The search for the perfect Kindle cover

I recently acquired a Kindle 4 for Christmas and am eager to avoid it ending up scratched and bashed like everything else (phone, mp3 player, etc all blighted by unsightly dents and blemishes) because i live by my personal mantra: “if it ain’t tough, it won’t survive”! So clearly it is very important to find a case which both protects my new gadget but is also not boring!

I have looked around and found some frankly rather boring Kindle cases provided by Amazon itself and a few others. Although i think they’re supposed to be more like a book cover, I’m concerned that cases like the one below will not protect the edges of my Kindle and will accidently open in a bag:

Kindle Leather Cover, Wine Purple (via Amazon)

This case style isn’t one i’m willing to waste my money on, even if it is my favourite colour purple! Amazon seems to charge a stupid amount of money for these cases, nearly half what the Kindle costs! There is also this one which isn’t too bad colourwise and has a nice clippy thing to keep the case closed, but i’m still not sure about it:

New Kindle Purple SD Folio Case – SD Tabletwear (via Amazon)

I did find some nice, less boring versions of that style, such as this Kate Spade one which is quite funky:

Kate Spade New York Kindle Cover (via Amazon)

There are the quite nice but extremely pricey designer ones, as shown on Pretty Shiny Sparkly’s blog:

Reader Chic: Designer Kindle Cases

Even though i’m not sure on this style, i do actually LOVE the pattern on this one:

Wild Rose Kindle 4 Cover – Oberon Design

It’s really beautiful, and they have many more different designs on their website for all Kindle models and also cases for other devices too, see Oberondesign.com.

And maybe this one is quite nice too:

Flower Kindle case – Lente Designs (via Amazon)

And then there are the sleeves for Kindle, such as this amusing one inspired by “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mixalot! (and that song got stuck in my head when i saw this!):

I LIke Big Books Kindle Sleeve – Cafepress.co.uk

Or maybe this simple one:

Belkin Knit sleeve for Kindle (via Tesco)

I would rather have a slip-on case which covers the whole thing and keeps it all safe and bash-free, maybe one like this:

SD TabletWear Leather Style Amazon Kindle Slip Pouch – Purple (via Gearzap.com)

Or there is this nifty reversible black and red one:

Forefront Cases NEW KINDLE 4 Black / Red Reversible Neoprene Case (via Amazon)

I am still undecided as to what to buy as i haven’t found anything that i like enough to buy. If there is nothing i can find that i like then i may have to design my own, either through one of these websites, medgestore.com, or bagsoflove.co.uk. Or i might just sew my own (looking like the easiest and cheapest option to get something personal and more attractive!

I will keep looking for now though, you never know when someone will bring something nice out!

Apple launches iBooks 2 app

The hottest news of the week in the publishing world was the announcement by Apple that they were launching the iBooks 2 app.

This app allows anyone to create their own ebook. It is mainly for authors wanting to create textbook ebooks for studying, with the app allowing them to upload content such as videos, images, Word docs etc into the app, which then works out how best to lay out the content.

This app will potentially lower the amount of huge heavy print books which students have to lug around campus and makes it easier to find what you are looking for. Although i guess you’d need to have an iPad in the first place which isn’t cheap, although if these ebook textbooks are cheaper than the paper versions then maybe you could afford one (or possibly not with the recent hiking up of tuition fees).

Publishers have already made use of the iPad for children’s books, and there are some beautiful ebooks out there for the iPad which i’ve seen and tried out for myself, although i still would be a little reluctant to give my expensive iPad to a small child to use, wouldn’t you? The pictures and animations are really lovely, colourful and appealing, which makes a children’s book more special.

Textbooks seemed like the next obvious target by publishers to try to digitise, as they contain far more content than other books and have always seemed rather dull. I guess with the iPad app we can now create beautiful ebook versions of these textbooks which we can interact with and make learning more enjoyable. We already have seen what can be done with textbook content in apps, the most famous being The Elements app:

Textbook ebooks look like they could be pretty big if done well, and it will be interesting to see how this works.
Here is a video explaining about the iBooks 2 app:

The video points out some interesting points about the old print textbook: They are outdated almost as soon as they are published, as new discoveries are made all the time, and the time-consuming process of publishing a book means that a textbook can be up-to-date upon its induction but by the time it reaches the shop it can be several months out of date. The ability to update the content of an ebook as new information is discovered would allow students to keep on top of developments. It may make it a bit harder to keep track of quotes a student may take from a book if new content is added, making referencing a little bit harder, but we’ll see how this works. Another point is that print textbooks are static, so if you are studying science, then ebooks make it possible to show images as animations so they look more like the real thing they are describing.

