Category Archives: Wireless

Thoughts on Nook

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I have noticed that the Barnes & Noble Nook Cloud service seems rather half-baked. I’ve been comparing different cloud services to each other and I’ve noticed that there is a distinct functionality deficit between many services on one side and the B&N service on the other.

It comes to user-added content. Every cloud service maintains a file storage area online and then establishes a sync using client software to tie it all together. In certain cases this difference has never actually been present, such as with Dropbox. Anything you store there are your own files and the sync client can display them (or play them sometimes) on any device that is attached to the Internet. Some of the more interesting examples are actually more contemporary than Dropbox, as it’s rather well-tread and venerable.

Specific services such as Apple’s iCloud are definitely centered in my sights for comparison sakes. With Apple’s provisions you could opt-in for iTunes Match which will assay your iTunes library and match the files with standardized files on their service. In an effective way if not in a literal way, Apple allows user submitted content to be stored on their service and then spread across the network amongst your connected devices. In Apple’s case you have to buy in to iTunes Match as a service, but I don’t see this as being a barrier to adoption and it fits squarely in the “Fair Dealing” camp as I would expect such a service to be paid and I applaud Apple for their letting users do such a thing.

Google was next on the scene with Google Music. It is a direct competitor to iTunes Match and is actually a more compelling service than what Apple provides as you upload your own music to Google’s storage system and then you can stream that information across the network to any of your devices. This service is free and Google is, along with Dropbox, embracing the true sense of cloud storage as far as I’m concerned. This service that Google provides (and arguably along with Dropbox) is the most stinging rebuke against what Barnes & Noble provides.

Now to the core of it, the Nook cloud infrastructure is half-baked because it is split in half. The division is visible on the Nook devices and Nook Apps that sync with the service. The Nook is all about books, so instead of music types like MP3 or AAC we’re instead talking about PDF and EPUB types of files. The fully baked Nook experience comes when you buy an eBook from Barnes & Noble. B&N stores the ePub on their cloud infrastructure and all your attached devices and apps can see everything in this storage area and enjoy the secret sauce of being able to track reading position between devices. Each device (or app) that you work with watches how far you’ve progressed in an eBook and synchronizes that back to the B&N cloud infrastructure. This is the core of the magic as far as I’m concerned with B&N’s entire Nook experience. It doesn’t seem like a very compelling feature, but to be able to escape from the tyranny of the bookmark or the dog-eared page is very valuable to a reader like me who reads in short little fits and spurts. Now where this goes from fully baked to not baked at all comes when the user approaches the B&N cloud infrastructure with their own eBook collection. The visible division I wrote of earlier on the devices is actually a kind of lame fairness conceit by B&N. You can certainly add extra storage to all the B&N devices and then store your own files on that add-on component, and for most people this would be an acceptable compromise. It is not for people like me. It denies my user data the access to the secret sauce of bookmark synchronization. I wouldn’t be so prickly about it if B&N wasn’t so pricky about how they assemble their devices. Every Nook has an amazing amount of storage on the device, but in the fine print you discover that the storage space for user data is pitiful. This forces end users like me to buy extra parts, specifically microSD cards to beef up storage on our Nook devices to compensate for B&N being an arguable dick about how their devices are designed. It is not pro-consumer, it is pro-company. So here it is, B&N only will allow you to store ePUB and PDF data on their service if you buy it from them. They even put the lie to the argument: “They do this because you should pay for the storage” because you can “purchase” free eBooks and they end up on that side of the cloud divide just fine and can take advantage of the bookmark sync functionality. What then for end users like me who come to Nook with gigabytes of ePub content? What is it that I’m after? I want to upload my ePub content to B&N so I can sync it amongst all my B&N cloud connected devices. Specifically I want to be able to read-anywhere all my books, not just the ones I purchase or “purchase” through B&N! I have to start asking “Why does B&N do it this way?” when it’s obvious that other cloud companies go about it in a much more pro-consumer approach?

There are ways to address this from the B&N mothership. They could offer a “My Library” service for $20 a year which would then provide customers with 5GB of complimentary data storage on the B&N cloud infrastructure. This product would not be compatible with B&N’s LendMe service, and I’m fine with that, as it is fair, but it would allow end users like me to upload our ePub content onto our B&N cloud accounts and then read that content anywhere. I think that would really address the concern I have and maybe others do too of the Nook being a pro-company and anti-consumer device. This would help even out the field, and its fair dealing because the value of the data storage and the bookmark sync functionality I would peg at $20 per year. It’s a lot like iTunes Match in that regard.

While Barnes & Noble keeps their cloud infrastructure closed in this odd fashion I will be dissuaded from using it. By allowing user data on their devices, and then the conceit of adding microSD to make the device honestly equitable between company and consumer they create a kind of leper colony for books. I don’t want to use it because I can’t use it the way I want to use it. It used to be that companies dictated to consumers what they could and could not do with the products that the company sold, but in this age of service competition and device jailbreaking the consumer really is empowered to demand and expect that the devices we purchase will do what we want first, and whatever the company suggests to us can be acceptable or skipped altogether. I have six books in the leper colony in my Nook and a great deal more on my microSD card. On one side of the Berlin Wall in my Nook are all the free books in the west, and all the jailed books in the east.

So what of it? What if B&N ignores what people like me have to say about their cloud service? They’ll miss out on a new subscription model of service and a steady flow of $20 per user per year for what amounts to being a button-press. The real danger will come when someone creates a new Android firmware set for the Nook devices allowing customers like me to buy a Nook from Barnes & Noble and then eliminate all traces of Barnes & Noble from that device and go with a competitor who offers what I want. What if a company starts up, offers a truly equitable cloud infrastructure system and provides a download link for their own Android firmware that will work on any Android device? Just because Barnes & Noble put their marks on the Nook doesn’t mean that the device isn’t an Android device. So end users can just download the file, use the Android SDK tools to jailbreak the Nook devices and eventually get what they want.

What does it all come down to? Liberty, for our data. Being able to buy eBooks in ePub format wherever we like, such as Barnes & Noble and put them on our devices and sync them amongst all our devices… OR we can download books for free from Project Gutenberg and read those on our devices and sync them amongst all our devices.

Either B&N can benefit by liberating their service or consumers will do it for them.

Can you hear me now?

