Ray Hendon

Ultraportables, which include the newest incarnation of thin and light laptops, the Ultrabook, are thought by some to be a threat to tablet computers.  The instant-on capability of Ultrabooks are believed to be especially attractive to those who have been buying tablets because of this feature. 

It appears likely to me that Ultrabooks and other thin and light laptops will do well in the market place, especially when their prices fall a few hundred dollars.  But whether they will dampen any of the enthusiasm for tablets is another matter.  Personally I think both form factors satisfy separate needs for different users.

One feature of the new Ultrabooks that will help resolve the question is whether they will serve their owners as competent eReaders.  Surely there are some prospective buyers who would prefer to own only one device rather than two—but only if the one could do the work of two.  Can an Ultrabook do both heavy duty computing and convenient eReading?  Can one design satisfy both these needs?

Certainly a dedicated eReader or a tablet have some advantages over a laptop, even a thin and light one.  Reading electronic books, for example is probably done best by a device that closely emulates the look and feel of a book.  The popularity of the Kindle and Nook are thought to owe much of their success to their similarity to printed books.

How essential is the look and feel,  though, to those who read a lot.   This article takes a look at the possibility of using these new, thin and light computers as an eReader.

To put this question to a practical test, I loaded the top three eReading applications to an 11.6” screen Asus UX21 to see how they worked.  The applications chosen to test are:

Amazon’s Kindle App for PCs, Macs, iPad, iPhone and Android devices

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• Barnes and Noble’s Nook Application for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone  and Android devices
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• Sony’s Reader Application for PC, Mac and Android devices

  

To give you a taste of the difference, I have taken screen shots of random pages from eBooks on the three applications I mentioned.

Beginning with Amazon, a screen shot of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, is displayed in the two column format for laptop viewing. The screen shot is taken of the Kindle application for PCs.

Screen of Kindle Reader in Two Column Format

The Kindle app is widely praised for its versatility of layout options, underlining, comments, bookmarks and especially its syncing abilities.  This app also has go-to options that ease navigation, and dictionary lookup for a highlighted word.  All these features work on Ultrabooks. 

Amazon also has a user friendly policy of allowing you to direct any book in your library to be sent to any device on your registered list of devices. Amazon is indifferent as to which device or how many you use for any their electronic titles.  It treats them all the same and syncs them in an effortless way. The moment I registered my latest laptop, the Asus ZenBook UX21, all books in my library were immediately available for reading.

The strongest features of Amazon is, in my view, the ease of use of its website.  It is easy to find books, send them to the device of your choice, and generally navigate their vast site.

Equally strong is the selection of books, magazines and newspapers. They claim over a million titles, but that includes some categories such as “Singles” that represent a new class of literature that is generally shorter than a book but longer than an article. 

The worst feature of Amazon is that they insist on using a proprietary format for their eBook files.  It has an AZW extension and works only on Kindle software or hardware.  Although all the free sites I use give the option of downloading their books in the AZW format, in practice it is not terribly inconvenient.  Amazon also can read PDF files, and they will convert your Word for Windows documents to a format that allows you to put them in you Kindle library.

The other downside to Amazon is that they use DRM (digital rights management) on everything, so there is no cutting or pasting using anything in the AZW format. 

The Nook eReader software also provides a good reader experience. The screen shot below is from one of their pre-DRM works. Don’t be fooled by the small typeface. My screen capture utility shrunk it because the Nook takes up more of the horizontal space of the computer screen than the Kindle reader, so it has to cut the size down to fit within the pasted space. In practice, the Nook screen is as readable as any other.

Screen shot from the Nook Reader using the dual pane format

All the formatting and user options are available for the Nook reader–font size, margins, highlighting, lookup, go-to. And the B&N syncing feature is excellent between devices, and they offer their reader software app for a wide range of devices.

As far as eReading goes, it is hard to find much to prefer of B&N over Amazon or vice versa.  Both are excellent and have almost identical features.

The same is true for selection of books. B&N’s inventory is huge, and they have a good selection of free public domain books—as good as or better than Amazon’s.

Nook uses the ePub format, as does Sony, although both will read many other formats as well.  They do not read Amazon’s proprietary AZW file format, however.

