Best eBook Readers » Lists

4 Cool Calendar Apps for Kindle

P.Rad — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:22:37 +0000

Kindle apps are not as sophisticated as those available for iPad and Android devices. But they can enhance the functionality of your Kindle. Take calendar apps for instance. They make it easier for you to catch up with your schedule on your Kindle. Here are 4 decent calendar apps you an install on your Kindle to get more out of your device:

7 Dragons Calendar for Kindle: a daily planner for your Kindle. It allows you to create a to-do lists and events on your device.

Calendar Pro: planning to manage your events on your Kindle? This application does the job. The title, location, description, and time of your event can be changed easily. You can create multiple events.

Compulab Calendar: it turns your Kindle into a daily planner. You can add your events and save your important notes on a sticky note.

Day Planner & Calendar: another schedule manager app for your Kindle. Supports recurring events. Multiple views are offered to help you get a better sense for your upcoming events. The task list feature is pretty useful too.

These calendars may not be as sophisticated as iPad calendars. At the same time, they do let you handle basic task and event management on your Kindle. They don’t cost a whole lot which is nice.

3 Cool Literature Apps for iPhone

P.Rad — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:55:54 +0000

There are plenty of silly books around that we all can spend hours reading. You would want to get your hands on classic literature once in a while. Studying literature can be quite gratifying no matter where you get to do it. These 3 iPhone apps can help you get more out of your literature studies on the go:

3D Classic Literature Collection: a 3D book engine that brings a good number of classic works to your phone. It has an elegant interface. The books included are unabridged.

American Literature – Oxford Dictionary: a useful application for those of you studying the American literature. It has over 2000 entries and over 300 biographical entries for contemporary writers.

Word Pile for iPhone: an interesting app to test your knowledge of classic literature with. It covers 55 classic works.

What’s your favorite literature app for iPhone?

6 iPhone Apps To Enhance Your Focus With

P.Rad — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:27:47 +0000

In this day and age, many of us find it difficult to stay focused on our tasks (such as reading) for too long. Some of us have developed short attention spans due to being addicted to the Internet. If you find reading more than a couple of pages of your books each night boring or uneasy, you may need to work on improving your focus. These 6 iPhone apps can help:

Rivet: developed to help you build up your focus. It has a simple interface but can make you more productive if you play with it long enough.

Pomodoro Pro: Pomodoro is the system I personally use to get more things done each day. Taking frequent breaks throughout the day is proven to make you more productive. This app is a timer for Pomodoro system.

Read More: reading is very much like working out. If you don’t do it for a long time, it may take you a bit of time to develop that habit again. Read More provides you with that extra motivation to start reading more.

DotOut: a powerful application that can bring calm to your mind and enhance your focus. Perfect if you are developing ADD or feel overwhelmed.

Brain Trainer: a subscription-based brain trainer that improves your memory, focus, and mood. It contains a good number of sessions you can use to make your brain perform better.

Improve Your Attention: a cool little app based on the Stroop Effect that gauges your ability to concentrate. The more you take this, the better your performance gets over time.

These apps won’t make you a genius. But they help you enhance your focus and improve your attention span.

Have you tried any of these? Please share your experiences below.

7 Search Tools for Amazon Books

P.Rad — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 14:28:42 +0000

Amazon.com is one of my favorite places to buy books and e-books from. There are a ton of books available on Amazon. The company does offer great prices on many titles. You can always search for books using Amazon.com’s interface. Here are 7 other services you can use to explore Amazon books:

Amazon Windowshop Beta: this tool has a sleek interface and lets you go through books and other Amazon products in a more flashy fashion.

ShelfLuv: a powerful service you can use to discover new books and maintain your own virtual bookshelf. It has a beautiful interface.

AddALL: a very simple tool that can search through various websites, including Amazon.com for used books and ebooks.

Amazon Student: a fresh iPhone application by Amazon that saves students money on their textbooks. Students can also sell their books back with this app.

oSkope: a flashy tool that gives you a visual way to explore through books available on Amazon.com. You can search for books in Amazon’s international sites too.

zlert: this is a price alert tool for Amazon books. It tells you when a book is offered for the price that works for you. Availability alerts are offered too.

Cheap River: gives you price breakdowns across multiple online stores, showing you where you can get the best deal.

The above tools make discovering books on Amazon a whole lot easier. They might save you a few bucks too.

Please share your suggestions below.

5 Cool Productivity Apps for Kindle

P.Rad — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 15:59:27 +0000

Amazon’s Kindle Development Kit has not led to revolutionary apps for the device. But developers have come up with a few useful tools for Kindle using the platform. Here are 5 cool Kindle apps you can use to become more productive and get more out of your device:

Calendar for Kindle: a simple daily planner and schedule manager for Kindle. You can use this to create events and tasks.

Notepad: would you like to take notes and edit your existing ones on your Kindle? This app has you covered.

Sticky for Kindle: displays the information important to you on your Kindle in form of sticky notes. It can organize up to 250 notes.

Calculator: this simple tool lets you make everyday, simple calculations on your Kindle. It has calculator history too.

Converter: if you need to convert between units on your Kindle, look no further than this app. It covers 76 units across 11 categories.

What are your favorite Kindle apps so far?

5 Comic Reader Apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android

P.Rad — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:58:37 +0000

There was a time when people used to buy paper comic books. Some people still do. But devices such as iPhone and iPad make great comic e-readers. These 5 apps for iOS and Android let you read comic books and manga on your smartphone or tablet without any issues:

Zeal Comic Reader: turns your iPhone or iPad into a sophisticated comic reader. It can organize your comic books. You can load your comics via WiFi or Dropbox.

