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Dell's wireless webcam prototype uses magnets to stick to a screen
We checked out Dell's prototypes around "seamless work experiences" called Concept Flow, Concept Stanza and Concept Pari.
Electronic mini-city comments on the dangers of surveillance
Nervous about the rise of a surveillance culture, where both companies and governments seem hell-bent on knowing everything they possibly can about you? So is British artist Stanza, who found a clever way of expressing that anxiety about always-watching electronics. His Nemesis Machine project connects a legion of climate and motion sensors in London to a miniature electronic city in Bruges. If the temperature climbs in Britain, for instance, a corresponding mini-building lights up in Belgium. There are even cameras that turn footage of viewers into tiny, Blade Runner-style video walls. The artwork both recreates the frenzied activity of a city and throws modern society's constant monitoring back in your face -- you know what those beeps, buzzes and flashes really mean.
Stanza iOS app updated, but Amazon is abandoning it
Stanza was one of the first apps I downloaded when I got an iPhone. It pre-dated Amazon's release of the Kindle iOS app and Apple's own iBooks app, so for awhile Stanza was the best option out there for reading eBooks on an iPhone. Not long after it released the official Kindle app, Amazon bought Stanza. What's happened subsequently should come as no surprise; the app languished, going for as much as nine months between updates. Stanza has recently been updated for iOS 5 compatibility, but according to Macworld, Amazon has confirmed this will be Stanza's final update. This will be sad news for a subset of iOS users, because Stanza has always had support for a wider array of document formats and more customization options than either the Kindle app or iBooks. Amazon's official word on the matter tries to steer Stanza users toward the Kindle app instead, but not all users will find that a suitable substitute for the flexibility Stanza provided. Personally I haven't used Stanza for some time; the iBookstore has vastly improved the breadth of its offerings over time, and I've found iBooks suitable for the majority of my e-reading needs. Stanza was the first e-reader app I used on my iPhone, though, so it's a bit sad to see it going away.
Seven ways the iPad is a boon for book lovers
Fellow TUAW blogger Michael Grothaus gave us his take on utilizing the iPad as an ebook reader over the weekend. It's is a good look into some of the down sides of ebook readers like the iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, et. al. I'm the type of bibliophile that reads a lot of different things at once. I'll be reading a couple of novels, along with several volumes of manga, at a time -- going back and forth as I feel like reading the particular book. While I do agree that traditional books aren't going anywhere soon, there are some rather big positives the iPad does bring to the literary world. Easy access to public-domain literature. I am in the process of launching a webcomic that requires a lot of research on literature that's already in the public domain, such as "The Wizard of Oz" with a few swipes. I had the initial book in the series, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," on my iPad and read it over the course of a few hours. Being a Kindle graduate, I found the process fairly easy and quickly loaded up some other titles onto the iPad. Of course, many of these are available for most ereaders thanks to Project Gutenberg. Presenting old classics in a new form. I encourage anyone with an iPad to try out the sample of this interactive version of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is simply superb, and really shows the possibilities of what the iPad can do for reading. Another example is The Elements, one of the initial iPad apps that got raves and with good reason.
International iBookstores opening on May 28th in most countries
When iPads fall into the eager hands of Apple fans in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK on May 28th, the iBookstore and Apple's free iBooks e-reader app may be there. Apple has confirmed that iBooks and the iBookstore will be available in all of the listed countries with the exception of Germany and Switzerland, and we'll be sure to update this post as soon as we've received word that those two countries have been added to the list (we're starting a rumor here that Apple has to stock up on digital umlauts and eszetts before opening these iBookstores). For those of you who will be getting your hands on an iPad soon and want to take advantage of the many books that are already available in the iBooks epub format, be sure to read Erica Sadun's post about filling up your iBookShelf. The post, and the comments that accompany it, offer some suggestions for fun and entertaining books. And remember, you can always use Stanza or Calibre to convert other document formats for reading in iBooks. [via MacRumors]
Eleven ways to stifle boredom in the iPad line
One of most excruciatingly boring experiences of my life was waiting in line on June 29, 2007 for my first-generation iPhone. The day was clear and hot, and although I had my laptop with me, it quickly ran out of juice as we waited for the official opening of the store for iPhone sales at 5 PM. Some people appear to have infinite patience, but TUAW reader Cody is like me -- he gets bored easily. In an email, Cody said "I will be standing in the Best Buy line for well over 5 hours. Do you have any suggestions on ways to help time go by? I think it would be helpful if you compiled a list and posted it on TUAW!" Well, we're at your service, Cody! And hopefully, these ideas will keep hundreds of thousands of iPad owners-to-be from suffering from terminal boredom in the early morning hours in line. Please note that several of these suggestions require that the person standing in line own an iPhone, so if you don't own one already, get thee to an Apple Store now! Do live streaming video the entire time you're in line. TUAW bloggers will be giving you live coverage of iPad Saturday at a number of locations across the country, but there's just not going to be enough local coverage everywhere. Grab yourself a copy of Qik (US$0.99) or Ustream Broadcaster (free), maybe buy yourself a Sima LED Video Light to strap to your head to brighten things up at 2 AM, and bring a lot of fully charged Monoprice battery packs. After all, we don't want to miss one thrilling moment of your time interviewing each and every person in the line at least twice.