Something of an oddity: The Nook reader treats all ePub software as DRM protected, so they do not allow cutting or pasting of non-DRM books.  Even on the iPad, whose own iReader app allows cutting and pasting of non-DRM protected material the  Nook does not.

Sony’s reader app provides a good reading experience. The screen shot below is from an ePub file of a non-DRM version of Sherlock Holmes.

Screen of Sony Reader’s Dual Column Layout

As with the Nook, the Sony Reader software uses more of the landscape screen to display its materiel than the Kindle app, so my clipping software has to reduce it to fit the pasting space. But Sony gives one plenty of formatting options and page control.

Sony lags both Amazon and B&N with book selection and syncing ability.  Their books are generally priced high; they have few free books, and their selection doesn’t match its two larger competitors.

Sony makes its reader software available to fewer devices—no iPad, no iPhone, no BlackBerry, for example.  They have syncing available to the three types of devices they support, but I have not tried it personally.

I like the Sony reader app for its ability to read almost any kind of document regardless of format, except, of course, Kindle documents. I will always have their app installed on my computers in case a particular book is not available in the Kindle format.  And they allow cut and paste options for non-protected books.

I find all three of the reader software about equally enjoyable to use. The differences in layout and options are not terribly important. I find I use the Kindle app more than the others because I find more books on their site I like, and I like to sync the books among all my devices. Still, I maintain active use of the Nook and the Sony Readers.

Summary:

First, the reality of the size and convenience of specialized eReaders and tablets makes it clear that they have the advantage. It is not possible for an ultrabook, weighing in at 2.9 pounds, to be as convenient to use as a 7-inch tablet or even the pound and a half iPad.

However, it is also inconvenient to carry two devices if one will do. So, there will be occasions when a thin and light laptop could be a suitable substitute for a dedicated eReader or tablet. 

At bottom, all of these tested apps work well on an Ultrabook. And they would work just as well with the software from other vendors such as Kobo or Blio. If your eReading preferences include comic books, magazines or children’s books, then you might like a specialty reader designed for the formats unique to these publications.

While all the eReading apps work well on an Ultrabook, it still may not be your preferred way of reading electronic texts.  But they are completely usable as a primary or secondary eReader. The choice of one over another is more dependent on which site you prefer to use because of its particular strengths than to the characteristics of their eReades.

From my experience, I have given away my Kindle reader. I simply do not want to carry another device with me in my travels. Now that I have a 7-inch tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, I use it as my eReader of choice because of its lightness and ease of holding in one hand. I use the iPad for e-reading infrequently, but there are occasions when it comes in handy. Its weight, though, makes it a second choice, especially for long reading times. 

I rarely use a PC or my ultraportable for reading, but if I do it will be on the ultraportable.  Its lightness and instant-on feature does make it a better choice than the older, heavier laptops, but it is not as convenient to carry as a tablet.

An ultraportable may not be your favorite way of reading electronic texts, but it serves as a completely satisfying vehicle for reading if you want to carry only one device with you or if an occasion arises when it is all you have to use.

Ray Hendon

eBooks have been rewriting the rules about how, when and where we read. The convenience and low costs of reading in electronic formats has made headway among the reading public, and In terms of book sales, eBooks are now a major force in today’s market.

But it has been only recently that America’s public libraries have joined the revolution, but now they have.  11,000 public libraries across the U.S.A. now allow their members to borrow electronic editions of books, and a few weeks ago Amazon joined the chorus and allowed its Kindle readers to borrow from public libraries.

Early Friday, about 9:00am, I made a trip to the local Lake Charles library, filled out a form for a library card, and about half an hour later, sitting at my desktop, I borrowed my first eBook, John Grisham’s The Confession: A Novel.  The entire process was painless and simple; this article is an account of how to do it.

First, one does not have to have a Kindle reader to use Amazon’s borrowing service.   I have a Kindle, but for almost all of my eReading I use the Kindle application  on my iPad or Galaxy Tab 7 rather than the Kindle device.  It is too easy to read on my other devices that I happen to have with me, so my old Kindle mostly gathers dust these days. 

If you do not have a Kindle Reader, just download the Kindle Reader Application through Amazon for your desktop or laptop or through the Android Market if you use Android, or Apple’s App Store if you have an iPhone or iPad.

