Oh, Hi There

As you've probably noticed, I've been neglecting Verbatio for quite some time now.  After finishing boards, I had barely a week before starting up with my clinical rotations.  My time is more limited now than it ever was during 1st and 2nd year, so my posts will likely be shorter and few and far between.

Rather than get into a long EBM post right now, I thought I'd say a little something about the HP TouchPad and how HP abandoned all WebOS hardware (though they say they haven't given up on supporting WebOS... we'll see about that).  As you might have read, HP has stopped production of all WebOS hardware (as in the Palm Pre line and the HP TouchPad).  Because of this, there was a firesale of HP TouchPads going for $99 over the weekend.  I was lucky enough to snag 2 of the 32GB versions at $149 a piece, as I'm hopeful Android will be ported over to the device soon to make it more useful.  At least I think I was able to snag them.  HP says they have my order and that they're slowly working their way through them, but I won't be entirely convinced until it shows up at my door!

It's been my opinion for a while that Palm's WebOS had the strongest UI of any mobile OS out there -- it's just a shame that their hardware sucked and there was so little developer support behind it.  WebOS just never got enough users to get people interested in developing apps for it, which is really too bad.  I preferred WebOS over Android (even CM7, though I do love the widgets and customization options), but WebOS just didn't have the apps I needed for school (Epocrates stopped supporting it shortly after I switched to Android).  I could talk at length about all the mistakes HP made when they purchased Palm, and how I wish Google had purchased Palm so as to integrate some of WebOS's features into Android, but Ars Technica had a pretty good article last week about what HP should have done with WebOS that is probably more worth your time.

I'll try to post more often, though for better or for worse, I wouldn't expect any really long posts any time soon.  So far I'm enjoying 3rd year, but I'm a little busier most days than I expected.  I'm almost 3 months into it, and I'm still not used to waking up early and working a normal/long work week!

Kindle now available for Windows Phone 7, but still no WebOS love

It appears that Amazon was able to release Kindle for Windows Phone 7 less than 2 months after WP7's release in the US.  That's great for WP7 users and all, but what about WebOS users?  What the hell, Amazon?

I've moved onto Android 2.2 (soon to be 2.3, or "Gingerbread") with my HTC Evo 4G, but 1.5 years ago I absolutely loved my Palm Pre when I got it!  It was a great phone.  WebOS development hasn't quite progressed like I'd hoped (hence my move to Android), but I still find it hard to believe that a Kindle app for WebOS would take very long to make.  I don't mean this in a conspiracy theory kind of way, but I wouldn't be too surprised if Microsoft had some part in getting the app out quickly.  After all, WP7 supposedly has at least a $500 million marketing budget, so I don't think it's out of the question.

I love Amazon and I love my Kindle, but this is still pretty ridiculous, and borderline insulting for the many WebOS users out there who would love to read Kindle books on their phones (my brother included, who isn't eligible for an upgrade until this summer).

Revisited: Kobo Books

A while back, I expressed my dissatisfaction with Kobo Books on the Palm Pre.  One thing I will say is that Kobo has done an excellent job in responding to my bug reports.  Compared to many companies that will just leave such problems unnoticed, I really have to commend Kobo for the effort.  Here's the current status on my previous concerns:

1. Downloading books and adding bookmarks:  This was solved with an update to the Kobo Books app on March 9.  The problems appeared to be due to changes made in a WebOS update.  So it took them a little over a week to fix the problem.  Not as fast as I'd like, but not bad.
2. Cutting off text at end of chapter:  They are aware of the problem, and they have been very good about keeping in contact with me about it.  They had difficulty reproducing it at first, so it seems to be pretty isolated based on the text display settings and just how it happens to paginate each chapter.  From the sound of it, it doesn't seem to be a widespread problem.  Still, this is an extremely annoying bug.  Although they did offer me a refund if it can't be resolved, which was comforting.
3. Wasted space in UI: They passed the idea along to the development team.  Whether anything actually happens about that... who knows.

They are far from fixing the problems, but I do appreciate it when a company takes the time to respond to user issues and requests.  I'm still not on board with buying any more eBooks from them until they address issues #2 and #3 above, but I haven't written them completely off.

