OK, I’m migrating

Point your bookmarks, assuming you have them, to this link: http://jschooltiger.com

Reading on the iPhone (Stanza vs. Kindle)

I’ve been meaning to write something about long-form reading on the iPhone for a while now, and the recent release of Amazon’s Kindle app prompted me to do so. I’ve been using Stanza as an e-reader on the iPhone for a while now, and it’s got some good and bad features compared to the Kindle. So I thought I’d do a side-by-side comparison.

Here’s a quick breakdown. Longer, if not deeper, thoughts below.

INSTALLATION: Tie – both are free, quick App Store downloads
PAGE TURNING: Stanza wins for navigation (tap rather than swipe)
READABILITY: Stanza wins, with a vastly more customizable interface
BOOK CATALOGS: Tie – Stanza has many more free books (through Project Gutenberg); Kindle has an edge on new books
BOOK PRICES: Kindle wins. Most books are $9.99, while new releases for Stanza can range up to full hardback price.
EASE OF IMPORTING BOOKS: Stanza wins – you download books directly through its interface. Kindle books have to be bought on Amazon.com, then loaded onto your iPhone.

Stanza
Stanza is made by Lexcycle and is mostly meant to be an iPhone reader. There is a Stanza desktop installation, which allows you to read books on your PC or Mac and also to export them for the Kindle, but the iPhone app works fine even without the desktop install. On the phone, Stanza interfaces directly with several online catalogs, including free libraries from Random House, Harlequin and Feedbooks, and perhaps most importantly with Project Gutenberg, which offers something like 27,000 free e-books out of its library. Most of those are classics, as you’d expect, and it can sometimes be tough to tell which version/edition you’d prefer. On the other hand, they’re all free, so you might as well download them — you can always delete them later. To download a book, just select it from the library and hit “Download;” a progress bar shows you how fast it’s going, and it will hit your phone in a few seconds.

Buying books is a little more complicated, because you’re interacting with more than one store. On Fictionwise, for example, you can buy books through the iPhone catalog, but you have to browse out to the Fictionwise catalong, then re-enter your credit card info to unlock the book once it’s downloaded/bought.

You can also import e-books from other sources into Stanza. I did that with books from one of my favorite sci-fi authors, David Weber, who offers many of his older books in several digital forms. I got a digital copy of about 20 of his works, imported them into the Stanza desktop app and then synced it with my iPhone. The sync process is supposed to be simple if you’re on the same wireless network, but I had to create a small private network to do it (I was experimenting with it at work, so the university firewall probably played a role). It took a bit of trial and error to see what version of the books worked best, but I finally figured out that the .lib files saved chapter markers and art.

Reading books on the Stanza is a surprisingly nice process. The app divides the iPod screen into three sections (vertically oriented). Tap on the left to “page turn” back, tap right to “page turn” forward or tap on the center to get the tools & settings menu. You can reverse that in the “settings” menu (I suppose that’s useful for right-to-left readers). If you switch the phone’s orientation, the text switches too, so you get really wide columns. Or you can lock that down so that it won’t arbitrarily change.

The setting menu is completely granular — you get a good choice of typefaces, colors and backgrounds, or you can reverse white type out of a colored background. I learned that stark white isn’t the best for reading, because I do a lot of reading in bed at night and it burns my eyes after a while. You can choose left or right ragged or justified type. And the font size, letterspacing and line spacing are infinitely adjustable with sliders. You can even choose “slide” or “page curl” animations for page turning.

Pages load instantly but you generally have to wait for a second or two to load a new chapter, depending on the size (see below). My assumption is that it keeps the chapters in RAM for ease of page-turning.

The app remembers your five last read books, and will even let you edit the cover art and title of the books. That came in handy in organizing the 15 David Weber books I had downloaded — I was able to alter the name of each one to add the number it was in the series.

The drawback, at least for the books I read, was that the app didn’t seem to handle long books particularly well. The David Weber series in particular have a lot of chapters, and Stanza seemed to count to 39 and then barf — I wouldn’t get chapter markers after that. So instead of a nice 30-”page” chapter, I wound up reading 700 or 800 “pages” at a time, which took considerably longer to load. And nonstandard characters seemed to throw the book — for example, text inside of carats (< or >) would invariably result in the book thinking that the text inside of it was supposed to be tagged. Of course, the tag never closed. The result was that I read a lot of books mostly in italics, which wasn’t much fun. I’m not complaining, because I got those books for free, but it would bug me if that happened with something I purchased.