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It all comes down to trusting the infrastructure. When you can’t trust the infrastructure anymore then it feels as though you are standing in an hourglass and the sand is running out beneath your feet.

This is how I felt after embarrassing myself towards a vendor by the name of eSpatial. I was asked by a coworker to investigate this vendor for geolocating alumni at work. I started their 14 day free trial and uploaded some data, nothing I thought that was too onerous, 250,000 US Postal Addresses. After some back and forth I learned that the trial account only can accept 10,000 addresses, but nowhere was that stated in the trial offer, that there was a limit. On January 12th I sent a link to an eSpatial rep so that they could create a demo account for me and show me what their company could do.

I waited until January 20th and then I wrote an email. I told them that I didn’t like being left in the dark for eight days when it should take them at most an afternoon to load my data and show me what their software could do. Then I got back an email telling me that they tried to email me and tried to call me to no avail. This is when I discovered that the infrastructure at work really isn’t working out for me. Apparently the messages just didn’t arrive. I checked all throughout “Webmail Plus” to no avail and I even checked the “PureMessage” spam system and the messages weren’t in there either. It’s as if the email wasn’t even delivered. Then the fellow from eSpatial told me that he tried to call me and the call never got through. I suspect that my setting my work phone to failover to my cell phone may be to blame on that one. I would put money behind the notion that international incoming calls will not be forwarded by the switches at Western to another line, instead they will simply be dropped. I have my phone set up that way because I absolutely detest voicemail and so I want incoming calls that are inbound to WMU to ring there first and then move on and ring my iPhone. There is a solution for that bit as well, and it involves turning my back on my work phone as well.

So how do I correct this? I can’t trust my work email any longer – I’m losing messages and making a fool of myself. I can’t live with doubt that the infrastructure works, and get anything done, so I have to compensate. The best way to compensate is to leave WMU behind when it comes to this infrastructure. My work phone number is now meaningless. My work email account is now meaningless. So everyone should strike those from their records and use a different number from now on, because I cannot trust that the infrastructure provided by my employer works properly.

I have to turn to Google at this point to provide the infrastructure that I need to do my work properly. Ironic if anyone has known me over the past few years that I’m turning to Google for infrastructure, after all, it was my crazy-eyed ranting that implored my workplace to use Google for their infrastructure but fell on deaf ears. So I’ll do it myself. The accounts and phone numbers will still be technically valid and reachable, but I’d rather people not use them. Instead, please use these instead:

Phone: 269-216-4597

Email: andymchugh75@gmail.com

If you have my personal gmail account, feel free to use that, as I trust gmail.com with my email, but no others.

I hate doubt and I will not accept it in my life.

Multiple iOS Ringtone Surprise

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Apple’s provision for Ringtones and Alerts on their iOS devices leaves quite a lot to be desired. I bought a handful of alert tones from the iTunes store and thought I could place them on my iPhone and my iPad. Turns out that unless you have your devices synced completely to the iTunes Library, something I never do, you are pretty much out of luck. If you want to get ringtones or alert tones on your other devices, you have to buy them multiple times! This is very shortsighted of Apple and I won’t play that game. That being said, I have bought enough ringtones to make me happy for what I need on my iPhone, so it’s not like I’ll ever go back to the ringtones again for more.

For those out there with multiple iOS devices, watch out. Apple only sort of loves you, they also kind of hate you too.

DC Comics – Comixology App

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Several months ago DC and Comixology rolled out a day-and-date program for their comic books. I was, initially at least, really excited for the development and I was ready to leave paper-based comic books in the past. The Comixology app was upgraded and I was ready to rock and roll with the new system. I had my Comixology app all up-to-date, called DC Comics running on my iPad.

The app was pretty to see at first, and as I used it I quickly found my initial pleasure quickly evaporating before my eyes. The first hit was the frequent app jettisoning. In the iOS Operating System when an application does something unplanned, illegal, or encounters some other fault on the platform it will crash, pushing the user back to the app selection interface. This fault is called a jettison, and I learned that fact from another iOS app that was chock-full of these jettisons. Beyond the functional failures of the app lie all the design issues with the user experience that I have a problem with.

I spent a long time comparing the old way I used to get comics to what the Comixology app would suggest is the new way. In the old way, with paper comics I would head out on Wednesday afternoon to the local comicbook store where my pull list was on-file there, after walking in the staff would greet me and get my pre-compiled list of comic books. I would then be able to sort through my pile, but it was almost always just a silly formality and so I would walk up with my pile of comics and the checkout would mostly just be the staff pressing a button, all my books on my list getting tallied up and then a total. I’d pay, then take my comics to lunch with Scott and we’d read and eat and talk about what DC or Marvel were up to. All in all, it worked out very well.

For the past few years, ever since I bought my first iPod Touch I considered how awesome it would be to have a device much bigger than the touch but nearly as thin, and I called it the iPod Touch XL. On this device I could read my comics on the display. Years rolled on by and Apple had introduced the iPad. I was in line that April morning when they had it for sale and I bought my iPad without any hesitation. I finally had the device that I wanted all along.

Zoom forward to a few weeks ago, after Comixology released “DC Comics” updated app, featuring the new art for DC’s “New 52” program. I was so happy, at least at first, and I moved forward. I didn’t renew my club card at my local comic book shop, and I stopped buying paper comics there. I was moving to the digital world. I opened up the DC app, and after several jettisons later I had connected my Comixology store username to the app and connected my Apple ID to the app as well. Apple takes a 30% cut of all in-app sales and the sales themselves are mediated through the App Store. So I browsed through the DC Comics app and started to pick out a host of Issue #1’s for titles I knew I would likely enjoy. I knew I wanted “New Guardians” along with Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Superman, Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Superboy, Batman and Robin, Detective Comics, Justice League and Justice League International. I also noticed that DC was going to publish a new series based on the Red Lantern component of the Green Lantern universe and that was another thing that attracted my eye. So I started to buy comics in-app. It was certainly a smooth process, tap on the comic image that I wanted, then tap to purchase, enter in my Apple ID and the app would begin to download the comic book I wanted. Using the Comixology app to actually read the comics was never a problem for me. I quite enjoy the frame-by-frame lead-through embedded in the comic books that I download, but right after that I started noticing issues.

