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Kobo offers one free book a month, brings peashooter to the e-reader gunfight
In a slightly underwhelming attempt to match Amazon's Lending Library proposition, Kobo will start to offer a free download each month to new Touch eReader owners. Starting in January, customers will be able to pick from the decidedly broad selection of Pride and Prejudice, HBR's 10 Must Reads: On Managing People and Star Wars Vs. Star Trek. Unfortunately, the offer is limited to devices purchased between November 24 and March 31 2012, but Kobo is hoping that the ability to hold on to the titles indefinitely will cancel out Amazon's legion of free rentals. Users can sign up to the ebook's offers mailing list for the full details. Remember: A book is for life, not just for Christmas.
Magic Catalog brings free books to your iBooks or Kindle collection
Most people know that there is a free Kindle app for iOS that will let you read books from Amazon's Kindle store. Apple also offers a free iBooks app. Fewer people have heard of Project Gutenberg, where you can download over 30,000 free books, and fewer still have heard of the Magic Catalog from FreeKindleBooks.org. The "Magic Catalog" isn't where Harry Potter shops -- it's a "book" containing nothing except links to other books. You can use the search feature of your favorite e-book reader to look for books; with a few taps, you can have the new book on your iOS device without ever needing to go through iTunes and without spending a penny. The easy way If you already have the iBooks or Kindle apps installed, simply go to Magic Catalog on your iOS device and tap the appropriate link for whichever app you are using (MOBI Edition for Kindle, EPUB Edition for iBooks). The slightly harder way If, for some reason, you'd prefer to download the books to your computer and transfer them to your iOS device (or if you already have .epub, .mobi, or other e-books on your computer), you can do so using iTunes. If you have the Kindle app installed, it will appear under the "File Sharing" section in the "apps" tab, and you can add books there. You may notice that iBooks does not appear in the "File Sharing" section. To transfer books to iBooks, simply drag to the "Library" section of your iTunes library (see this page at Apple.com for more details). Two minor flaws Kindle: When using the Magic Catalog with the Kindle app, you'll find one glitch in the process. When you tap on a book in the catalog, the Kindle app opens a blank page with an arrow at the top left. You have to tap on that arrow to open the page in Safari, which will then show you a link to open the book in the Kindle app. Then when you go back to the Kindle app, you have to tap the "Done" button on the top right in order to see the new book. It's a minor annoyance, at worst. Kindle and iBooks: When you are on the web page to download the book, you will not see the name of the book; you'll see something like "pg23.mobi" followed by the size and a button to open the book in the Kindle app (or iBooks if you have the EPUB version). Once you open the book in the appropriate application, it will show the correct name.
A barrel of free books from Kaplan makes a great back-to-school haul
Kaplan Publishing is offering quite a few free eBooks through the iTunes store, but you can only access them on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. It's a great deal if you're heading back to school or just want to stock up on some quality reference material. The books are in the categories of college prep, graduate studies, law, medicine, nursing and education. The book are free from now until August 30. Kaplan first became well known to students preparing for SAT and other exams such as the GRE, GMAT, LSAT and many others. The company then expanded into publishing on many education topics. %Gallery-100381%
iPad apps: books and comics galore
Reading on the iPad is something that is part of the device's DNA. Whether or not you think that LED-backlit display is a killer or a cure for the world's third favorite bedtime activity, you can't deny that Apple has pushed the idea of the iPad as e-reader pretty heavily. So, if you've got one you must be thinking about what kinds of reading choices you really have. Unlike a lot of platforms, you're not just locked into Apple's iTunes-integrated iBookstore for getting your textual kicks -- you can also utilize Amazon's Kindle service and a handful of other distribution channels for the books and comics of your choosing. So, which ones stand out? Take a look beyond the break and see our picks for reading on your magical new device. Oh, and be sure to check out our other app roundups right here.