However, according to the Guardian, the textbooks will only be available in the US for now, which means the rest of us will have to wait! My main concern is that with tuition fees going up by massive amounts, students will be unable to afford to buy these textbooks, whether or not they have an iPad (and i can’t imagine many will do, i rarely saw them when i was at uni not long ago), so one hopes that libraries will buy them in so students can borrow them, but i guess that in itself will conjure up a load of trouble with lending, as we’ve already witnessed with other ebooks.

These textbooks can open a whole new way of learning, which is an exciting prospect. They look more interesting than print books, and the ability to interact with the content within the book makes it a more compelling reading experience, and if i was learning a subject as heavy and information-packed as medicine or something, i would want a more exciting way of learning about it! And it also makes it easier to take notes by simply highlighting text with your fingers and pasting it into your notes, which seems a lot easier than writing it all down by hand! I only wish i’d had this when i was at school/university, would have made life a lot easier, even though i was only studying literature and language and not science or anything!

I wonder what you think of iBooks 2? Feel free to comment!

Articles consulted:
Telegraph.co.uk: Apple iBooks 2 app lets authors make their own books

Engadget.com: Apple ibooks 2

Guardian.co.uk: Apple unveils ibooks 2 textbooks ipad

Ipads in society

Image via Wikipedia

I was in a restaurant a few nights ago (celebrating my graduation from university, might i add!) with my parents, and my mum spotted a woman on a table behind us who had brought her Ipad with her to dinner.

Now we thought this to be quite an interesting, but odd sight, particularly as it was only the second time i had been in a room with someone who actually owns one of these devices. For some reason she kept wandering round the restaurant with her Ipad, maybe she was showing it off, i don’t know! We thought it was a bit strange to bring such a huge device into a restaurant,  as it barely fitted into her handbag!

My mum pointed out that anyone could see what she was doing on it, what with her waving it around for the whole restaurant to see and the fact the screen was quite bright and therefore stood out in the dimly-lit restaurant.

I wonder how practical these Ipads really are, as they are quite large and cumbersome…. its not like an Iphone which is smaller and more practical.

To be fair, anyone who can afford to buy an Ipad while they are still uncommon in everyday life is bound to show it off, even at the risk of showing everyone what they are doing on this stupidly expensive and large device. And showing off is exactly what this woman was doing, parading it around the restaurant. She was with a fairly big  group of people, so why she had brought it with her i don’t know. I would have thought a restaurant was hardly the sort of place where you need to check on stuff like emails and so on, its more a place where you want to relax and enjoy your dinner without worrying about stuff.

No-one else seemed to need gadgets at the dinner table (there was the odd person on their mobile but that’s fairly common these days), and it seemed like the woman was distracted and a bit distant from her group because of this device which made her stand out. This doesnt seem like a good thing, and i for one would be annoyed if someone i was dining with decided to bring their Ipad and fiddle with it all through the meal, when i want to talk to them with their full attention focused on our conversation.

I really hope that Ipads don’t start to invade our lives too much, as they are only isolating people from real life, and at the moment they are so expensive that very few can afford one comfortably, and once people have got used to them, i’m sure the novelty will wear off.

I am quite divided because Ipads do seem more practical and less cumbersome than a laptop, but less practical than a mobile phone. I think its ok if you want to use it purely for working or whatever while travelling, but they shouldnt really be used in restaurants and other places where you don’t really need them.

What does everyone else think of this?

Going Digital: Is it all it’s cracked up to be?

Image via Wikipedia

Is going digital all its cracked up to be?

Like everything else, digital does has its downsides, and although the following are more speculation than anything else, they are things to think about if we carry on down this path.

How empty is our world going to be in the future, if we no longer have books cluttering up our bookshelves?? If books are replaced by Ebooks, the world will seem very strange.

Maybe one day every human will have one machine that does and has everything:

• Able to read any book in existence as an Ebook, whether its the Bible or the latest bestseller.
• Able to watch videos of anything in any place
• Able to listen to music from anywhere in the world
• Able to access TV channels and programmes from anywhere in the world
• Aable to order stuff from anywhere
• Able to access news and information from anywhere about anything

and the list goes on!

