Recently I published a post commenting on the fact that Flipboard was an interesting App to check out, if you were able to.  As the application was released there was such an influx of people downloading it and wanting to use it that their servers were overwhelmed.  At that point I had watched their demo video, but had not yet been able to try out the App. Now, they seem to have gotten things under control, even though you need to go through a registration process that lets them have better control on the number of people putting demand on their  back-end services. A couple of days ago I finally...

Approximately at the same time that the iPhone 4 was being released, Apple released a new version of iBooks for the iPad with PDF support.  This was not the first application for reading PDFs on the iPad, but it brought PDF support to what is almost a built-in application for the iPad, despite the fact that you need to download it. I don’t imagine that many iPad owners skip on downloading Apple’s free ebook reader application. While  PDF support in iBooks doesn’t still have all the features that you can use on EPUB books, it is certainly a welcome addition and makes the iPad still...

Amazon has introduced a new version of its Kindle application for both the iPad and the iPhone (and iPod) that supports embedded audio and video clips.  This move gives Amazon an interesting advantage with publishers wishing to bring to market multimedia enriched books without having to develop their own iOS applications. It is probably just a question of time before Apple matches this move by adding equivalent features to its own ebook reading application: iBooks. As Amazon and Apple both use different formats for the eBooks they sell through their stores, this means that we will have competing book...

In a press release Condé Nast, publisher of several magazines including Wired and several Web properties announced that it would be launching a Gourmet application for the iPad, bringing back the brand of the Gourmet magazine that was discontinued last year. The brand has a lot of recognition and some comments made by people with past relation to the magazine suggests that a good deal of content for the iPad application may come from the archives of the original printed magazine, instead of being newly created. With the huge sales success of the first issue of Wired for iPad I imagine that Condé Nast...

Apple released yesterday iOS 4, the new version of its iPhone operating system and in its wake iBooks, its eBook reading application.  Being a compulsive reader I set out to try the application just as soon as I could and was a bit disappointed. I did my testing on an iPod Touch upgraded to iOS 4, which is a requirement of the iBooks application.  Upgrading to iOS 4 will take a while, so if you are interested in trying out iBooks for your self, set a side at least an hour and a half for the upgrade, up setup and customization. It took me pretty much that time to go through the process with roughly 12...

In the first nine days of sales Wired Magazine’s iPad edition has sold over 73,000 units, while its printed monthly sales are of about 80,000 units.  If Wired is capable of maintaining such incredible sales numbers after the novelty wares off, it might signal other publications that they should put more effort into their digital editions. Gone through Wired’s first iPad issue I have to say that despite the underlying technology not being that great, it looks pretty good.  They better do something about the half gigabyte size issues before people start to run out of storage in the iPads,...

If you like science-fiction or fantasy books and haven’t checked out the Baen Free Library, do so right now.  For a long time Baen has been making many of their books available for free download.  These are the same books you would otherwise purchase in paper or ebook form and they are available in multiple formats, including ePub which makes them ideally suited for reading on the iPad in any of various reader applications. I’ve been using Stanza on the iPod Touch to read ebooks for quite some time and now that Stanza for iPad is out I just loaded it up with several titles I purchased...

Wired Magazine made its debut on the iPad recently and seems to have done well for itself.  With 24,000 units sold and downloaded in the first 24 hours, things are looking good for Wired.  But, are they really? There is another number about the magazine that is quite troubling: 527.  The first issue of Wired for the iPad has a wopping 527 MBs of size.   So what?  Well, that is a lot of megabytes for a single magazine issue, specially when you consider it relative to the storage space of a base model iPad: 16 GB. If all magazines were to have similar size a base model iPad would only be able to...

Last week Apple started offering book authors the option of submitting their books directly to the iBookstore.   Why is this different than what could already be done with Amazon?  For one thing, the iPad is a hot new device that is igniting a revolution in how people interact with computers and all kinds of media.  While this should not be relevant, in a round about sort of way it really is. Anyone that is following what goes on around and about the iPad must have heard or read something about Apple’s App Store.  Since Apple introduced the iPhone SDK, almost two years ago, a large number of...

Wired magazine has finally become available on the iPad.  Users can already download the application from the App Store for $4.99.  This is going to be the per issue cost of the magazine but he user won’t have to download a separate applications for each issue.  Future issues of Wired will be available for purchase from a library within the application itself. Wired had been working with Adobe on a tablet version of the magazine for quite some time. That work received a jolt when Apple changed the terms of use for its online application store limiting the tools which could be used to create...

Seqoy, a small company with headquarters in both São Paulo, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina is bringing to market a publishing platform that promises to make the process a snap. The platform called publiyou sports a minimalist interface on the iPad and includes social features such as sharing and commenting on your favorite stories. Through the  publiyou Website users can create their accounts, upload and manage their published content, manage statistics, payments, etc. The site will also be the main window for promoting the available content.  Users submit the content for publication in PDF...

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve read countless articles and posts with the most outlandish comments about the iPad, but few caught my attention more than a short post I read today about the iPad making it easier to pirate comic books because it has a screen grabbing feature. It makes it piracy so easy because you only need to push two buttons to capture whatever is on the screen.  Hello?!  Anyone in there?! Last time I checked we lived in 2010.  I have an incredibly cheap HP integrated printer/scanner, in fact much cheaper than an iPad, and incredibly enough it also has a couple of buttons...

I’m sure that by now you have all seen this as it seems to have run around the world incredibly fast.  I cannot in good conscience, however, abstain from commenting on how incredible the Alice for iPad eBook application looks.  While I’m sure that there could be many different ways to translate this story into an interactive children’s eBook, this one certainly is fun and the children are going to love it.  Heck, I love it! We are bound to see a great number of fantastic new interactive books on the iPad and the beauty of this device is that there isn’t a single way of doing...

I love reading books and I love shopping for them.  Okay, let me rephrase that.  I love browsing through a bookstore, but I rarely buy a paper book these days, always preferring the digital version if one is available.  This duality of feelings and the certainty of the inevitable demise of the paper book in the future makes me a bit sad each time I go to a good bookstore. The experience of going through the books, the quiet atmosphere and the simple joy of seeing so many colorful covers that represent books you haven’t yet read is an experience I am in no hurry to loose.  I am, however,...

I have seen a lot of people question just how significant are Apple’s eBook numbers since they started coming out. The nature of the numbers is frequently questioned as they are download numbers.  That means that it includes books that are available for free and those that users have actually purchased to read on their iPads. Many seem to taking this indiscrimination as a basis on which to build a theory that Apple’s numbers are not significant, that they aren’t indicative of sales and therefore of sales potential.  Well, consider this for a moment.  I would say that anyone that...