This is the second of a series of posts about the iPhone/iPod Touch.

With the recent announcement of the Kindle 2 from Amazon, I thought it was a good time to talk about e-books.

Despite being a librarian with an interest in technology, I still haven’t actually seen an e-book reader in the flesh. I’d like to see a Kindle (and particularly the new version) but sadly it is still only available across the pond in USA. Sony’s e-book reader is available via Waterstones in the UK, which I recently read a great review of from Ian at Thoughts of a [wannabe] librarian. I have to admit, the review really did make me want to go and at least take a look at the Sony e-reader, if not buy one. (As an aside, I wish we had some of these types of things at our library, a while ago I heard about the “Techie Toybox” available to the library staff at Topeka & Shawnee Public County Library and thought what a great idea that was – as librarians we ought to be at the forefront of these information developments, particularly those of the e-book).

Academic libraries have gradually introduced more and more e-books (personally, I always buy an e-book version if there is one available for any reading list texts), and some public libraries have also started to purchase e-books for their users. It’s been quite a gradual process so far but I can really see e-books become very popular as the technology improves.

My own experience as an e-book user has, until recently, been limited to academic texts which i have either read online on a PC or downloaded sections as a pdf. Although this has a great advantage in terms of access (particularly useful when you are studying from a distance), it’s not as portable as a book, even if I use my netbook to read them. I read a lot on my daily travel to and from work (it take me about 90mins each way now) so I’m usually seen carrying around some form of reading, whether it be a fiction book, a non-fiction book, journal articles, magazines etc etc. – I quite often have all of the above! I have to admit, it would be nice to not have to lug so much around with me.

In order to give e-book reading for leisure a go, I recently downloaded Stanza, an e-book reader application for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Stanza is also available as a desktop reader which you can then sync with your iPhone/iPod Touch. It also has the ability to sync with the Kindle for anyone lucky enough to own one, although it can only sync by USB with the Kindle.

I’ve only tried the iPod Touch version which I have to say, I’m really impressed by. The application itself is free and there are a number of free books, newspapers and magazines – or you can purchase them using a number of different services. The screenshot below shows the first half of those services which are already listed in the online catalog, and you can also add more to the list.

Stanza Online Catalog

Once you’ve chosen to download a book (I’m using the term book for ease but of course it could be a newspaper, blog etc), it is added to your Library. You can browse your library by Title, Author, Subjects, or Latest Reads. By turning the screen landscape you can also use coverflow to flick through your library (see screenshot).

Stanza Library - coverflow view

Once you’ve chosen what you would like to read, the book opens ready for you to read. You can adjust the visual settings to suit you (you can change the font face (style), size, colour, background colour, line spacing, margin width and text alignment), as well as the effects (e.g. I have the page transition set to curl the page when I press the right hand side of the screen). I downloaded the Obnoxious Librarian from Hades to read for a bit of light entertainment. Whilst reading, you xan also tap the screen to bring up further options such as skipping to certain sections, searching within the chapter, or moving to a different chapter (see grey bars on screenshot).

Stanza book - settings whilst reading

At first, I thought I would find the screen too small to read for any period of time, but I’ve used it for 40 minutes and found that the size didn’t bother me. It may well do if you are reading for a few hours, but the portability is certainly a big bonus. What I really like about it is that the application opens wherever you were last reading and even if you skip between books, when you re-open the book it will always take you back to the point where you last left it. I haven’t actually chosen to buy a book on my iPod yet, but I definitely see potential, especially when you’re travelling and don’t want to carry lots of books. At the moment I am still preferring to read on paper but I think that is probably just due to convenience of having books in paper that I want to read. Who knows, in a few year time I might do almost all of my reading on a portable device.

I think e-books are definitely something that is going to grow, and I can see portable e-book readers becoming popular for those who travel a lot, and potantially students/academics who can carry one device instead of numerous hefty textbooks. I don’t think we’re going to see traditional paper books disappear any time soon but I do think we may well see a change in both academic and public library services as more and more users adopt e-books in favour of print books.

What do you think?  Are you an avid e-book reader or do you love the emotional side of sitting down and curling up with a good book? Do you think this could change the way libraries work in the future or is it just a passing trend?

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Following on from my post about my experiences with the iPod Touch, this is the first review of a third party application. Byline by Phantom Fish (link opens in iTunes) is an RSS reader for your iPhone/iPod Touch which synchronises with Google Reader and allows you to read RSS feeds whilst offline as well as online.

As mentioned in previous posts, I fairly recently changed RSS reader from Bloglines to Google Reader. Although not the main reason, one contributing factor to this move was the functionality of Google Reader when accessing the mobile version on my iPod Touch.