Free Kindle readers are available Here for the devicdes shown above.

Once your account is set up with Amazon, you are ready to proceed, assuming, of course, that you are a member of your local library.  If not, then join and get your member number.      Also, since the lending is done on-line, you must get a PIN number at the same time.  When these two things done, you are ready to proceed to the next step.

The second step is to get the appropriate software from site that handles electronic lending for all the libraries that lend eBooks—Overdrive (Click Here).  This is a great convenience to have a professional firm to provide a consistent interface to all public library eLending.

Once on the Overdrive page you will notice a box on the top right of the screen:  You can see that the service is available for desktops, laptops as well as many mobile devices.  Don’t confuse the Mac software for what you will need for the iPad or iPhone.  If you want to read on you home computers and on your mobile devices, you will need the software install on each device you plan to use.

Once the download is completed and installed, you are ready to borrow a library book on your Kindle reading app or your iPad/iPhone Overdrive app.  Sign on to Overdrive with your library membership number and enter your PIN, and you will then be able to search for the title or author of your choice.

When you are signing up with Overdrive you will select what lending period you would like. I chose the 14-day option. If I finish reading the borrowed book before that time, I can return it so it will go back into circulation sooner.

I noticed that the Lake Charles library (Calcasieu Public Library) they often have only one digital copy of a title.  The book publishers are holding the feet of the public libraries to the fire and require that they can only lend the number of books they have purchased.  So, if it is checked out you may put it on hold so you will be notified when it become available.   

With the Kindle, you chose Kindle as your reader on the Overdrive site, so when you select the title you want to borrow and continue with checkout, the Overdrive site lines up your download with Amazon’s website and switches your browser to that site so you can tell Amazon to which device you want your copy to be downloaded.    I chose the Galaxy Tab 7, and by the time I turned it on and synced it with Amazon it was in my archives files.  I simply clicked on the archived copy and the download was completed and then appeared on my Kindle library, ready to read.

For the iPad/iPhone device, rather than choosing Kindle, you need to choose Adobe ePub format which is the DRM enabled ePub format.  In this case, the file of the borrowed book is downloaded directly into Overdrives reader application, and the icon is displayed on the iPad’s/iPhone’s screen.  You simply open the reader app and the books you have borrowed appear in the library, ready to be read.

This same procedure will work with Nook and Sony readers, but they may also have their own way of handling borrowed book that allows you to use their proprietary reader apps in place of the Overdrive reader.Borrowing for these devices will be covered in a later piece.

Below is a video that goes through the process for Kindle.  If anything is unclear about the process, it may help to clear it up.

Video on Borrowing eBooks from you Local Library

Good reading.

Sony Insider reports that Sony is working on a new device that will run the Chrome operating system.  According to the report, the new device will be patterned after the Chrome “. . . Cr-48 reference design with roughly the same dimensions and keyboard but an oh-so-slightly smaller 11.6-inch screen, and NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 running the show alongside 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage. Sony’s also shooting for eight hours of battery life, and a weight of just 2.2 pounds. “

For those of you who have forgotten the experimental Chrome CR-48, this link will take you to Engadget’s initial review it.  For my review, based on specs and other reviews Click Here.

The same report also suggests that Sony is working on a “Hybrid PC” with the following configuration: “. . . at a thin-and-light Core i7 notebook with an incredible 8 to 16.5 hours of battery life, Intel Thunderbolt and an internal SSD, all of which plugs into a dock of some sort that adds a Blu-ray burner and external graphics (by AMD) for gaming and multimedia.”

Both these devices seem to be Sony’s effort to leap frog the competition in two new areas:  Cloud devices, (CR-48) and a new ultraportable that competes with the Apple Mac Book Air.

For a Chrome OS device, although the reference design device received a great deal of press attention, there has been little written about it since.  It fell off everyone’s radar. 

This does not mean that manufacturers  are not working on their own versions of this radical new design, but no one is talking about it if they are.  A 2.2lb laptop would be welcome to those who need portability, although the lack of a strong central processing unit would limit its attraction.  I will be watching carefully if the business community takes an interest in it.  But, it seem to me to be a long-shot for Sony.

