Category Archives: ebook
Stumble Upon
Del.icio.us
Buzz
iBooks on iPhone: What Apple Needs to Fix
Calibre: iBooks’ Ideal Desktop Companion – Convert and Organize Your eBooks
Stanza Updates for the iPad
Stanza Updates for the iPad is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Stanza’s Options and Reading Screen
Lexcycle, acquired last year by Amazon, released a version of their popular iPhone/iPod touch eReader Stanza for the iPad last week. Stanza was my eReader of choice on my iPhone and I’m thrilled it’s finally been ported to the iPad. It’s a terrific reader that’s compatible with a wide variety of different formats. Before Stanza for iPad was released, I used Calibre to convert my eBooks to iBooks’ required ePub format. Stanza allows users to read in a whole bunch of formats, and the 3.0 release adds PDF, DjVu, and Comic Book Archive support to Stanza’s already extensive library of readable files.
Stanza includes the most customizable reading interface I’ve seen on a mobile application. It allows you to customize nearly everything, from the page turning animations (a slide like the Kindle’s or a page turning animation like iBooks’) to the background and color of the text. Stanza really does make the experience all about the text – the user is able to customize everything about the way the book is viewed. Barnes and Nobles’ app was lauded earlier this week for including the same customization but their application locks you into using their bookstore. Stanza lets you load your own books onto the iPad or iPhone. It also, however, allows you access to a variety of other eBook stores directly from the phone.
Stanza’s Text Descriptions
Perhaps the application’s best feature is Stanza’s Detail views for text. Highlighting text using the traditional copy and paste mechanism in iBooks yields a tooltip that lets you bookmark (highlight) and look things up in the dictionary. It’s a more complicated scenario in Stanza but one that offers one additional option – the ability to share text on Facebook, Twitter, and through email. The detail view pulls up the paragraph in question in an iPhone-sized window and makes it easier to select text.
Stanza works perfectly with Calibre, my app of choice for eBook conversion. It now allows for a really simple workflow to get eBooks from the desktop to an iPad. It’s possible to move books by utilizing a computer as a wireless server, or by pushing them from Calibre into iTunes. It’s also possible to drag books into iTunes and into Stanza.
Stanza is the ideal reading experience, with customizable colors, animations, and more and compatibility with dozens of different formats. The Lexcycle team has succeeded in bringing the great iPhone app to the iPad and I, as an avid reader, am glad they did so.
FREE!
+ Universal App – Designed for iPhone and iPad
Our Rating: 
:: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Read Our Full Review >>
:: HIGHLY RECOMMENDEDRead Our Full Review >>
Released: 2008-07-13 :: Category: Books
[ Stanza Updates for the iPad is a post from 148Apps ]
QuickReader
Henry Goes Camping: Fun Story App for Kids Who Love Dogs
iBooks Store May Contain 30,000 Free Books
iBooks Store May Contain 30,000 Free Books is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
I haven’t really been excited about the new iBooks Store coming on the new iPad because I just don’t read a lot of books. I read online all the time, just not books. Anyway, this bit of news got me excited about the iBooks Store. Apparently the entire collection of books in the Gutenberg Project will be in the iBooks Store. This includes over 30,000 books that are out of copyright. Some of those books include: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Through the Looking-Glass.
eBook: All About Coffee is a Fascinating Look at the Worlds Favorite Drink
eBook: All About Coffee is a Fascinating Look at the Worlds Favorite Drink is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Price: $2.99 Score: 9/10 By Sarah Parker
When people take a sip of their morning brew, not too many think about the history of coffee or its cultural significance. Whether we realize it or not, there is more than meets the eye with your average cup a’ joe. Learn all there is to know about your favorite drink with eBook: All About Coffee. All About Coffee is #4 in the eBook Media Viewer Series developed by Procypher Software Company.
