As you might notice, there are some slight changes to the City of Amathar Blog. I’m reoganizing it a bit. You will also note the books on the right now include direct links to the Kindle store and some other places where you can find my books. Feel free to try a few of these links and download some books for you Kindle, Nook, or iPad.
If you are reading this from facebook, visit: http://amathar.blogspot.com/
If you are like me, a Sony EReader fan who moved over to iPad, you may have had a problem reading your old books on your new device. Enter Bluefire Reader. It reads Adobe DRM, so you can read books bought at Sony, Kobo, Borders, and a lot of other ebook sources (but not Amazon or B&N). You can also use it to read ebooks from the library and it has built in support from Feedbooks (where you can download my free books) and other online ebookstores. Best of all– it’s free. Ket it and ad one more blade to the techie Swiss army knife that is the iPad.
One of my favorite purchases for the iPad is the wireless keyboard. It is way cool, using bluetooth to connect. To be fair though, I really don’t use it much– certainly not enough to justify the price. At least not yet.
I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about my iPad, but I still love it. I enjoy iBooks, though I have all the other book programs on it as well– Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Borders. All the books I’ve bought so far have been either from Kobo or Barnes and Noble so that I can get epub format, then I strip the epub and read them in iBooks which I like better. I haven’t bought any Kindle books even when they have been cheaper because I can’t strip the DRM (I’m sure I can, I just haven’t taken the time to learn how). If I can, I buy DRM-free books. It’s only once in a while that a book is so compelling I have to get it anyway. The world will be a much better place when publishers just stop all the DRM in their books and we can choose where we would like to buy our books and on which reader we would like to read them.
P.S. Tomorrow’s post, posted today, so I can sleep in tomorrow. I’m exhausted.
The iPad arrived today. I’m having a fine time playing with it. I plan to post a Youtube video of me reading one of my books from the iPad soon.
I bit the bullet and bought an iPad. When I say I bought it, I mean I ordered it, because they are sold out all over Nevada. I’ve never bought an Apple product before, not even an iPod. Not a big Apple fan. But if you’ve held one in your hands, you know. If you haven’t, try it…. unless you don’t want to want on, because I guarantee that if you hold one, you’ll want one.
The iPad has my interest, even though I’m not a fan of closed systems, and I never thought I’d consider a device without at least one USB port and a memory card slot. What follows is my reasons for interest, and the things I wish it had. I.e., if I could have provided input, this is what Apple might have included on an iPad developed just for me.
Why I Am Interested
Good battery life. Hopefully, real world usage matches 10-12hrs.
Great form factor – light, slim and nicely sized screen
Zippy performance – should be much faster than e-ink devices
Capacitive touch screen
Lots of developer support, and huge iPhone consumer base
External keyboard via BT or dock. Eventually wired keyboards will probably be available via the connector.
Should be a good e-book reader, even for PDFs in landscape. (I don’t mind reading on an LCD screen.)
Price is not much more than an e-ink device, so I can potentially make this as an e-book reader purchase that gets me some additional functionality and a more responsive device as well.
If you go to a full O/S like Win7, then you lose battery life and the lightweight advantage. I.e. In that case, I may as well use my convertible tablet, or get a netbook (still a possibility). The extra weight and shorter battery life is a critical factor for me.
It will be interesting to see what Android tablets come out with 7-10″ screens, 8+hr battery life,
City of Amathar 