BookReader for iPhone: You can't judge a book by its cover
We did a fairly extensive rundown of eBooks for the iPhone/iPod touch in August; you can take a look back if you're new to the eBook universe for Apple's mobile devices. BookReader [iTunes Link] , a US$4.99 app for devices running OS 2.21 or higher, has just joined the crowded eBook market -- but it brings little to the table to recommend itself. The app when first run looks beautiful. You are shown a wonderfully rendered bookshelf which looks very similar to the one found in Classics [iTunes Link], but a bit more nicely rendered, showing the spines of books instead of covers in a scrolling list. Impressive, but now what? I really had no idea since there were no instructions on how to operate the app either in the app, or on the Readdle site. This, as I've often said, is a major downfall of many of the apps in the store. It would be fine if it were an adventure game, but not at all acceptable in something offering utility that you would like to get at quickly. The only documentation in the app is a cursory explanation of one of three methods of getting content into the app -- connecting via Wi-Fi and WebDAV to your computer in a fairly arcane manner. You connect to an external server and provide an app-created numeric password. From there you can add books to the server folder... or so they say, but they don't go as far as saying how. I added books to the server, and they never showed up in the app. I was left stranded on the Wi-fi access page and didn't know where to go from there. Now I know that I'm missing something minuscule, but that's exactly my point; there wasn't enough given to me to allow me to complete the task. The second method of acquiring content is through Readdle Storage. You need to set up an account on the Readdle site which gives you a free 512 megabytes; larger amounts of storage are available for purchase. Once you set up an account, it works fine, but unless you know what to do, you may not find it on your own. You can easily add documents to Readdle Storage and they do show up in the app. Many documents, unfortunately, don't look very attractive. Anything that started as a .pdf document winds up looking like garbage since all the graphics are gone, and the formatting is stripped out. The list of formats that BookReader handles is also lacking. It doesn't understand some very popular formats such as Kindle, MobiPocket and Microsoft Word's .DOC as do other apps such as Stanza [iTunes Link]. DRM is not supported, but that's par for the course in the eReader market.
eBook Roundup: 8 Apps for iPhone readers
An e-book (or ebook, or eBook, depending upon who you ask) is the digital equivalent of a paper book. According to KiwiTech, the publishers of Classics2Go, the market for eBooks has increased more than 60% over the last six years and growth from this point is expected to be very strong. We can reasonably connect the start of this burgeoning market to the release of the Amazon Kindle in 2007. Strong sales convinced some wary readers that this was a viable option. You could carry a few hundred books under your arm, and the reading experience was, well, acceptable. Going on a long trip? Wouldn't it be nice to take about 20 pounds of paper out of your luggage? 2007 also marked the introduction of the iPhone; it took about a year for eBook apps to appear on the iPhone. Now there are so many of them that finding the right one for your purposes can be a confusing prospect. I would like to clarify all this a bit by categorizing the four types of eBook apps, at least so far, and letting you know what you can expect from each. In deciding upon an eBook reader you need to consider: what sort of material you will be reading, how much you are willing to spend (if anything) and the quality of the viewing experience. Last year, Andrew Kazmierski and Phill Ryu released Classics (iTunes link). Their idea was to take a bunch of books in the public domain, 22 in the current release, and control all aspects of the user experience. We covered the first release of Classics upon its original release when its price was $2.99. Since then, the price has dropped to .99 and the number of books has increased. This app looked so impressive that it was featured in an Apple iPhone commercial. Upon launch, the reader is presented with a nicely rendered wooden bookshelf displaying colorful dust jackets. Click on a book and start reading. There is no wait, since all the books were downloaded with the app. Future updates bring more books. The books are all the kind of classics that are on school reading lists ranging from Frankenstein and Dracula, to Hound of the Baskervilles. The feature set is slim. Tap the right side of the screen or swipe right to left and the sepia toned pages turn using a pleasing animation. There are two buttons on the top of the screen. One brings down a maroon and gold bookmark and sends you to the bookshelf. When you click on the book again, you are brought to where you left off. The second button takes you to a table of contents. The bottom of the screen tells you the name of the chapter you are reading and what page you are on. The top of the screen displays the title of the book. Illustrations in books like Alice in Wonderland are nicely rendered, and the text is attractively formatted. A change in color of the title bar gives you an idea of where you are in the book.
