Entry tags:
Reading tech part I
Over the last few months, the way I’ve read both fanfic and books has changed *dramatically*, primarily thanks to a few pieces of technology. I’ve been hankering for a while to talk about that tech and how I use it, and today the hankering is pushing itself over the edge and I think I am going to write a multi-part series. Intended parts, hopefully to be filled in with URLs as I finish writing the series:
Part I: E-Readers/Tablets, with a focus on the rooted Nook Color, which I personally think is the most optimal device on the market for my specific needs.
Part II: “Read It Later” type sites, with a focus on Instapaper and ReadItLater
Part II: Social bookmarking, with a focus on Pinboard
Without further fanfare, on to Part I!
This is in part sparked by an email from a good friend, in which she asked whether she should get a Nook or a Kindle. But I’ve had the e-reader conversation with a lot of people, so here are the things in general you should think about when you’re thinking about getting an e-reader.
My very short answer is: if you can afford it, get a Nook Color. If not, I lean towards Nook over Kindle, but more because I’m resistant to a device that incentivizes me to buy all my books from Amazon than because of its technical merits. If you’re super cheap and are willing to deal with a crappy interface, get a Kobo.
e-ink is really interesting technology. It doesn’t require a backlight, so it’s easier on the eyes, and it only requires power when what’s on the screen changes, so it has ridiculously long battery life. But what you have to know is that the screen refresh when a page turns is AWFUL. People eventually get Stockholmed into being ok with it, but man does it suck. Until you’re used to it, it totally pulls you out of your reading experience, and it takes long enough that accidentally turning a page is super irritating because now you have to do that AGAIN to go back.
The Kindle, the Nook, the Sony e-reader, and the Kobo all use e-ink, designed in various ways. I believe the Kindle has the fastest page turning speed, but the Nook’s has been getting faster with software updates (I actually got a phone call of excitement about this from my sister when her Nook got updated.
It’s been a while since I’ve played around with a Nook, and it was before I had much experience with e-readers in general, so my opinions are relatively unformed about the quality of its UI. I used to have a Kobo and I’ve played around with friends’ Kindles, and I do have to say that compared to the Kobo the Kindle is a DREAM. While reading books themselves was cool on the Kobo, the entire time I used it I felt like it was an evil torture device designed to keep me from being able to navigate around my device and pick what book I wanted to read. And it’s page-turning time was killer.
I found the Kindle’s UI a lot more intuitive than the Kobo’s, but IIRC the Nook’s is even smoother. It’s got two windows, an LCD touchscreen that turns on to navigate, and the e-ink screen to display the books you’ve opened. The Kindle and Kobo both use a combination of buttons and the e-ink screen for settings, but the Kindle does it well.
One major thing here--the Nook uses a touch-pad keyboard and the Kindle has a hardware keyboard. This means that typing with the Kindle is a bit easier, but also means that the Nook has a lot more of its surface dedicated to showing you your e-book, which is a significant win in my book (exactly how much typing do you plan on doing on your e-reader?)
The Nook color uses an LCD touchscreen, which means it is basically like a mini-tablet. It doesn’t have the advantages of e-ink on the battery and hypothetical future blindness side, but it’s way easier to adjust to if you’re used to interacting with, say, computers or smartphones. It’s a full-screen touch screen, and it is sexiness.
For any e-reader, there are two ways to get books on the device: the dedicated store or “sideloading.” Using the dedicated store gives you a much slicker experience but limits you to books that the device-seller sells, at the prices they want you to buy, and any books you get there will almost certainly be laden with DRM of some kind or another.
There are two major players in the eBook format wars right now: .mobi, which is an Amazon-dedicated format and comes Amazon DRM and DRM-free flavors, and .epub, which everyone else uses and which comes in Adobe DRM and DRM-free flavors. If you get a Kindle, it will come with mobi and will read only mobi files. If you get a Nook or a Kobo, it will come with epubs and will play only epubs. If you get ebooks from anywhere else that sells DRMed ebooks (Sony eReader store, Overdrive, etc) the odds are they’ll be epubs, although I’m increasingly seeing DRM-free sites like Baen Books, AO3, etc, providing multiple formats, including both ebook and mobi.
