smurphy – Page 28 – Tech, writing, and tech writing

Value for Kindle

A happy reunion

For a number of months, I wasn’t using the Kindle as much as I might. I’d been downloading free books and samples, and mailing myself PDFs, but not shelling out for proper paid books. This turns out to have been something of a false investment (or false lack of investment). My Kindle was clogged with rubbish I had little inclination to look at, so it sat sad and lonely on the bookshelf gathering dust. A couple of weeks ago, though, I bit the bullet and paid for an actual proper book that I genuinely wanted to read (Room by Emma Donohue), and it changed my relationship with my Kindle completely.

Finding Kindle Books You Want to Read

Many of the free books in the Kindle store are pretty awful, though I have happened upon one or two that weren’t bad – verging on good, even. On top of this, the range of paid books available to Irish customers is fairly restricted. I’m getting the impression that “new” books are having contracts written that include clauses on epublishing, but that older publications aren’t being revisited at any rapid rate. I’ve attempted to buy a few much loved older novels that I wouldn’t mind having at my disposal in idle moments, only to be told that the Kindle version either doesn’t exist or isn’t available in my country.

Trying to find something, free or paid, you might be interested in reading isn’t all that easy either. Especially if you’ve messed up Amazon’s recommendation algorithm by downloading loads of tripe just because it was free. Live and learn.

Book classification in the Kindle store seems to be a bit all over the place. I find it easier to locate what I want by searching for an exact title or browsing categories in the standard Amazon.com store and checking whether or not there’s a link to a Kindle edition once I’ve found something of interest.

Big international best sellers seem to be the safest bet when looking for books to read on your Kindle. The type of things that are up for book prizes, or in some of the media book clubs, and the like.

Once You’ve Found It

Always try before you buy. The “Try a Sample” option sends the first n% of the book to your reader and you can have a virtual flick through before you commit to purchasing. The last page of the sample includes a link to buy the whole book from the Kindle store, so you don’t have to go searching again. One quibble: the purchased book and sample don’t sync reading position, so you’ll need to take note of where you ended in the sample and go find it again in the full book.

If you do download a book in error, there’s an option to unpurchase/return it, which is handy too, though be careful not to abuse this – there are horror stories out there of people who’ve returned items (real and virtual) one too many times for Amazon’s liking and had their accounts closed down.

Current exchange rates between the Euro and the Dollar, combined with discounted pricing for Kindle editions of books, means that you can save a few bob by buying your books on the Kindle. I paid less than a fiver for Room, but the best price I’ve seen around town so far was a tenner for the paperback. (To be fair, I wasn’t looking very hard, so it may well be available for less dozens of places.)

In Summary

To get the most from your Kindle, look for popular mainstream books (for now), try before you buy, and don’t be afraid to part with a few quid.

Kindle!

When Dave asked me what I’d like for my birthday this year, I immediately responded: “A Kindle!”

I’d been working on some new projects and amassed a bundle of chunky text books as part of my research. Every time we left the house, I was bringing the lot with me – just in case there was some down time while we were out. The idea of having all my texts and annotations in a single 241g bundle was vastly appealing.

Note for Irish readers: the Kindle is not available for sale to Ireland via amazon.co.uk – we’re supposed to order from amazon.com, then buy the UK power adapter as an extra, and pay international shipping and duty on the lot. If you are blessed, as Dave is, with an obliging UK-based friend or relative, use their address for shipping!

eInk

When the goods arrived, I broke into the packaging, hauled out the goods, and started trying to peel the “How to get started” sticker off the screen. Doh! That weren’t no sticker – that was eInk – yowza! Impressive! Text is as legible as normal print in all levels of light, though the screen is shades of grey on grey, rather than crisp black on white, which takes a small bit of getting used to.

Content

You can download free and paid Kindle-specific content from amazon (again, Irish users are directed to the .com site where the selection is restricted for international customers). You can usually (always?) download the first chapter free to see if you fancy spending your hard earned cash on the full book. You can also drag-and-drop content in a variety of supported formats to the device.

I got the WiFi only version, but with 3G, this toy would have been an amazing thing to have back in my pre-kiddie days when I travelled a bit and always wound up for English reading material just before the end of my trip, having lugged around several kilos of paper for the duration. It has a web browser too, so you can catch up on news and blogs if you’re not in the mood for a whole novel.