For a lot more on Stanza, you can check out the Stanza FAQ right here.

Kindle:
The Kindle app handles downloading and reading a little differently. It’s “simpler” to use in a sense, but the lack of control was frustrating, too. Granted, it’s a port to make editions intended for a proprietary e-reader work on the iPhone. But it still leaves some features to be desired.

Getting books on the Kindle is surprisingly difficult. The first thing I did when I installed the app was to go to “Get books,” thinking I could at least download some chapter previews. Nope — you’re greeted with a cheerful screen asking you to go to the Amazon Kindle store on your PC, or alternatively, to use Safari on your iPhone to browse to the Kindle store. Sitting in front of my Mac, I was able to pretty quickly “buy” several free previews. From there, it was as simple as refreshing the Kindle app on the iPhone to start reading.

The reading experience on the Kindle is less customizable than the Stanza, which might be better for some users. You sweep your finger rather than tapping to turn the page, which seems more intuitive but becomes really tiring after a while. The text is always justified, and is only available in five sizes. Like the Stanza, the Kindle app remembers where you stopped (even if you’re switching from iPhone Kindle to real Kindle.) And like the Stanza, you can bookmark pages and return to them later.

I really prefer the Stanza because of how it handles reading (repeated taps is much better than repeated swipes) but I think the Kindle app might wind up killing it. Really, what it boils down to is price and product availability. Browsing for a new book to take on a quick trip this weekend, I came across “Agincourt” by Bernard Cornwell. It’s new, out in paperback for a suggested retail price of $27.99, and available from Amazon in hardback for $18.47. On the Kindle store, it’s $9.99 — a little pricey for digital, but maybe okay for a new release. But on both the stores Stanza supports, it clocked in at the price of the new hardback — $27.99 from Fictionwise and $23.60 from Books on Board.

I might be willing to pay a premium for a new e-edition, but full price is completely unreasonable for a digital edition, which (duh) doesn’t have printing, distribution or shipping costs. I can walk into Barnes & Noble and use my Reader Rewards card and save more money, plus have the actual book.

Thoughts on cell phone journalism

Clyde Bentley has invited me to his Solving Practical Problems class today. The goal of the class, as the name would suggest, is to tackle a current problem in journalism and solve it through research. This semester’s class is looking at the role of cell phones in journalism. I’m to participate in a focus group/discussion, so the students can see how it works.

Given Clyde’s record as a new media mind, I’m assuming the goal is to be a bit more than just “I use them to get calls from sources.” Although Clyde assures me that no preparation is necessary, just speculation, I’d like to be prepared for what might hit me.

Obviously, phones are a two-way method of communication, so they can both be used to push news to readers and get news from them. Smart phones and Twitter can help with coverage, as we saw in Mumbai and the Hudson plane crash. And The Guardian is among British newspapers that uses cell phone photos in print, as well as on its site.

But most of the population is still using some form of a phone that mostly just texts and makes calls. So the question is, to reach a mass audience, how can we creatively use that technology for news?

Changes coming

I’ve bought http://www.jschooltiger.com and am in the process of moving this blog to there. Stay tuned. Hopefully I won’t destroy it.

Great piece from David Simon

David Simon, who was one of the creators of “The Wire,” has a fantastic piece in the Sunday Washington Post. It’s a great reminder, if we needed another one, of the value that professional watchdog journalism brings to civic life. Here’s a little excerpt:

On Feb. 17, when a 29-year-old officer responded to a domestic dispute in East Baltimore, ended up fighting for her gun and ultimately shot an unarmed 61-year-old man named Joseph Alfonso Forrest, the Sun reported the incident, during which Forrest died, as a brief item. It did not name the officer, Traci McKissick, or a police sergeant who later arrived at the scene to aid her and who also shot the man.

It didn’t identify the pair the next day, either, because the Sun ran no full story on the shooting, as if officers battling for their weapons and unarmed 61-year-old citizens dying by police gunfire are no longer the grist of city journalism. At which point, one old police reporter lost his mind and began making calls.

If you haven’t seen “The Wire,” it’s worth watching. Netflix the first season. Or if you’re willing to figure out who people are in midstream, watch the fifth season, which focuses on The Sun.

