It seems that e-book readers are going to be technology’s next big thing. With the Kindle being named Oprah’s favorite gadget and other e-book reading devices battling for pole position, the e-book reader is populating daily culture. But who wants to pay that much money for a dedicated reading device that is admittedly limited and still has no true standard format?

Insert iPhone. We all know that the iPhone does a great job in converging multiple devices, why not add being an e-book reader to its capabilities? Obviously we won’t have any e-ink technology in the iPhone but the e-book readers in the iPhone, Classics and Stanza, offer ease of use and a great free selection—plus you don’t have to plop down an extra 400 dollars to read a book.

See what we think of Classics and Stanza in our App vs App!

Design

Classics is wonderfully designed. Upon starting the app, a virtual bookcase filled with the covers of popular books gives you your reading options. The interactive bookshelf definitely makes for a virtually pleasing layout—it gives a experience similar to grabbing a book from your shelf, but in this case, tapping will suffice. You can also rearrange the books in any order, though the obvious flaw is when more books become available this design layout may not be the most effective to navigate.

What’s great about Classics is that the look of the pages seems carefully designed and well implemented. The pages look like pages of a book, complete with a clothlike texture and instant readability. Another great touch is the flipping of the pages, swipe from right to left to move pages in the most accurate rendition we’ve seen in an e-book reader.

Stanza makes up for what it lacks in groundbreaking design by offering seemingly limitless customization. If you want the color of the words a certain hue of grey or the background completely black, you have the option to do so. This amount of customization allows you to create layouts that better suit your eyes.

Stanza’s library page is akin to the iPhone’s setting page—effective and efficient but hardly awe inspiring. It gives you a basic list to select from and it’ll narrow your selection from there. Overall, it works but it definitely feels like you have to learn how to use the controls before you read, rather than just get to reading right away.

Usability

Classics notable feature is its ability to realistically flip through pages. Because there is no customization options whatsoever in Classics, Classics needed to nail this feature to warrant any type of consideration. Luckily, they absolutely nailed it. The animation and physics of turning the page are extremely accurate and if you’re sliding the finger to turn but decide not to, it follows your movement and the page falls back in place. You really have to give it a try, it’s the most accurate representation of page turning that I’ve ever seen.

Also, I found that the overall page design of Classics was fairly easy on the eyes. It uses a tan/brown mix of colors to create a more paper-esque texture to the page. It almost looks cloth like. Overall, Classics did a wonderful job in presenting themselves and I enjoyed reading from the application.

But by no means is Classics perfect. It doesn’t have a great selection, offering only a handful of “classic” novels and it offers no customization whatsoever. There is no ability to customize page layout, to change fonts, no ability to add books—you really have to run with what the developers designed for you. You can’t even change the font size, so you’re stuck turning pages at a pretty fast rate. So though Classics looks great, it is definitely limited.

Stanza on the other hand, is completely customizable. You can add books, newspapers, magazines, and thousands of books from different publishers. The sheer number of books is simply staggering, you can always find something to read.

Also, you can customize the page layout to fit your eyes’ preference. The text color, background color, link color, font, font size, alignment, line spacing, margin width, images, and controls—it can really be tweaked to whatever you prefer. Want to read with a black background and white text? By all means! Black Helvetica text on a red background with justified alignment? Sure!

But in the end, I still preferred the overall look of Classics standard page layout over Stanza’s customizable options. No matter what I did, and I tried to emulate Classics, it just wasn’t as easy on the eyes. Also, turning the page is nowhere near as pretty. It only slides out in Stanza.

But the unarguable advantage of Stanza is its ability to add books. That makes it a much more powerful reader and definitely lengthens the life span of the application. You’ll never be able to read everything that the folks at Stanza offers because it really has a library worth of literature! 

Final Thoughts

So I guess what it really boils down to is: do you want an e-book reader that looks good with a limited amount of books or a fully customizable reader with limitless options of reading material?

