Markus

Afternoon all,
just thought I would see what thoughts people have about ebooks. Be it reading them on a computer, laptop, dedicated reader or an app on iPhone

James Neill

iTrader: (1)

I use Mobipocket on my Windows Mobile. Great when on the train. I set the background to black and the text to Green and its very easy on the eyes.

ChefDude

i have a sony reader (PRS505) as my eyes go funny reading anything with a refresh rate for any length of time.

I made sure I had a good pile of 'ebooks' before i spent the 150 quid too, so it's paid for itself already

i wonder about the idea of the ipad where you pay subscriptions for digital content, just like in the real world... i think we're all just being stingy, but on the other hand i don't think we trust that the ebook we bought is really ours - 'someone' will remove it from your device !

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Interestingly - my other half is a technophobe. With all previous phones she has barely done anything other than call and text.

She now has an iPhone which she uses for calls, texts and can do her email on it.

Amazingly I have now discovered she has discovered and downloaded a bunch of apps including a number of readers including Sherlock Holmes stories, for example. She raves about it. They are typically short stories but great for a 15 minute read.

Oh, and my son uses it to read Transformers comics - does that count?

Markus

David, what reader is she using on the iPhone?

Hanley

I'm currently reading Treasure Island via Kobo on my iPhone

Markus

Ah a Kobo user. What do you think of the app?

Hanley

Seems okay Markus, I decided to give the free classics a try before purchasing any content but overall the app works very well.

Markus

Glad you like it, if there is something you don't like, let me know

ChefDude

you a dev Markus?

Markus

Alas not, but I'm as close as one can get, I'm QA for the iPlatform team at Kobo. I know, slightly cheeky thread, but I'm not doing some guerilla marketing thing, am genuinely wanting to see what people thing, as at first I wasn't convinced about ebooks.

ChefDude

I think the ePublications thing is going to take off big time. And I'm starting to believe the iPad is going to be huge.

THere is a gap in peoples thinking about web content and books/magazines/papers.

if tech companies bring out their 'iPads' it isn't enough. you need an 'app/book/whatever' store that's easy to communicate with for new content. that's where apple is going to win.

you'll get your magazine/paper/book page for page, but it'll be interactive - go to the website, pop up small video window, etc. I think people who are still whingeing about free web style content are being narrow minded. I haven't even mentioned mobile tv yet.

my personal sore points with ebook/ipad/etc is/are that I don't buy magazines, papers and only buy books for long journeys. so the concept of paying for subscription content is a subjective sore point. If i subscribed to, say, Empire magazine and it was on my eDevice page for page + interaction + trailers + maybe a free movie - wow! - I'd pay 5 quid a month for that.

Markus

I too think the IPad will be a very good reader device. We have submittd out app and it has seed5 approval, just need to compile with the gm of the sdk and resubmit it and we should, fingers crossed, be on the ipad store come Saturday!

you are right about needing a store to back up a device and we do have that, be it for iPhone, ipad, or our own ereader device

he subs thing I agree with too, not totally convinced but rich content will be coming along. Take a look at the ideas that penguin has for some of it's books and you will see where thongs are headed

Hanley

I'm very excited to see where 'thongs' are headed

I suspect I'm not alone either