Archive for October, 2009

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Wi-Fi Connectivity Problems with the Acer Aspire One Netbook


29 Oct

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Just a little note for those of you who may have an Acer Aspire One netbook and are having connectivity problems with your home or other wi-fi networks under Windows XP: update your drivers!

I like to play around between Windows and Ubuntu Netbook Remix (Linux) on my Aspire One, and one thing that came to light was that when I was in Windows, the network connection would be intermittent, at best. I could connect, but then after a few minutes I couldn’t reach the internet: the network indicator still said I was connected to the wi-fi network, but that was it. I couldn’t get anywhere. The only solution was to disconnect and then reconnect from the network. That gets to be a bit of a pain ever five minutes or so!

Since the wireless connectivity when I was in Ubuntu seemed to be fine, that suggested that it was a Windows driver issue. The Acer One uses an Atheros 5700EG wi-fi card, which – if you do a bit of searching on the web – has a bit of a bad reputation for network dropouts like this. I don’t really want to try and replace the actual wi-fi adapter, which involves tearing the netbook apart, so I was hoping a driver update would fix the problem.

To do this is easy:

  1. Click on Start
  2. Right click on the icon for My Computer.
  3. Select Properties
  4. Click on the Hardware Manager tab
  5. Click on the Device Manager button
  6. Click on the plus sign next to Network adapters to expand the selection
  7. Right click on the entry for the Atheros 5700EG Wireless Network Adapter
  8. Select Update Driver
  9. In the dialog window that pops up, make sure you have Install the software automatically checked
  10. If you are offered the option, make sure you select the one that has Windows check on-line for driver udpates
  11. It may take a few minutes (the installer has to download the driver from the Windows site – behind the scenes – and then install it), but the new driver should be installed, then just click Finish.

And that should be it! It’s been working fine on mine so far, and I hope this will help if you’re having similar issues.

The Proof Copy For In Her Name: First Contact Is On Its Way


27 Oct

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In Her Name: First ContactThe first proof copy for In Her Name: First Contact is on its way from Lightning Source, Inc. – yay! I’m not sure when it will get here, but hopefully soon. Once I review it and it gets approved, it should be available for purchase on Amazon, B&N, and a bunch of other sites, although it will probably take a week or two to percolate through the retailer databases.

It’s also available on Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket in ebook format!

Adding Your Book to Amazon’s Search Inside! Program


27 Oct

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If you’ve perused Amazon’s bookstore, you’ve no doubt seen the Search Inside! feature, where you can see samples of the book. For independent publishers and authors, here’s the trick to add this nifty marketing feature to the Amazon catalog pages for your printed books (note: you do not need this for Kindle books).

Before I go further, if you used Amazon’s CreateSpace, you’re already set: you need do nothing extra for the Search Inside! feature to be added. That’s part of the CreateSpace “package,” which is definitely nice.

If you’re using an independent printer, such as Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI), the first thing you need to do, assuming your book is already up in the Amazon catalog, is to get an Amazon Seller Central account. Once you get that, you’ll need to have a PDF copy of your book – just make sure to follow the guidelines! If you click on the Search Inside the Book tab, there’s some info and a link on the right hand side for PDF guidelines.

Once you get the file uploaded, Amazon takes care of the rest! The Search Inside! feature for your book won’t show up right away: give it two to three weeks to appear. If you need tech support or assistance, there’s contact information for technical support from a link at the bottom of the web pages.

In Her Name: Empire Snags 5-Stars From Independent Reviewer


26 Oct

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In Her Name: EmpireIt’s always nice to get pleasant surprises (unlike the other kind!), and that’s indeed what I got when I checked out Red Adept’s Kindle Book Review Blog to see how her review of In Her Name: Empire fared. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it fared pretty darn well!

Empire is the first of the three books contained in the original omnibus version of In Her Name, and begins the story of Reza Gard and his trials and tribulations in living between the human Confederation and the alien Kreelan Empire.

Red Adept (a.k.a. Lynn) happened to buy my book and let me know that she would be reviewing it. If you look at her reviews, she doesn’t hand out stars like candy. Clearly, like any reviewer, she has her likes and dislikes, but Empire fortunately fell deep into the “like” category. Here’s an excerpt from her review:

This is one of the hardest types of reviews for me to write. It’s much easier to write a review of a “good, mediocre, or bad” book. It’s not that I enjoy being so critical, just that it’s easier to explain flaws than it is to explain why a book has achieved ‘greatness’. I can sit here and type all of the words: compelling, interesting, wonderful, intriguing, etc., but none of them do it justice. They don’t really explain how a book speaks to the reader, how it draws the reader in and echoes in the mind long after it is finished.

This book grabs the reader with the opening scene and rarely relaxes its grip. With a wonderful mix of science fiction and fantasy, the plot is vastly different from most science fiction books I have read. Sure, you have your hero, your war, your deadly aliens. However, this story takes you in a different direction.

So, check out her review and the reader reviews on Amazon and see if Empire appeals to you – it may just open up an entirely new universe of entertainment!

Flying in a Piper Cub – Good, Old Fashioned Fun


12 Oct

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It’s been a very long time – the better part of 30 years –  since I went up in a light plane. I’d forgotten what fun it could be!

My cousin Wendy has a Piper Cub that was originally built in 1947 and has been completely rehabbed. She flies quite a bit (needless to say!), and took me up for a great ride this weekend. We went up over the Great Salt Lake on the way to Logan airfield, where the local pilots have a breakfast every Saturday. I don’t have anything to compare it to, but they seem to have a big aviation community in the Salt Lake area: lots of nice folks and great airplanes.

Flying in the Cub made me start thinking again of building my own plane, a dream I’ve had since I was young. It’s probably a pipe dream, but…who knows?

Anyway, I just wanted to share a few pics of our trip (I took tons, but don’t want to bore you with them all!) – hope you enjoy them!

Mobipocket No Longer Accepting New Publishers


12 Oct

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If you’ve visited the Mobipocket site recently with the intention of setting up a new publisher account, you no doubt encountered this message on the publisher welcome page:

Effective September 2009, we will no longer open new accounts for publishers to sell titles through the Kindle Store or MobiPocket.com. If you have an existing account, there will be no change and you can continue to upload and sell titles using Ebookbase. New publishers with a US address and bank account can sign up to sell ebooks in the Kindle store via our self-service publishing channel at http://dtp.amazon.com.

While I haven’t seen any confirmation, this certainly looks like the first big step in Amazon absorbing Mobipocket into the overall Digital Text Platform (DTP) service, which is the other route – besides Mobipocket – for getting book into the Amazon Kindle store (note: for independent publishers; mainstream publishers have their own distribution channel for Kindle).

So, the upshot is that if you have an existing Mobipocket account, you’re fine for now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some changes in the next year. The big question will be if Amazon will continue to use Mobipocket as a distribution platform for the many independent ebook retailers out there. Stay tuned!

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Michael R. Hicks

Tales and Musings

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