The problems were annoying and frustrating. The apps instability was the first thing I noticed. While paging through a Superman comic book the app would jettison. This was merely an inconvenience because I could restart the app and pick up where I left off. But then I started to notice some real problems. I would read my comics while on the treadmill at the gym, and I’d use the gym’s free wifi. As I stood there walking away on the treadmill I tapped in vain on the “DC Comics” Comixology app looking for “New Guardians #1” because I knew from earlier in that day that DC had released it, because I saw it on the shelf at the local comic book store. While I stopped buying, Scott did not, so every Wednesday I can see what books should be in the “DC Comics” app around 2pm later that day. It took me half and hour to find the “New Guardians #1” issue. The way that the app is organized, you have your comics and you have “The Store”. This is a structure that I’m comfortable with, however the way it’s designed, it doesn’t live up to even it’s own structure. For each comic book that I wanted to read, I plowed manually through the app and set alarms, as the “set alert” button was on each titles purchase screen. This button does nothing.

So my frustration comes from what I think the app should do and what the app fails to do. As I described to Scott earlier tonight, Comixology went miles to produce a shiny app that looks great. All I want is for them to give me just 5 more inches, they’ve gone miles, why not just a little touch more? I started to compare the app to the local comic book store. At the store I had a pull-list, a pile of comics were waiting for me to pick up, all I had to do was plunk down payment and that would be that. The app doesn’t tell me when a new edition of one of my comics is available, as that “set alert” button DOES NOTHING. So when I start the DC Comics app I have to slog through the store trying to find the issues I want, and trying to keep in mind what issues I own and what issues are unbought and whether or not I still want to read that particular comic book. Now along with this irritating app comes at the same time several comics from DC where the quality has gone down the toilet. I tried a lot of comics and found that I didn’t like many of them, Batwoman and Batgirl were both irritating, spending more time being stupid than being the female version of Batman. I also really don’t like the new Robin, which is Batman’s apparent son Damien Wayne. Yeah I understand the story, but I don’t like the character. So I got angry. Angry at the app because I couldn’t easily get the comics I wanted, angry that the “Alert” button was meaningless and angry at DC for selling me crap.

I stopped buying comics in paper at the local comic book store. I have also not returned to the DC Comics app. I have comics that I bought that are unread in that app and I don’t really care one way or another. Perhaps on some quiet snowy day I’ll slog through the damn thing and polish what I bought off. Mostly I’m dissapointed and sad. I don’t think what I had in mind is too difficult to pull off in iOS and the fact that Comixology so deeply overhauled their entire comic book app on iOS, and left such functionality out really boggles my mind.

So what would I want to see? Scott asked this of me after I was done railing against the Comixology app. I don’t want paper comic books, I want virtual ones on my iPad. I know that for sure. What I want is to open up the DC Comics app on any given Wednesday around 3pm or so and be presented with a list of all the comic books that I am following, all listed nicely with a checkbox next to each that is by default on, and a nice big friendly button marked “Purchase Comics”. I tap the button, enter in my Apple ID password and the app automatically downloads all the comics I want to read. I’d also want the app to link these purchases serially so when I’m done reading Green Lantern, the next one up, say Detective Comics is the next, ready to read with a tap of a button. I want to be able to start the DC Comics app, start with one comic book and then tap my way through my entire comics purchase serially. So what is it that I’m after?

  • I’d like to be able to define a pull-list in the DC Comics app.
  • I’d like the “Alert Me” button removed, or better yet, HAVE IT DO SOMETHING and throw notifications through Notification Center “DC Comics – Superman #3 is now available.”
  • I’d like it more, if after I start the app, that it presents me with a list of comics that I haven’t bought yet, but own their predecessors with a clear way to “turn them on” or “turn them off” and buy them in one single transaction.
  • I’d like to see “My Comics” extended with links into “The Store” so that when I tap on “Adventure Comics” that the app has enough wits to show me all the issues of that title that I haven’t bought. I want to continue reading the stories, and this is the most convenient way to my mind on how to arrange that.

What I don’t want to do is slog my ass through “The Store” searching in vain in the “Day and Date Release” comics list which never really has the comics I’m looking for. Instead I have to either search on the title explicitly or I have to search for the “New 52” story arc section and rifle through that section. It’s really quite an unpleasant experience to be swiping through lists of comics you don’t care about only to discover that the comic book you really really wanted, in this case, “New Guardians #1” was released two weeks ago and you never knew because it wasn’t in the “Day and Date” release list. You sizzle when you go to “The Store” and verify that “Alert Me” is indeed on, and then you get even more angry when you realize that the stupid thing doesn’t do anything at all. It doesn’t alert anyone. It doesn’t fire off Notifications, it doesn’t do anything but toggle on and toggle off.

But I’m not an iOS Developer and I don’t work for Comixology. I’m just one lonely angry customer with a list of ideas and I don’t think my tiny angry voice amounts to very much in the great analysis when it’s all tallied up. Comixology will continue to sell comic books with their Jettison-a-palooza app with all it’s do nothing options and intentionally labyrinthine store that forces you to swipe past comic books you will never ever buy because you have absolutely zero interest. I will never buy Batwing. I don’t care for Bats in Africa. Moving on…

And that’s what drives me the most crazy. It’s like this great app was only half-designed. That there are entire sections that feel like it should be in there. Functionality that when you discover it’s absence you crinkle up your eyes and wonder “What the hell were they thinking?” To go so far, to create such a slick app and then leave the most consumer-friendly (and most comic-book-store analogue) features totally absent boggles the mind. The lack of all of these features seems terribly absurd, and of course begs the thought that if it’s so half-baked, perhaps it’s designed to fail. Designed to piss people off so much, to irritate them so thuroughly that they’d rather slog their behinds back to their local comic book store and set up those pull lists again and go back to hauling dead trees around.

So I don’t use the app. I complained on Twitter, mostly as an explanation of why I’m leaving comic books for good. I am no longer really a customer, I used to be, I so much want to be, but I don’t want to go to my local comic book shop anymore, and I don’t want to use DC Comics anymore because it’s so unhelpful. I’ve got money and I might have interest and what really grinds my gears is that I’m fine with 90% of the app beyond the parts I really don’t like. The things that irritate me upset me enough to sour the entire experience. I’m so angry at wasting time hunting and pecking for comic books that I have blown out time I could have spent ACTUALLY READING THEM with trying to navigate through a store I don’t really like. And the biggest rub of all? What I ask out of Comixology and the DC Comics app in particular doesn’t strike me as being a monumentally difficult thing to arrange. The app knows I have a Comixology account, it knows I have an Apple ID. I have to assume there is room in iCloud for apps to store arrays of data. Why not enable the customer to create pull-lists and then adjust the app so it’s as helpful as Alfred? Batman would never put up with this crap. 🙂

So this entire blog post is half me railing against technology that has failed me and a response to someone on Twitter who wants to know why I’m leaving comic books. I could put up with junky content from DC in hopes that it gets better, but I really can’t put up with that app. That’s really what it comes down to. Such a shame. What would change my tune?

