How-to: Have your iOS device read text for you

How-to: Have your iOS device read text for you, article.

Highly useful article. Still not as good as if apps could tap into text-to-speech like in Android, for example, in Voiceover mode (which you have to use for ebooks), you can't change the voice, and the default voice rubs me the wrong way, I don't think it's pleasant.

In the other mode you can select between different voices, some which are much better. But you can only get text read if you select it first, and selecting text on a tablet is a bee-atch.
Still, better than nothing.

Siri takes over the world

[Thanks to Henry]

The problems of moral men

[Thanks to Dave T]

We laugh, but it's a big problem, just think of how many ereaders have 50 Shades on them! So much work.

"Her"

New film. A story about a lonely writer and a sexy smartphone. Oh no.

How Jonathan Ive got inspired to create the iOS 7 color sheme

How Jonathan Ive... from Max Wohlleber on Vimeo.

For those less than obsessed, this is the upcoming look referred to. Ligher, brighter, fresher colors and a simpler look: 

2013 Nexus 7 Review

This sounds wonderful. But I don't know that I once again will be lured into buying one more Android device, only to be disappointed at that system's bugginess and clumsiness.
(And one has to wonder if it is not very deliberate that they, like last year, announce this thing near the end of a long year without any new, exciting iPads or Kindle Fires...)

But one thing for sure: price difference between a 16GB model and a 32GB one: only 40 dollars! Apple, are you listening? Your 100 dollars is just opportunism, I'm sorry.

Amazon, don't be disingenuous

I like Amazon a lot, in most ways. But I don't like their Win-All-Or-Die attitude to business, and I don't like how they are sometimes too comfortable with leaning against the borders of disingenuousness (dishonesty).

One example was last big event, where they carefully avoided telling us that the new, lower prices of Kindles were only for the ad-supported varieties. Another one I just saw today, see this message from Amazon:

... Particularly the language "Please ensure that your device is connected to Wi-Fi to receive your content" is almost dishonest. "Ensure" tells us that we must do this, otherwise we won't get the content. But my Kindle is a wifi and 3G Kindle. I paid extra for this, and Amazon knows full well exactly which one I have.

They are apparently trying to get people weaned off using the 3G (cell phone network) in order to cut down their own bills. That in itself is OK, but virtually lying to people to get them to do this? That is not okay. They may waste collectedly a lot of time for people who may have better things to do, and they may make many people anxious about getting their content, if they are not experts on the technology.

If people paid for their 3G model, Amazon must deliver what they promised, delivery wherever there is coverage, and not try to weasel out of it. This promise has been at the heart of the Kindle experience which was promised so beautifully and so loudly in their commercials.

The message could be turned completely honest and straightforward if the sentence was changed to: "You may receive your content faster if your device has wi-fi turned on."

iOS 7, coming this fall

This looks nice. And as always, Apple talks a good game. Very good indeed, they have the gift of the golden gab.

I'm a little in doubt, though, apart from a fresher look color- and design-wise (and apart from the control center which I like), how big a difference will this really make in daily use? It seems to me that while the translucency and backgrounds moving behind icons when you turn the phone look great, it's mostly iCandy, as it were.

Will things actually be improved and fixed? Will there be text-to-speech for applications, like on Android? Will the nightmare of trying to select text be handled?

Also, when does it come to the iPad? You'll notice they only talk about the phone. Will it be like iOS4, where the system only came to the iPad months later?

New Nexus Seven

We've all passed a lot of water since the debut of Google's Nexus Seven, but when it came out (it feels much longer than just a year) it was almost revolutionary: a seven-inch Android tablet in good quality, with full features, and at a startlingly low price. And now it has been upgraded.

Me, I now prefer an iPad Mini, or a Kindle Paperwhite, or a Kindle Fire HD, for various reasons, including finding Android to be clumsy and buggy, but if one really wants a 7-inch Android tablet, I think the new Nexus is surely a good bet. It seems to have been upgraded and improved all over the range, included acquiring a back camera and the highest screen resolution in the class (full HD. My eyes can't follow once PPI gets above 200*, but if you want 323PPI, here it is).
I doubt one will find better for the money. (Though admittedly competition in this area is sharp a glass shards, so they are pretty much all good and cheap, overlooking the OS.)





*I'm using both my iPad 3 and my iPad 2, and I have to say that I don't notice the huge difference in screen resolution. Oh, I can see it if required to, but in practical use... And that's despite that anybody these days daring to release a tablet with only a 132PPI resolution would be laughed out of the market.

OneDollarScan

1DollarScan may be a solution where you have (or buy) a book or more that you don't need to keep (seems it's destroyed in the process), but would like to have as ebook.
The service comes in several levels, here is pricing info. The most basic scan for books is a dollar per 100 pages, which seems pretty cheap. OCR (real text), angle correction, and other quality options are extra.

I know that many people, myself included, find it genuinely difficult to read paperbooks after getting used to ebooks (some even get headaches). So if there are books you just must read, but nobody has digitized them yet, this might be a solution.
Getting your whole library, if you're a bookworm, scanned in good quality might cost a pretty penny though.

I asked them:

I suppose the customer always is the one to ship the book (if you don’t have it)?

The customer is ALWAYS the one to send in the book. Even if the book is a book that we have scanned before, we will still scan it. Every single book is scanned. When customers order from online bookstores, the physical book bypasses the user and goes directly to us. Sometimes this is good for users in other countries if they can find a seller in the U.S. then they save a lot on shipping and we deliver the file digitally into their account. So we have many users from other countries using this service. 

We typically deliver a PDF. We can do other formats, but it's usually a special operation to do that.

Are the scans real, searchable text?

If the customer adds OCR by request, then the scan is searchable. The quality of the OCR depends on a few things, like the quality of the book, language, fancy font, etc. (if they ask us to do angle correction on the file after or scan 
at 600 DPI it's a lot better).  But the average book is fairly accurate. 

The phone wars.

Funny.

Apple should lead the move to DRM-free ebooks

Apple should lead the move to DRM-free ebooks, article.
But above all, what should matter to Apple is that ending ebook DRM would be good for consumers. It would lead to true competition among ebook retailers, since any retailer could sell books that could be read on different devices, just as any bookstore can sell dead-tree books that anyone can read. We would be able to choose the device we want to use to read a new book. We wouldn’t have to worry about being able to access our digital libraries in the future.
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Viva la difference

[Thanks to Mashable]

Pointed, but I think there's something to it. It may be part of the reason why Android has trouble getting good apps, and selling them.

The Making of Apple's "Dual Mind" ad (1986)

PCWorld Exits Print, and the Era of Computer Magazines Ends

PCWorld Exits Print, and the Era of Computer Magazines Ends, article.
The news isn’t shocking. In fact, it’s sort of a shock it didn’t happen several years ago. After slightly more than thirty years in print, PCWorld magazine is ceasing publication, effective with the current issue, to focus on its website and digital editions.

PCWorld! Hot dang.

I've been noticing in recent years how magazine kiosks and book stores in town have been giving more and more space to candy and greeting cards (what's with the Brits and greeting cards?? They are everywhere), and less and less to magazines.

I guess in a few years, if you just can't stand using the web or a tablet, you'll just have to go without your magazines! And considering that for many people, magazines have been the only thing they read, something is going to give.