Dear Diary, I was thinking of replacing you with an iPad, but...

Here is my experience using the iPad.

I do not have an iPhone or an iMac, but I do own an iPod. I have never used an iPad.

Overall, my disappointment outweighed my delight with this device.

Pros

1. The iPad lets you hilite, make notes, easily look up words in the dictionary and search for words throughout a text. These functions are all very nice.
2. I like the different ways you can turn a page. In print books, I often begin to turn a page before I am completely done with the page I'm reading, and I discovered you can do almost the same thing on the iPad.

Cons

I encountered several things that, for me, were broken.

1. I did not know how to turn on the device. This is kind of a big deal. I figured you simply hit the small button on the bottom of the device, but I had to be told how to turn it on (I won't spoil it in case you don't know, either). I consider the on-off button to be a broken design.
2. Upon getting the machine on, I was struck by the clarity of the screen, its crispness, but also how it reflected back at me in certain lights. Also, I found myself tiring easily reading the device in dim light.
3. I poked around the Apps store. It was easy to navigate. However, when I chose to view the listings by name, there was only one option: alphabetical from A to Z. There was no option I could find that would let me search from Z to A, or even to skip ahead to B or see the listings under C without having to go through ALL the A and B listings. I give this feature a B for broken.
4. Some of the apps offer a link to the developer website. This is a nice option, and upon selection it quickly opens the Web browser to the site you chose. However, there is no "back" button to return to your spot in the Apps store. So I had to close out of the Web browser and go back and open up the Apps store again. This is annoying and broken.

Here are few broken things I encountered while reading. I opened up a sample of "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," by Jonathan Safran Foer (which I have not read, but it's on my to-read list!)

1. There are a few illustrations in the print edition. In the e-version sample, the illustrations do not appear in the same places, and they run over to two screens, so the second screen has just a sliver of the illustration, and the rest of the screen is blank. This is weird (and broken).
2. I could not figure out a way to change the view to landscape format (broken for landscape lovers).
3. There is a section in the print version where the narrator is looking at a newspaper clipping, which has been marked with a red pen. In the print book, the marking is red. In the e-version, the marking is not red (it looks like something in color that is printed in grayscale).

So overall, I would be hard pressed to purchase an iPad primarily as a reading device.

Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Reading My Kindle

Last week, I a the chance to check out our class Kindle. It was an interesting experience.

I ride both the bus and metro to get to class (and just about everywhere else), so to stay entertained while waiting forever for the bus to come and during my commute, I've taken to reading books on my phone or iPod touch. My phone came with the Kindle app pre-loaded, but I've always been a B&N girl, so Nook is my e-reading app of choice. But I digress.

When I got off the metro and into the line for the bus last Monday night and pulled out the Kindle to start my antisocial reading ritual (I've found that head phones and a book/electronic device tend to ward off the weirdos) the first thing I noticed was how uncomfortable it made me. Forget uncomfortable, I felt downright ostentatious. The Kindle is not much bigger than the average book, but something about it just screamed (to me at least) "look at me! look at me! I've got a huge e-reader" and I felt embarrassed to be holding it. I'm sure that once I got used to having one, I wouldn't feel that way, but at that moment, all I wanted was my teeny tiny phone screen.

Of course, I also felt a little silly because I had a few problems figuring out how to use the darn thing. I got into the book fine, but then I kept hitting the wrong buttons while trying to turn the page. To go to the next page on a Kindle you push the large bottom arrow (circled in red in the picture) located on either side of the machine. To go back a page, you push the smaller arrow button on the top (circled in blue). If you ask me, having the buttons in the same place on both sides is sort of counter intuitive. I kept pushing the large button on the left expecting to go back a page, and not realizing I had really gone forward, getting very confused when I couldn't find the beginning of the chapter. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be a clever feature that allows the reader to hold it with either hand and turn the page in either direction, but I don't think it works. It's BROKEN.

At this point I was really missing my touch screen phone/iPod.

Visually, page turning is something that the Kindle does have going for it. On my Nook app for iPod touch, when I turn the page the words sort of zoom across the screen and are replaced with a new page worth of words that zoom into their place. It sort of makes me feel seasick to look at. On the Kindle, the words sort of cross-fade, with the current page dissolving and the new one reappearing in it's place. It's very innocuous and good for reading while traveling. My favorite page turning method, however, is in my Android Nook app, which animates a page turning. I like it because it makes me the least dizzy.

I also checked out the Kindle store on the Kindle. As a die hard, "buy it for the cover" book buyer, I found the black and white monotone pictures very unappealing and was far less likely to investigate a book further without the lure of attractively colored covers. I also noticed that a lot of the "most popular" books in the Kindle store weren't the traditional bestsellers, but a bunch of books that sold a lot because they were either free or only $.99. That threw me for a loop too. But it was very easy to buy a book (or in my case, a free sample of a book) and it loads right onto the device, which is pretty cool.

Overall, while I eventually figured out how to use and navigate the inner workings of the Kindle, I never really felt comfortable using it. So, for now, I think I'll stick to my color, touch-capable phone or iPod while reading on public transportation, and paperbacks for the rest of the time.

"The Life of Samuel Johnson" on eBooks

As demonstrated in class last night eBook conversions are not perfect.
Whether it is the mentality of "it's not my job" or "I'm not a fish" the proofing step should not be overlooked. The name Penguin Classics implies top-notch publishing integrity and editorial quality, and "The Life of Samuel Johnson" by James Boswell did not receive it.

The Kindle eBook edition of Boswell's work costs $12.24. So I opted for the free sample, which gives you approximately 10-15% of the book (usually Front Matter and beginning of a first chapter). Even from this small sample I detected multiple format and content issues such as: "principles'ofwhich, asBoswellrecords, Johnsonhad'Muchexperience'. Boswell's famousimage" or "He was from the beginning '$$$$, a king of men."
I can only imagine it continues throughout the Kindle version.

The Nook eBook edition is free. And although it's not the same edition as the Kindle, format and content was horrible, one such example is:
"Ovre reus e7riavecrTaTai9 7rpa£eo-i ttolvtus tvecrTi S^Awcris dper^s rj Ka/aas, aXka 7rpay/xa fipayy ttoAAcckis, kcli pv)fJ"
This happened throughout the text, in large batches as above and in hidden in words or short sentences.

The best way to proof eBook conversions is looking off a hard copy of the text to see how the content is suppose to be presented - borders, indentations, spacing, grammar, spelling, font, size, etc. - and making the correct adjustments for the eBook to appropriately represent the original text on a different platform. Not having a hard copy of Boswell's book, I could only detect the obvious errors (as noted above) - but there could have been more had I been comparing eBook to book.

Since these errors (format, missing content, special characters) appear in some way on three different devices (Nook, Kindle, iPad) it leads me to believe that Penguin sent a corrupted InDesign or PDF file to get converted to ePUB. Penguin then did not thoroughly proof the final ePUB version but instead sent the final file for submission to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, and possibly other vendors, who accepted the file for resale.

"The Life of Samuel Johnson" on eBooks is broken.