yikes!

Seconding quester's yikes!

Hands-On: Kindle for iPhone spreads the e-reading love across platforms

Amazon rolled out Kindle for iPhone, a free download from the iTune app store that opens up Amazon's library of 240,000 e-books to iPhone users. We installed the app on an iPhone, and found it to be a useful enhancement to the Kindle 2 experience, as well as an excellent e-reader in its own right. With its "Whispersync," it cues up your book on the page you last read on the Kindle, and gives you access to all your bookmarks and highlights, too. It's a joy to use — a swipe to the side with your finger, and one page gracefully slides to the next in that unmistakable iPhone way.

Most of the Kindle features are all there, including text sizing, table of contents, and an unexpected enhancement not on the Kindle itself: a spot of color here and there. The app stops short of showing you the book's cover in color, though, perhaps in a reluctance to upstage the black-and-white Kindle itself.

This iPhone app not only enhances the Kindle, it might encourage more people to buy the E Ink reader with its much longer battery life, bigger screen and wireless book purchasing. Oh yeah, you can't buy books directly from Kindle for iPhone — you'll need to use the iPhone's Mobile Safari or a Mac or PC and then transfer the e-book over to Kindle for iPhone. Can't make it too easy, because even though Apple's apparently given up on selling books and book-reading hardware because of Steve Jobs's misguided pronouncement that "people don't read anymore" (despite statistics that show Americans reading more than ever), Apple's not stupid.

The screen on the Kindle is bad enough, I can't imagine reading on the iPhone.

Car question:

I was an idiot. I left my car running all night long in the driveway, around 12 hours or so. This morning, I went out and it was STILL running (thank goodness), although the gas gauge reads as far below empty as I've ever seen it.

I need to use the car this evening. Is it safe to start it up (assuming it starts) and drive it straight to the gas station? Should I first fill it with a gallon from a gas can? Might I have done any damage? This would be a good excuse to call CarTalk, but as I need it this evening, there's no time.

So far as I know, running out of gas doesn't hurt a car. At least, it seems a rite of passage with each car I've had. Rather than risk running out of gas in traffic, I'd walk over to the gas station on Highland and bring home a gallon/pint/liter/whatever.

So long as it didn't overheat, I don't expect any harm was done. A gallon of gas before heading to the gas station seems like a good precaution.

Jon, does your car have a "low fuel" light? If so, and if the light isn't on, you probably can drive another 20-40 miles.

People probably do drive for 12 hours in a row sometimes. Possibly wearing a diaper to assassinate their astronaut love rivals, but that's a digression.

I think you should call Car Talk retroactively, though. I mean, what a feather for your cap!

The gauge or other sensors are definitely not the most reliable way to judge if you have enough gas or not. This week's Top Gear ep had them driving from Basel, Switzerland to Blackpool on one tank of gas each, and all of them had run out (according to their gauges) an hour outside of Blackpool, but at least two of them made it to the illuminations with no problems.