I no longer enjoy launching the Kobo app on my iPhone or iPad. I stopped looking forward to interacting with it a few updates ago, and now I actually avoid it. This has been building for a while. A year ago, I praised Kobo for being ahead of the curve when it came to adding [...]
Apple iOS
Apple gives book creators beautiful, golden handcuffs
Today Apple raised the bar on interactive textbook publishing, with the introduction of a revamped iBooks app for the iPad and a free textbook publishing app for the Mac. If you’ve got an iPad, a fairly new Mac, and a big pile o’ knowledge to share with the world, you can now create a really [...]
Stanza updated! Now works on iOS 5
Clearly I was too pessimistic last week when I wrote about the death of Stanza, the ebook reader app that stopped working on Apple devices with the release of iOS 5. Earlier today an updated version of Stanza was released, and the app now works again. I take back what I wrote in that earlier [...]
Alternatives to Stanza on iOS
Update: Forget all of this! Stanza delivered a surprise update to the Apple app store on November 10th, 2011, that restored functionality on iOS 5. But only update if you need to: this latest version breaks the app if you’re running an older iOS like 4.3 (thanks to Paula for pointing that out in the [...]
Amazon releases Kindle Cloud Reader, HTML5 web app that runs on iPad
Amazon surprised everyone this morning by announcing a new way to read your Kindle books if you’re on an iPad or computer. It’s called Kindle Cloud Reader, and it’s an HTML5 web application that runs in modern browsers and gives you offline access to Kindle books that you download. Unlike some Kindle announcements, this one [...]
Why I won’t buy anything from iBooks
Last month was a sad one for all ebooksellers who aren’t Apple but who offer iOS apps, as well as for ebook customers. If you use a Kindle, Kobo or Nook app on your iOS device, you probably already noticed this, but otherwise you might have no idea what’s going on. So here’s a quick [...]
Apple relaxes app rules for ebook apps
It looks like Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and any other ereader app currently on iOS won’t be disappearing from the App Store after the end of the month after all. Mac Rumors is reporting that Apple has removed its most controversial new rule concerning in-app purchases, which said if you sold any media content elsewhere that [...]
Amazon offering 56 TextVook mini titles for free
Vook, the company that mixes audio and video with ebooks, has just released a new line called TextVook. The titles are short (about 4,000 words) and offer concise overviews of topics from subjects like science, law, and world history. They fall somewhere between an old-fashioned encyclopedia article and an edited Wikipedia entry. About 20 of [...]
Instagram users like their Kindles
By michellewegner Instagram is an iOS app that lets you shoot a quick photo, tint it or age it so that it has a more organic/hipster look, and then share it online like a tweet or Tumblr update. I never use it, but it’s crazy popular — and apparently lots of Instagram users tend to [...]
Miss Spider’s publisher explains how he’s wanted to create ebook apps since 1972
With all the blog chatter about myopic and hamstrung publishers, it’s easy to forget about the innovators like Nicholas Callaway…
Expect more educational Kindle apps soon, hints developer
AppleInsider wrote today that the developer for an iOS periodic table app was invited by Amazon to port it over to the Kindle platform: [The developer] contacted AppleInsider to note that Amazon had invited him via email to bring the app to Kindle, noting that the company was especially interested in educational apps. As AppleInsider [...]