mip's scan

Kobo For the iPad

The stream of iPad apps that will be available has been trickling in all weekend long.  This morning I saw a video of one app that I'm looking forward to.  Kobo!  I'm already a huge Kobo fan on my iPhone.  It is an elegant little app that is a near-perfect eBook reader.  The video below demonstrates what this app will be like on the iPad and it looks fantastic!  I'm skeptical that the iBookstore will be available upon launch for us here in Canada - so I was eagerly awaiting to see if the Kobo reader would be updated with an iPad version.  Glad that it will be!

Give it a look for yourself.

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Today's post isn't so much about tech itself, but rather, business and books.  I love to read.  I read a lot.  In fact, I read as much as I can get my hands on, both fiction and non-fiction.  Both from a professional and personal perspective, reading provides me with different perspectives, different ideas to think about and often can be a source of inspiration for exploring new areas of interest.

As many people are, I find I'm often in a time crunch and there is never enough time to read everything.  As well, with so many good (and some times not so good) book titles, it is hard to know what to read next.  This is where Soundview Executive Book Summaries comes in for me.  What does Soundview do?  From their website:

"Receive 8-page text and 20-minute audio summaries of the top business books of the year in 8 digital formats, accessible anytime, anywhere in your Online Library on our website."

If you want further info, here is a link to a video that gives a good overview as well.

This is a great service that provides me with book summaries that I can download in a number of formats:  PDF, MP3, Kindle, eBook, Blackberry (to name a few).  As well, each month, they mail me a CD with audio summaries of three books.  These are a good added feature as well as I am easily able to listen to them in the car.  Beyond the summaries, they also do a good job of providing interesting extras, like author interviews.  I find these particularly good as they provide added insight to a book.

So how do I use this service and the summaries?  Are they replacing reading books for me?  Not a chance!  I use this service to augment my reading.  Often, the "next" book that I'm going to read is a book in which the summary was rather engaging and I want to read/own the full text.  

So if you are looking to tap into expanding what you read, but are time challenged, this is a good service to explore.  The wide variety of formats they offer are fantastic as they can be consumed how you like on whatever device is your preference.  The summaries themselves are well done, thoughtful and not simple "reviews" or overviews - the provide enough detail to give you the major aspects of the books they are summarizing.  

You can find them at www.summary.com or follow them on Twitter via www.twitter.com/businessbooks

Happy reading!

iPhone Apps That Will Be Great on iPad: Panelfly

 A break from the recent business/tech posts - let me indulge in one of my long time interests/hobbies: comic collecting.  I want to write about apps that I think will be great on the iPad that have limited use on the iPhone.  Thought it would be fun to talk about Panelfly.  

The tagline for this app / service is "your local comic book store in your back pocket"  - that makes me smile!  I love comics.  Have collected them since I was 4 years old.  I'd seen this app for the iPhone and thought that the small screen size would be terrible for viewing such an illustrative form of content.  I like to pour over the detail in my comics.  I like to read the dialogue and study the art, picking up on details that the artist has poured his/her heart into.  

The iPad, with the larger screen and rich colour screen, will make Panelfly a gorgeous app to behold.  The iPad will change the way content is consumed, and it makes sense, that such a visual form of literature (comic / graphic novels) would be very well suited for the iPad.  Does that mean I'll stop buying comics at the local comic store?  No.  I view this type of app as something that will augment comic reading.  It doesn't seem to be available in Canada yet (boo boo), but hopefully it will become available in the near-future.  If it does, this would definitely be an app I'd have on my iPad that I wouldn't use on my iPhone.

Stay tuned for future posts about iPhone apps that I think will rock on the iPad.  If you have apps you'd like to suggest, feel free to post some thoughts in the comments below.

The Rise of eBooks & the eReader

eBook and eReaders have been around for some time now.  I had used a Cybook for some time, but always found it to be poorly constructed (plastic) and not easy to get books from my Mac to the unit.  It was also sluggish at times, which detracted from the experience.

Still, I very much liked the ability to carry multiple books with me when I wanted.  I never wrote a post about my experience as I felt I didn't have much to say beyond my personal opinion, which was, that the eReader was something I liked, but not entirely practical or ready for prime time.

A short while I go, I started using the Sony eReader.  It was the Touch edition that allowed me to literally "flip" pages.  The device is incredibly solid; very well built.  I have very much enjoyed using it and like the fact that it is more open than other units, like the Kindle (for a comparison of the features, click here).  I particularly like being able to download books from the Toronto library. As with my original eReader, I like the immediacy of buying a book and downloading it.  It is akin to the way I buy music and movies. 

The question for today's post is whether this device will replace the physical book?  Will students, for example, carry an electronic reader rather than house dozens of textbooks in their lockers and school bags?  Blyth Academy here in Toronto has begun to utilize the Sony eReader.  The video announcing this historic move is below.  Will this be something that catches on? 

To Google or Not To Google?