In conclusion, I think having a greater selection wins out. The fact that Stanza can add a variety of books, newspapers, and magazines to your library makes it the winner in this week’s App vs App. The complete customization of the page layout also deserves kudos because it lets the reader decide what he or she wants to see.

It’s hard to knock Classics though. As a reading application, it deserves stellar marks for nailing the physics of turning the page and offering such a great, easy on the eyes, page design. Even though customization is huge in e-book readers, the stock look of Classics is still by far the best look in comparison with the two.

But Classics falls short by not offering a wider reading selection. It simply can’t seriously compete as an e-book reader when you can only read the same “classic” books over again. I love this application and think the developers did a fantastic job, but the lack of selection makes it hard for me to give my full recommendation. I definitely think it still merits consideration as the most exciting reader app for the iPhone. But as it stands now, Stanza has still got it beat.

Classics Rating

Stanza Rating

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App vs App: Classics vs Stanza eBook Readers for the iPhone

What is NewsGator Online?

NewsGator is a service for personal and professional social networking. They have different applications on many platforms that bring information together. Google has probably coined it best, “RSS is the inbox for the Web”. Our focus in this review is with NewsGator’s free, personal services for RSS on the iPhone.

NewsGator’s web app for the iPhone is called… NewsGator, I know, original. This web app allows for users of the free NewsGator service to view their RSS feeds in an optimized format on the iPhone. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Appearance and Navigation- NewsGator web app

After logging in, you are presented with your feeds, organized by folders (if you organized into folders via newsgator.com). For example, if you follow Apple news, you might want to organize your feeds by site in an “apple” labeled folder. The feeds are then listed by unread stories in that folder. You know how many stories are unread by a number appearing to the right of the feed name. For example, you might have a feed called “The iPhone Blog” and next to it, the number “7″. That number means that there are seven stories that are unread since your last visit.

To view the unread stories in a news feed, simply tap the feed name and the stories will be displayed. Depending on your iPhone’s Internet connection (EDGE, 3G or Wi-Fi) it can take a couple of moments for the stories to appear on-screen.

For each story, you have four choices available to you; first, you can click on the title of the story. This will cause Safari to open the original post in a new page. Second, you can mark a story as “read” by tapping the word “Read”. Once done, the story will be removed from your list. Third, you can tap “Clip”. Clip allows you to save a story for viewing at a later date. Forth is “Email”. Tapping this link will cause the Mail app to launch with information about the story and a link to send to friends. Of course, you don’t have to mark every story read, you can click the “Page Read” link at the bottom and top of the webpage to mark all stories on that page as read.

The portions of information presented in the feed are usually small; just enough to whet your appetite for more information. NewsGator has given you a great option for viewing more information. At the bottom of each story there is a “More” link. This link will expand giving you more text and typically a graphic or picture, if one is associated with the feed. Of course, this will also cause the page to load more slowly as additional text and images are rendered on the iPhone’s screen. Once you have read the feeds, where do you go? Have no fear; NewsGator has a “Feeds” link located at the top left-hand corner of the page. Tapping this link will take you back to other stories you have not read yet.

What is the NetNewsWire native app?

Though the NewsGator web app is nice, why not take it to the next level? NewsGator has a native reader for the iPhone called NetNewsWire. It takes your NewsGator feeds and places them in a very Apple-esque format. Once you launch NetNewsWire, it immediately begins to synchronize your news feeds and your read/unread counts.

There are a few advantages beyond the basics for the NetNewsWire native app on the iPhone. For example, one common annoyance on the iPhone with 3rd party apps is when a native app calls on another app. The native app closes and the “called” app opens. This can be very inconvenient. NetNewsWire for the iPhone is able to work around this issue by allowing its own WebKit-based browser to open and overlay the story. What does this mean for you? If you want to read the story in “Safari”, you don’t have to close the native app! Instead of launching Safari, NetNewsWire creates a window that slides down from the top allowing you to view the post in full HTML. You don’t have any of the Safari-specific features such as bookmarks in this view, but that is OK. If you really need to open the story in Safari, there is a convenient Safari button located on the bottom right of the page. This will close the native app and open the requested webpage in Safari. This feature is also useful because not every publisher chooses to post their full story in their RSS feed. Often, the user has to go to the publisher’s site to view the full article. The slide-down window makes this process much, much easier.

