Tag Archives for blackberry playbook

Library Love: Ebooks

My intent to blog about library love this week comes on the heels of an announcement by Penguin that they will no longer be making their ebooks available to libraries via Overdrive. This post is about singing the praises of borrowing ebooks from the library and how, in spite of what Penguin and others believe, has added a slew of new authors to my reading roster — which, in spite of what Penguin seems to think, has resulted in sales for those authors.

I’m relatively new to borrowing books online. As I mentioned in my last post I had set a few goals for myself for January, one of which was to watch my money a little more carefully. Balancing a whopping payout on a student loan I had to find a way to get my book fix without doing my usual New Year splurge. One method  was reading what I had in dead-tree lying around the house, but the books I now own in print are special little indulgences and not for burning through over a weekend. My day-to-day takes me nowhere near a decent used bookstore, and borrowing dead-tree books from the library doesn’t particularly appeal to me. I’m horrible at remembering to return dead-tree books and always rack up late fees. Now that the library is offering e-books to borrow I’m immensely enjoying the experience for a number of reasons.

If you own a compatible device and you’re not taking advantage of Overdrive, you’re missing out, especially if you live in a rural area where getting to your local library is a pain in the ass. Whether you have a Kobo, a Sony, or a mobile device like an Android or iPhone, you should get thee to a library and get yourself a card. Kindle users, you are shit out of luck as far as Overdrive goes.

So borrowing via Overdrive is easy if you have a library card and the right device. I have a Kobo and since I don’t like the way their app syncs with my reader I used Adobe Digital Editions, which is also what you use to move borrowed ebooks onto your device once you download.

Here’s a step by step, the desktop method:

First off, get your library card out and head to your local library’s website to see if they offer ebooks via Overdrive. If they do, great, you are good to go. Follow the link to the Overdrive console:

Search or browse until you find a book you would like to check out:

Assuming it’s available, simply add it to your cart:

You can add more books or go directly to the checkout, where you will be prompted for your library card number:
Next, select the lending period. You can also set a default lending time under “My Account” – I always go for 21 days even though I am usually finished a book in under a week:

Here is where you download your book to use in Adobe Digital Editions. Select “download” and open the file into ADE:
See? Just like that it’s ready to read like any other book you would buy:

The book can be found under “Borrowed” where you will also see the number of days left before you have to return the book:

Next, simply drag the book from “Borrowed” to your device:

Once you’ve done reading your book, you can either let it expire to return it. I’m anal, so I return books and delete the file from my Kobo when I’m done to keep my library looking clean. Just click the arrow next to the title and select “Return Borrowed Item”:
You can also wishlist a book in case you’re not ready to read just yet:

And if a book isn’t available, place a hold and leave your email address so they will notify you. Once the item is available, you will be emailed that the book will be available for you for a short period of time:
Just watch your trigger finger when playing in ADE. I was one chapter into Terry Fallis’s The High Road when I accidentally returned it, and had to put myself back on the waiting list for it.
Overdrive also offers audiobooks, if that is your bag. A co-worker dropped $20 on an audiobook last week and could have cried when I told her it was available to borrow from the library right on her iPhone.
Now what about the selection? My experience is that it balances what is available in print. There is quite a selection if you are willing to try new authors. If you are a Harlequin fan you are pretty set, since there is a huge selection. Carina also seems to be the only big erotic romance publisher in the catalog (for instance, neither of my releases from Loose Id are available but you can easily find fellow Haligonian Lily Cain’s Carina titles.)
For me, forcing myself to read what is available versus what I want has opened me up to reading new authors I might have passed on because of price. 
Which, of course, leads me to the decision by certain publishers to exclude their titles from library borrowing via Overdrive. I think this deserves a separate post, which I’ll post over at Culinary Carnivale.
There is another, more altruistic element to this. If I’m popping onto the library’s website twice a week, my awareness of my local community is getting a boost. Right on the front page I get library news, whether it’s new services, volunteering opportunities, or special events and programming.
Overall, adding ebooks to the mix of library materials available is wonderful. As I mentioned earlier in the post, it can make the ease of borrowing better for those who live outside of an urban center or, like me, are not terribly disciplined.
And now, on to Culinary Carnivale for a rant ;)

Review: Playbook for Writers

When I shoved the horrid 2011 out the door, I tried to decide whether I wanted to make any resolutions for 2012. I’ve done this before, and like so many other they’ve been a total failure. What’s the point? I asked myself. Do what needs to be done and leave the annual tradition of failing to keep a resolution out of it. But where is the fun in that? So I decided no resolutions. Instead, at the beginning of every month just set a goal or two for myself. Blogging more often is one of those. You can also follow me on any of the other social networks listed in the sidebar. 

