Amazon Cloud Reader: Almost Useless

This morning I wanted to look something up in an e-book that I had previously read and archived on my Kindle. Rather than download it to the Kindle, re-read small portions of it, and then put it back in the archive, I figured I could just use the Amazon Cloud Reader. I opened the book, and tried to search the book. No joy. ^F just does a find on the visible portion of the book, and there are no other search controls.

After a search (powerful idea, no?) of the Kindle help forums and learning there is no search, I sent Amazon customer service a query in case there really was, but no.

So how could a text-based application, like an e-reader, possibly be shipped without a search function? How could Amazon possibly make this omission? Really, how could they consider the Cloud Reader ready to ship without a convenient way of searching a book?

How can an organization that did such a great job on the Kindle do such a poor job on the web-based stand-in?

"Free" Online Storage

A couple months ago I related my experiences with Google Documents and Windows Live Skydrive for online storage. Mostly my online storage is .tar.gz.cpt files (gzipped tar files fed through ccrypt); everything I put on the cloud with no intention of sharing is encrypted. The brief discussion is at http://martesmartes.blogspot.com/2011/08/skydrivewindows-live-or-google.html

Since then, I have used Amazon's Cloud Drive for this, and it works fine. Since I almost always have Gmail open, though, Google is a tad more convenient. Also, I think Google's commitment to cross-platform interoperability is stronger than Amazon's, so I feel slightly more confident that I'll always be able to access the Google cloud.

So the score is Google Great, Amazon Good, Microsoft Bad. Today I finally successfully logged into my Verizon account; it only took 13 months to get in. I use FiOS at home, but don't use Windows much, and in the past Verizon has required installation of software on the home client to use a supposedly-web account. So I've been s.o.l. But today I got a notice from Verizon on changes to its privacy policy, and I was actually able to log in through a link in that e-mail. It was not smooth, as at one point I received an error message saying my phone number was invalid (I have no Verizon phone), but a shrug got me past that.

Verizon provides users with 2GB of space, but I cannot see that since some script at mylibrary/members/logincheck.aspx goes into an infinite loop, repeatedly reloading the same useless-looking page. So, as bad as Skydrive is, I have to rate Verizon's service as worse.

Skydrive/Windows Live or Google?

For the past month or so I've been using Microsoft's Skydrive to save files online for transfer among systems and off-site backup. I have a free gigabyte there. I've also been occasionally using Google Documents for this purpose. In each case, what I transfer is an encrypted compressed tarball, and I saw little difference in terms of performance or convenience.

Today I've decided to stop using Skydrive--it's too unreliable. Two of the last three times I've tried an upload (using Chrome from an Ubuntu box) the transfer to Skydrive has stalled. Each time, when giving it extra time, I've opened a tab and Windows Live informs me that if I leave the page the upload will be canceled. WTF? I was leaving that tab open and going somewhere else.

Until yesterday I would have said I like Skydrive, and that it's nowhere near as clunky as Outlook Live, which is very retro, and very limited in what it allows one to do. Now, I think I can say Microsoft online services are to be avoided.

Do these work better with IE on a Windows machine? Probably, but that defeats the purpose of a web-based service. Why might they work better with IE/Windows? Possibly ActiveX, and intrusive access to the PC.