Tag Archives: Nook

Using the Kindle for Bible Study

Since posting about OSNOVA’s work on the use interface (UI) for Kindle-formatted bibles, we’ve seen some increasing activity on the site in regards to Bibles, religious apps, and best usages of religious apps on the Kindle, Nook, and other eReader devices. Certanely, the acquisition and use of eReaders and tablets is growing, and we would do well to chart and observe some means of using these devices similar to, and as an enhancement from, how we have used print books and smaller mobile devices for study and reflection. And as This Lamp’s review of the Kindle Touch 3G reveals, there is something to be gained from understanding the benefits and limitations of eInk devices, which are different from tablet computers.

The Biblical Learning Blog posted 25 ways in which the Kindle is useful for bible study. These are grouped, but certainly point to the wealth of content that can be found for Kindle devices. Here’s a snippet:

  • Bible Options: This search leads to various options to the traditional Bible, including a Bible in contemporary language, the Apologetics Study Bible, a complete Jewish Bible, the Jefferson Bible and much more.
  • Bible Study: This link leads to the Bible Study option at the Amazon Kindle Store. You can search for Bible study books by title, customer review or by price.
  • Bible Study Guides: Amazon makes a wide variety of Bible study guides available to many markets, from an equally wide variety of writers.
  • Bible Translations: Use the menu to the left of this search page to discover Biblical translations for a wide variety of Bibles.
    Christian Books: From fiction to theology and from how-to books to music, this search reveals thousands of books available to Kindle readers.

Read the rest of 25 Ways the Kindle is Useful for Bible Study at the Biblical Learning Blog.

Back in October, we talked about some of the effects that the Kindle opens up to those folks who might have previously considered electronic texts, or even those who have, but might have creative pursuits which better translate into that domain. Wisdom is the skillful application of knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 4:7). Let’s continue to collect wisdom in using all electronic texts by identifying both their strengths and weaknesses, and then making a concerted effort to esteem one another as the reading and publishing environment evolves.

View a listing of bibles and other religious apps for the Kindle and other mobile computing devices.

[Guest Post] iBooks Author: It’s Place in an eBook Production Workflow

This is a guest post submitted by Craig Button (@TheProdSon)

Introduction, Quick Summary

Since most of you have no idea who I am, I suppose I should introduce myself. First and foremost I am a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. After that I’m a geek. I’ve owned just about every type of computer ever made and today work on both Mac and PCs depending on what I’m doing. I use both Pages and MS Word, prefer Excel to Numbers, and either PowerPoint or Keynote depending on what I’m doing. I’m a health care provider by profession, an educator by avocation, I’ve been clergy, (church offices on weekdays weren’t what I was expecting) and am now a grad student. I’m always looking for ways to package and present information.

I was excited when Apple announced iBook 2.0 and iBooks Author. I’m in the process of producing a couple of books/ebooks and was looking for something that would make it easier. I was hoping that iBA was going to be it.

After spending a few days playing with it (and I have to be honest and admit it was playing, not a focused systematic study/evaluation of the program) There are some conclusions that I’ve come to regarding iBooks Author which might not match your needs, but hopefully shines some light towards its strengths and weaknesses at this juncture of the application.

Summarizing the Positives and Negatives

There will be projects I’ll use iBA for. However, I won’t be using it for everyday kind of work. Not because, I don’t like it, or it’s a bad program, or even because of the EULA that says you can only sell product from iBA thought Apple. I’m accustomed to a bit more control and flexibility when creating publications, and iBA doesn’t quite meet those spot on – though its not far off.

Positives about iBA: It works, it looks good, it’s easy and it produces what it says it’s going to.

Negatives about iBA: it produces HUGE files. A test file went from 800K .txt file to 27MB (~1000K = 1MB) with a couple of pictures added. The second, and in my case the biggest thing against iBA, is it only produces a product that can be viewed on iOS devices. That means not on the Kindle, not on a Nook, not on an Android phone, not on anything unless it has been made by Apple. I’m a Mac fan boy. But, I’m about communication. Therefore, limiting my target audience isn’t good for me. My first product is to be a textbook on Critical Care for Emergency Room nurses. The second book will be first aid and health for photographers. Both topics I’m pretty passionate about (hence my issues with file sizes and limited devices).

It’s About Workflow

It’s about workflow. The term workflow is one that you hear in the digital photography world. It is the term that defines the flow of data from the camera to the final print. I think the term works well for the ePub/ebook industry as well.