The book All About Coffee was originally written in 1922 by William Harrison Ukers (1873-1945). Uker’s book chronicles the etymology, pharmacology, and origins of coffee, and every coffee-related topic in between. All About Coffee is a fascinating narrative that explores the relationship of coffee and culture in Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern countries. There are 36 chapters in this book, complete with artwork from the original book. All About Coffee is full of interesting information that you can share with your friends. Here are a few tidbits from the book:
- At the time the book was written, many Arabs averaged 25 to 30 cups (findjans) of coffee a day.
- In some places in Africa, the natives eat coffee beans raw.
- Sweetened, iced coffee (also called mazargran) originated in Algiers, then became popular in France.
The ebook version of All About Coffee maintains (for the most part) the format of the original book. The typeset, citations, and images are very well structured. The Table of Contents page allows the user to choose the chapters they wish to read first. Anywhere in the book, you can tap the center of the screen to bring up the Viewer Controls, which include a back button, bookmarks, a night-time mode, and font size options. All About Coffee can be read in both regular mode and landscape mode. When switching between landscape mode and regular mode, your place in the chapter can move slightly (usually within a paragraph).
eBook: All About Coffee is a delectable book to read, and the app works well to conveniently bring the book to iPhone users. Learn some morsels of info from the book that you can share with your friends over coffee!
eBook: All About Coffee is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch; requires OS 3.0 or later
QuickReader
QuickReader is a post from: Best Iphone App Review Website
Developer: Inkstone
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
iPhone Integration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.33 out of 5 stars
By far the most fascinating application I’ve reviewed in a while, QuickReader is designed to improve your reading speed. I was cautiously skeptical at first, but after a few sessions with the app, I can actually feel myself improving. Anyone willing to invest the time in developing their speed-reading skills should grab this app immediately.
As one iTunes store reviewer put it, QuickReader is like a metronome for reading. By default, the app is set to 3 “stops” per line and 300 words per minute. A “stop” is essentially a highlighted portion of the text; it’s the digital equivalent to traditional methods like using a pen to track your progress. The highlight steadily moves across the page according to the pace you set, and you’re supposed to follow along with it. It’s supposed to allow you to focus on groups of words and to read properly from side to side, because your eye focuses naturally on movement.
If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. I can’t explain the science behind it myself, but after using it for just a few days, I can see a marked improvement in my speed. There’s a speed test included with the application, and I was reading around 325 words per minute at the beginning; now, I’m hovering between 585 and 608. I have to put forth a conscious effort to read quickly, but it feels comfortable. What shocked me most was that I was able to retain what I had read, at nearly double the speed—and I haven’t even been using QuickReader for a week! Granted, that speed hasn’t quite translated into the offscreen world, but if I focus, I can approach similar speeds.
There are three modes within the application: Guided Reading, Normal Reading, and Speed Test. I recommend taking a Speed Test prior to starting with the app, so that you can nudge the words per minute rate just a little higher than your current speed. Normal Reading is good if you just want to read the bundled classics. Thankfully, you can switch freely through the modes mid-read without having to navigate back to the menu. You can also fully customize font and color schemes, which makes QuickReader a solid eBook reader as well as a reading-improvement device. Both landscape and portrait reading modes are supported.
The application comes with 21 classic eBooks for you to practice with. I’m working with Sherlock Holmes, which might account for my speed; though a classic, it’s hardly as dense as, say, a textbook. The developers apparently have plans to incorporate an eBook store in the future, but I’d love to be able to upload my own eBooks into the reader—I have quite a few sitting around on my hard drive.
I suspect that your mileage may vary with QuickReader. I was already a relatively fast reader (a little over a page per minute with a real book?), and I adapted to the methods used here quickly. Others may struggle. Still, for me, it’s an incredibly useful tool, and I’m glad that I downloaded it. If you’re a frequent reader, you should definitely give this application a try; even if the price makes you hesitate, you need to check out the lite version. The effects are nothing short of magical.