School has just started here, and it seems like this may be the (school) year of the e-book. I was already thinking of getting a couple of Kindles,  and my kids told me (after I expressed that I was considering buying some Kindles) that there will be an announcement very soon about increased used of ebook readers or tablets (I know they bought a bunch of iPads). They say some of their classmates already bring these to school.

Most of the children's ebooks I've seen on Amazon are twice the price I would pay for the typical paperback kid's book, so I am having doubts as to whether I would really gain anything other than saving a trip to the public library. Amazon allows you to rent some books from the Kindle Owner's Lending Library once a month, but all they can tell you is they have Harry Potter, the actual books available in the Lending Library are apparently a big secret unless you buy a Kindle.

Aside from paying for ebooks through Amazon, I am looking at borrowing ebooks through the local library. I will consider paying for a library card from out of town. But every library I've checked (including NYPL)  seems to have the same crappy browsing of all juvenile ebooks not categorized by age group.

So I guess I am looking for any of the following:
- Better way to navigate kids ebooks by age group and get suggestions
- Awareness of any independently published children's books or website specializing in kids ebooks that can be read on a Kindle or other reader
- Any suggestions of ebooks kids in the upper single digits (say 7 to 9 years old) can enjoy, that can be borrowed or otherwise obtained inexpensively.
- Any other children's ebook tips

I've noticed that T-Mobile USA's 3G bands (UMTS (W-CDMA)/HSPDA) operate using both 1700 and 2100 Mhz frequencies (at the same time) and India also uses 2100 Mhz for its 3G, so that seems to be a happy coincidence for those who travel between both countries.

-daddydave (September 02, 2012, 10:08 AM)

Apparently T-Mobile will be using 1700 and 2100 Mhz for LTE and move UMTS over to 1900 Mhz in the near future (source: Fierce Wireless). Would existing T-Mobile UMTS phones start supporting LTE at that point? I know jack about the technology, but  I know different phones support different speeds of UMTS/HSPDA+, so it seems too much to ask.

I can never remember to check Task Manager when it happens, but in Firefox and Waterfox both, I often get a frozen browser for nearly a minute before I can scroll or click on another tab, while seeing a busy cursor (going in circles animation, I guess that replaced the hourglass in Win 7).

I have just set Microsoft Security Essentials to exclude firefox.exe and waterfox.exe from monitored processes to see if that is an issue. Many will recall we had a thread about issues antivirus software was causing with FARR for this reason. So this is just a test at this point. I will let you know how it goes.

AdBlock Plus is a necessity. I've never seen any ethical dilemma there, unless someone believes it is unethical to fast forward through TV commercials, and it cuts down on malware, especially if you have kids. The default for ABP these days is to "allow some non-intrusive advertising" which lets in some text ads, that I'm OK with. Besides that, I have four domains in my exclusion list, the one I remember adding is MakeUseOf.