The ultraportable with new innards, though, seems more mainstream.  Thin and light is making a strong showing now among those who must carry their computing power with them in their frequent travels.  The Mac Book Air has been popular in spite of its $1000+ price, and other manufacturers are increasing their offerings in this new class of device.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about eReading on the various operating systems that power many of the new tablets coming to market this year.  Some fear that the larger screens and new operating systems will not be able to read electronic texts of the major vendors.

Each of the major new tablets is reviewed below for its ability to read Kindle, Nook and Sony electronic formats.

Android Tablets

There are four Android tablets that are either out now or will be soon.

· The Motorola Xoom is on sale now at Best Buy and at Verizon stores.

· The LG G-Slate is expected this month.

· Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn’t have a date set, yet.

· Acer has its Iconia Tab A500 set for a date sometime in April.

All are slated to run Android 3.0, the Honeycomb version, and the first Android system made for large screen formats. The new version of Android is a source of much of this confusion. Earlier versions of Android were written for cell phones with their 3 and 4-inch screens. It appears that some believe that the new software will not work with the older eReader applications that were written with small screens in mind. The pictures below show the Kindle apps that Amazons offers its customers.

Note that the second icon from the left, the Kindle for Android, is depicted as a smartphone. This is probably the origin of some of the confusion. Android versions from the first through version 2.2.1 were written for this size screen. However, the new Android 3,0 scales these apps to larger screens with good results.  The problem of clunky graphics that plagued the iPad for apps that were brought over from the iPhone, are largely avoided by Android. (Update 4/23–Amazon announced a few days ago that they were re-writing their Kindle App for Adroid 3.0.  So any problems with the larger screens will be addressed with the new release. RH)

The Galaxy Tab 7 uses the older version Android eReading apps, and the Kindle eReader works well on it. The same is true for the new Honeycomb versions of tablets. I checked Motorola’s Xoom yesterday and the Kindle app scales well on the larger 10.1-inch screen. I can say the same for an independent eReading app from Aldiko. The reading page looks fine on both apps and all the font and brightness controls available on the small-screens  work as they are supposed to.

The only drawback to the scaling is that when the Xoom is turned horizontally, neither the Kindle app not the Aldiko switches to a dual-pane display—this feature isn’t available to the small-screen versions of eithr reader.  I suspect that Amazon will make this adjustment quickly, however. They made it for the iPad within the first month it it going one sale.

I mention this because on wide screens a dual- pane division is helpful to the reader. Long lines are hard to follow, and a dual pane window solves the problem nicely.

The absence of a dual-pane switch tells me that Amazon and Barnes and Noble will most likely rewrite their reader software for the larger Android screen.

The picture below is of devices for Nook eReaders.

They match up well with Amazon with the exception of a Windows Phone 7 app, but that will probably have one soon. The scalable properties of the Nook are the same as for Amazon and Aldiko, so Nook owners need have no fear of buying an Android tablet.

Other Operating Systems: HP’s WebOS and BlackBerry’s QNX

Kobo is the only eReader app available for the Palm/HP WebOS. The Palm Pre is shown on the far right in the picture below.

The Pre runs the Palm OS that HP now owns.  HP has enhanced the OS and blown it up for the larger tablet screens. It isn’t known how the older apps will scale to the new 10.1-inch dimensions of the HP Touch Pad’s. But I cannot imagine HP not taking care of this issue before releasing their new tablet, scheduled sometime in the summer of this year.

I feel confident that HP’s new WebOS will have a full complement of reader apps when the time comes for them to go on sale. HP has too much credibility in the industry not to be able to convince Amazon and others to build reader apps for its tablet and smartphones.

RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook has several options of bringing their existing eReaders to the new seven-inch platform. First, with their huge installed base of BlackBerry smartphones, no book seller is going to be caught without a new app ready for it the day it is introduced. (Rumor has it that April 10^th will be the day).

RIM has also said that the Playbook will be able to run legacy apps from its earlier OS days, so existing apps from Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, for example, would be able to run on the new OS. There is also the real possibility that the new OS of BlackBerry will be able to run Android apps. Company executives have dropped the hint that they are considering making it compatible with Android —their hardware inside the tablet is certainly capable of being programmed to do it, and I would not be surprised to see it happen.  (Update 4/23–the only eReading app ready on the day of its release was Kobo.  I noticed the Kobo icon on the home screen when I checked the Playbook out at my local Best Buy store.  Kobo will read ePub files, so early adopters of the Playbook will have plenty of reading material available from day one.  RH)

Windows Tablets

On the few tablets that run Windows, all of the major booksellers already have software for it.  If it runs on your PC, it will run on a tablet.