Project Gutenberg books will work on the iPad
If you don't already know about Project Gutenberg, you should. The site has over 30,000 free ebooks, most of them classics whose copyrights have lapsed. The site includes big-name titles from big-name authors, representing everyone from Dante Alighieri to H.G. Wells. The site's free digital ebooks saved me untold hundreds of dollars while I was doing undergrad work for my English degree. 9to5Mac points out that all of those ebooks should be compatible with Apple's forthcoming iBooks app for the iPad. iBooks will be using the ePub format, and Apple itself has said "you can add free ePub titles to iTunes and sync them to the iBooks app on your iPad." ePub is one of many formats available for Project Gutenberg's ebooks; therefore, it stands to reason that those ebooks should all work in the iBooks app. However, even if Project Gutenberg's ebooks don't work in iBooks, whether for technical reasons such as formatting or more sinister reasons such as content providers' demands, it won't matter. Project Gutenberg's ebooks are already available on the iPhone and iPod touch through multiple channels -- the Stanza app, and through Project Gutenberg's own site via MobileSafari -- and the iPad will be able to access Project Gutenberg's library in the same way. Reading those ebooks will undoubtedly be a better experience on the iPad's larger screen, whether it's through iBooks, Stanza, Safari, or some other means. Apple isn't advertising the iPad as coming with 30,000 free books, but thanks to Project Gutenberg, without spending a penny more than the cost of the iPad itself, you'll be able to carry an entire library of classics around in a device that weighs less than most hardcover novels. [Via Cult of Mac]
Apple forces Stanza to nix USB book sharing
Those who enjoy USB book sharing their ePub and eReader files in the current version of Stanza [iTunes link] will want to avoid the 2.1 version of the software, currently being distributed in the App Store. The update notes reveal that Apple apparently ordered Lexcycle to remove the USB sharing ability. Unfortunately, Lexcycle is forbidden from explaining why they were told to remove the feature. To me -- and this is pure speculation -- this is Apple's equivalent of giving Amazon the finger. Amazon acquired Lexcycle back in 2009, and that this could be part of a series of moves by Apple to drive people toward the iPad and the upcoming iBooks software. I wouldn't be too surprised if Apple found a way to ban the wonderful Kindle app [iTunes link] from the App Store at some point in the future. Is Apple becoming the next Tammany Hall with Steve Jobs its "Boss" Tweed? For now, to avoid losing USB sharing, remember not to do a bulk upgrade of your apps and avoid any future Stanza updates.
Buyer's Guide: 33 things you don't need if you have an iPhone
Every time I walk through Warehouse Stationery (New Zealand's equivalent to Office Depot) or Dick Smith's Electronics (pretty much Best Buy), I'm struck by how probably half the products in each store are pretty much useless to me since I've got an iPhone. Thanks to the apps that come pre-packaged with the iPhone and the more than 100,000 third-party offerings now available in the iTunes Store, the iPhone has gained functionality that might have seemed hard to fathom under three years ago when Steve Jobs first announced the device. "A widescreen iPod with touch controls... a revolutionary mobile phone... a breakthrough internet communications device... these are not three separate devices. This is one device." So Steve Jobs told us all back at Macworld Expo 2007. But since then, the iPhone has grown to be much more than just those three concepts. What follows is a sort of anti-buyer's guide, a list of products and devices that you may never need or even want to buy again (or receive as a gift) if you have an iPhone. Some of these are certainly open for debate, but more than a few of them are products that, for all intents and purposes, are completely unnecessary if you have an iPhone. (Items in bold also apply to the iPod touch).