Monday morning link dump

I spent the weekend at the True/False Film Festival here in Columbia. Although my wife and I saw fewer movies than in years past (“only” nine this time around), I still have the strange feeling that I’ve been on vacation for a month and am just now coming back into real life. That’s partly due to the nature of the festival — we saw set in the Congo, Romania, Slovenia, the Amazon, Afghanistan, South Africa, Mongolia and Burma in very quick succession. But the result is that I’m having a hard time sorting out my thoughts this morning. (An incipient cold isn’t helping either.)

Jeremy Littau was also at the festival, and wrote a great post about “Burma VJ.” It’s a film that anyone who cares about journalism should try to see — it follows the work of independent video journalists who smuggle footage out of the country at great personal risk. At a time when journalism is facing substantial change and challenges here in the U.S., it’s a reminder of why news matters. As my wife said, it’s amazing that three of the VJs are facing life in prison for filming demonstrations — we take freedom of speech very much for granted.

I’m also helping out with Jen Reeves’ Twitter presentation today at RJI. You can get a quick preview of it here. I’ve written about Twitter before — I don’t think it’s a magic bullet for journalism, but I think there are some really interesting things journos do with it. If you’re around the J-school today, come by Smith Forum at noon.

And Steve Yelvington has an interesting post about what he’s calling the “Fidler pad.” Having worked with Roger Fidler on the eMprint project, I have some experience in screen facsimile devices and editions. I think that e-readers will eventually catch on — although I’ve enjoyed reading books on my iPod using Stanza. The key for e-readers to work, IMO, is long battery life; easy access to books; and an emphasis on readability/customization. The iPod has good readability settings but not the battery life I’d like for a long trip.

Four SF books for social media followers

Link here. Good stuff.

Yelvington with some good ideas

I’ve decided I’m not going to be depressed over the Rocky — after all, True/False is in town and that should provide plenty to distract me.

Steve Yelvington has a really great blog post today that echoes a lot of what I’ve tried to tell people: The newspaper is not competing against other newspapers, or even against TV, radio and magazines. It’s competing against all the entertainment options available all the time everywhere in the world.

I don’t want to steal too much of Steve’s post, but the point is that we don’t often look at our news sites through the eyes of the consumer. The magazine industry, IMO, is better at doing this. That’s at least partly because magazines have known for a long time that they are competing against a very broad market, and that their value exists inside a very specific niche.

Newspapers, on the other hand, have been run generally by news editors — who are some of the best people in the world, but who think of content in terms of exclusivity and value compared to other similar content. The upshot of this is that they tend to have a view of content that says 1) exclusive is better; and 2) if it’s not ours it’s not worthwhile.

There’s certainly value in exclusivity (see: WSJ). But there’s also a lot of value in the “portal” strategy, where your homepage becomes a place to go for every possible bit of something you might want. The Missourian has started to get better about this — we’re understanding the value of linking to KOMU for school closings, for example. But we aren’t perfect at it yet.

Oh, and for the hardcore news junkies: I realize that you don’t mean “news” to be “entertainment” and I’m not suggesting that the Missourian become Maxim. But entertainment value is exactly why people spend time with newspapers. There’s an old truism that says we spend time on things for only two reasons: to solve a problem or to give us pleasure. Does your newspaper do either?

(Speaking of the Rocky, it went out in style by linking to some of its best pieces. Like this.)

The Rocky Mountain News

I suppose I should have something interesting to say about this, but I’m empty. The paper is closing two months shy of its 150th birthday. The possible good news is that they’re selling their archives and Web site, so maybe someone can soldier on with just the costs associated with the site.

This part from their closing story depresses me more than anything else:

“In the past decade, the Rocky has won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than all but a handful of American papers. Its sports section was named one of the 10 best in the nation this week. Its business section was cited by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers as one of the best in the country last year. And its photo staff is regularly listed among the best in the nation when the top 10 photo newspapers are judged.”

I realize there’s only a tenuous link between quality and sustainability, but dammit, that’s how business is supposed to work — your superior product should outsell everyone else’s. And their product was so much more entertaining than the Post’s.

Maybe I’ll come back to this later. But I can’t now.

Good stuff here

Long story from the New York Observer with the title “App it out, paper boy.” Once I’ve had time to digest a little I may try to synthesize my thoughts on the topic.

My favorite sentence so far: “If postmodernism came to literature in the ’80s, it’s got to come to journalism now.”