Currently viewing the tag: "tablets"
This week marks my first time contributing to the Tecca WWIN (What We’re Into Now). I gushed about the Series 7 Gamer I just bought (more on this later) and made a sad face about The Closer finale, but I forgot to mention the fiction I’ve been reading.
This is a particular crime since my whole short fiction reading setup is very tech-influenced. I read way more now that I have a good device and good apps to make it all possible.
Just a year ago I was complaining about how it was still an annoying multi-step process to get short fiction from my favorite magazines onto my mobile device of choice. Back then it was my eReader. These days I read on a tablet, but only because none of my eInk eReaders has the versatility I need for what I do.
The tablet I use everyday is a 7-inch Galaxy Tab, which is the perfect size for tableting, according to me. The two apps I use to grab short fiction are the official Google Reader app and Pocket (used to be Read It Later). Sometimes I have to use the browser.
Many of the online magazines I read have RSS feeds, so I subscribe to them in Google Reader. Every month I go to the Fiction folder, find the stories I want to read, then Share them to Pocket. Even if the RSS feed doesn’t have the whole story, it doesn’t matter. Pocket goes to the source link and pulls the webpage into their app.
For the magazines without an RSS feed, I go to the browser[1]. Same deal there. I find the stories I like, then Share them to Pocket.
Pocket is awesome. It pulls in and saves all the links I share to it, then has the full text waiting for me to read whenever I want. It automatically caches everything offline, so if I’m on a plane or on the subway I can still read my stuff.
I used to use Readability, but that app went wonky on me too much and also wasn’t reliable with the offline cache.
Pocket makes reading a bit easier on the eyes by offering some control over background colors and font size. Settings aren’t as robust as eReader apps like Nook or Kindle, sadly.
So, you ask, why can’t I do this on my eReader? It’s not that I can’t, I just don’t like the options available for eInk eReaders.
Most of the services available for saving web pages (which is where these stories reside) exist for the Kindle. There’s Instapaper, which I used for a while, and now there’s a new Chrome extension for Kindle that works similarly to Pocket. Problem is, I much prefer Nook to Kindle.
The reason I can’t get stuff automatically sent to Nook is entirely Barnes & Noble’s fault. For whatever reason, they don’t feel the need to create a WhisperSync-like system where you can easy send stuff to the Nook via email or syncing to a cloud service. Instapaper does have a way to download your saved pages as an EPUB file for Nook, but then you have to transfer it yourself. An extra step.
It would be worth taking if Instapaper’s formatting wasn’t extremely odd. What I like about Pocket is that it gives you text or the actual layout of the web page. Nothing janky.
Instapaper might be better at this now, I don’t know, it’s been a while.
Still, being able to click once and know that the story I want to read will be where I want to read it is a big thing for me.
Several online magazines have started creating eBook versions for people with eReaders, and I think that is awesome. Some will deliver to Kindles automatically, but not Nooks. This has something to do with how ridiculously hard it is for a magazine to get into Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s newsstands. And perhaps it’s prohibitively expensive, too.
Once again, the eBook sellers are putting barriers between me and the stuff I want to read, thus costing both themselves and content creators money. All by making stuff far more complex than it needs to be.
Anyway, this got me to wondering how other fiction lovers read stories from their favorite online magazines? Do you get the eBook versions, save them to your phone/tablet/eReader some other way, or just read on a computer?
Notes
- I should point out here that I only bother to do this with magazines I really, really like. If I come across your zine and it has no RSS feed and has no track record with me, I skip it. Shorter: Magazines, get an RSS feed. It’s 2012. Come on. [↩]
At CES I saw several really drool-worthy products, but the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga was among the best, no question, no hesitation. When the company demoed it for us the first time I was immediately impressed and also immediately aware that I needed one of my own.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had this reaction to a Lenovo product. And I’ve been burned in the past. I’ve seen some amazing notebooks and tablets teased and promised at CES only to receive news later that they wouldn’t be coming to market, after all. They swear this is not the case for the Yoga; it’s just waiting for Windows 8 before it can ship to customers. I begrudgingly believe them.
After we saw the Yoga, Josh Smith (my colleague at GottaBeMobile) found an old post on the site from 2009 showing off a Lenovo Yoga that looked very different. It was just a concept design back then, but it shared the dual notebook/tablet nature and the hinge that allowed it to fold all the way back. Further delving into tags revealed an even older Yoga design from 2005 — it actually won an award — that looks very similar in design to what we have now.
You can see all the pictures I found over on the Gadget Porn Tumblr. (Yes, that’s also one of mine.)
Seeing that there was a Yoga all the way back in 2005 yet the product didn’t become a solid reality until 2012 makes me feel better about the Lenovo notebooks I’ve loved and lost. Two years in a row Lenovo showed off the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, a combo tablet and 11-inch notebook that was actually two computers in one. The display bit would detach and become a tablet — first running Linux, then running Android — with its own CPU, memory, battery, and ports. When attached to the keyboard base it switched to Windows, again with separate memory, ports, battery and so forth.
I wanted this thing so bad, my friends. Lenovo never did bring it out in America, though, because they couldn’t get the hinge/connector up to snuff (so I hear). Even I could tell that this was the weakest point of the design. Still, some of the devices I saw this year gave me hope that the company could get over that hurdle if they so desired.
Another product I’ve always mourned is the Lenovo Skylight. This was meant to be a smartbook, back when smartbooks were deemed a viable notebook category. Here’s a primer if you care, but the basics are that they were meant to be inexpensive notebooks running lightweight operating systems like Windows CE, Android, or similar that acted like smartphones. They’d sleep instead of tuning off, resume instantly, and stay thin thanks to the components inside.
Putting aside the smartbookness of it, the Lenovo Skylight was is one of the best looking laptops I’ve ever seen. It’s not just thin and light, but crafted and designed so well that you instantly want it, no matter what it’s running or what the limitations. The company even brought in the guy who designed the original ThinkPads to create this thing of beauty.
The whole smartbook thing didn’t last. In fact, I don’t think any ever came out. It’s a shame because smartbooks are what netbooks were supposed to be before mainstream consumers started giving their opinions. Anyway, back in 2010 I asked a Lenovo exec if the Skylight was truly dead, because I felt that it would be such a shame if so. He told me: Not quite. Somewhere in the bowels of the company someone still cares about the Skylight.
Given what’s going on with the laptop category right now, I suspect that it’ll be reborn as an ultrabook. As of right now it’s too thin to deal with the components (I think…) but perhaps when the next generation of Intel chips comes out the Skylight can live again. I can also see the U1 Hybrid making a reappearance as a Windows 8 tablet hybrid.
Hopefully it won’t be another 5 years before I see these products again. But if they rises from the ashes as amazing as the Yoga is today, I won’t grumble about the wait too much.
With the revelation of Apple’s tablet moniker, I’m left to wonder why it is that beautiful tablets are getting such unfortunate names.
First we had the JooJoo, which inspired a rash of ethnic jokes best left unsaid. Now comes the iPad, which has already been subjected to various feminine hygiene jokes with more still to come.
Was iSlate not sexy enough? Did iTablet not occur to anyone? One thing is for sure, there probably weren’t too many women involved in the development of that tablet, as they would have pointed out the consequences long ago.
Which moniker do you think is worse, JooJoo or iPad? Vote in the poll below (you may have to click the permalink, depending on where you’re reading this). If you’re a comedian, you should probably choose which one is best for you.
Which tablet name is worse?
- iPad (59%, 20 Votes)
- JooJoo (41%, 14 Votes)
Total Voters: 34
Loading ...On a related note, kudos to MADtv for making what is likely the very first iPad joke over two years ago:
Today Walt Mosspuppet (who is, by the way, my favorite puppet journalist of all time) posted the following about the Apple tablet:
According to a poll over at MacMost.com, what most people want out of the upcoming iSlate is to be able to read books. My god, you people think so small.
I must say: the puppet is right. Seriously, people? You’re going to use the tablet mainly for reading? What do you do with your computers all day, play 8-bit Tetris? Dear Gozer.
Anyway, go read Mosspuppet because he’s far funner about all this than I am. I’m too appalled at how unimaginative the people who took that poll are to be witty today.
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