Google has an iPhone optimised reader which allows you to read posts, star them, and write notes. You can choose to read all new posts or you can view them by the folders you set up in Google Reader. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:

Google Reader iPhone interface

Although this is great, you can only read items when you are online. This is fine for most iPhone users who are pretty much always connected using 3G/EDGE. But for iPod Touch users like myself (or iPhone users who sometimes have no internet connection such as those who travel via underground), it means you can only read your feeds whilst you’ve got wireless access.

Over Christmas I found out about Byline (link opens application details in iTunes), an application which synchronises with your Google Reader account but also enables you to read your RSS feeds offline.

You can open the application whilst are connected to the internet to synchronise with your Google Reader account; Byline downloads any new feeds and archives them so that you can then read them offline. It’s great for me because I can sync at home in a morning before I go to work and can then catch up with my feeds whilst I’m travelling to work (I travel to work by public transport). In order to update your Google account you need to sync again after you have read them (I usually do this when I get to work).

Functionality is very similar to the Google site – you can star items, mark them as read/unread, write notes about them, and view new items either all together or by viewing specific folders.

The look of the application is very unusual; I quite like it but there are some negative comments on Apple’s store about Byline are due to the look of the application. It has a wooden textured look, as shown in the screenshot below:

Home page of Byline - with options to view all new items or those from one of your Google Reader folders

From the summary view of the feeds, you can see details of the title of the post, which blog it is from, when it was posted, and the first couple of lines of the post. You can also mark items as read/unread on this page by swiping across them with your finger (like you do to delete e-mails).

Another thing I like about Byline is that you can order posts so that you see the oldest first. This is not normally something I need, but it is useful when you have quite a few posts and not much time as you can just read the first few oldest posts, then synchronise later on to read the newer items either in Byline or at your PC. I tend to find this useful in a morning when I’m not sure whether or not I will get time to read all the posts. I read what I can, and then sync at the office to read the newer posts later.

The screenshot below shows the New Items screen which lumps all new feeds together. From here you can choose to read particular posts and mark others as read/unread.

New items page in Byline (those with a dot are unread)

If you’re using it and you have access to the internet (if you’re on an iPhone for example or an iPod and in a wireless area) you can also view the original post within Byline and click to follow any links in the post which will open in Byline instead of launching Safari. This is really neat as you can check out interesting points from the article taking you all over the internet, and then just click the down arrow in the Byline header when you’re done to move straight to the next item in your new items list.

You can also choose to read Byline in either portrait or landscape mode – landscape is often easier for reading longer blog posts.

View of Byline in landscape mode

There are other products that synchronise with Google Reader too, this is the only one I have tried. I decided to purchase Byline (currently £2.99) after reading the reviews on the App Store and I certainly haven’t been disappointed. It’s a nice way to read your RSS feeds even when you do have access to the internet – personally I prefer using a dedicated application to opening Safari and going to my Google Reader bookmark. Being able to also read your RSS feeds when you don’t have internet access makes it a perfect application for those with an iPhone/iPod Touch who want to catch up with their RSS feeds whilst away from an internet connection.

Has anyone else tried any good RSS readers for the iPhone/iPod Touch? Let me know in the comments if so.

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Just over a year ago I had my first go on an iPod Touch and raved about it. Shortly after I caved in and bought myself one. At the time, although I loved my new gadget I was worried I’d made the wrong decision as it isn’t a cheap gadget at £269 (as was the price of my 16GB model this time last year). However, looking back over the last year, I can definitely say it was not a waste of money.

I absolutely love my iPod Touch and use it on an almost daily basis. Since I bought it, there have been numerous developments, the main one being the applications to download from Apple’s App Store. I have to admit, this has sucked me in big time and I love trying out the new apps. I tend to mostly try the free ones but I have bought a couple of games and some of the productivity apps (including Appigo ToDo which I previously blogged about).

Apple also added support for Microsoft Exchange which has been brilliant for me. I can now synchronise my e-mail and calendar to reflect changes in my Exchange account from work. This is particularly useful for planning my day as I can check my work calendar from my iPod whilst I am at home or on the way to work.

I’ve noticed over the year that more and more librarians have bought either an iPhone or an iPod Touch, and there have been some interesting developments related to libraries using iPod Touch/iPhones. This post from College@Home gives some ideas of how to incorporate the use of iPhones in libraries, some of which are very interesting (e.g. being able to check the catalogue whilst at the shelves or responding to enquiries whilst on the move – both things which could be extremely useful as many libraries move towards providing rovintg support within libraries). Many libraries have worked to ensure that their library websites and OPACs work correctly on the iPhone, and very recently the first library application made it onto the App Store. I downloaded it the other day and have to say I’m very impressed, I love the simplicity of searching the OPAC as well as the ease of finding the opening hours and locations of each of the branches of DCPL. It’s very exciting, and I hope this starts to become the norm for library services. I think we’ve got a fair way to go yet but these innovations are great news for the future. Ebooks seem to be gathering more users also, and one platform to read ebooks is the iPhone/iPod Touch. I’ve been having a look at ebooks on my iPod including the newly released Stanza application.