Readability

Content that can re-flow on the 6″ screen is very easy to read and enjoy – PDFs somewhat less so: original page size, fonts, layout, whitespace etc. are preserved, which means you may have to zoom in to get to a legible font size, and then scan left and right, and up and down on every page. Since battery power on the Kindle is used up by screen re-draws, this is a pretty unpleasant and inefficient way to read. You can email a PDF to your personal Kindle address with a subject line of “Convert” and amazon will convert it and make it availble for download to the device. Good for documents that don’t rely on their layout to make sense (no use for reading tables of statistics). If you’re going to avail of the conversion service, add yourself to your safe senders list first on the “Manage Your Kindle” page on amazon first!

There’s also an experimental text to speech facility, which seemed pretty nifty. The voices didn’t sound too computer-y at all, though I can’t imagine them reading a whole entire book to me – I think I’d opt for content from audible or similar if I was after that kind of service.

Syncing

Syncing your latest position in a text across multiple platforms is great – I can pick up where I left off on the Kindle, the iPhone, my laptop or the iPad. This only works for content downloaded from the Kindle store, as far as I can tell thus far, though.

And there’s more…

It’s taken me weeks to get as far as posting this introductory review, because every time I try to be definitive about something the Kindle does/doesn’t do, I find myself discovering new features and services and wasting time trying them out. So, I’m going to go ahead and post the brief details above: if I discover any particular useful features worthy of mention, they’ll get a separate post another time.

In short:

Would I recommend it? Yes. Buy a cover while you’re at it – mine arrived this morning and I’m no longer afraid to stick it in my handbag for fear of the screen getting scratched.

iPad Review

This Summer I developed an App for iThings, so got my hands on an iPad for legitimate business purposes. They’re a bit pricey to be justified as a personal toy as yet. My team and I are using the iPad to research the device’s capabilities, check out other apps, and test/demo our own apps, but the member of the team who gets the most use and value out of it is my 4 year old son.

As with any toy that rewards the user’s efforts, the iPad is encouraging an interest in spelling, typing, sums and other reasoning (e.g. predicting trajectories in Angry Birds) that parental efforts in the real world have up to now failed to inspire.

And there are a phenomenal number of iPhone and iPad apps aimed at his age group – both to entertain and to educate: annimated nursery rhymes, characters that echo back what’s said to them in cutesy voices, first spelling and maths games… the list goes on. I may review some specific apps here at some stage, but not just now.

The iPad is definitely the ultimate first computer for kids, and once the price point drops to ~€100, every pre-schooler in Ireland will have one (or one to share, at least).

Top tip: if you are letting a small person play with your iThing, log out of the store first, and preferably turn off whatever internet access you’ve got going. My boy’s excuse for clicking on Upgrade and other links is that he can’t read them yet, but I’m guessing that even when he can, the temptation to add to the games selection will prove too much to resist.

For the grown ups, there’s plenty to entertain and educate too. I’ve downloaded an app to learn how to play real Mahjong, and have been doing Sudokus again for the first time in ~4 years. (It’s almost as if something happened 4 years ago that made me give up all my hobbies for lack of time and energy… I wonder what that could have been? Hmmm…)I’ve also been looking at word processors and spreadsheets, timetablers and mind-mapping tools. Oh – and the book-reading apps, of course: iBooks, Kindle and the like.

Reading books on the iPad is just lovely, provided you’re indoors and shaded. Tragically it’s quite useless in bright/direct light, like the iPod and iPhone before it. For these conditions, you’ll be wanting a Kindle or similar.

iPod apps run on the iPad at their original resolution or supersized to fit the larger screen (by clicking the x2 icon), and many apps either have versions specifically designed to make the most of the greater area of screen real estate, or are developed for iPad only. The larger screen size is a definite bonus, and the onscreen keyboard is as manageable and responsive as the “full size” keyboards on netbooks and other similarly-sized devices.

In short:

Would I recommend the iPad? Oh yes

At that price? Oh no! Wait a generation or two, then either pick up an early one on sale, or the latest and greatest at a price point that’s *got* to be lower than today’s. It’s a must have, but not right away.

Hello!

Hi! Welcome to my new blog.

As a tech writer and tech addict, I’m planning to use this as a place to publish reviews of gadgets and apps, and to generally comment on techy things, and, most likely, tech-writing-y things.