For DRM-free files, you can use software like Calibre to convert from one format to another, but once you start buying ebooks with DRM on them, you’re pretty much stuck on one side of the fence. If you want to be able to continue reading your books, you will need to have a device that you can use to read them, for which reason I lean towards an epub device of some kind over a mobi device.
A potentially important player in this decision process is Overdrive, which is a service that a lot of libraries are using to provide library ebooks. Basically, it has a version of DRM that expires after a given period of time, so you can literally “check out” a book using your library card and have it automatically expire when it’s time to return it. Their inventory is still small enough that I haven’t found them useful, but I’m hoping to see more books there over time, and since they’re using Adobe DRM (aka epub) they’re a definite point in the Nook’s favor.
Another player that is still small and will hopefully get larger is Google eBooks, which has quickly become my absolute favorite eBook store, because of (a) its very slick e-reader app and (b) the fact that viaBookSense IndieBound you can buy Google eBooks from the independent bookstore of your choice and have a cut of the revenue go to that book store. Google eBooks use Adobe DRM, so again, they work on Nook and other epub-based e-readers and not on the Kindle.
Both the Kindle and the Nook have applications that allow you to read books you’ve bought from them on other devices, such as a laptop, a smartphone, or a tablet. But while they both *have* applications, this is generally an area where the Kindle wins hands-down.
The Nook app is... well, it does exactly what it’s supposed to. It lets you open files that you’ve saved to your computer or phone or whatever and read them. It’s got some different viewing options. *shrug*
The Kindle mobile app is a work of joy. It uses something it calls “Whispernet” which the rest of the world calls, um, “the internet” with maybe a little bonus reference to “the cloud” to keep track of where you are in your book across different devices. So if you’ve got a Kindle, an iPad with the Kindle app, and an Android with the Kindle app installed, you keep your place as you move from one device to another. The rendering is lovely, the app is intuitive, it’s just a beauty to behold.
The only thing that’s better than it is the Google Books app, which does the exact same thing but has one additional option that kicks a lot of ass--because it’s tied to the full Google Books collection of scanned books, it gives you the option of toggling between “flowing text” mode and “scanned book” mode. “Scanned book” mode is mostly really cool when you’ve got a book from Gutenberg with screwed-up formatting and you want to switch to some 19th-century edition scanned from the Harvard Library (<3). On the downside, the inventory is smaller than the Amazon and B&N inventory, but so far when I’ve run into books I can’t get, I can’t get them in any of the three.
One of the really delightful things about the Nook Color is that I’ve got access to B&N stuff via the built-in Nook app, which is much nicer than the app you can install on other devices, AND I have both Google Books and Kindle mobile installed on it for good measure, because I’m a packrat. I do the vast majority of my book reading in the Google Books app. BUT I should mention here that I can install all of these apps only because I’ve rooted my Nook Color, a process that is a bit tricky (but that there’s very thorough documentation for online).
Nook has a feature where you can share your DRMed books with friends who also have Nooks. It’s pretty cool. (ETA:![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
februraryfour tells me the Kindle has this now too.)
If you have DRM-free books, though, you can just email them the files :P
One of the major things I figured out when I was in the loathing-my-Kobo stage of life was that I wanted to be able to read books and fanfic in the same place. I also wanted to be able to manage ebooks from multiple stores, and I did NOT want to have my laptop as an intermediary between acquiring books and reading them on my reader.
The Kindle, Nook, etc, are all pretty seamless when buying books from their respective stores, but sideloading is pretty much a bitch. At this point in my life I have been trained by a long line of Android phones that there is no reason to plug a device into a computer just to put content on it, and that any device that does so is only there to hurt you (I AM LOOKING AT YOU, IPOD >:-| ).