Another thing I will say is that their price for one of the books I'm interested in reading, No One Would Listen, was down to $9.99 before Amazon's Kindle price was.  They're the same now, but Kobo was cheaper by about $6 for a week or so that I noticed.  I'd still suggest Kindle for your eBooks, but it wouldn't hurt to check Kobo as well to see if they're cheaper.  If you can save yourself some money, it might be worth giving Kobo a shot.  Perhaps the software is better on other phones/devices.  If it is, let me know!

Initial Thoughts: Kobo Books

I'm almost half-way through my 2nd eBook I've purchased via the Kobo Books app on my Palm Pre.  So far, I've been really disappointed and I don't think I'll buy any more books from them.  My biggest complaint is that the text display is horribly wasteful.  With the narrowest margins and the smallest text (which are the defaults), it still only displays 17 lines of text.  That might sound like a lot, but it skips a line of text for each new paragraph and the screen isn't very wide either.  There would be room for at least 4-5 more lines if the display was actually fullscreen and didn't leave so much empty space for when the UI buttons appear (but they disappear while reading unless you bring them back up manually).  The buttons are almost never there, and yet it just leaves the space empty instead of using it for displaying text.  I'd even argue that the buttons are useless and everything they do can be accomplished via swiping gestures and/or just tap-holding the display to bring up a menu for bookmarks, book information, etc.  It also does not support landscape viewing.

On a few occasions it's even dropped text at the end of a chapter!  I noticed this on a couple chapters in the 2nd book I've read (Darkly Dreaming Dexter), but now it has me wondering if I missed text in the 1st book I read on it too (Checklist Manifesto)!  To add icing on the cake, I also haven't been able to use the bookmark feature the last few nights and it hasn't allowed me to download Darkly Dreaming Dexter to my phone so I can read it without having a data connection present.  This is especially disappointing because the whole motto of WebOS is to automatically save your data whenever you exit/close an application.  With all of the other phone applications, such as the memo pad or the task list, it automatically saves my data when I close the application so I don't need to manually press "save" to preserve my changes.  And yet with Kobo, I have to bring up the UI buttons and then save a bookmark (assuming I have a current data connection and the feature is working).  When opening Kobo back up, I have to navigate to my library and then select the book, when it seems much more practical to take me back to wherever I left off in my current book instead of me having to waste time getting back to it.  The "home screen" when opening up the application is actually a list of books that you can spend more money on.  How convenient.  It'd be nice if they tried to make it easier for me to actually read my eBooks instead of just making it easy to spend money on them.

As I've stated before, I was very excited about Kobo Books, but the software has really failed to deliver.  I'll post more information about the software (with some screenshots to show what I mean about the UI) as well as the books I've read after I get through my histology exam this week.

Why is buying an eBook such a pain?

As much as I've enjoyed free shipping with Amazon Prime lately, I'd enjoy buying eBooks that I could read on my Palm Pre even more.  The problem with eBooks right now is that you're throwing all of this money at a specific format/company, but if that company goes under or doesn't support your current or next mobile device, you're pretty much screwed.  To be fair, eReader does support a lot of other devices, but their lack of Pre support is a deal breaker for me.  I love my Palm Pre, but unfortunately it doesn't have the same market penetration that the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android smartphones are enjoying (but hopefully its recent Verizon launch will change that).  Maybe the Kindle software will come out for the Pre soon too, but we'll see.

Right now, I think I'll give Kobo Books a try with my next purchase.  It's available on my Palm pre and other devices and I'm pretty sure it even syncs your bookmarks with the cloud so you can log in from a different device or in a browser and continue reading there.  I like the idea of always having my books with me on my phone without also having my library (and bookmarks) limited to just my phone.  After I finish with Hidden Empire, I'll probably read Checklist Manifesto.  Kobo Books' prices even seem to be pretty reasonable ($10-$15 for most books), unlike eReader and Fictionwise that charge $20+ for books that have been out for years.  If anyone has any experience with Kobo Books, or if you would like to suggest another eBook solution, please let me know.  Otherwise I'll see how it goes when I get around to trying it out.