I’m a bit of a gadget geek. I’m not as bad as some, but I do love my Apple products. I don’t have cable any longer because I just use iTunes to buy and rent. I’ve got an iPod and an iPhone. But I drew the line at an iPad. I love iOS and the app store can’t be beat, but the size put me off. I liked the size of the Android tablets, but I’m not a huge Android fan (the iPhone replaced my HTC Desire.) Kindle Fire isn’t available here in Canada, and while I enjoy my Kobo WiFi, I’ve had so many problems syncing between apps that I just gave up and started using Adobe Digital Editions for everything.

Without anything in my price range that appealed to me, I decided to just sit and wait to see if Apple eventually caves and brings out a 7-8″ tablet.
Then my boss introduced me to her Blackberry Playbook. She bought it when the price dropped and has been using it to coordinate her daughter’s wedding. I figured for $200 CDN I could afford to give it a shot.
Turns out it’s a pretty decent and inexpensive tool for a gadget loving writer.
When you turn it on, it pretty much looks like any other tablet with an icon grid. There’s no home button like on the Apple devices, you just swipe your way around the screen.
One of the big beefs with the Playbook is the fact that is has no native email or calendar app. This is true and it is tad annoying, but using mobile Gmail or Hotmail gets the job done on the fly. However, there is no option for adding attachments — this could be a dealbreaker for some.
There is an Evernote app. It’s lacking — you can’t create a notebook, just add notes to your existing notebooks. To be fair, this is also missing from the Apple app. I have a personal Evernote account I use to save recipes, grocery lists and so on. For my writer account, this is where I tuck away Calls for Submission so I don’t have to root through my email. I much prefer Evernote to Google Docs.
One thing that was pretty important for me was a decent RSS app. I use Google Reader faithfully at work to keep up on recipe sites and other SFW blogs, but for NSFW blogs I sync with my writer account. On my iPhone I use Flipboard, but it’s a challenge to read on such a small screen. While GeeReader is no Flipboard for iPad, it still looks pretty good. I use the free version to sync with Google Reader to keep up with blogs.
As far as social media goes, the Playbook is totally lacking. No Pinterest, no Tumblr, no Twitter. The Twitter icon on the Playbook actually takes you to the mobile site. Blah. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Without social media beckoning me I’m more apt to stay focused on the business at hand. However, I did want Twitter if for no other reason than to share blog posts from GeeReader. Lemma is a pretty basic (and I do mean basic) app for Twitter and is a little better than the mobile app.
Navigating from app to app is pretty simple. Swipe, swipe, swipe. That has always been my gripe about the Android and iOS. Usually when you close an app to answer a text or an email you’re really closing the app. Blackberry made copying stuff from the web and pasting it into Evernote a breeze. Swipe, copy, swipe, paste, and so on.
And now here is the all-important part — writing on the Playbook. Playbook comes pre-installed with Word To Go (you have to buy a word processing app for iPad), and while it takes some getting used to, typing on this sucker using your thumbs like you would a Smartphone is a breeze, and you’ll quickly master jumping back and forth to get to the second keyboard for your quotation marks ;) Be prepared to have to take a day off once in a while to give your hands a rest tho :p What I like most of all is NO WORD COUNT. Just you and your writing.
The documents save right on the Playbook, which you can mount to your computer to grab at a later time. Or, assuming you want to back up your work to the cloud and spare yourself a heart attack in the event of a lost/broken device, there’s Bluebox, which syncs to your Dropbox account.
Last, but not least, what about reading? It looks like Kobo is it for now as far as official apps go. Android and Apple both have Kindle apps, Nook apps, and so on, and Amazon at least is in no hurry to roll one out for Playbook now that Kindle Fire is available. I buy most of my books through Kobo anyway, but if you are dedicated to your Nook or Sony or Amazon this won’t appeal to you. I haven’t done any nosing around, but there are probably a few other ebook apps that are decent for sideloading.
I should also mention that you can get Angry Birds for the Playbook, because you simply cannot have a mobile device without Angry Birds ;)
My one major beef is the lack of a calendar. Google doesn’t load right and I’m not seeing a decent app, paid or free, that does what I want it to. The closest I have come is the paid GroovyNotes, and even that isn’t all that great (certainly not worth $5.)
Overall, I wouldn’t pay more than $200 for the Playbook. For my part, I’ve gotten more done with this device on the night stand than I ever imagined. Email is perfectly sorted. Notes are up to date. I can lie in bed and read my favourite blogs on the same scale as I read a book. Below is the Playbook next to the iPad and the iPhone.
I haven’t bothered to master converting Android apps to Playbook (and apparently it can be done with some patience and effort), but February 17th is the date that Blackberry plans on rolling out a major update, and rumour has it there are some good changes in the works. I have a few productivity apps on my wishlist, but nothing I can’t live without.
It’s good, but if you’re going to spend more than $200 and want a tablet with all the bells and whistles then just get an iPad.