sending me to the naughty corner.
So what have I learned from my month of being on FB?

If you need to get work done, don’t log in. If you need to get somewhere on time, don’t log in. If you have a task that MUST get done, don’t log in. But if you’re bored and want to go spend a whole afternoon sitting waiting for your equally bored friends, to let you know JUST how bored they really are, then sure log in, sit down and start perusing.

The thing I DO like about FB, apart from the ability to semi-stalk people from a nice safe distance, is the connection factor. Up-to-date information in real time.

The one thing I can promise you though, is there is NO way in hell you’ll all get me sitting down and watching the movie about FB. Just being on there is enough for me.

By the way feel free to add me. Search for ‘Friday Ketchup’. I promise I won’t make you feel like a Nigel-no-friends.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVA047JAQsk

MUSIC: David Ippolito – Facebook

Some of you may recall that I listed EONA as one of my top 5 most anticipated releases for 2011. I can tell you now; it was sooo worth the wait.

*SPOILER ALERT FOR EON*

If you haven’t yet read EON – also known as The Two Pearls of Wisdom, EON: Dragoneye Reborn and EON: Rise of the Dragoneye… go and read EON first. Seriously – right now!

EONA is the sequel to the multi-award winning EON, and wraps up the story of the Dragoneyes. Both EON and EONA are set in a kind of ancient-magical-alternate-mash-up of China and Japan. Eona is the Dragoneye to the beautiful Mirror Dragon who suddenly reappeared after going missing 500 years ago. The Emperor is dead, replaced on the throne by the evil Lord Sethon while the true Emperor, Kygo, is missing. Only Eona and the power-hungry Lord Ido (Dragoneye to the Rat Dragon) survive… and only just.

Eona is on the run in search of Kygo with her supporters, Dela and Ryko, while Ido is a tortured captive of Sethon. Eona must learn to harness her own power to save the land, as well as put the rightful emperor on the throne and defeat Sethon. Just to confuse things a little more (a LOT more, actually) she needs to save her enemy, Ido, to do this. As the only other surviving Dragoneye, he is the one person who can teach Eona to use her power and call the Mirror Dragon safely. Lord Ido seems to have changed when Eona healed him – has he finally learned to feel compassion? Is his twisted thirst for total power of the land, the elements and the dragons finally quenched? Is he really the ally Eona hopes him to be? Is the chemistry between them real, or another of Ido’s tricks? These are just some of the questions that kept me holding my breath, furiously turning page after page… and then… and there was Kygo… *sigh*.

Kygo is the son of the slain emperor, the rightful heir. He even wears the Pearl at his throat – an enormous stone stitched painfully in place, a procedure that must be done within twelve breaths of the last emperor’s death. But Kygo’s uncle, Sethon made a bloody and successful grab for the throne throwing the land into turmoil. Will they succeed in their quest to put Kygo back on the throne? Can Kygo trust Eona? Can they trust their growing feelings for one another? Or will Ido and the connection he shares with the only female Dragoneye win her heart?

EONA, like EON, is told from a first person point of view. We’re there with Eona every step of the way as she battles her own feelings for these powerful men. We understand as she keeps deadly secrets from those she loves, knowing it will hurt them. We share her pain intimately as she learns the secrets of her ancestors and the Dragons and grows from a young girl into a strong, capable woman. Eona is far from perfect. She makes mistakes, she acts rashly and without thought, sometimes with terrible consequences. But throughout, as a reader we also understand she has no other choice.

EON is one of my all-time favourite books, and although I expected EONA to be just as amazing, I honestly didn’t expect Alison Goodman to create a sequel that was even better than the original. The world is richer, the action harder and faster. I cared more about the supporting cast of friends and allies this time around; I loved being there, inside Eona’s head as she grew and matured.  The confusion she felt with her feelings between Kygo and Ido was palpable (as were some of the, um… kissing scenes!) and my stomach lurched with the violence in the numerous battle scenes. The Dragons themselves are intriguing and sad and it’s not far into this book you realise no character is guaranteed to make it out alive. Goodman has an incredible gift of evoking emotion with her words. I cried and I laughed out loud, and then I cried some more.

EONA is violent, furious and exquisitely tender and beautiful. You won’t put it down except to catch your breath.

Note: There has been a little confusion with the titles from this duology. For marketing reasons, they have numerous titles. EON is also known as: The Two Pearls of Wisdom, EON: Dragoneye Reborn and EON: Rise of the Dragoneye.

EONA will also be released in different parts of the world as: The Necklace of the Gods and EONA: Return of the Dragoneye.

EONA — Alison Goodman

Published by Angus&Robertson, an imprint of Harper Collins, Australia.

Paperback, 469 pages.

ISBN – 978 0 7322 8494 7