Do Androids Read of Electric Sheep?
Media Apps on the Galaxy Tab, Part One
Our extended road test of the Samsung Galaxy Tab is entering its second month, and the tablet is getting quite a workout.
What we like most about the Tab:
-It’s surprisingly portable.
-The device is intuitive and apps are (almost) always easy to learn.
-Transferring content into and out of the Tab is a snap.
Things we’ve come to resent:
-Apps from major players that don’t behave.
-Times when it’s hard to figure out how to do something that ought to be simple.
-Stuff you should be able to do on a Tab, but can’t… like make phone calls.
Overall, the pluses far outweigh the minuses. It’s extraordinary to have so much media at your fingertips. It’s possible to surf the Web, play video games, listen to the radio, watch TV, read the newspaper, enjoy music, see a movie, browse a magazine, and read a book—all in the same afternoon without getting up from your armchair. It may not be a healthy lifestyle, but it’s easily done.
Tablets make better platforms for visual content than smartphones. The tablet’s larger screen makes it easier to watch video, read, view pictures, and to interact … and with a larger screen, content becomes more engaging. Well, since this is why you bought a Tab and not a phone, we plan to examine some Tab-friendly media apps in this post and continuing in the weeks ahead. First up, the written word.
A-One, A-One, A-Two, A-Three…
A. J. Liebling called televisions machines for selling beer and razor blades. In a similar vein, many digital tablets are machines for selling books. It’s natural to use tablets as readers… but frankly, we think there’s a faint whiff of the bogus in the idea that you should buy the reader and the book. We believe that a digital tablet should confer the ability to read books for free. Under other circumstances this might sound naively idealistic. But if you have a Galaxy Tab and want to read a book without paying for the privilege…good news—you’ve got plenty of options.
First, remember the secret password, 1/1/23. Any book published in the U.S. before that date is out of copyright, and in the public domain. We’ll grant that very few of the books on today’s best seller lists were written before 1923. On the other hand, many very good books were. Mark Twain… Charles Dickens… Jane Austen… William Shakespeare… well, the list is virtually endless, and so is the supply.
Clearly the first place to turn is Google Books, the world’s largest collection of digital books. We hear that as of October, 2010, Google has scanned 15 million titles. Yikes! We’re also told that Google Books will soon be folded into Google eBooks, combining the database with a “cloud-based” service for buying and reading titles.
The merger of Google Books and Google eBooks has already taken place in the Android world. An app imaginatively called Books (free on Android Market) provides a seamless interface with the Google database and store—another instance like Maps or Gmail where the Google-Android connection works to your advantage. Although searches in Books sometimes provide a haystack of choice, it’s usually easy to find the needle. For example, one convenient button separates free books from books for sale in search results. The Books app acts as a reader and a library too, and material you download on Books is formatted perfectly for the Tab.
“Daddy, read me a bedtime story.”
Hold on, kid. Let’s see… tap Books… tap Search… type “pie patty pan”… tap… tap again. And there it is: Beatrix Potter’s classic, The Pie and the Patty-Pan, with full color illustrations, in your hand, invitingly opened to page one, in approximately 15 seconds. The interval between thought and possession has practically vanished—it takes longer to stand up and take the book from a shelf. Try this feat of mind-boggling convenience yourself, on the title of your choice.
Filed under: GentryMedia •Apps4Tablets •
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Do Androids Read of Electric Sheep?
Media Apps on the Galaxy Tab, Part One
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