Bookman Pro: this is more than just a comic reader. It can handle your PDF documents too. CBR, CBZ, RAR, and ZIP file formats are supported.

CloudReaders for iPhone: there is nothing wrong with paying for high quality apps. But some people prefer picking up apps for free. This free app reads PDF, CBZ, ZIP, CBR and RAR formats. It has a simple interface and does what it promises.

Droid Comic Viewer: a superb image, comic & manga viewer for Android phones. It allows you to read comics from SD cards. It is quite lightweight too.

MangaWhat: supports reading from some of the top Manga websites around. Supports offline browsing. The app does use a lot of data though.

If you are a fan of reading comic books on your computer and want to have the ability to do so on your tablet or smartphone, you should check the above comic readers.

7+ Websites To Track New Book Releases With

P.Rad — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 13:29:48 +0000

I don’t know about you but I am always looking for new quality books to read every week. Finding out about new book releases is much easier these days. There are plenty of tools that track them or help you search for them. These websites can certainly help:

Amazon.com’s Advanced Search: Amazon.com is most people’s favorite place to buy books from. With this tool, you can find exactly what you are looking for easier.

Track New Book: a powerful tool that notifies you when new books that meet your criteria are out. You can track books by author, subject, seed, or keyword.

Author Alerts: we all have our favorite authors. Thanks to this tool, you get notified when your favorite author has a new work out.

Book Buzzed: another simple tool to use to keep up with your favorite authors’ latest works. You need an account to get started though.

Any New Books: this cool service keeps feeding you with interesting books in genres interesting to you on a weekly basis.

Wowbrary: this is a useful tool for those of you who still love going to libraries. It shows you your local library’s most recent acquisitions.

NewBookAlerts: a free tool that sends you emails when your favorite authors release new books. It also helps you keep up with most popular authors.

The above sites make it easy to keep up with new book releases. Most publishers also have new book alert tools on their websites (e.g. Springer). With these tools at your disposal, you will never be out of new books to get your hands on.

Please feel free to add your favorite book notification services below.

7 Non-iPad Tablets That Make Great E-Readers

P.Rad — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:32:54 +0000

Let’s face it. The experience you get from reading e-books on an LCD-based tablet won’t come anywhere close to the one you get on Kindle or NOOK Touch. But tablets have their advantages too. They are far more versatile than e-readers and have color screens. If do not find Kindle or NOOK to be your cup of tea and do not want to buy an iPad (due to Apple imposing restrictions on publishers), these 7 tablets are worth a try:

Samsung Galaxy Tab: one of the most formidable challengers to Apple iPad. It comes very close to it in terms of style. It has a large 10.1 inch screen. It weighs 1.25 pounds and runs Android 3.1 at the time of this writing [video: mobile burn]

ASUS Eee Transformer: another decent Android tablet with an optional keyboard dock you can use to turn it into a mini laptop.

Toshiba Thrive: a superb Android tablet with user replaceable battery. It runs Android 3.1 and has a 5.0 MP rear camera with autofocus and a 2.0MP front-facing webcam. It features full USB and HDMI ports.

HP TouchPad with WebOS: WebOS has one of the most beautiful interfaces around. This tablet is the only one that runs it. Unfortunately, WebOS does not have as many apps as Android or iOS.

Acer Iconia A500: ships with Android 3 coupled with Acer UI. More affordable than most other tablets in this list. Its cameras are very decent [video: mini PC Pro].

Lenovo Ideapad K1: a great tablet for playing games, watching movies, and reading e-books on. It is fairly social media friendly too. Downside? It is a tad bit heavier than other top tablets.

XOOM WiFi: the first iPad challenger is still in demand. Motorola could have probably done a better job pricing this tablet at first. But with the recent price drop, XOOM is all of a sudden a contender again.

What’s your favorite tablet for e-reading?

4 iOS Apps That Train You To Read More

P.Rad — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:00:12 +0000

Many of us do not have enough time to read as much as we like. Some of us are suffering from the “Internet effect,” which is making it hard to read for long periods of time without losing focus. These are not things that can’t be fixed with a bit of training. Here are 4 iOS apps that can train you to read more:

ReadMore: a perfect training tool for those of you who have trouble motivating yourself to finish up all the books you have bought. It breaks down books in smaller, more manageable chunks. It keeps track of your progress all the way to help you read more.

Quick Reader: reading faster is one of the best ways to get more reading done everyday. This app pushes you to make you a faster reader. It gives you access to 2 million e-books. You can always import your own books.

Acceleread: this cool iPad application enables you to test yourself and tackle a variety of exercises to improve your focus and reading skills.

iScroll for iPhone: research has shown that reading and listening to your books can improve your level of comprehension. This tool provides you with books in both formats for that very purpose.

If you find yourself reading less everyday and want to change that trend, the above iPhone and iPad apps should help.

5 Must See E-book Infographics

P.Rad — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:27:18 +0000

Infographics are not only quite popular on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, they also provide you with a crash course on a topic of your choosing. They are great tools to make your point about a topic to someone without having to spend a day doing it. These 5 infographics on the e-book industry are useful for those very purposes:

The Persistent Rise of E-Books: an infographic by The Next Web that demonstrates how far the e-book industry has come in the past few years.

Books vs. E-books: an old but interesting infographic that demonstrates how books stack up against e-books (courtesy of Knowbodies).

History of E-books: a powerful infographic by ebookfriend.ly that shows some of the major milestones reached in this industry.

Price of ebooks vs paper books: a very informative infographic by Printing Choice that gives a crash course on the costs of bringing a book/ebook to the market.

E-book Universe: a bit dated but demonstrates how the market has changed in such a short period of time.

Please add your favorite infographics on e-book industry below.