Alfred. He would change my tune. Alfred in DC Comics app. That’s really all there is to it.

Nook Tablet Review

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Nook Tablet Review

Unboxing

The box for the Nook Tablet strongly resembles the boxing for all the other Nook devices. Two compartments, the top compartment for the device and a bottom compartment for the charging/data cable and the charging block. The device still uses microUSB as a connector type, which is just like home if you already have a nook or a more-recent release Blackberry. The Nook Tablet is couched in high-density shipping foam.

First Look

The Nook Tablet weighs in at an even 400 grams. My first-generation iPad with Apple slipcover comes in at 865 grams. Already this device has the iPad beaten on mass. The device is wrapped in a matte or brushed aluminum finish and the texture of the case is not slippery but rather grippy. The power button is on the top left corner, the volume buttons are on the top right corner and the microSD slot is cleverly established under the “nook” flap underneath the carabiner-clip part of the case. In the upper right corner, along the top is a standard headphone jack. The rear of the device is wrapped in a dull metalic finish darker than the edging and equally textured. Not slippery, but grippy.

Power On

The power on sequence brings you to the same screen that the Nook Color has, although I can’t recall if the Nook Color had sound effects like this device has upon power up and unlocking. The first thing I noticed in the Library was a video called “New Years Eve” after playing it I noticed that the video was bright and the sound good, except when I turned the display the video was paused and the screen rotated. I had to manually restart playback. Not a showstopper, but worthy to note. The included Spiderman Graphic Novel showed off the Nook Tablet’s color and excellent resolution and the display responded to both my pinch-open and pinch-close finger gestures. The glass surface has some friction to it, nothing upsetting, but worth noting. Through the library feature at least, comic books on the Nook Tablet have the same convenience as reading them on the iPad using Comic Zeal, there isn’t any guided panel-by-panel view that you’d expect with a Comixology app.

Networking

Accessing Wifi is not a problem, at least with plain-jane WEP. Once connected to the network the device can be used to browse the web, and the browser is very fast and actually more responsive than the iPad. The only issue I ran into was a run-away inertial bug in the flick gesture for websites. If you flick too forcefully the Nook Tablet web browser will advance the page faster than you can read and faster than you want. You have to have a very gentle way of gesturing for the built-in web app.

Apps

App downloading is quick and tidy. The update command to check for updated apps is plainly visible on the App Screen. The device comes with a series of standard apps which include:

  • Angry Birds (lead-in to download)
  • Chess
  • Contacts
  • Crossword
  • Email
  • Grooveshark
  • Hulu Plus
  • Music Player
  • My Media
  • Netflix
  • NOOK Friends
  • Pandora
  • Showtime (lead-in)
  • Solitaire (lead-in)
  • Sudoku

The App Store access is easy to find and the app store itself has many apps that I recognize from the Apple App Store, so I didn’t feel like a stranger in a strange land. One notable absence which I did notice was that there was no Comixology app for the Nook Tablet. I suppose it will take just a little bit of time for this app to make it to the Nook App Store.

NetFlix

NetFlix loaded very quickly and I was able to browse my instant queue immediately. Starting a movie was problem free. The display is very bright and the colors are gorgeous. While I watched the movie I decided to test the device with my Apple iPhone earbuds. These have play controls in-line with the wire and I attempted to control volume and playback using them and the Nook ignored this attempt at control. I would hazard that the Nook Tablet cannot understand in-line headphone wire controls. Listening to the movie had only one mild issue and that is as you hold the device in the landscape orientation you can accidentally occlude the devices primary speakers. While these are acceptable for general purpose use, when you have your hand covering the grille to these speakers the sound is muted and muddy. Keeping your hands clear is obviously the answer, but it makes holding the device a little tricky.

Reading

Reading on this device is similar to reading on the iPad. The weight savings alone make it more pleasant to use than the iPad for long-duration reading, and the spoiled-rotten brightness of the display makes reading in any indoor environment very pleasant. The font selection for reading contains:

  • Century Schoolbook
  • Dutch
  • Georgia
  • Ascender Sans
  • Trebuchet MS
  • Gill Sans

Looking up a word brings up the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition with the usual high quality dictionary detail you come to expect. There are two other controls along the bottom in the Lookup Feature, a icon for Google Searching and an icon for Wikipedia Searching.

Accessing new books via the Nook store is a given. However accessing new books via Project Gutenberg is something that I’ve found to be hit-or-miss on these devices. Accessing the web on the Nook Tablet is easy enough, browsing to Project Gutenberg is likewise not an issue. I downloaded Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” as an ePub with images. The file downloaded to the Nook Tablet just fine and the Nook Tablet had no qualms displaying this freshly downloaded ePub, including it’s images. The only thing that I have a qualm about is that the downloaded Books only appear in My Files, under “My Downloads” and can’t be integrated with the primary device library. Because of this limitation you cannot add your downloaded ePub file to a Nook Shelf or browse it in the Nook Library, you have to go out of your way to find what you just downloaded.

Directly importing ePub files to the Nook Tablet however does provide a way to “have your cake and eat it too”. You have to use your computer to download an ePub book and then plug the Nook Tablet into the computer. You can then move whatever ePub files you wish to the Books folder and they will appear in your Library. With this, you can view the book in your Library and add it to Nook Shelves without a problem. One oddity I did uncover was trying to open the new ePub file the first time lead to an error from the Nook Tablet that it could not open the book. Subsequent loads of the book did not display this error. I am unsure whether this was a glitch or a bug. Subsequent loading of ePub material shows this to be a one-off glitch and therefore shouldn’t appear again, I hope.

