Tag Archives: download

I Bought an iPhone3GS and Now I Want to Read

Not sure if you looked up in the sky last night, but a rare astronomical event occurred as planets aligned with soon-to-expire cellphone contracts and only a 5-minute wait at the local Apple store… so after many months of waiting… I finally got my iPhone. I spent the evening getting my gMail and Google Apps affairs in order, downloaded a cool typographic wallpaper and now I’m ready to read.

I haven’t bought a book yet, but I grabbed these iPhone apps and a few freebie books to page? flick? thumb? through. What I’m asking is… what reader/app am I missing? I’m coming late to the game and I want to start with everything in the arsenal and then weed out the slackers. So, my iPhone book reading slate on Day One is…

Barnes & Noble Store
Barnes & Noble eReader
Kindle for iPhone
Stanza
Fictionwise’s eReader
Shortcovers
BeamItDown book of Benjamin Button
Iceberg book of Jame’s Patterson’s Maximum Ride

Of course, some of these are eReaders and others are books as apps, which should be fun to try and see what bells and whistles are available. So let me know of any free or paid apps that I need to add. True, I am always looking for good reads, but this time I’m looking for who is getting right and who is presenting the best reading experience on the iPhone platform. Though not my usual genre, I hear I need to check out some Harlequin material, as they have been leaders in the digital space for over a year now, but what else am I missing?

This is going to be fun!

Nine Free Audiobooks at B&N store

Barnes & Noble opened their Audiobook store this weekend. As a promo they are offering nine titles as free MP3 downloads. I noticed that each title is listed at a penny a piece, but when I clicked through, the total was zero dollars at the checkout stage.  You do still have to enter a valid credit card to get your free audiobook, though.

These nine title will be available until 3 a.m. on May 16th.

Mobile Books Climbing the Ladder

The folks over at the O’Reilly RADAR blog crunched some numbers and churned out some graphs. With the iPhone Apps store about to sell its one billionth app download,  the “books” category is by far and wide the largest mover and shaker. It saw 279% growth over the past week and while sporting only 11% of the Apps Store’s total offerings. Granted it’s not as popular as the Games and Entertainment categories and the growth probably has a lot to do with the Kindle App, but with all of the geo-synching-motion-controlling-gesture-detecting-music-blasting features that the iPhone can do… look what all those iPhone owners are wanting to explore on their gadgets… books.

Bookmobile in Birmingham

digital bookmobile

The Parnasus on Wheels of the new millinium is making a stop in Birmingham today, Thursday, October 30th. The big Digital Bookmobile truck will be open from 10am-4pm at the downtown Central branch. The 18-wheeler will have demonstration stations and computers set-up to allow browsers the chance to learn about e-books, mobile books, digital audio books, etc.

None of these products are new to the internet crowd. But the part that’s really cool is that the event is designed to highlight and introduce many of our local library’s own digital download and media services. I plan on swinging by to see what’s new!

ED: Thanks to shadowhelm for catching my scheduling snafu. The Bookmobile is in town Thursday, October 30th. Sorry for the confusion.