This is not true for Windows Phone 7, however.  The eReader apps will have to be re-written, but that is already underway. Kindle had their app pre-installed on Windows Phone 7 smartphones the day they were introduced. Also, there are no expectations that this new operating system will be ready for a tablet until sometime in 2012.

Whether they will be as easily scalable as Android, though, we cannot know for certain until Microsoft steps forward with more details.

Overall it looks good for those who enjoy reading on electronic devices. The options are growing daily, and many of the new tablets have features that exceed what we have come to expect from laptops and the iPad. With the syncing ability of the major vendors of electronic titles, it is easy to switch devices without losing your place and without having to buy new copies.

As more magazines and newspapers become available in an electronic format, we can expect more and more time spent reading our favorite material whenever and wherever we happen to be. This is the liberating power of the new technology.

The netbook-looking device you see above is neither a netbook nor a laptop, though it has a screen large enough to qualify. Its basic computer and storage abilities are not robust enough to meet a laptop’s criteria. Off-line computing on this guy will leave many users howling at the moon.

The crux of this gizmo (touted as revolutionary) is that it is a terminal, connected to the internet rather than to a mainframe. The news, though, is that this black and skinny little gadget doesn’t do much of anything else.  It is the slave; the internet is its master:  If it needs to add one plus one, it must rely on a computer somewhere on the internet to do that simple chore and then send the information back.  A dumb-terminal, in an older vernacular, comes closer to the concept of Chrome.

The CR-48 is not entirely dumb, however. It has native on-board computing power of a modest amount. The Intel Atom processor inside provides less than powerhouse functionality, but it is capable of doing some off-line chores.

But to do critical tasks off-line would require it to bulk up too much: more CPU memory, more storage memory, more weight, and more money. The idea of a terminal is to off-load all the storage burdens placed on in when native programs are installed. Off-loading allows the Chrome to be more nimble in doing other things and be lighter, cheaper and faster at the same time.

Critical Weakness

To use the CR-48, you need to be connected, and your connection needs to be good—always good.  In real life the internet is almost always available—but not always.  Internet connections are far from perfect, especially if you move around.  Connections can break down in local areas for hours or more.   Remote locations have limited signal strength or none, etc.

This single fact of unreliability marks the limits of the CR-48, and brings its level of use well below that which is required and demanded by many mobile business clients.

For those who intend to use it for less than critical tasks, then the equation changes and the balance may shift to its favor.  Both tablets and net books are less than all things to all people. Yet both have found a viable niche in the larger market for strong mobile devices with a commodious screen. These instruments are sometimes alternatives to other computers.  But often they are a supplement and enhancement to existing computers. The iPad and netbooks do not always compete with larger systems as much as compliment them.

The task of Chrome is to find its niche, and this process will probably take a couple of new iterations before it is completed. Chrome needs to make room for off-line computing, but the tradeoffs of this move are unflattering.

My imagination is too limited to see how they will attempt to solve this Rubric’s cube of a puzzle of being more while at the same time being less. I am skeptical of the concept, but I am probably more likely than not to be wrong. The CR-48 is interesting, both in concept and in design. It is a return to the yesteryear of brainy, brawny mainframes and dumb terminals. It worked then. I just don’t know about now.

Review

Cnet got an early look here. But this is not a review:  The piece lists the specs, with few other comments.

• 12.1-inch display
• Full-size keyboard
• Oversize clickable touchpad
• World-mode 3G
• 802.11n Wi-Fi
• Eight-plus hours of use
• Eight-plus days of standby
• Webcam
• SSD hard drive

PC World has a more conventional review after a brief session with the new device here. Edward Albro is the reviewer, and he is candid about his experience. He mentions nine apps that come pre-loaded on the CR-48, and has valuable comments about how they work.  It is easy to see an eReader as an embedded application that would allow off-line reading.