Especially since right now the vast majority of stuff I read is fanfic, which is much shorter than a novel, I wanted a way to get content on and off of my reader quickly without going through my computer. In short, after gettng a Kobo, I fell in love with the concept of eBooks and then did all my eBook reading on my cellphone, which is really not an ideal size for it. I wanted my phone, except larger.
Did I need my e-reader to be able to check my email and play youtube videos and sync with twitter and do all those other things my phone does? Not really, and I don’t really use those features, but it’s handy to have them. And I’ve gotten really used to having a web browser in that size and orientation--it’s so much nicer for reading just about ANYTHING than my laptop is. I really only use my personal laptop these days for writing and watching tv, because all my other needs are met by the Nook Color.
The process of rooting a Nook Color has many steps, all of them detailed, but the instructions at NookDevs are REALLY good and thorough, although TBF I am pretty good at technology. There are a couple of downsides to having a rooted Nook instead of, say, a device that was intended to be a tablet.
I do worry a bit about the future of generic Android tablets since right now all of them cost at least 3x what I spent on my Nook Color and barely provide any more features (the same could be said of the iPad). The Nook Color is kind of a treasure--because it’s marketed as competing in the ereader market its price is drastically underneath what it would be if it were marketed as being in the tablet market. I love that thing to pieces, as does everyone else who owns one, and especially when Honeycomb for the Nook is out, there’s not going to be a clear reason to buy any other Android tablet. Well, that’s not true, because the Nook Color is wifi only. But STILL. Treasure.
Part I: E-Readers/Tablets, with a focus on the rooted Nook Color, which I personally think is the most optimal device on the market for my specific needs.
Part II: “Read It Later” type sites, with a focus on Instapaper and ReadItLater
Part II: Social bookmarking, with a focus on Pinboard
Without further fanfare, on to Part I!
Part I: E-Readers/Tablets
This is in part sparked by an email from a good friend, in which she asked whether she should get a Nook or a Kindle. But I’ve had the e-reader conversation with a lot of people, so here are the things in general you should think about when you’re thinking about getting an e-reader.
My very short answer is: if you can afford it, get a Nook Color. If not, I lean towards Nook over Kindle, but more because I’m resistant to a device that incentivizes me to buy all my books from Amazon than because of its technical merits. If you’re super cheap and are willing to deal with a crappy interface, get a Kobo.
User Interface -- e-ink vs LCD
e-ink is really interesting technology. It doesn’t require a backlight, so it’s easier on the eyes, and it only requires power when what’s on the screen changes, so it has ridiculously long battery life. But what you have to know is that the screen refresh when a page turns is AWFUL. People eventually get Stockholmed into being ok with it, but man does it suck. Until you’re used to it, it totally pulls you out of your reading experience, and it takes long enough that accidentally turning a page is super irritating because now you have to do that AGAIN to go back.
The Kindle, the Nook, the Sony e-reader, and the Kobo all use e-ink, designed in various ways. I believe the Kindle has the fastest page turning speed, but the Nook’s has been getting faster with software updates (I actually got a phone call of excitement about this from my sister when her Nook got updated.
It’s been a while since I’ve played around with a Nook, and it was before I had much experience with e-readers in general, so my opinions are relatively unformed about the quality of its UI. I used to have a Kobo and I’ve played around with friends’ Kindles, and I do have to say that compared to the Kobo the Kindle is a DREAM. While reading books themselves was cool on the Kobo, the entire time I used it I felt like it was an evil torture device designed to keep me from being able to navigate around my device and pick what book I wanted to read. And it’s page-turning time was killer.
I found the Kindle’s UI a lot more intuitive than the Kobo’s, but IIRC the Nook’s is even smoother. It’s got two windows, an LCD touchscreen that turns on to navigate, and the e-ink screen to display the books you’ve opened. The Kindle and Kobo both use a combination of buttons and the e-ink screen for settings, but the Kindle does it well.
One major thing here--the Nook uses a touch-pad keyboard and the Kindle has a hardware keyboard. This means that typing with the Kindle is a bit easier, but also means that the Nook has a lot more of its surface dedicated to showing you your e-book, which is a significant win in my book (exactly how much typing do you plan on doing on your e-reader?)
