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It's a long, cold winter, but don't worry, Spring will be here before you know it & it will be time for Beer Can Racing!   We will have a Beer Can Fleet Meeting Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 1930.  Purpose of the meeting will be to discuss the schedule and review/revise the racing instructions.   All interested members are invited to attend.

The 2010 Sequoia racing season continued on Sat., Dec. 5 with Winter #2.  Once again the popularity of SYC Winter Racing was demonstrated with 16 boats starting the race, including one boat from Coyote Pt. Yacht Club.  There were 13 boats in the spinnaker division and 3 in the non-spinnaker division.

The race also demonstrated just how fickle the winds can be during the winter series.  The journey to the starting line was under overcast skies with promising winds of about 10 knots, gusting to 13.  This led to a decision to extend the race from 4.8 to 7.1 miles.  Five minutes after the change, the wind died to about 2 knots and the first start was postponed.  The race finally started at 13:15.

Although the wind was light the rest of the afternoon, the SYC racers were not to be stopped and 13 of the 16 boats finished as the sun was setting in the west.  Those with later finish times were treated to a first view of the boats decked out with holiday lights on their way back to the harbor.

What is an e-Book?
An e-Book is a book in computer format to be read on an electronic device.  The most commonly found e-Book is an Adobe Portable Document File (PDF). The problem with PDF is the lack of any digital rights management (DRM).  To address this issue, there has been many e-Book readers developed for the PC over the years.  Some of the earlier ones include MSeReader and Adobe e-Book Reader, both ca. 2000. There were also e-Readers developed for smart devices. The biggest issue has always been howDRM is managed.  I've lost access to many books because I can't remember which credit card I purchased the book under, which is how they verified ownership of a book.

e-Book Readers
You don't have to have a special device to read e-Books. There are software available to allow you to read e-Books on your home computer,SmartPhone, iPod Touch.  More on that in a moment.

There have been several attempts at mass marketing portable e-Book readers in the past, including Franklin's e-BookMan (1999-2002). In the past two years, there has been a lot of buzz around Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Readers, and most recently, Sony's nook.  There are several other smaller players.  Just what are these devices and why are they so special?

Features of an e-Book Device
Current generation of e-Book Devices have the following features: