Okay, so a few weeks ago, I groused about the new Kindle a tad. Like most people, my take is “me likey but me can’t affordy.” Here’s the Geek Way of having your Kindle and eating it too. ADHERER
As with most things, this whole Kindle thing’s proof is in the pudding. This article assumes you have need of reading on-the-go. It also assumes you’re like me, and don’t have a $359 that you can just drop willy-nilly. It also assumes that you, like me, are a geek and have geeky reading needs.
So first of all, you have to determine what books you want to read on-the-go. You also have to determine where they’ll come from. And then also how you’ll use them.
For me, I have a lot of manuals that I would love to keep in an electronic format, all searchable, and all portable. I am currently moving to a new place and I’ll tell you, nothing underscores the weightiness of actual printed books like moving.
I am still looking for the solution, but am getting closer. Here are some suggestions to get you on the way to having your books portable. In the end, I just may have to drop the $359 and be done with it. We’ll see.
Most smartphones have some sort of ebook reader. Check them out to see if they help. It is my understanding that the Kindle format is the same as the older MobiPocket format. If you have a MobiPocket reader, then you may already be able to use Kindle books on your smartphone. Although, getting the books to the phone might be a little more difficult.
I got the iPhone Kindle app and I do like it a lot. I’ve bought two books so far. Trouble is that they aren’t much cheaper than buying the print editions, so be aware that reading in this manner isn’t totally free.
Most of the books that I want are not in Kindle format (yet). O’Reilly’s website (http://oreilly.com/store/) has pretty much any geek manual your heart desires. Again, not that much cheaper than the print versions. But new books can be downloaded in a variety of formats. I prefer PDF. On a recent “Macbreak Weekly,” Andy Ihnatko sung the praises of Stanza’s ePub format. Let me caution you about this format. It’s text only. So if you are looking at programming books that have charts and graphics, the ePub format won’t show them. At least not in my experience.
But the PDF formats from O’Reilly are just like the print versions. And you can email them to Amazon to convert to Kindle format. Or can you? If all you have is the iPhone Kindle App, and not a true Kindle, they don’t give you an email address to use (this is how Amazon converts your documents to Kindle format… you email them in, they charge you $0.10, and then they’re available for your Kindle to download). So you’re stuck with the PDF format.
(By the way, O’Reilly also has a subscription service that allows you to read any of their books online. It’s not the best solution, but it’s a lot cheaper, especially considering that most good programming manuals and the like are $40-50 each. They also have an iPhone-friendly version of their site. I pay them $20 a month for up to 10 books on my virtual “bookshelf”)
So, here’s my geek-workaround (geek-around?) for this. Go to DropBox (http://getdropbox.com) and sign up for a free account. DropBox is a wonderful app that gives you 2GB (or up to 5GB if you refer friends) of online storage, as well as applications that will give you an easy way to upload files to the cloud (this is a great way to sync files, BTW). And here’s the kicker, DropBox also has an iPhone (mobile browser) version of their site. So if you have PDFs stored there, you can access them easily from your iPhone or other smartphone. Easy peasy.
But none of this is searchable. Which is what I really want. And browsing PDFs on the iPhone doesn’t remember where you left off reading; plus you have to browse from the start of the book. So even if you know you stopped on page 300, you still have to swipe your finger up the screen to get there!
But the Kindle app is really nice. Still not searchable and still not every book I would want, but at least it remembers where I left off reading on each book. It will also, apparently, sync that information with your actual Kindle, if you have one, so you can go back and forth. Although, I’m not sure why that’s so important. If you have the Kindle, which is supposed to be portable, why would you really want the iPhone app? C’est la vie, and to each their own.
One more thing to note about the Kindle iPhone app; it doesn’t let you purchase books. You can, of course, browse Amazon from Safari and purchase books there, but that’s a huge pain since Amazon does not have an iPhone-friendly version of their site. So here’s my way to make that a little easier. Download the free Amazon app and use that to shop for books. It still won’t let you purchase Kindle content, but you can save it to your wishlist, which is pretty easy to get to via Safari. Then you can purchase your books there and the next time you start up the Kindle app, it will download the new books.
Oh, and if all you do is read novels, well, there are tons of free and cheap avenues for that. But this is a blog by geeks for geeks, so we’re looking for the geek solution (geekution?) for geeky books.
Another alternative to Safari with 3x the available titles for a low annual price is http://www.books24x7.com. All the same IT books as Safari, but alos the best business, engineering, finance, executive, and otehr areas also available. Much more ‘affordy’ than one at a time Kindle purchase model.
Books24x7.com looks very interesting. What’s the pricing? How are the books read? Is there an iPhone/smartphone-friendly version of the site?
Thanks! This is great info!
-Mike
I have to report that ePub is *not* text only. ePub actually supports tables and graphics very well.
Kindle format, on the other hand, does not support tables at all.
Hmmm, very interesting. Okay, maybe it was just O’Reilly’s ePub format that they remove all the graphics and text from. Because I downloaded the same book from them in ePub and PDF format. I loaded the ePub into Stanza on a PC and it was format-less.
Well, check that. There was text formatting. But it looks as if someone copied and pasted all the text (and only the text) from the PDF as one big stream.
Likewise, the ePub file is about half the size of the PDF. Of course, PDFs have never been the most frugal with disk space, have they?
-Mike
I stand very corrected… I downloaded and installed Calibre and it was far better at rendering the ePub format than Stanza. So obviously, Stanza is not up to the task at hand.
Calibre can convert into MOBI or LRF, which I am not sure what those are. If MOBI is MobiPocket, then that is the Kindle format, no? Of course, unless you actually have a Kindle, there’s no way (that I know of) to get non-Amazon-purchased content into the iPhone’s Kindle App.
Anyone know a better iPhone reader than Stanza for ePub formats? Hopefully one that will remember where I left off reading?
-Mike
From what I’ve read, Stanza and eReader are better iPhone apps for e-books than the Kindle app is. The Kindle app is good for people with the Kindle….and will probably attract a fair number of people just because of the name recognition. One article I read speculated that its main purpose is as a “gateway drug” to get more people to buy the Kindle, which seems like a good idea.
Dr. Tantillo, a branding expert, has a marketing and branding blog on which he does a weekly brand winner/brand loser post. The week before last, he named The Rocky Mountain News (and the newspaper industry) the loser and the Kindle (and Amazon) the brand winner. He also pointed out that, since the Kindle supports newspaper subscriptions, ironically, it may help save the newspaper industry… Most of his blog posts come back to the importance of focusing on your Target Market, and how good marketing should be communication with your Target Market (not smoke and mirrors). “Real marketers must always assume that a better job of serving their customers’ needs is possible —and be actively figuring out how to do so, before a competitor steps in to fill unmet demands.” Here’s a link to his full post. http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2009/03/01/brand-winners-and-losers-kindle-and-the-rocky-mountain-news.aspx
(Oh, I just signed up for Dropbox – thaaaaaanks for the tip!)
I think you missed the boat on the “O;Reilly service” you described. I have a subscription to Safari Books Online (http://http://my.safaribooksonline.com) and it offers all of this and a whole lot more. I can search across all the latest books and read anything I want. I can download chapters as PDFs. I can bookmark and make notes. They even now have a mobile site that works great on my iPhone. Its ten times better than the Kindle iPhone app because i don’t have to worry about individual downloads or buying individual books. I think you should reconsider.
@sloane: Could you please qualify how Stanza and eReader are better iPhone reader apps than Kindle? So far, Stanza seems to remove any and all graphics, charts, etc. from the book. And if you’re looking to read programming manuals, like I am, those are pretty important.
I am downloading eReader to try it as we speak.
Also, please qualify how you think that the iPhone Kindle App is for people who have Kindles. For such people, I would think that the app would be 100% redundant. After all, the Kindle itself is already very portable. What would the iPhone gain them?
Now, you may have a point that it’s a gateway product, designed to get more people into the Kindle fold and wanting an actual Kindle. That does make total sense.
@Scott: I don’t think I missed the boat. I love the O’Reilly online service and happily give them $20 a month. But my trouble with them is: 1) has to be online, 2) unless you download chapter PDFs, which are only chapters, not entire books, and accumulating tokens for chapter downloads is not very fast (I get 5 per month with my subscription), and 3) no way to get my own content into their service. #3 is the big one here. The O’Reilly online service is nearly perfect for my needs. It has ALL of their books, including the ones that aren’t in the Kindle Store (yet?). However, I find their site to be a bit clunky, so it’s VERY slow to load on 3G and EDGE networks. And I also really would like to have manuals I already have available and searchable.
See, among manuals that I’ve bought, I have PDF versions of manuals for software suites that I use. These are obscure applications so buying a manual isn’t possible. Amazon allows you to email them PDFs and they will, for a ten cent fee, convert them for use on the Kindle. But sadly, they won’t do it for users of only the iPhone Kindle app… at least not yet.
So, whereas I agree with you, that the O’Reilly online subscription service is by far the most cost-effective way to read geek books, it isn’t the magic bullet that I am looking for.
Right now, it seems like the best solution, albeit not the least expensive one, is to get a Kindle for $359, and then I can also use O’Reilly to get the books that aren’t in the Kindle store (I am thinking that if I download purchased books in .MOBI format they should work) and also email in the PDFs to be converted.
I just wish there was a cheaper way. Maybe a Netbook would be the silver bullet here. Hmmmm…
-Mike