Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Issuu goes Android! iPhone coming soon!


Just got notice that Issuu, the online publication tool for pdf, has gone mobile! According to their release...
Introducing Issuu Mobile for Android phones. You can now access your favorite magazines, newspapers, catalogs and more everywhere you go. Enjoy the best mobile reading experience and share it with your friends. Choose from over 1 million free publications from Bauer Media, Penguin Books, Random House and more including the web's best indie publishers. Or publish your very own today!

Scratch for easy reading

With our groundbreaking EasyRead technology you can finally enjoy reading, yes reading, the text of magazines, newspapers, books and more on any small screen device.

It's social too

All the popular features of Issuu have gone mobile: get notified of the latest editions, subscribe to your favorite publishers, see what your friends are reading, keep up with your groups, synchronize with My Library, and much much more.

Without even lifting a finger, the books and 'zines published by L'Stok Press will now be available as true eBooks that you can read on the go! Issuu is also promising that they will soon be available on the iPhone, and by extension the iTouch.

This is going to make the dividing line between eBook reader and the new large, clear screen phones much more fuzzy! Competition? I don't think so. It will boil down to how much reading you intend doing on the device - the ePaper screens of the dedicated readers win hands down for clarity and legibility. However for convenience, the ability to snatch a few pages of the book you are reading on one of the new smartphones between phone calls, music and emails, would be magic!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Simon & Schuster get Scribd?

I don't know how long they've been there, but I noticed today that Simon & Schuster, the publishers of licensed Star Trek fiction, are publishing teaser copies of their works on Scribd. Have a look at the latest in their Star Trek: Enterprise line ...



Just out of curiosity, what exactly is the title? Most of the advance publicity says this is "Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War", so what is, "Beneath The Raptor's Wing"? Is it just me or does it sound like the first of a new series? Surely they're not going to fit the whole of the Romulan War in one volume?

And, not wanting to be critical but... two colons in the same sentence?

All niggles aside, I will be buying this since I believe Enterprise has a lot of story potential and not just because of curiosity as to how they will unfold the Romulan War to us. My only caveat is what media to get it in. I recently lost my beloved iPaq >sniff< and I mostly miss its scheduling and eBook functions. I have a eeePC - called "Mini Me" - that is very handy but the Linux installation that it came with has no serious eBook reader (and the media player sucks too!). I'm trying to teach myself the arcane rituals of downloading and installing software in Linux to put one on there. (^V^)

I could get it from Scribd as a pdf download but pdf looses a lot of the eBook functionality, keeping your page, dictionary and note-taking for example. I haven't read an eBook in a while, can I get this in MobiPocket? Does MobiPocket still exist now that it has been bought by Amazon and they are pushing the Kindle?

I'll get back to you shortly.