Reading with Kids

The Nook Tablet has a portion of the library devoted just to kids books. I explored this feature, along with the “Play Along” mode and the “Record Along” mode for the sample book, which is a Winnie the Pooh story. While the “Play Along” feature was pleasant enough, a cross between a childs book and an audiobook with cute little animations peppered in, the “Record Along” feature is really quite something. A parent can record the entire book in their own voice and their child can play it back whenever they like, and read along with their parents voice. There is a certain power in your parents voice, especially for kids and people who never let their inner child fade away. After I recorded a page or two of the Winnie the Pooh story I thought about how this would work in a home with actual children. The Nook Tablet would either have to be the childs device or a home device. I imagine this feature would have the most poignant effect if a parent recorded the book, and then when the parent is on a work trip or otherwise unavailable the child can open the story and hear their parents recorded voice read-along with them. This is the extreme of niche features but the way it’s arranged and the way the interface is constructed to facilitate such a thing is absolutely breathtaking. If you are a parent who has a young child just starting to read, the Nook Tablet, for this one feature, is worth every penny that you’ll spend on it. I am impressed, and that takes a lot.

Opinion

The Nook Tablet is a very compelling device and at the price point of $249 dollars, when compared to the iPad at $499 it does pose a certain competition to the Apple device. There are some really outstanding features which already make the Nook Tablet a great device:

  • Reading is easy, not as easy as a Nook Simple Touch, but more pleasant than an iPad, mostly due to the weight and size.
  • Access to both the built-in Dictionary, Google, and Wikipedia deserves an standing ovation.
  • Ability to import your own ePub files, and I presume if you insert a large microSD card, putting your books that you already own on the Nook Tablet is a non-issue.
  • Access on-the-fly to Project Gutenberg is a delight to see. There is a certain freedom in not being tied to the Barnes & Noble Bookstore with this device and you cannot quibble with free books.
  • The audio is clear, and the sound effects for both turning on and off the device replicate very well the sound a dusty tome would make if you opened it and closed it quickly. It’s these little touches that you appreciate as you reflect on your experience.
  • The “Record Along” feature is absolutely outstanding. Parents with young children just starting to read really should look at this device for this feature.

Some of the problems with the Nook Tablet:

  • Immature App Store – Comixology has an app for Android, but it is not in the Barnes & Noble App Store yet. Barnes & Noble should pour resources into their App Store and corral developers to bring more meat to the party.
  • Speaker Placement – The speakers placed where they are makes watching a Netflix movie on the device a little bit irritating as you really can’t hold the device like you really want to without occluding the speakers and either muting or muddying the sound.
  • Headphone Insensitivity – Headphones with in-line controls should be respected and honored. People are going to attach these accessories to this device and expect it to work, and so far, it won’t. I don’t know if it’s a firmware adjustment or if the device lacks the controller to process such an accessory. The Nook Tablet also does not stop playback when the headphones are plugged in or removed. If the headphones are accidentally removed during playback, at least with the NetFlix app, the speakers resume playing sound.
  • Font Problems – My favorite font is not present. Helvetica Neue. It is present on the Nook Simple Touch but not on the Nook Tablet. I hope this is an oversight by the developers at Barnes & Noble Booksellers and that an upgraded firmware update to the Nook Tablet will eventually fix the issue. The Nook Tablet has a similar set of fonts to iBooks on iOS. This should be on B&N’s list of things to fix soon.
  • No satellite charging – The Nook Tablet refuses to charge when plugged into a USB port. I am unsure as to why, since the device was plugged into a MacBook and I know for a fact that this particular computer supports low-current USB and high-current USB, enough to charge an iPad – so why can’t it charge a Nook Tablet?
  • Gesture bugs – There are a few places where gestures with your fingers produce unwanted results. Specifically browsing the web, if you flick-gesture too strongly you end up in a warp-speed scroll to the end of the document. On really long documents this can become annoying quickly. While not really a design fault, it will require some experience to master, especially if you have grown used to flick-gesture-with-inertia that Apple has mastered in their iOS run devices.

All in all, the Nook Tablet is well worth the $249.00 pricetag. The device is solid and constructed well and I think it will withstand the kind of use that kids can throw at it. I couldn’t test this demo unit to destruction however I can’t imagine that something this solidly built can be harmed easily. If you are in the market for a tablet, but don’t have the cash on hand for an iPad, this is the next natural option. This device will get better with time, with firmware updates and the later refinements that come with customer feedback to the developers. This device will truly shine when the Nook App Store bulks up. Right now, I would advise anyone looking for a tablet, or parents looking for a device like this to buy it as quickly as you can.

Nook vs. Kindle vs. iPad

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I’ve been watching a lot of the press surrounding the brewing three-party war between Apple, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, and Amazon over the tablet space for the past few months. I was one of the first people to be in line two Aprils ago when the first generation iPad was released by Apple. I bought it without hesitation, knowing that it was exactly what I had wanted and dreamed of all this time – a much larger version of my beloved iPod Touch. As I’ve had some opportunity to use different devices I’ve discovered that at least for me, each device that I own serves a particular purpose. Here’s a handy list of the device and what I use it for:

  • 24” iMac – General computing, work and writing.
  • 13” MacBook Laptop – General computing, work and writing.
  • First-Generation iPad – Convenience browsing, game playing, reading comic books, cookbooks
  • iPhone 4 carried by Verizon – Telephone and 3G data access with the HotSpot feature. I use it for mobile data access, taking pictures, scanning prices and comparing retailers and writing down notes and ideas for my writing. Sometimes inspiration strikes when you least expect it. Also enables me to play Foursquare, as well as many other location-aware games and activities that my family has come to enjoy.
  • iPod Nano 6th Generation – Contains my entire music library and is the device I use when I want to play music. Also has a very useful pedometer that I use to track my steps and calories burned while I work.
  • Nook SImple Touch – Contains a giant book library and is the device I use when I want to read.

I have to be very clear here, I am an Apple fanboy. If Apple makes it, I’ll use it. Over the years all the Apple devices have worked exceptionally well and over time they have gotten better. I still love using my iPad and my iPhone. There are four devices that I simply cannot go without whenever I travel, my iPad, my iPhone, my iPod, and my Nook. The iMac is a work-only machine and I leave it at work all the time. My MacBook I use from time to time, but I actually prefer to work on my iPad to my MacBook unless I’m writing something very long. The iPod Nano fits in my pocket so easily, or clips to my shirt so well that carrying it everywhere I go is a non-issue. My phone keeps me in touch, mostly over SMS and iMessage, and secondarily by the voice service itself. The majority of this post isn’t about these other items that I find indispensable, but rather about the tablets.