There’s a lot of great applications out there so I’m hoping to write a series of blog posts about iPhone/iPod Touch applications, including Stanza, the DCPL library application, and others. Many of these will inevitably be linked to libraries, although as I am also a bit of a productivity freak I may well also include some general applications for improving productivity as well as a few fun applications.

In related news, my ancient Sony Ericsson K750i which I have now had for 3 and a half years seems to be conspiring against me. I’m not a heavy user of my mobile phone (I tend to use the internet to contact people), and this argument has always stopped me from purchasing an iPhone. I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to resist at the moment however as my phone keeps playing up. I have most of the features of the iPhone on my iPod Touch anyway but there is still the disadvantage of having two devices as well as not being able to use the internet on my iPod unless I am in range of wireless connection. I know I don’t need an iPhone but how long can my head win over my heart?

In unrelated news, I received confirmation yesterday that I have passed my Diploma in Information and Library Studies with a distinction! Hoping I can continue that trend when it comes to writing my dissertation later this year.

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One of my interests in Web 2.0 technology is using tools to improve productivity. It’s the reason I love RSS feeds so much, I’m a fan of anything that can help save time or improve productivity in both my working life and life on general. When I bought my iPod Touch in December I was keen to integrate that to help increase my productivity which it did to an extent but it had the distinct disadvantage of requiring wifi to do most things. The release of the iPod Touch software 2.0 and the App Store has changed all that though…

To-do lists using ToodleDo and Todo

I’ve always been a fan of the good old to-do list and although I’m not a GTD advocate (mainly as I don’t know too much about it!) I do enjoy finding out about new GTD tools. ToodleDo has been a firm favourite of mine for a while now, I’ve tried the popular Remember the Milk but I personally prefer the simplicity of ToodleDo. I have it embedded in my Pageflakes homepage so as soon as I load my browser at either work or home I see my to-do list. It’s particularly useful at work but I do also use it to help me organise my home life and studying too. I was also using the slim version of ToodleDo on my iPod (see screenshot) which was great when I was at home or work and therefore had wifi access, but I was unable to use it when out and about as it was all online.

ToodleDo Slim

Luckily, that has now changed thanks to Appigo’s Todo application (NB: site seems to be down at the moment but it has worked for me in the past). The main page of my Todo app currently looks like the image below with details of my lists and the number of tasks in each (as an aside, you may have noticed I am loving the ability to take screenshots from my iPod!).

Screenshot of the main page of my Todo app

When you go view the All list it lists all of your tasks in order of due date. I’d like to see different ordering of tasks (e.g. priority as it also uses priorities when you set the task), and Appigo are hoping to add this in a future release.

It synchronises with my ToodleDo account which means I can now update the list on my iPod whilst I’m away from the Internet, and then sync when I get back. I can also use the web version still and then update my iPod at the end of the working day. It might sound like such a simple thing but this really has helped me in the way I work, particularly as I often spend my time on the bus in the morning planning my day. Another neat feature (purely aesthetic but it makes it look nicer!) is that you can choose a different way of marking tasks complete. In the screenshot below you can see I’ve opted for a pretty boring blue tick with faded task at the moment but there are lots of different options available (including a DONE stamp across the task which is quite satisfying to look at!).

Screenshot of my current list of tasks for Study

The ToodleDo team and the Appigo team are both great at listening to user feedback and acting on it too, so I really do recommend them both if you work using to-do lists and want to access it on the web or on an iPhone/iPod Touch.

Blogging using the WordPress iPhone app

The other thing I tend to do on the bus is jot down ideas for blog posts or even write whole posts. As a get around for no Internet I had been writing them as e-mails (you can write without Internet access), saving them as drafts, and then sending them when I got home. Then I’d have to jump on the PC, copy the text, paste it into WordPress, and add any links and images I needed. So I was delighted to hear that WordPress were releasing an iPhone app and I have been eagerly awaiting it’s release. It’s finally here, and it’s great (I wrote most of this blog post on it). At the moment it’s tricky to add in links or formatting as the HTML tags are on the third keyboard on the iPhone, but for just getting the text down and working offline it’s great. You can then add it to the drafts folder and edit it on the PC. It could do with more functionality (e.g. links, ability to adminstrate comments etc.) but I’m sure that will come in the future.