The Nook color uses an LCD touchscreen, which means it is basically like a mini-tablet. It doesn’t have the advantages of e-ink on the battery and hypothetical future blindness side, but it’s way easier to adjust to if you’re used to interacting with, say, computers or smartphones. It’s a full-screen touch screen, and it is sexiness.
Where you want to get books from
For any e-reader, there are two ways to get books on the device: the dedicated store or “sideloading.” Using the dedicated store gives you a much slicker experience but limits you to books that the device-seller sells, at the prices they want you to buy, and any books you get there will almost certainly be laden with DRM of some kind or another.
There are two major players in the eBook format wars right now: .mobi, which is an Amazon-dedicated format and comes Amazon DRM and DRM-free flavors, and .epub, which everyone else uses and which comes in Adobe DRM and DRM-free flavors. If you get a Kindle, it will come with mobi and will read only mobi files. If you get a Nook or a Kobo, it will come with epubs and will play only epubs. If you get ebooks from anywhere else that sells DRMed ebooks (Sony eReader store, Overdrive, etc) the odds are they’ll be epubs, although I’m increasingly seeing DRM-free sites like Baen Books, AO3, etc, providing multiple formats, including both ebook and mobi.
For DRM-free files, you can use software like Calibre to convert from one format to another, but once you start buying ebooks with DRM on them, you’re pretty much stuck on one side of the fence. If you want to be able to continue reading your books, you will need to have a device that you can use to read them, for which reason I lean towards an epub device of some kind over a mobi device.
A potentially important player in this decision process is Overdrive, which is a service that a lot of libraries are using to provide library ebooks. Basically, it has a version of DRM that expires after a given period of time, so you can literally “check out” a book using your library card and have it automatically expire when it’s time to return it. Their inventory is still small enough that I haven’t found them useful, but I’m hoping to see more books there over time, and since they’re using Adobe DRM (aka epub) they’re a definite point in the Nook’s favor.
Another player that is still small and will hopefully get larger is Google eBooks, which has quickly become my absolute favorite eBook store, because of (a) its very slick e-reader app and (b) the fact that via
Related: Reading your books when you’re not using your e-reader.
Both the Kindle and the Nook have applications that allow you to read books you’ve bought from them on other devices, such as a laptop, a smartphone, or a tablet. But while they both *have* applications, this is generally an area where the Kindle wins hands-down.
The Nook app is... well, it does exactly what it’s supposed to. It lets you open files that you’ve saved to your computer or phone or whatever and read them. It’s got some different viewing options. *shrug*
The Kindle mobile app is a work of joy. It uses something it calls “Whispernet” which the rest of the world calls, um, “the internet” with maybe a little bonus reference to “the cloud” to keep track of where you are in your book across different devices. So if you’ve got a Kindle, an iPad with the Kindle app, and an Android with the Kindle app installed, you keep your place as you move from one device to another. The rendering is lovely, the app is intuitive, it’s just a beauty to behold.
The only thing that’s better than it is the Google Books app, which does the exact same thing but has one additional option that kicks a lot of ass--because it’s tied to the full Google Books collection of scanned books, it gives you the option of toggling between “flowing text” mode and “scanned book” mode. “Scanned book” mode is mostly really cool when you’ve got a book from Gutenberg with screwed-up formatting and you want to switch to some 19th-century edition scanned from the Harvard Library (<3). On the downside, the inventory is smaller than the Amazon and B&N inventory, but so far when I’ve run into books I can’t get, I can’t get them in any of the three.
One of the really delightful things about the Nook Color is that I’ve got access to B&N stuff via the built-in Nook app, which is much nicer than the app you can install on other devices, AND I have both Google Books and Kindle mobile installed on it for good measure, because I’m a packrat. I do the vast majority of my book reading in the Google Books app. BUT I should mention here that I can install all of these apps only because I’ve rooted my Nook Color, a process that is a bit tricky (but that there’s very thorough documentation for online).
Want to share your e-books?