There are other reviews, but everyone has caught on to the limits of the concept.  There is much water to flow under this bridge before it is ready to complete the revolution it promises.

From engadget, the following quotation: “About a year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said he believed general-purpose gadgets were the future, and dedicated devices such as the Kindle were on their way out. Early numbers suggest he may be right.”

A marketing research firm, ChangeWave, tabulated results from the 2,800 people who responded  to their survey of eReading.  The results, shown in the graphs below, indicate that the iPad is rapidly gaining on Kindle as the eReader of choice. 32 percent said they used an iPad as an e-reader, while 47 percent said they used a Kindle.

If the survey results are truly representative of all those who use eReaders, the iPad is headed for domination of this market by the middle of next year.  This is a phenomenal rate of a market shift in response to the iPad and, probably, by implications, all color multipurpose tablets.  E-Ink, again, if these results are a true indicator of the buying public, is soon to find itself relegated to the back burners.

ChangeWave also asked their respondents about their plans for purchases of eReaders within the next  30 days: 42 percent said they were likely to buy an iPad, while 33 percent said they’d probably buy a Kindle.  These results are graphed in the second chart, below.

The story doesn’t end here, though.  The repercussions for the sale of eBooks, supposedly what they all are aiming for, promises to help sooth the pain for Amazon.  Its eReader software for the iPad and Android devices continues in widespread use, so the sale of eBooks by Amazon will probably continue prospering, regardless of the fate of its E-Ink reader.  According to research firm Cowen, Amazon sales through the eBook store were on track to grow 195 percent to $701 million this year.

The evidence on the side of Amazon’s eBook software, however, is clouded by the revelation from ChangeWave that 60% of iPad customers whom they surveyed are downloading apps through the iBooks store while only 31% go for the Kindle app.

This particular statistic may or may not be stable over time.  New owners of iPads are likely to use the iBooks store and its eReader more at first, but as they gain experience, and sample the virtues of Amazon’s larger library and well-functioning reader app, they may migrate more to Amazon’s side.  At least anecdotal evidence supports this interpretation of the maturing process of eReading on the iPad.

According to the AllThingsD, “Credit Suisse analystSpencer Wang predicted earlier this year that Amazon’s share of the e-book market will shrink from 90 percent to 35 percent by 2015.

There are a couple of other factors to consider before jumping to any of these apocalyptic conclusions.  First, the survey was carried out before the advent of the Nook Color and many of the current crop of color tablets hit the market.  This dynamic is unaccounted for in their results.

Secondly, the study was done before Google announced its intentions to bring their eBook site live in December of this year.  That would probably indicate a further eroding of Amazon’s market share of eBook sales.

One conclusion I draw from this research report is that the eReading market is undergoing a rapid change in response to new technology.  Any firm that stays too long with its tried and true solutions will likely find the market quickly moving away from them.  In this industry, what was true yesterday is likely to be untrue tomorrow.

All four major of the major retailers of electronic books provide free software for reading their titles on mobile devices.  These applications extend the ability to read well beyond the proprietary reader hardware they sell, and give their owners a flexibility in what, when and where they read that was unimaginable a few years ago.

I will describe and review the mobile offerings for all four:  Amazon’s Kindle Reader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Sony’s Reader and Borders’ Kobo.  There are also other mobile and desktop readers, but for this article, the focus is on the main players.

Amazon’s Kindle

Amazon leads the field by providing mobile software for six mobile devices now, with an additional one for Windows Phone 7 promised “soon.”  Their list of supported devices:

Windows PCs

Macintosh Computers

iPhone

Android Phone

BlackBerry

iPad

Windows Phone 7 –  soon. 

An eighth device, the Galaxy Tab is also supported, but the software comes installed.

Barnes and Noble’s Nook

B&N has largely kept pace with Amazon in making their reader software available of on mobile and fixed devices.  There are currently six supported :

Windows PCs

Macintosh Computers

iPhone

iPad

Blackberry

Android Phones

Sony Reader Editions

Sony lags the other eReader sellers.  They currently support two devices, with two more promised by December.

Windows PCs

Macintosh Computers (desktops, laptops)

  Promised in December:

    iPhone

    Android Phones

Borders’ Kobo

Borders has done a good job in keeping pace with its major rivals.  It partnered with Kobo and now has its software readers available for the same devices and B&N:

PC

Macintosh

iPhone

Blackberry

Android.