I can speak for the iPad and the Nook Simple Touch. I was absolutely sold over the iPad, especially when it comes to reading comic books. As for reading “regular” books, the glossy display and backlit nature of the iPad does start to wear down the eyes plus the native book app in the iPad, which is iBooks, doesn’t support the font I like the most, which is Helvetica Neue. I was a little dubious about the Nook Simple Touch at first, but the device won me over with it’s eInk display and it’s expandability via a microSD card port on the upper right corner of the device. The Nook Simple Touch has a lot of really compelling features going for it which made it’s purchase a sure thing. Here’s a list of what I like about my Nook Simple Touch:

  • Size – It’s perfectly sized. It feels a lot like a paperback book, this size really is a sweet-spot for me because this device can fit in my front and rear pants pockets when I want to carry it without having it in my hands and it can be easily stowed anyplace a book can go.
  • Weight – It’s surprisingly lightweight. Even with the microSD card, which only adds maybe a gram or two to it’s total weight, the whole package is very light.
  • Textured and Contoured Back – The rear of the Nook Simple Touch is contoured to fit my hands and rubberized so that I can keep a nice grip on it without having to strain.
  • Interface – Ever since the 1.1.0 Nook Firmware upgrade the device has been surprisingly quick on display updates and the touch sensitivity has also been tuned and I notice it. You can either use the side navigation buttons or a tap or swipe on the display to advance pages. It has a built in dictionary and wifi, with some social features but so far I haven’t explored those enough to report on them.
  • Compatibility – The Nook Simple Touch (as well as the iPad) both can open and display ePub format books. There is a special place in my heart for the ePub format. it’s open, it’s well understood, and there are tools like Calibre which I can use to convert PDF or DOC or MOBI format (actually there are a huge number of formats that Calibre understands) and convert them all to ePub. I bought a 4GB microSD card and was able to store thousands of free eBooks on my Nook without even a second glance. I know the books will work, I know they are configurable, it’s perfect for me.

So now I’m witnessing this war brewing between Apple, B&N and Amazon. I’ve never really used a Kindle, but I assume it’s most like the Nook devices. The latest device to be released, and is shipping now is the Amazon Fire. I’ve heard a lot of people going on about how the Fire may be Amazon’s answer to Barnes & Nobles Nook Tablet and may compete with the iPad. Out of curiosity I went to Amazon’s site where they describe the new Kindle Fire and as I was reading along several alarm bells went off in my head all at the same time. Here’s a list of issues I have with the Kindle Fire, even before laying my hands on it:

  • Eight hours of battery life – Even my iPad can beat this rating. I will hand it to the Kindle Fire that they were able to squeeze such a battery lifetime out of a device that was smaller than the iPad, but when you are watching video I will bet real money that end users never see these eight hours of battery life, let alone their hedged-bet of seven and a half for video playback.
  • Incompatible with ePub format! – This one took my breath away! Any device should at least be compatible with the ePub format, but Amazon has elected to support their own format called AZW instead. There are other formats supported, but ePub is not on that list and my library is configured to support ePub and I prefer it that way.
  • Prime Membership – If you want the most bang for your Kindle Fire buck, you’ll have to spring for an $80 a year Prime Membership. This could be useful if you do a lot of Amazon.com purchases but I don’t. It’s a little creepy that Amazon sells you a device and then charges you over and over again to use it fully. Feels more like a cash-grab and/or a gyp to me.

I don’t really believe the Kindle Fire will pose much of a risk to the iPad and iPad 2 class devices. I haven’t gotten a chance to hold either of the more relevant competitors devices in my hands to give it a right and thorough review. Based on just the description from the manufacturers alone, and even considering the Nook Tablet costs $50 more than the Amazon offering I can say just from the start that the B&N device is the one to get. Better battery life, better storage, better hardware, ePub format, that’s the one that I would get if I didn’t already have an iPad.

Keep your eyes peeled on this blog. I doubt I’ll ever get my hands on a Kindle Fire, but I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually be able to review the Nook Tablet.

Working Out

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My workout regimen is a nightly two hour long cardiovascular adventure.

I start the first hour on the treadmill and over time I have increased the angle on the treadmill deck progressively all the way up to where I now use it, at five degrees of inclination. I set the speed at 3.8 miles per hour, which is enough to get my heart pumping but not enough to take my breath away. I read once that if you were going to use walking as an exercise that if you are short of breath or breathing so that you cannot maintain a conversation well, that you are exercising beyond your capacity for maximum cardiovascular benefit. At some point walking has to drop away and give up to running. I was doing some running on a Nike+ program but when I started to run into joint aching that was a pretty clear signal to me that perhaps I need to stretch out my expectations of running, at least in the short-term. This time on the treadmill, at least by the computer in the treadmill declares that I burn around 745 calories for the entire hour.

The second hour I spend on the Elliptical Trainer. This machine replicates the general motion of cross-country skiing mixed with stair-climbing and walking. I set the time to be an hour and the “difficulty” to 14 out of 20. I don’t really know what the units are for the Elliptical trainer when it comes to its “difficulty” and I think that each machine manufacturer has it’s own concept of this. When I finish with this exercise I’ve burned about 845 calories.

I do this every single night, except on Sunday. That’s the day I select to rest and recover. So far it’s working very well for me. I do have some mildly entertaining problems, first of which is that I sweat a LOT. Even when I wear UnderArmour, which is supposed to wick sweat away. I find myself soaking my entire kit to saturation and then the sweat starts to rain off of me. It’s not just a little either, not a pitterpat, but more along the lines of a light rainstorm. I try to keep from swinging my hands too much so I don’t accidentally splatter nearby people who really would rather not take a shower from me. The sweat gets going on the treadmill but goes out of control on the Elliptical machine. It runs down my face and into my eyes and stings. So I’ve altered my kit and now I have a towel with me. I mop myself up every two or three minutes and by the end I’m wringing what I imagine to be about 300 to 500 milliliters of water out of myself. They say Cancer is a water sign, of this I have no doubt. Along with my issues with water, it’s getting colder outside. No longer can I work out, then dash outside to hop in my car. I did that once, and when the 40 degree air hit me it took my breath away. Evaporation consumes a lot of energy, in moments I was shivering. Now I take my time, change, wear more seasonally appropriate coverings so the short jaunt outside to my car isn’t so breathtaking.