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.
Amazon has acquired Stanza
Last month Amazon released the free Kindle application for the iPhone in the US [App Store link], shortly after the Kindle 2 hit the market. If you haven't used it yet, it works quite well. Users can buy books (but not subscriptions) from the Kindle Store via Mobile Safari for reading on their iPhones, although the purchasing process is easier from a desktop browser. Unlike the Kindle, the iPhone app is able to display color images, but it lacks text-to-speech as well as a direct connection to the Kindle Store. Whispersync, which synchronizes ebooks between the iPhone app and Kindle, works as advertised.A few weeks ago, we posted a comparison of ebook readers featuring, among others, the iPhone app Stanza [App Store link]. As Steve mentioned, Stanza works with nearly every ebook format, even Project Gutenberg etexts. I only used Stanza briefly to check it out and I can say that the UI was very nice. Additionally, the folks who created Stanza have an existing relationship with ebook seller Fictionwise. In fact, Fictionwise created an ebook store just for Stanza users.This week, we've learned that Amazon has acquired the company behind Stanza. We can only assume that aspects of Stanza will make it into a future release of Kindle for the iPhone.
Google and Amazon debut cellphone e-books, eye strain
Sure, we pretty much figured that the V-Book (which is actually not a book at all) would be the final nail in the coffin of what was once known as "literature," but it looks like both Google and Amazon have other plans. Not only have their been rumblings of a new Kindle, but Amazon has announced that it'll soon be making the popular e-reader's some 230,000 titles available for your cellphone. The company hasn't said when the titles will be available or exactly what phones would be supported -- but we're guessing that we'll be seeing handsets with nice, big screens like the G1 and the iPhone on the list. If that weren't enough, Google's Book Search holdings -- about 1.5 million public domain works -- will soon be available for cellphone-based e-readers like Stanza. This is good news for people who need access to data on the go -- and really good news for anyone who would like to curl up next to the fire with a nice glass of wine and their Curve 8900.[Image courtesy of Spacesick, Via Unwired View]
Stanza adds licensed eReader content for iPhone booklovers
Good news for those who like to read books on their iPhones (as opposed to listening to them read by other people). JKontherun reports that ebook seller Fictionwise is licensing support for the eReader format to Lexcycle for use in Stanza; Fictionwise is also launching an eReader store for Stanza users. This adds more than 40,000 titles to the Stanza family, and allows multiple options for licensed book content on the iPhone family; Fictionwise will continue to offer the eReader app that's already on the App Store. For users with libraries of eReader-format content bought for previous platforms like the Palm handhelds, those books should work. The press release quotes Lexcycle COO Neelan Choksi: "Just in time for the holidays, Stanza readers are going to be able to find their favorite authors like Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts. This relationship with Fictionwise is a big step forward in our ongoing effort to expand the selection of works available to our large and growing user base."While we love the sleek UI of Classics for books on the iPhone, that app doesn't let you choose your own premium or free books to populate the shelves -- and with thousands more ebooks now available to Stanza users, filling the shelves is going to be easier.Thanks James.
iPhone the most popular ebook reader
Forbes is reporting that the iPhone has become the country's top eBook reader. The claim is based upon the number of downloads of Stanza [App Store link], an ebook reader for the iPhone and iPod touch (395,000 and counting), versus the number of projected US Kindle sales (380,000). For those unfamiliar with Stanza, it's a free application that lets users download books over the air, as does the Kindle. All of Stanza's offerings are free works in the public domain, and flipping pages is a breeze with the touch screen.Of course, it's silly to compare an iPhone to a Kindle. The screen is very tiny and I wouldn't want to read anything longer than an email message with it. However, many people will, some of whom do it just because they can. I can remember reading a Stephen King book on my old Palm ///e simply because I thought it was neat.Still, combine the 395,000 downloads of Stanza with nearly 380,000 Kindles sold (plus the Sony eBook reader figures), and it seems that many people enjoy reading very tiny type.[Via MacDailyNews]