I have installed, subscribed and use all of the above apps except for Mac and iPhone, and while they all do the same thing, more or less, there are differences, especially on PCs and Macs.  On mobile devices, however, there is little to separate them, since the real estate on phones is so limited.  I can’t tell the difference in any of them while reading on my Android phone

The story is a little different on PCs and Macs, but even here, there isn’t a great deal of difference.  They are all competent, and they all make it as easy as possible to get new and existing purchases into your reading library.

As for which one is preferred, the obvious first choice is to get the app that matches your dedicated reading device, if you have one.  I bought a Kindle early this year, so I got their app for my desktop, laptop and netbook. When I bought an iPad the Kindle app was my first download.  I bought a Droid at about the same time, and the first app for it was from Kobo, so I began with it and added Kindle a couple of weeks later when it was released.

If you are looking for the “best” app, I cannot name it.  The look and feel is different even within the same app on different devices.  On my Windows machines, I actually prefer reading with the Sony app.  It reads just about every format available (except Kindle, of course) and its navigation and font control are handy—not elaborate, but enough to give me control I want. I do not use my PCs much for reading, though, especially since the Kindle and iPad came along.

Most of the apps are good on the iPad, but I generally prefer the Kindle, especially now that they offer two-column reading in the landscape mode.  The Nook reader is excellent on the iPad, too.  Kobo does not do two-up columns in landscape, and it is slow to load and a tad unreliable for some titles, so I almost never use it on my iPad.  But, on my Droid, Kobo is a good as any.

The last thing to consider is the book selection, and here the winners are Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  Both have a great selection of free and not-free books. Both are easy to buy and download; their syncing is good.

One last point about book availability.  Most of my electronic reading is of the classics, although I buy a stray new title ever now and then.  As for the classics, all are free at Gutenberg or Manybooks.net, and all are downloadable in virtually any format your want. 

Amazon and B&N also have a good selection of free titles.  Sony does not, and Borders is somewhere in between—it has some, but not as many as the two leaders.

Whichever reader you chose, it is wonderful to have your entire library with you wherever you may be.  I do not always carry my iPad or Kindle, but I do always carry my Droid, so it is handy to be able to read a few minutes while waiting on an appointment or other occasion when I have a few minutes to spare.

All are free to try, so don’t be bashful in trying them out.

Electronic reading, variously known as e-reading or eReading, has now added another nomenclature to our language: apps book.  This name represents a new form of written and multimedia expression, and though it is derived from an eBook, it goes beyond that into an entirely new realm of reader-author interaction.

As a general topic I have been writing about the new forms writing will be taking for some time.  Last week’s article, Digi-Novels (Click here to read) and a News of the Day entry on October 15 on self publishing options that have opened up lately, are examples.  The Future of eReading (Click here to read) is another article that touches on this subject.

But, apps book is a turn I did not anticipate.  Roughly, an apps book begins with an electronic edition of a title—nothing new in that.  What sets this new medium apart, however, is that it is sold (or given away) as an application that will run on an iPad, iPhone and, perhaps eventually, an Android phone.

Secondly, the app has in it ways that fans of the author of the book can discuss the book among themselves, and an ability of the author to enter into the discussions.  All these activities take place inside the application.  There is no need to jump around from browser to app or eBook to email.  These features are embedded into the app.

The inventor of this new medium is a Brooklyn NY publisher, Electric Literature. Electric Literature was founded by Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, who met as Brooklyn College M.F.A. students in 2006.

The book featured in their first app book offering is based on the book Adderall Diaries, by Stephen Elliott.  Here is what Mr. Elliott has to saywhat  about the venture:

“The Adderall Diaries,” his “memoir of moods, masochism and murder” based on his childhood in Chicago group homes, which was published in hardcover last year by Graywolf Press.

But Mr. Elliott says he has good reasons for producing his own iPad app, separate and apart from the e-book version of “Adderall Diaries” that is for sale, say, for the Kindle or the iPad reader from Apple. But those reasons are not the artistic, meta-fictional ones you might suspect — you know, so that when characters enter a bar, you suddenly hear music and a glass dropped by the waiter, or more fancifully, you can make them turn around and go somewhere else.