What has it done for me personally? Well, I’ve lost a lot of weight. I started this adventure at 280 pounds, and I was wobbling around there and 278, back and forth. Mostly that was my sedentary lifestyle expressed in my weight. At this point I was hypertensive and really on the road to later disaster and I knew it. Now I weigh in at 242.6. I have lost 37.4 pounds. It’s interesting to see where it loses first. The first zones that showed immediate and surprising (almost shocking) improvement were in my legs. I used to have what I affectionately described as thunder-thighs, because I keep a lot of my weight there. That has since started to drop away. The next place was my ass, which as pretty much disappeared. Then I started to notice the drop in my face and neck, and oddly enough, my wrists and arms. The most resistant area for weight loss is the obvious regions, right along my trunk and back. So I still have a belly and love-handles, although the further I go the more I am noticing that I’m starting to develop an actual body-shape that is in line with my overall goals. I’m never ever going to look like the other gym bunnies, and I’m okay with that, but I am tired of being fat, and that fat made me tired. In a way I’m tired of being tired. That leads into the next expected-but-still-a-surprise personal result for me, my energy level has shot way up. All this exercise has also done wonders for my mood. When I carried all the weight I was always tired and irritable and generally a moody bitch. Now that I’ve shed a lot of that, I find myself not so quick in the grouchiness arena. Exercise physiologists say that regular exercise has benefits for mental health in addition to what it does for the body and of that I believe them. Body image is very important to me and it struck me square between the eyes a few days ago. I was about to head into the gym and I was wearing too much bulk, so it wasn’t terribly cold and so I stripped down to my UnderArmour Heat Gear Tee. Almost always I want to put something else on over that because I’m self-conscious about how I look with such form-fitting clothing on but that day I tossed off the layers and didn’t give it a single thought. When I got half-way to the changing rooms at my gym and noticed that I just had on my heatgear tee, and that I was okay with that, that feeling was like a blossoming reward for all the hard work I had been doing. It’s only going to get better, and I have another 42.6 pounds to lose. When I get to 200, then I’ll be just right where I want to be.

Working out this way is exceptionally dull work. I get out of work at 5, get to the gym around 5:30, and I really don’t get started on the machines until 6pm. Two hours of working out push my days to 8pm before I can even think of going home. While I’m working out I found that mental diversions really help. Listening to Podcasts works okay, but often times I get transfixed by the timer on the machine and then it just drags on and on. Reading on my Nook Simple Touch is better, especially when I can make the text very large. I sweat too much, and so the Nook has fallen out of favor in this use because I don’t want to drown it in sweat and short it out and kill it. What works best to keep my mind occupied while my body chugs away is my iPad. I’ve found that Flipboard, DC Comics app, Uno, Bejeweled 2, and Qrank really work well to keep me entertained so the time just flies on by. When I’m working out at the Anytime Fitness in Kalamazoo, they offer free Wifi so it’s great and very easy. When I’m at the Anytime Fitness in Portage, they don’t offer free Wifi, so I have to create my own Wifi through my iPhone. It’s not too bad, but I do wish I could get Wifi down in Portage as well.

When I began this new regimen I started out dreading my afternoons, schlepping off to the gym and huffing and puffing and sweating like a rainstorm. Now I think I might be getting addicted to working out. It’s not that I really like it, but it’s an odd sort of craving I have now. It’s good for me and is one of the reasons why I’m dropping weight so very quickly and I really don’t have a problem with that. I just wish I had more hours in the day to do the other things in my life. But if trading some fun for what I’ve been able to do for and to myself over these past few months is very much worth it.

iOS 5.0.1 / Learning My Lesson

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iOS 5.0.1 – Learning My Lesson

I was on the edge of my seat along with everyone else, there was word that Apple was going to push iOS 5.0.1 OTA to all the upgraded devices. Then TUAW made the announcement on Twitter that the upgrade was live and ready to go. I opened up my iPhone and there it was. 56MB upgrade waiting for me. I tapped the Upgrade button and off it went.

I was filled with fear when it came to my iPad First Generation device. Right after iOS 5.0 was released for my iPad and after I upgraded that device to iOS 5.0 I noticed that my iPad lacked the advertised multitasking gestures. I felt dejected so I moved along without. Shortly after that I noticed on the LifeHacker blog an article that would guide me through using the RedSn0w jailbreak tool to hack-in the multitasking gestures on my iPad. I moved ahead and applied the patch and watched with horror as my iOS device went through various cycles of rebooting and loading and one really upsetting sequence when it was just text, like it was the Linux kernel starting up. One of the reasons why I really love Apple is the insulation away from the expectant horrors of text startups. Never knowing if you are going to read “FAILURE” or “Kernel Panic” or something messy. I’d prefer to hide all of that behind helpful routines in a classical dialog box once the OS comes up and deal with it then. But I squeezed my eyes shut and when I opened them my iPad was waiting for me with the multitasking gestures enabled. I enjoyed my iPad and for a time everything was going wonderfully. Then Apple announced iOS 5.0.1.

I tried three times to upgrade my iPad, and each time there was an unknown upgrade error. I knew full well what the problem was. The hack was in the way. Apple was running a checksum on the kernel on my iPad and it was failing that check, so no upgrade for me! So I tried in vain to see if there was a way to back the hack out of my iPad and it turns out, there wasn’t one. So I meekly trudged forward, hat in my hands, head bowed and restored my iPad back to factory specifications. It erased everything off my device. Really that was okay, since the last time I did this upgrade to iOS 5 it was a loss-tastic failboat to hell. I’ve been keeping everything on my Dropbox, so losing the files on my iPad really wasn’t a risk for me anymore. When I woke my iPad up, it was as if it was fresh from the factory all over again, but this time with the self-starting parts of iOS 5 doing the lead-in with me. I set it up, and when I came across the backup/restore options I elected to restore my data from iCloud, and I had a valid backup from 8:30am this morning, so that worked well. Then it looked just like I had to start from scratch all over again for about 30 seconds and right after that iCloud came crashing down into my device – all my apps are now busy loading from iCloud. We’ll see how that turns out, but one this is for certain, I’m done with these jailbreak/hack tools. I lost an entire afternoon to the silly botch that was that hack and I can’t afford to lose time like this in the future.