"To Google or Not to Google?"

That's not really the question :-)
Of course we all Google.  I was just being funny to introduce a great mini-site that Google has launched.  Explore Shakespeare with Google.

I love books.  Love to read them and love to write them.  I also really like, as I mentioned recently in another post, when my other interests intersect with technology.

So what exactly is it?

Now Shakespeare's oeuvre is even more accessible. Search within HamletGoogle Book Search, many of which are available for purchase. for "to be or not to be" to read the rest of his famous soliloquy. Find out who called the world his "oyster" and why. Browse through a familiar play – or follow your curiosity to discover a new one. And if you decide you want to buy a copy, "All editions" will show you every version in

This is really great.  You can see the real strength of Google isn't going to be just in being able to search effectively through billions of web pages of information.  They are going to be able to re-package, re-present, and re-think the way information can be made available to us.

Get Your Hands on Free eBooks

I did a show today over at Leading Edge Technology that I thought I'd blog about as well.  It's about a great site for getting your hands on free eBooks.  Manybooks.net provides thousands of titles that are available for download.  A little about Manybooks:

Hi, my name is Matthew McClintock, and I maintain manybooks.net as a service to the internet community at large. If you would like to contact me please use this form.

All of the eBooks from manybooks.net are free, however donations toward the maintenance of the site are welcome.

Many of the etexts are from the November, 2003 Project Gutenberg DVD, which contains the entire Project Gutenberg archives except for the Human Genome Project and audio eBooks, due to size limitations, and the Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks, due to copyright. As of July 2004 most current PG texts are available here, usuallly within the week of release.

What I really like are the multiple formats available for download - PDF, eReader, Palm, iPod Notes and many more.  Check it out and get reading!  Would love to hear from you on other sources you may have found/used for getting eBooks as well.

Blogging for Business

Usually I just place a book review in my Amazon sidebar 'thing' (to the left and down on this page).  But occassionally, I like to create an actual post for a book I thought was particularly good and/or relevant to stuff I'm working on.  Blogging for Business by Shel Holtz & Ted Demopoulos is one of those books.  In my opinion it's a good read for those people inside an organization who are responsible for setting a strategy for blogging.  I particularily like how the book doesn't get lost in the hype of blogging.  There's no "blog because it's cool" aspect to this book.  It sticks to an important first principle that I apply to all the IT work I do - let the business lead.  Blogging is no different and Blogging for Business captures.  If I may, a quote from early on is:

"The best business blogs were implemented in support of some business goal. Determining the kind of blogs you might consider begins with a review of your goals and issues in order to identify where your opportunities may lie. One kind of blog you should never launch is the "let's launch a blog" blog. Any company blog should be viewed as a part of the company's communication strategy."

To me that is an important starting point and I was glad to see the book go from there.  I think if you are getting into blogging as a small, medium or large sized business, this book should be on your list to read.  You'll appreciate the content and I liked the tone of the book itself.  How to get it?  Well, I'm not much of a physical-bookstore-kind-of-guy anymore, so for folks in Canada click here, for US readers click here. 

New Podcast Coming: write on

Well here is the post for my second new blog and podcast show that I announced earlier today.  The blog is called write on and the weekly show I'll do is going to be called the writeCast. 

This is a blog & show that are completely non-technical in nature and might not appeal to the readers of mip's scan but since I mentioned it in my podcast this morning I thought a delayed post was in order.  You can get details on this new experimental site and show by clicking here.

Ajax in Action

I've been very interested in AJAX and what it seems capable of delivering to the end-user over the web.  I picked up a book last week and finished it last night and it was really excellent so I thought I'd share it here for those of your also interested in this emerging technology framework.  The book is called Ajax in Action and it does a great job of covering this topic with lots of detail.  I liked that it wasn't just some overview of what AJAX was but offered content of interest to developers.  There is a clear presentation on how to get all the components that make up AJAX to fit together (JavaScript, server-side components, HTML, CSS, and XML.)  I particularly liked the step-by-step how to items that introduce you to creating things like dynamic double combo boxes, typeahead select boxes, and Web portals with selectable, draggable portlets.

If you're a web developer who's been looking to understand and begin developing AJAX enabled sites, this book is really a good read.  If you're and IT manager or systems integration consultant, I still think this book is worth reading as it'll give you a good sense of what this technology is and lay a good foundation to understanding how to leverage it.

Get Yourself Published

If you've listened to today's show that I did over at Podcaster News feel free to discuss it here!  I'm an aspiring writer and often write things that have nothing to do with technology!  If you are a budding author then today's show is for you!

Sometimes technology let's you do something that has nothing to do with technology! Huh? What are you talking about mip? Well. I'm talking about self-publishing a book. The web has allowed us disintermediate business value chains, which really means, eliminate the middleman. Join me in today's show where I talk about two services that let you do just that.

If you have any thoughts on the services I discuss today I would welcome your feedback.