Rather than exploit the multimedia potential of an app book, Mr. Elliott said he wanted to include tools that cater to a special group: Stephen Elliott readers.

“As an author, I want you to have the best experience,” he said. “People want to talk about the books they are reading with other people. Why, with everything we know, wouldn’t you include a chat room with your e-book?”

Here is a link to the full NY Times article.

Who knows where this will lead.  The young firm that wrote the code of the new app has also developed another application that allows authors to put their work into this new format.  The fee starts at $600.

I certainly don’t know how this will play out.  But I can say that publishing is undergoing a radical restructuring, and much if not all of the restructuring is coming from new entrants into the industry. I am excited about what comes next.

Electronic reading is revolutionizing more than just what, when or where we read, although these changes are profoundly significant in themselves.  But the change doesn’t stop with those who read electronic media.  Another equally profound change is taking place on the supply side—the publishers and authors.

One manifestation of this change is the development of the Digi-novel.  With printed books, novels contained text, text and more text.  Some have illustrations and photographs, but all the visual effects were static.  They didn’t move, they didn’t update and their entertainment quotient was low.  Color was confined largely to children’s books—it’s expensive to print in multi-colors.

With a Digi-novel, all that has changed.  The text is still there, but the story is supplemented with visual effects.  A quotation from an article today in the New York times lays out the explanation.

On this week’s New York Times Tech Talk podcast, J.D. Biersdorfer talks to Anthony Zuiker, the creator of the hit TV show “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” about his latest digi-novel, “Dark Prophecy.”

What’s a digi-novel? As Mr. Zuiker explains, it’s “the best of publishing, motion picture and social communities all kind of meshed into one experience.” Every 25 pages, readers get a code they can take to a Web site, where they can watch a video segment that bridges the chapters.

An iPad app with interactive features is expected next month, and this will give the publishing industry a large and growing audience for the new way of publishing.

If the eReading public responds to this enhanced presentation, then the adoption of this technical wizardry will be accelerated and expanded.  It will be accelerated because other writers will be forced to adopt the new medium in order to stay competitive.  And it will be expanded because more and more publishers of different types of reading material will join the revolution—they will have to.

Text books, which employ color more than fiction or essays, will likely be an early mover.  Video clips of historical interest for history books, animated graphics for mathematics and other scientific text books seem natural for the effects of digital printing.  Animation with full audio for children’s books should not be long in adopting the new medium.

In other words, digital publishing will extend far past novels.  We will see digi-texts, digi-stories, digi-essays, digi-manuals, digi-instructions.  It is beginning to happen because the power of electronics make it possible.  And the needs of readers for the convenience of taking a thousand or so books and magazines with them wherever they go can and will be satisfied.

I don’t have any doubt that this scenario will play out in this manner.  The detractors will eventually fall by the wayside, as they always have.  The new technology will triumph over the old, and our learning, entertainment and way of disseminating information will be changed for the better and forever.

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by Ray Hendon

Microsoft’s new operating system for mobile devices, Windows Phone 7, has yet to be released.  But, there are test models of phones running it.  This video tests the new OS running on an LG Panther.  LG will probably be one of the first smart phone manufacturers to put a WP7 model on the street.

The test is done using build # 64.14 of WP7 and it running against a Nexus One with Android 2.2, and, of course, a new iPhone 4.

A brief summary of the results is surprising to me.  The WP7 phone is fast, multitasks, has sooth finger operations, including all the pinch, expand options.  It also scrolls without the patches that plague the iPhone 4 and the iPad.

The worst feature is the dull looking screen.  Note the picture above, the WP7 phone is in the middle.  I don’t know the cause of the lack of brightness, and he reviewer doesn’t mention it.  I hope this is corrected in the production model.

To see the video, follow the link below:

Windows Phone 7 compared with Android and iPhone

The test did not include an eReader, although there is a rumor that a new one will be included on the new phone.  It was also praised as being exceptionally good and is expected to be one of the best yet.

The test was conducted at PocketNow.

The finished product will probably be introduced around September 28.

The picture above is a promo shot of the LG C900, which is expected to be the device that is first to market with WP7.