At least I was able to claw victory from the gaping maw of defeat, that I am thankful for. There was a way to go back and I wasn’t trapped with a half-life-half-stuck device. I’m not going to do that ever again! Yikes! 🙂

iOS Newsstand

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On my way to Grand Rapids with Scott I decided to investigate the new Newsstand feature in iOS 5. I had downloaded three magazines, Comic Heroes, Men’s Fitness, and Mac Format. I opened Newsstand and started to look through the issues I downloaded. I was under the impression that I had at least a free sample.

Boy was I wrong! These “Free” issues were just stub-apps with more prices and a place to subscribe. This fails to reflect the way people usually buy magazines at brick and mortar stores. You can open up a magazine and browse before buying. Can’t do that in iOS!

So it’s a gyp. A bait-and-switch and now it’s tarnished what piddling interest I had in those aforementioned magazines. It’s also tarnished the Newsstand über-app as well. It’s really just a trap. It baits you with free and then thumbs its nose at you with a crass subscription ask or a expensive per-issue price.

It’s simple enough to ignore Newsstand completely now. I had piddling interest in magazines anyways. All the content, really good, fresh, relevant content is on Flipboard or Google Reader, or hell, even Safari! Better yet, those options have a great price tag, free.

iOS 5

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Since October 12th at 1pm when iOS 5 and iCloud were officially released by Apple I’ve been toying around with both products. I have a first generation iPad and a iPhone 4 with Verizon. I was able to grab the update from Apple at work and begin my install.

To set this scene properly, I should also state for the record that I have on all my machines, both at home and at work, Mac OSX Snow Leopard. I have resisted Mac OSX Lion because of it’s radical change in interface, some security concerns, and a general sense that if Snow Leopard isn’t broken, and Lion doesn’t bring anything new to the party, why fix what isn’t broken?

So once the download of iOS 5 for both my iPhone and my iPad were complete I started to upgrade my iPhone. The entire process worked well, however here at work we all use multiple Apple ID’s to manage apps and ownership of devices. Apple has changed the policy, so it’s just one Apple ID now, which at first filled us with trepidation. Turns out it’s not as bad as it could have been, and for that we feel like we have dodged a bullet. The install for my iPhone worked acceptably well and I was back up and working about an hour later. The update for my iPad was a bloody mess. The iOS 5 updater hosed my iPad, emptied it all out of all the data and even hosed all of my backups! It wasn’t the end of my world since I’ve been slowly moving all of my data to other cloud services such as Box.net and Dropbox. There wasn’t any loss, really, only a loss of my time and general inconvenience. I was able to get all my devices up and running shortly afterwards to my satisfaction.

Then I started to experience iCloud and ran into some problems. Apple rushed all of these products out without having their most-installed OS ready for it. This boggles my mind. I can accept that Snow Leopard doesn’t have an iCloud app yet and that Lion does, but what I don’t get is how iCloud is under-represented on the web and for common services we all know are running in iCloud. Things like web access to every aspect of iCloud, it should be a drive, it should have a place to access the Photo Stream. There is access for mail and calendar and so on, but it’s only fifty percent of what iCloud stores. Then there is no reference to IMAP addresses for the mail, no CalDAV addresses for the Calendar, and no CardDAV addresses for Address Book. These are of course all workarounds to enable Snow Leopard users to access iCloud. What bothers me most is that Apple doesn’t care about Snow Leopard users anymore. I turned on Photo Stream and noticed that there really wasn’t any way for me to get the Photos I put there, out of there anymore using any of the technology I already have. So I turned the feature off. As it goes, I was initially very enthusiastic about iCloud, but as I saw what it was all about and how Apple treats it, it’s just so much inter-device glue infrastructure and frankly, between my iPad and my iPhone, the glue is worth a short smile and a shrug. So this entire “cymbals and fanfare” around iCloud turned out to be a teeny-tiny firecracker that once it ignited, sounded more pitiful than exciting.

What did I really get out of iOS 5? The new notification center is marvelous. It is way past time for this. Online backup to iCloud is certainly good, but I may never really need it, and since I’m poisoned by my last experience with “Apple iOS Backups” in regards to my iPad, you can excuse me if I don’t stand up and cheer. iMessage is just BBM on the iPhone, so Apple beat RIM to the punch. It’s okay, it works, but it doesn’t fill me with fuzzy feelings. Behind all these weak good vibes from iOS 5 stands my biggest beef with Apple. They took Siri away! A week before iOS 5 was released I downloaded the free Siri app for my iPhone 4. It worked acceptably well. Then Apple pulled a huge whammy, Siri was no longer available for my iPhone 4 and I would have to get an iPhone 4S to use Siri. But it worked well on my iPhone 4! Why not include Siri on the iPhone 4 iOS 5 update? Why Apple? I feel cheated. Cheated by the company that I root and rah-rah for and this is a rather jagged little pill to swallow. I don’t see how the Apple A4 chip can’t cope with Siri’s information and how the A5 chip can. I feel like it’s a gyp, a cash grab from Apple. A way for them to shaft all of us iPhone 4 owners. After I celebrated the iPhone 4 on Verizon, now I’m actively looking forward to upgrading my device and that rankles! It’s a dick move Apple, and you know it.

So, iOS 5 and iCloud. Lion. All said it feels like Apple is slipping into a funk. It’s very reminiscent of the funk they were in when they dismissed Steve Jobs, and then when he returned, the funk dissipated. Now that he’s dead, the funk has returned. It may have been that Apple was really great only because of Steve Jobs and now that he’s gone, Apple is going to tumble, aimless and full of dicks trying to all grab at the company rudder and making a general mess of things. I can’t really feel a lot of gee-whiz-rah-rah about iOS 5 or iCloud.

One thing that also just occurred to me, and is another bit of evidence of Apple’s dick moves is the lack of four-finger gesture control on the first generation iPad. There was a hack to turn this feature on and it worked, now it doesn’t and the hack is gone as well. Not being able to have this neat feature on my first generation iPad stings. It feels a lot like the whole case with Siri. It worked before, and now it doesn’t. What a dick move, Apple.

So, should you upgrade to iOS 5 and use iCloud? Sure. Why not? It’s free. You get what you pay for.