It’s not all roses…

Another issues when a story is highlighted, you can’t tell how many unread articles there are for that feed. The blue reticule is the same color as the unread count; oops.

Conclusion

Ratings (out of 5)

• Look and Feel: 4
• Navigation: 4
• Features: 4
• Reliability: 5
• Overall: 4.25

Pros:

• Awesome sync capability allowing you to keep all of your feeds in check from the desktop to the iPhone a complete solution
• Free!
• “Built-in” browser

Cons:

• Can’t add your own feeds on the iPhone
• Can’t view unread count when item is selected

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

NetNewsWire: Web App vs. Native App

Are you an avid magazine reader? Do you look at your iPhone and think that it’d be the perfect device to read digital magazines? Well, Zinio Mobile Newsstand for the iPhone offers such digital magazines in high-resolution glory. With loads of popular magazines in tow, Zinio Mobile Newstand gives iPhone users a free look at issues that typically cost anywhere from $5 to $10.

How does it perform? Can you actually read anything?

Read on for the rest of the review!

Design/Interface

Overall the design and interface is simple and clear. Touch the magazine you’re interested in reading and you’ll be able to read it in its entirety. There are two different ways to read the magazines and it is similar to its real-life counterpart. You can choose to flip through it page-by-page to see if anything catches your eye in a less-slick form of CoverFlow, or you can click the contents button and select an article that you may have interest in through the magazine’s digital table of contents. Either way works perfectly fine.

Usability

Criticism

Zinio would also be better served if they could create an actual application for 2.0. I found myself trying to flick the screen to move on to the next screen but remembered I was trapped in Safari and had to use the available ‘buttons’. Hopefully, Zinio can add these features and maintain the current cost of the web app, which is, FREE.

Final Thoughts

The high resolution shots take a while to load, to be sure, but the quality of the pages are worthwhile. Every picture is crip and the text is readable. Using both landscape and portrait mode also adds to the versatility of this web app. I would suggest everyone to point their browsers to www.zinio.com/iphone to take a look at this great web app.

PROS:

• Magazines in its entirety
• High Resolution Pages
• Simple, Intuitive Interface
• Variety of Selections

CONS:

• Text isn’t readable in ‘CoverFlow’ mode
• Even Wi-Fi is a little slow
• No notification of ‘What’s New’ or which edition it is
• Trapped by Safari

FINAL RATING: 4.8/5

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Weekly Web App Review: Zinio Mobile Newsstand

It’s Pretty

When you search in Google, specifically Google Mobile for iPhone, you have a neat feature: it gives you suggestions as you type. After that, I don’t think that Google mobile does anything specifically well, other than meaningful searches. This is what sets AOL search apart from its competition, it displays the results well. Its closest competitor, Yahoo One Search renders poorly on the iPhone in my opinion, the fonts are too large among other issues. The AOL search experience feels right.

Information is broken into sections. Let’s see how a simple search for “movies” is rendered after I have set my default location.

Searching for “movies”

After typing in “movies” you are given an immediate area to see search results. It starts to list theatres from closest to me to farther away. The results for movies display the some very cool iPhone-ified icons for calling (a Green icon. You tap it, it calls the number) and maps (it displays MapQuest instead of Google Maps… what?). These are nice touches and really make the search FEEL like it was made for the iPhone.

