Month: January 2012

Open Source Alternative to Kindle-Style Syncing?

Over the past year or so I’ve been buying a lot of books through Amazon’s Kindle store. The selection is great and removing Amazon’s crappy DRM — so I’m not locked into Amazon’s model — is extremely easy.

Here’s the thing, though — the Kindle app is actually pretty good. I especially like how Amazon syncs the last page I’m reading between multiple devices. Being able to go from my laptops to my phone to my iPod to my Android devices and instantly pick up where I left off is awesome.

At home I run Calibre in server mode so I can easily download/transfer any of the thousands of book I own in Epub or PDF format, but there’s no live syncing of where the reader is in a book.

Anyone know of an open source solution that accomplishes this sort of syncing? I’m guessing PDF is a lost cause, but surely this is possible with Epub. Has anyone created an open source system that will sync last page read across multiple devices with Epub formatted ebooks?

Directory Opus – The Other Manual

Since 2004, the first thing I do whenever I get a new computer is install Directory Opus on it. Directory Opus is a file manager replacement that guarantees I never again have to use Microsoft’s atrocious Windows Explorer.

Directory Opus goes well beyond being a simple file manager replacement, however, and is a powerful utility that can be used to save a lot of time in doing common file operations.

The problem is that Directory Opus has so many options and features that it can be overwhelming — this is a program that now comes with a 700+ page manual.

Fortunately another Directory Opus fan has read through that manual and created the “Other Manual” guide to the program.

This is still a fairly long guide — probably longer than most people ever spend thinking about the best way to optimize a file manager — but well worth looking into. There are several configuration options that are explained in the “Other Manual” that I had yet to run across in 9 years of using Directory Opus, so even long time users should give it a look.