My Workflow: I use a program called Scrivener. This is a Mac application, (Windows and Linux also available) that I use to produce the text of my work. It’s a combination text editor and research organizer. This is probably were 80+% of my work is done. I do all my writing within Scrivener. It also produces ePub files which can be read by nearly all computing platforms. It does have some drawbacks, with one of them being that its not easy to place tables and graphics into the output. From there, I use Adobe InDesign for layout that needs formatting and graphics. I don’t own this program; I rent it as needed since I only use it maybe 1-2 months out of the year. Using InDesign I produce a ePub, witch is a zip file that includes all the information needed for the ebook reader to read your file. It only takes a little modification for it to work on any of the readers.

How could iBA fit into this workflow? Well in my next publication, it might work for me. These books I’m publishing on health care and first aid directed at travel photographers whom are likely to have iOS devices. But, in using iBooks with plans on selling it, I’m sure the iPad market will be a bit too limiting. I will however give it a try. iBA is very easy, and I’m hoping it will allow me to easily produce the product I want. However, for anything that is text-based, or contains just a few graphics, the files produced by iBA are way to big and to limiting.

The workflow I have fits my use case, and allows me the broadest target audience. While I’m a geek, and still have a copy of the original PageMaker running on a Mac Classic, I’d like to have more control than what iBA offers. On the other hand, for someone who has never produced an ebook, iBA might be the perfect tool.

Conclusions

After writing the first few paragraphs, and sleeping on it, I came up with a few other thoughts. The first is that I’ve been through this kind of transition before. I remember when PageMaker first came out and people had lots of different fonts to use. I remember when Photoshop first came out and it was affordable to anyone to buy. People produced some horrendous publications and photos. And you’ve all probably sat through some pretty long, boring PowerPoint presentations. Just because the tools are there, doesn’t mean that everyone should use them.

I’m a Tim Taylor, not a Bob Villa, when it comes to using those hammers and screwdrivers. Like any task which needs to be done, it deserves to be done right. Use the right tool, have the right people use the tool, and spread the word.

For more information and to download (free), see the iBooks Author page on the Apple website. Note: content created with iBooks Author can only be read on devices with iBooks2 on the iOS device.

Craig is @TheProdSon on Twitter.

OSNOVA and Designing Effective In-Bible Interfaces

Of the few complaints that you tend to hear from those using Kindles/Nooks/Kobos and similar eInk-based reading devices, the primary ones have to do with the speed of navigating while inside of a book. Getting around to different materials isn’t so much the problem for some. Its when they want to get around inside of the materials that there’s a challenge, and sometimes a disappointment.

Over at This Lamp, a commentary on the user interface (UI) refinements made with OSNOVA have been published. This gets me excited because of my personal history with mobile Bible interfaces (Palm Bible+ and Katana specifically) and the amount of work that needs to go into making just getting around as efficient and productive as possible. Here’s a snippet of This Lamp’s observations:

…So, if a Kindle user wants to go directly to a verse, in many non-OSNOVA Kindle Bibles, he or she would have to go to the menu on the Kindle, then table of contents, then scroll through the pages until the book of the Bible sought after appears. Some ebook Bibles have chapter numbers listed, but I’ve seen other Bibles in which the Contents merely takes one to the first chapter in the selected book. With OSNOVA’s DVJ, a specific verse can be accessed directly by typing in an abbreviated form that works with the Kindle. So, if I want to go to Romans 1:17, I’d type ro 1 17 and the Kindle immediately jumps to that location in the Bible…

Read the rest of This Lamp’s experiences with OSNOVA. Also, check out the OSNOVA website for optimized documents for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and other eInk devices. There are also several tutorial videos on this interface at the OSNOVA blog.

The Efficient Interface Is the One That’s Transforms Lives

One of the best selling features for a Bible/reading application is the efficiency of the user interface. In talking with friends about my iPad during Thanksgiving meals, one of the comments against the iPad was that people couldn’t see how a device like a tablet would be conductive to annotation behaviors such as writing on margins, highlighting, proofreading, and cut-pasting-mashing up more than just lines of text. In that conversation, I demonstrated the abilities of Good Reader (an iPad document reader with many of those features). Upon using it for themselves, the viability of eReaders and tablets became more relevant.

Hence the challenge for user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) folks:design into content pleasurable experiences which take advantage of the technology, not simply repeat the behaviors of less capable media.

Late to eReading or Just Looking at the Covers Still

Some months ago, I made a post about why it wasn’t such a good idea to invest in ebooks. The thinking was – and still is – that investing in ebooks with unresolved questions such as being able to read books across devices, the long-term viability of certain ebooks, and even the various containers that encourage or prohibit ebook reading makes for a tumutilous time if you are wondering if its a good time to go ebook or not.

