Tag Archives: Kindle

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I Bought an iPhone3GS and Now I Want to Read

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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!

Digital Publishing, E-Books, New Releases, On the Web, Publishing Industry News, Technology

Barnes & Noble eReader for Mac – My Thoughts

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So I downloaded the free Barnes & Nobel eReader 1.0 this morning, to check it out. I’m on a Mac and was glad to see that B&N rolled out versions of the readers for iPhone, Blackberry, PC and Mac all at the same time. That’s a good move.

The first thing I tried to do was open some pdf’s, mobi, epub and prc files…

Continue reading Barnes & Noble eReader for Mac – My Thoughts →

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Poor Kindle-Laden Students

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I read this post this morning and thought about students being forced to use Amazon’s new Kindle DX. While I don’t shy away from eBooks and think the Kindle DX is a step in the right direction for textbooks and newspapers, I really think this is a bad move, for one major reason. That is usability.

It’s true that the screen is bigger and as a dedicated reading device the Kindle is pretty good. But reading texts for school is a TOTALLY different type of reading and the Kindle is only going to slow students down and tick them off.

I mean have you ever tried to cross reference something between two separate works on a Kindle? It’s the worst. The device is just not made for easy navigation. Even if you have the forsite to use the bookmark feature and know exactly where the info you need is (remember no page numbers) and you are only using two books for your work, it could take you almost a full minute to close a book, navigate to the other book, find reference, make a note and navigate back and load original text. Killer!

That little flip-flop between titles would take seconds with two books open side-by-side on a desk. The Kindle is just not built with usability in mind. It’s built to deliver books and ease eye-strain. So until they fix the navigation and allow multiple texts to be loaded into the RAM all at once, I’m afraid it’s going to be slow going.

I’m all for saving the environment and spreading the eBook love, but not at the expense of time and productivity.

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Large-format Kindle this Wednesday?

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Amazon announced they will hold an event this Wednesday (May 6th:10 a.m.) in New York. Most are expecting the unveiling of a large-format e-reader geared towards newspaper subscriptions. Which would be a smart move for Amazon, as many newspapers aren’t happy with the Kindle and its inability to serve up newspaper styles content and ads as the industry needs. That’s a fact that has many of the major newspaper chains partnering with other e-reader device manufacturers to develop their own e-ink devices.

A trend that Amazon would no doubt like to curb with its potential to cut into it’s growing revenue stream of (on avergae) $14 a month per newspaper subscription.