Once you click on a theater, it takes you to Moviefone, another iPhone optimized site. There is standard movie fanfare here except for a very unexpected piece of functionality. At the bottom of a specific movie, there is an “Invite” button. When tapped, it launches the iPhone’s Mail app and gives you the follow text:

• Subject: Wanna go see XYZ (2008)
• Body: Wanna go see XYZ (2008)
• Link to movie

You can add your own nuances of course, but this is a great way to utilize the Mail app.

Everything Else

The rest of search is broken into sections such as Web, Images, News and Local. You can collapse and expand these sections to meet your needs, again really cool.

Conclusion

The only real disappointment is when I wanted driving directions, it did not take me to the Google Maps application on my iPhone, and instead it took me to AOL’s own tool for maps and directions, MapQuest. I know you don’t want to advertise for the “other guy” but when you go through the trouble of making a specific app for the iPhone, you should exploit all of its features and bite the bullet. I can’t say the experience of using MapQuest was horrible, but without a doubt, the map experience in the iPhone Google Maps app is way better.

I think I will be using AOL Search for iPhone more and more. I like its speed, aesthetics and information. It is all done very well and I look forward to seeing what other surprises AOL has in store!

Ratings (out of 5)

• Look and Feel: 4
• Navigation: 4
• Features: 5
• Reliability: 5

Overall: 4.5

Pros:

• Good interface
• Seamless integration with AOL Services
• Loads quickly
• Search results are broken down by section: business, photos, etc
• Email invite feature for movies; innovative!

Cons:

• It’s AOL. Just kidding
• Having to use MapQuest instead of the iPhone’s Google Maps application

Here is a video tour showing all of AOL’s Search functionality on the iPhone, enjoy.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Weekly Web App Review: AOL Search for iPhone

Reader has the ability to capture text documents in two formats: and ebook or a standard document. The two formats are easily distinguishable by their icons; the book looks like a book with a bookmark and the document looks a piece of paper. The articles of text reside on a virtual bookshelf. Simply click on the document you want and it opens up. Reading your documents are as simply as browsing a web page. But that is where the similarities end.

Getting your text into Reader

There is no “desktop version” of Reader. Simply go to http://dbelement.com/reader/ and create a free account. Once you are logged in, choose the option to “+Add to shelf”. This takes you to a screen to select what type of text document you want. You can choose ebook to text. I have not found any discernable difference between them other an categorizing them on the shelf. Next, add a title and paste your content. This can be any text such as a Word file, ebook or just plain text. Once pasted, click the “+Add item to shelf” button again and your done!

Viewing your text file

Just click the file you want to open it. Opening the file can sometimes take a second, but once opened, the file is formatted just as you pasted it. Tabs, commas all appear. The only issue I found is that apostrophes do not appear to be recognized and displays “%u2019”.

This is where the innovation occurs!

Since there are no real plug-in options for Mobile Safari, how do you navigate within your document? Scroll up and down? Yes. But wait, you can also:

• Exit to go back to your shelf
• Save a bookmark
• Change your font size
• Invert your colors (W/B to B/W)
• Access different parts of your text file in a tap

How is this accomplished? Just tap anywhere within the document, and an onscreen menu appears! Genius! Tap the functionality you want, and it works. Everything is laid out in a simple, direct fashion.

Conclusion

This is really a great application; I can’t talk enough about it. The ease of use as well as the very innovative toolbar really makes the app easy to use. It has really made me thing how similar actions can be implemented into web apps and native apps. The only downsides are a few bugs such as the previously mentioned apostrophe issue.

Ratings (out of 5)

• Look and Feel: 5
• Navigation: 5
• Features: 5
• Reliability: 5

Overall: 5- a perfect score!!!!

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Awesome innovative toolbar
• Looks like a real bookshelf
• Two text options for the shelf display
• Loads quickly

Cons:

• A few rendering bugs that I am sure will be addressed

…Give reader a shot and let us know what you think in the comments – this is a Wait-a-Thon, iTunes-Giveaway post!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Weekly Web App Review: Reader – Wait-a-Thon