And the truth is, I am not sure if it is a good time yet. Yet, today, I took the plunge by purchasing my first Kindle book on my iPad. And for the type of reading that this is, I think I can see where ebooks do have a profitable, and actually advanteageous niche.

The book that I purchased is titled Abusing Scripture: the Consequences of Misreading the Bible and is basically an academic, theological, and sociological look at different abuses to handling Scripture that have occured within evangeltical (and to some extent, all) Christian circles. This is a book ripe with footnotes and endnotes and is the kind of read that not only takes time, but is one where I’ve on several times texted friends encouraging them to either purchase the book or to share a quote.

With a print book, this is a simple matter. You see something you like and either type it verbatium or take a picture of a piece of the passage and then share it via MMS or email. There’s nothing illegal about doing this (it falls within fair use for snippets, not entire books). To my friends, they probably have a bit too much information coming their way, and probably would like a better way to triage it.

I had gotten about 90 pages through the paperback when I realized that I didn’t want to pick up or carry the paperback again. It wasn’t that it wasn’t portable enough, nor that it wasn’t intimate enough. I just knew that in the midst of reading that I’d want to do more than highlight or bookmark. I wanted to dig a bit deeper, and here’s where simple paper failed me. For a person that has grown up in increasingly informational times, there are those reads that are just great (immersive) reads, and those reads like this one where it adds considerable value to the reading experience to be able to cross-reference and dig a bit deeper.

So, I pulled out my iPad, downloaded the Kindle app, and purchased Abusing Scripture in less than 5min. It took me a while to find where I left off, as the page numbers for the ebook didn’t equate to the paperback, but once I did, I was just as comfortable reading on the iPad as I had been the paper. A person watching me read (the iPad was on a table in front of me) even asked how I liked the Kindle. Though letting her know that it was just the kindle app for the iPad, it was still readily apparent that I was reading differently and at the same time little changed.

It is a bit of a two-edged sword to go this route. I’ve spent weeks looking at the various ebook formats and ebook stores. I’m even considering selling the iPad for the latest Kindle (seriously). Because of this, I made some choice value judgements: what ebook companies will be around for the forseeable future; what kind of content will I stick to purchasing in print versus digital; what are potential hurdles; and a number of other questions. I really wanted to make sure before I went with any ebook solution that I was choosing right.

But, the choice became easier as I looked at the types of books that I read and those which I am likely to want to recall for reference, versus pass on as library material. For one, books like Abusing Scripture are great books to co-read with another person. It doesn’t make for a good gift-book because of the type of content and the conversations around it. That being said, after reading it, I’d want to reference it for other readings or writings.

Another aspect to ebooks that works in their favor are in those perodicals that I’d like to read. I’m a huge fan still of magazines and much of my time in bookstores is spent in the magazine section looking at covers, trends, and just glazing content (and offline web browsing experience if you will). I’d like to have a similar experience on the iPad (Kindle, iBooks, or any other reader), but be able to choose those more immersive reading apps like Wired or Popular Science if the content dictates. Ebooks are perfect for such a format.

Where ebooks fall down for me is in those more story-like readings. For example, I have the book Boundaries. I really dig that book, but its one of many that the stories presented always adds the kind of layers to conversations where pulling out the book just makes more sense. Those kinds of books are also the kind where you don’t feel so bad letting someone borrow them. The Nook has a great solution here electronically, would be nice to see other books jump at such a method.

Bibles (and their notes) are different. While I do have a Bible app on my iPad, I’m not yet sure of the right Bible format for larger screened mobile devices. On one hand, having a reading experience that’s similar to a paper bible works, but its an ebook, I’d really like to see something more revlutionary take place because the content is so interconnected. Then also there’s the notes, highlighting, bookmarking aspect of reading the Bible. I’m still not yet pleased with solutions there – but some interesting stuff is happening in this space that’s worth waiting for.

All of this being said, yes, there’s now a book on my iPad. And for the kind of book that it is, having it in an electronic manner makes sense. At some point, perhaps in the near future, perhaps in 5 years or so, this won’t be a decision that needs to be made. It may very well be that the point of paper books will be for those very quality, treasured works to where there is a point in retaining them in that manner. For everything else, having access to it, no matter the device you are reading from, makes more sense. There will need to be some considerable innovations on the side of licensing and formatting, but it will come.

Until then, make careful decisions on what goes ebook and what doesn’t. And then read for longevity where possible. If it is something that will become a box of books that will eventually be recycled (not donated), then ebook just might be the better call.