Nook has a feature where you can share your DRMed books with friends who also have Nooks. It’s pretty cool. (ETA:
februraryfour tells me the Kindle has this now too.)If you have DRM-free books, though, you can just email them the files :P
Do you want to do anything other than read books?
One of the major things I figured out when I was in the loathing-my-Kobo stage of life was that I wanted to be able to read books and fanfic in the same place. I also wanted to be able to manage ebooks from multiple stores, and I did NOT want to have my laptop as an intermediary between acquiring books and reading them on my reader.
The Kindle, Nook, etc, are all pretty seamless when buying books from their respective stores, but sideloading is pretty much a bitch. At this point in my life I have been trained by a long line of Android phones that there is no reason to plug a device into a computer just to put content on it, and that any device that does so is only there to hurt you (I AM LOOKING AT YOU, IPOD >:-| ).
Especially since right now the vast majority of stuff I read is fanfic, which is much shorter than a novel, I wanted a way to get content on and off of my reader quickly without going through my computer. In short, after gettng a Kobo, I fell in love with the concept of eBooks and then did all my eBook reading on my cellphone, which is really not an ideal size for it. I wanted my phone, except larger.
Did I need my e-reader to be able to check my email and play youtube videos and sync with twitter and do all those other things my phone does? Not really, and I don’t really use those features, but it’s handy to have them. And I’ve gotten really used to having a web browser in that size and orientation--it’s so much nicer for reading just about ANYTHING than my laptop is. I really only use my personal laptop these days for writing and watching tv, because all my other needs are met by the Nook Color.
On rooting
The process of rooting a Nook Color has many steps, all of them detailed, but the instructions at NookDevs are REALLY good and thorough, although TBF I am pretty good at technology. There are a couple of downsides to having a rooted Nook instead of, say, a device that was intended to be a tablet.
- Lack of standard buttons: almost all Android apps are written on the assumption that your hardware will have home, menu, search, and back keys, and using them without them sucks. Solution: SoftKeys app, which gives you a touchscreen version of these buttons
- Apps not optimized for this hardware. I’ve had a couple of apps get cut off at the bottom of the screen because they were expecting to have the menu bar at the top and not the bottom of the screen. But they were sucky apps in other ways and I uninstalled them.
- Crippled alternatives for good stuff. Two main things here: the Nook browser is ok, but not nearly as good as the standard Android browser (solution: install DolphinBrowser). And the Nook homescreen will only let you add books that you bought from B&N, and not apps, because the Nook thinks you don’t have apps. You can install a different homescreen, but honestly I just go without it entirely, since it’s pretty useless. The apps listing and built-in Library are all I ever need.
I do worry a bit about the future of generic Android tablets since right now all of them cost at least 3x what I spent on my Nook Color and barely provide any more features (the same could be said of the iPad). The Nook Color is kind of a treasure--because it’s marketed as competing in the ereader market its price is drastically underneath what it would be if it were marketed as being in the tablet market. I love that thing to pieces, as does everyone else who owns one, and especially when Honeycomb for the Nook is out, there’s not going to be a clear reason to buy any other Android tablet. Well, that’s not true, because the Nook Color is wifi only. But STILL. Treasure.
Android Apps I wouldn’t be able to live without on the Nook Color
- Google Books: mentioned above. Sexiness in book reading, way better than the auto installed library from the Nook.
- Dolphin Browser HD: it’s got a ton of really awesome features, but the built-in Android browser is good enough that I haven’t bothered to use it on my phone. The built-in Nook browser is crippleware and definitely needs to be replaced with this.
- EverPaper: Is the best of the Android Instapaper clients since the tragic demise of HardCopy. But see later post for the fact that I’ve finally given up on Instapaper for Android and turned my hopes to ReadItLater
- ReadItLater: My new hope for streamlined fic-reading. It fixes almost all my problems with Instapaper. I am full of !!!!!! for it right now, presumably because I haven’t been using it long enough to know what I’ll dislike eventually.
- Softkeys: Necessary to get to the table of contents in Google Books. And do other things occasionally too! But really that is my primary use.