Interestingly, the mobile phone started as a huge brick-like contraption (just like the first computer was huge too), and has gradually shrunk over the years as technology has improved. However, now touchscreens are the big thing and seem to be getting bigger and bigger in size! The Iphone is pretty big as it is, but then we have been introduced to the Ipad and the other copycat devices, all with large touchscreens. Maybe one day there will be a touchscreen which is the size of a wall!

The possibilities seem to be endless.

But one wonders if we are spending too much time and effort on these technologies.

For one thing, we are losing out in other areas, for example music records, LPs, and CDs are being phased out….we are losing the actual physical object which we can hold and have signed by the artist. The same thing is happening with books, with each Ebook that is released, we are losing the physical object.

Another worry is that we are becoming increasingly dependant on devices which need a whole lot of energy, and that energy isnt all coming from green sources. I can’t imagine how much fuel is needed to make the electricity to charge these devices. Poor Mother Nature must hate us for our greedy sucking-the-Earth-dry approach to living. What happens when the fuel sources run out? What happens when there’s long term powercuts and we will no longer be able to access all this information on our phones and various other devices?

Something else to consider is that with all this technology, we are slowly losing our ability to think creatively, and losing our imagination. I think that maybe digital technology could destroy the creative mind and not allow the brain to construct mental images as you read a book.

Is our evolution as a species being prevented by this abundance of technology which we rely on? We humans haven’t changed or evolved in thousands of years!

There is also the worry that our ability to interaction with other people in real time is being affected because we can find out so much about people from their online profile, such as Facebook, and the use of email and IM means we don’t see each other’s reactions. The way we interact with our children is different now, with mobiles and computers taking us away from each other, and computer games and so on making us less inclined to sit and chat properly with each other.

It could be that the introduction of special enhanced Ebooks for children – with features such as being able to record the parent/grandparent/carer’s voice reading the story and pictures and games – could destroy the vital bonding between the parent and child,  especially if the parents just leaves the child with the ebook to read by themself, while the parent goes off to bed or work (obviously the child won’t be fully abandoned, i just mean, that the interaction will be much less).

I’m not saying that these things are definite, but it is important to consider the implications and potential consequences of our actions now.

It’s something to think about, certainly, and i wonder what others think of these, and if you have any issues to add to the list.

Ebooks: Good and Bad

Image via Wikipedia

With all this fuss about Ebooks, i thought i would just sum up the main points about Ebooks, both the good and the bad, just in case people don’t understand all the fuss and debate around them.

Advantages of Ebooks:

• They can be accessed on pretty much any device these days, whether its a mobile phone, computer, Ipad, etc.
• They are becoming more and more widely available every day.
• You get better access to a wider range of books.
• Students can get hold of books in digital form much easier than in a library where there is often demand for the same book.
• It solves the problem of having to travel to a bookstore to buy a book, or waiting for your order from Amazon or any other online seller.
• They give you the opportunity to interact more with the book, or at least they are slowly being developed into something much more sophisticated. ( See Enhanced Editions.com for the amazing future of Ebooks)
• It is now possible to take your whole home library (or indeed, anybody else’s on the planet) with you when you go on holiday, particularly useful for staying within your flying allowance of luggage.
• They may not be so cheap now, but if the MP3 revolution in music sales is anything to go by, eventually prices will come down.
• The author can sell Ebooks direct to the customer if they want to.
• They are more environmentally friendly (no paper, no ink, no chemicals, no emissions from manufacturing or distribution).

Problems with Ebooks:

• If an author writes an Ebook and then constantly updates it, how hard is it going to be for academics to reference citations and quotes from that Ebook? Anyone who has done research will understand how much of a pain referencing is, and Ebooks could make it much more difficult.
• Not everyone can read long portions of text for long periods of time on a screen.
• It may make your eyesight deteriorate if you stare at a screen for a long time. (See above point)
• Its harder to swap and share books with friends. (Although, its not impossible, and the digital people are working on solving this)
• Ebooks have the potential to put many people out of a job.
• Bookshops are going out of business already, but even more will disappear with Ebooks being sold online.
• Not everyone can access a computer or other Ebook-reading device, for example the elderly who rely on their local library, etc.
• Ebooks are still relatively expensive, in most cases they are around the same price as the hardbook edition.

So there you are, a few points about the Ebook! I hope i have enlightened you!

For a really good video demonstration of how awesome Ebooks could be, see this!