Books In The Air

We just read about an author who sells 200 books a day through the Amazon Kindle digital book store and only 100 a month at the Apple iBook store. That’s because the Kindle software has a wider reach. It lets you read digital books on just about any computer or smart-phone; you don’t have to own a Kindle. The software is free.

Another freebie, called Copia, is about to enter the scene. It will add a social networking dimension to the e-reading experience. The point of combining reading on an e-book with social networking is that it makes it easy to start book discussions, share passages, make notes and see the comments of others. You can see what your friends on Facebook are reading without asking them first. You can see what others using the app are reading and what passages they’ve circled.

Copia will have a full-color e-reader this Fall for $99. Other models will use the black and white display that’s easy on the eyes and in bright light. All the models will combine social networking with reading. The software itself will still be free from theCopia.com.

Like the Kindle’s software, the Copia software can display books on your computer or iPad. This feature will soon be extended to other devices, like those using the Android operating system. As with other Readers, there’s access to a free library, in this case Adobe’s Digital Editions, which we used recently to download “Huckleberry Finn.” This should be a boon for teachers and book clubs. If you can’t wait for the software, try GoodReads.com, which operates in a similar way. If you’re already using GoodReads, you’ll be able to import everything into the Copia app as well.

Free Photoshop

Why buy Photoshop for more than a thousand dollars if all you need is the free version? Adobe, the maker of Photoshop, has just revamped its freebie website, Photoshop.com, with new tools for organizing and editing photos. They have an “Express Editor,” an “Express Uploader,” “Express Organizer” and “Express Slideshows.” We’ve tried them and they are super nice. Most users would need nothing else.

More Roads to App Land

• DinnerSpinner is a free iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad app. You choose the type of meal, the ingredients you want, and the amount of preparation time, spin the dial and whoosh! A set of recipes are ready to view and add to your favorites list. We liked the sound of the spinner, which made it feel like we had won the jackpot. If you don’t have an iPhone or iPad, you can use AllRecipes.com on your computer.

(Bob wants to add here that he is very leery of recipes and says they should be used only as a guide. He points out that because of copyright laws, many recipes will make small changes, like adding some strange ingredient or instruction, in order to make it “new.” These changes usually add nothing to the basic recipe except make it more difficult.)

• “Dragon’s Lair” is a classic adventure game from from Electronic Arts that can now be played on the iPhone or iPad for $2. The plot is simple enough: You have to fight your way through a castle to kill the dragon and save the princess. There’s also a version for the Wii machine.

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• The classic mystery board game “Clue” is also $2 from Electronic Arts, for the iPhone or iPad. The basics of the murder mystery are still the same, It’s somewhat challenging because they’ve put in time limits. You still must figure out if Miss Scarlett did it with a wrench in the billiard room, or Professor Plum with a knife in the library

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• Fotopedia is a free app for iPhone or iPad that gives you spectacular photos from all over the world. Save a ton on air fare. Each photo has a link to a Wikipedia article, so you can tour the world through photos and learn about each place. You can also go to fotopedia.com on your computer. The pictures are great, an armchair tour of the world.

The Best Web Browsers

What’s the best way to browse the web? The four favorites are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Readers have asked us why we prefer Chrome. It’s mainly because the address bar is also the search bar, so it’s faster to do searches.

But it’s also because we’ve become used to it. We can hold down the “CNTRL” key and tap the “h” key to see a history of where we’ve been on the web. We can hold down “CNTRL” and the “j” key to see everything we’ve downloaded. If we hold down the “CNTRL,” “SHIFT” and tap “B” we can see all our Bookmarks.

There are a number of other web browsers, and you can roam among them at will:

-- Flock, for example, is a social web browser. It keeps you up-to-date with your Facebook and Twitter friends. You can use it to share web pages, photos, and video, update your status and make comments from anywhere on the web.

-- Opera is mainly known for its speed. It’s very popular in Europe and on phones. It has an app called Opera Unite for sharing large files. Something about its look never appealed to us.

-- Maxthon is light and won’t take up much of your computer resources. Similarly, K-Meleon is an extremely fast, customizable, lightweight web browser.

Some browsers, like iCab, (for Mac only) aren’t free. ICab costs $20 but claims to have features that Safari, the free Mac browser, doesn’t. You can find still more browsers if you Google the search: “list of browsers.”

 You can safely install as many browsers as you wish, and use each one as often as you wish. They do not interfere with each other.

The Numbers Report

We knew lectures were popular, but this is amazing. Three hundred million lectures have been downloaded from iTunes. (And you can talk in class.)