Other productivity tools

Those are the main things I use with my iPod (in addition to Microsoft Exchange which I use for email and calendar) but on the web I also use:

• PageFlakes homepage as mentioned earlier
• Google Calendar (I use this at work to promote sessions as mentioned in an earlier blog post)
• del.icio.us to store useful bookmarks
• Bloglines (I currently use the Beta version) as my RSS feed reader, which also has an iPhone optimised version but although it looks pretty is very basic so I don’t tend to use it often

I’ve also dabbled with online document creators such as Google Docs, Zoho, Buzzword and Blist (there are probably more of these I have forgotten!).

I’m always keen to try new tools, are there any other useful productivity tools you love which I haven’t mentioned? How do you manage your time and organise your work?

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I’ve already briefly discussed the iPod Touch in an earlier post but now that I’ve had one for over a month I thought it was about time for a blog post about my thoughts on it.

I guess strictly speaking this is not directly related to libraries, but I imagine the implications of mobile technologies and particularly mobile web browsing will effect libraries and services of the future, it’s certainly made me think more about interoperability of our web pages and catalogues for users accessing them on different devices.

I’ve been using my iPod Touch on an almost daily basis since getting it at the end of December (much to the annoyance of my partner who doesn’t like the attention it’s getting!). I love having a mobile browser and have got it working on the WiFi at both home and work. It’s great for all those “Oh I forgot to look up…”, “That sounds interesting, tell me more” moments (I don’t know about you but I have many of these!).

Since the update following MacWorld last month (which by the way, I paid the £12.99 for and personally think it was worth every penny despite the hoo-ha) I’ve been checking my e-mail using the e-mail application which really is excellent. The Google Maps application is also great and I particularly like the feature of adding a pin and linking it to your contacts for people’s addresses. I’m finding out about more and more web apps on an almost daily basis and can’t wait for the SDK release hopefully later this month which should mean more applications for both the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Earlier today larger capacity models have been released (32GB for the iPod, 16GB for the iPhone) which I imagine will help improve sales of the Touch for some who feel 16GB isn’t enough storage for their music and movies.

I think these developments with hardware and software are really exciting and have nerdily been getting more and more excited by Apple developments as well as widgets and apps which are getting better and better and allowing so much more flexibility with the way we work.

Anyone else as excited as me about future technological developments or am I turning into a complete sad case?!

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Firstly, I hope those who celebrate had an enjoyable Christmas.

I’ve always been a bit of a gadget freak so I particularly enjoyed playing with a new toy at my boyfriend’s parents – the iPod Touch. I’ve had a play with the iPhone in O2 shops and although I think it is great, I really don’t think it justifies such a hefty upfront cost on top of an expensive contract so once I found out the cost it was never really an option for me. I do love some of the new features though and it really is intuitive. I hadn’t really realised just how similar to the iPhone the latest iPod was. OK, so it doesn’t have the ability to phone or text but my regular phone which I’ve had for 2 and a half years does all that sort of stuff fine. What it does have however is the same web browser capability as the iPhone.

I had a quick play on it last night and I’ve fallen in love – I know it sounds dramatic but it was brilliant. I checked my blog on there which worked fine in both portrait and landscape (good little test in case anyone ever views this on an iPhone!), then decided to check Facebook. It automatically detected I was using an iPod and took me directly to the iPhone friendly Facebook page, very neat. Many Web 2.0 type sites have developed (or are in the process of doing so) iPhone friendly sites so I imagine this will become more popular as long as iPhones stay at the forefront. The ease of use was incredible, at first I found it a little confusing but within just a few minutes I was automatically turning it for best view and zooming in using my fingers to read smaller print. You can also open multiple windows which I didn’t realise beforehand, another great feature.

I’m now in turmoil as I really want one but don’t know if I can justify the cost (especially with me having to fork out more for my University fees this year). I’ll have to see if I can find a good deal. The only slight drawback for me is that obviously you need to gain access to wifi – this is no problem at home but for example, I wouldn’t be able to browse the internet on the bus on the way home whereas with the iPhone I could. I just hope we see more free wifi hotspots and wifi on public transport becoming the norm!

Now that I’ve experienced it myself I can really see why Apple are doing so well in this market and I can really see this sort of thing becoming the future for browsing the net wherever people are. Who knows, maybe we’ll see developments for iPhone friendly library OPACs and online databases soon!

One of my Christmas gifts is a gadget too – a 4 GB USB drive with U3 capability. I’m currently using Firefox from the USB and it seems to work well, I did have problems when using it on another PC though, hopefully it’s just teething problems. It also has the ability to automatically synchronise files and password protect them too, although I’m still learning how to do that!

Other Christmas gadgets I was impressed by included my sister’s new Kodak EasyShare camera with printer which meant I walked away with copies of instant photos from the day. OK so Polaroid has been doing this for years but the advantage of being able to see the pictures on the camera beforehand and print full sized photos so quickly without a PC is really great.

Did anyone else get any cool gadgets?

EDIT: I couldn’t resist any longer, I am now the proud owner of a 16GB iPod Touch.

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