| If you have a tablet or smartphone running Android or iOS you are used to a constant barrage of notifications. Notifications have been a blunt instrument for apps to try to get our attention. Every time you install something new, you get a pop-up message that asks if you want to allow it to send you notifications. If you say yes, they arrive with the same intensity as emails, draining precious battery life, making your phone more annoying than savvy. e-Readers on the other hand have never had this issue, which gives it a higher level of immersion. I have been using an iPad for a number of years and my attention while reading an eBook is constantly shifting towards the notifications I receive. Simpsons Tapped Out is letting me know there are more aliens to be squashed or Spider-Man Unlimited is informing me that my energy is now full. Haven’t played a game in awhile, a ton of prompts suddenly say “we miss you, please come back”. Obviously you can turn these off, but if you have a ton of apps and games installed, it can take hours to tweak all of the settings. Dedicated e-readers such as the Kindle Voyage or Kobo Aura H2O are a very different beast than your average smartphone or tablet. There are almost zero notifications, aside from low battery life or new content being synced. Some tablets by Amazon and Kobo have tried to tackle the notification system with an improvement called “Quiet Mode” or “Quiet Time.” Its a simple feature found in the setting menu that will automatically disable all push notifications and disable popups. Sadly, these tablets have not been embraced by the global market and remain niche devices. If you find yourself being detracted by a constant barrage of notifications while reading on your mobile device, you might want to look at buying an e-reader instead. They certainly don’t provide the same type of generalist functionality, but if you want to lose yourself in a good book, you don’t want to buy anything else. The Benefits of an e-Reader – Fewer Notifcations is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Saturday, November 8, 2014
The Benefits of an e-Reader – Fewer Notifcations
Recent comScore Report Places Android on Top in U.S.
| According to the latest comScore metrics, Android is in the lead as the dominant smartphone platform in the mobile marketplace. With 52.1% of the market share, Android is a fair step ahead of Apple who is lagging behind at 41.7% (third place went to Microsoft at a pitiful 3.6%, with fourth landing in BlackBerry’s lap at 2.3%). Android didn’t lead every statistic, however… with Apple leading the pack as the top smartphone manufacturer (based on 174 million people with U.S.-owned devices), securing 41.7% of that market share as well. By comparison, Samsung is next in line with only 29.0% –leaving LG to secure third place with 6.9%. While it may seem a little difficult to understand how Android can lead in the platform category while lagging in the hardware division –it’s due to the range of OEM manufacturers. Samsung may be making the most sales, but others like LG, Motorola, and HTC are also delivering a large number of units that contribute to the overall total number of smartphones. The comScore report also identified the most downloaded smartphone apps (for U.S. smartphone mobile media users, aged 18+ on both iOS and Android platforms): placing Facebook on top, followed by YouTube in a distant second place. Boasting themselves as a leading Internet technology company, comScore “measures what people do as they navigate the digital world – and turns that information into insights and actions for our clients to maximize the value of their digital investments.”
Recent comScore Report Places Android on Top in U.S. is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Free Kindle eBook and Audiobook: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
| This month’s Whispersync for Voice freebie is a classic tale that delves into the darker side of humanity, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. After you get the free version of the Kindle ebook, the audiobook copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will […] |
Amazon Fire HDX 8.9 vs Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 10.1
| Amazon and Barnes and Noble both have flagship large screen tablets in the form of the Fire HDX 8.9 2014 edition and the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 10.1. These devices both cost over $300 and provide large screens to read digital books, newspapers, magazines, comics and graphic novels. How well do they compete against each other head to head? Today we compare the full experience to give you a sense of how the hardware and software elements play out. Lately, I have not been going into full details about the specs during these comparison videos. Tablets these days all give you quad-core processors, plenty of RAM and internal storage, on paper they are fairly even. My opinion is that it is all about real world conditions and how content looks. The Fire HDX 8.9 model has a few software functions that make it standout in a crowd. You can listen to a song and quickly ID it, and then buy it from Amazon, or scan a bar code, UPC and just snap a picture of a physical book and instantly get a price comparison. There is also the consumer friendly technical support system that allows you to talk to a real person via Mayday. The best aspect of the HDX, is the Dolby Audio, which really fills a room with full and vibrant sounds, currently the sound quality is the best of ANY tablet in the world right now. The Nook 10.1 has the larger screen, which really makes visual content look really good. It is certainly no slouch in the sound department either, with the stereo speakers. I think the most compelling aspects is the ability to access the classic Nook Store to buy any content you need, but also the inclusion of Google Play greatly enhances customers ability to download other reading apps, such as Kindle, Kobo, Comixology, and thousands of others. In this comparison video we mainly look at how the same content looks side by side, to give you a sense of the resolution and quality. We look at an eBook, magazine, and comic book experience.
Amazon Fire HDX 8.9 vs Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 10.1 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
