Upstaged by Grover

When my children were little, one of their favorite books was "Oscar's Book."  This is my son's well-worn copy...a Little Golden Book.   I recently grabbed it to read to our granddaughter during a Skype visit and now it's often requested when we talk via the computer.

One of the things that makes it such a great book to read to children is that the dialogue is SO dramatic, ironic, and just plain funny.  There is action, there is interaction with the reader, and plenty of opportunities for the adult reader to really put some "oomph" into the reading of it.

Because our little Sweet Pea has enjoyed that book so much, I wasted no time in grabbing these little child-sized books off the shelf at our local Barnes and Noble to put in her Christmas stocking.  I'm really looking forward to reading them to her, when I can pry them away from her.

This morning I was reading a computing magazine on my iPad and noticed a glowing review for a children's application.  It was an interactive version of "The Monster at the End of this Book."  How could I resist?  The price was right ($3.99 here in the States) so I purchased it and quickly downloaded it onto the iPad. Well then I had to give it a try, right?

What fun!  You turn the pages by clicking on an area in the bottom right-hand corner.  In case you or your little one forget, Grover will remind you.  In the meantime, Grover is animated and walks around on the pages, emoting in all his theatrical glory as he tries to get the reader NOT to get to the end of the book.  Ha!  What child could resist turning the page?

What ADULT could resist turning the page as well?  The words are highlighted as Grover speaks them in some of the "bubbles" on the pages.  For the adventurous who want to go off the beaten path, if you will, you can do other things like poke Grover and he'll deviate from the written word and respond in ways appropriate to where you are in the story.

If you are familiar at all with the story, you know that Grover tries a lot of things to keep you from turning the pages.  The reader/child will soon discover that they can cause delightful things to happen if they do things like poke the ropes or touch the brick wall he builds.  What fun!

I have to say, though, that I found myself a little jealous of Grover.  As an actress, I've always loved really "getting into" a story when I'm reading it to young children.  I love doing the voices, making the sounds, and adding the side comments before turning the pages.  Now Grover was doing it all instead of me.  I was upstaged by a furry blue puppet.  Sheesh!  But you can't keep a good thespian down and I quickly decided that there was plenty I could do in a supporting role as my Sweet Pea and I work with this application.

There is a second book available in this series called "Another Monster at the End of This Book" and I just noticed that it is available for an introductory price of $0.99 up on iTunes right now.  What a deal!  Can you guess what I just purchased?  I think there is only one downside to these two applications.  Once your little ones have had a chance to interact with them, you might never again be able to walk past them with your iPad in hand without them trailing along behind you wanting to see Grover "again."

Making the Connection

Part of the fun of having a new tech toy if trying out all the things you can do with it. Today was the day, I decided, to try out my Apple Wireless Keyboard with my iPad. In addition, I would be using Blogsy to do this blogpost so I'd be working with two new things at once. Wow, what a multi-tasker I am.

The first thing I did was go online to do a little research to see what all was involved in synching my keyboard with the iPad. There were actually several helpful little videos posted on YouTube that described the process in simple terms. However, they both said you first needed to disconnect your keyboard attached to your Mac. Well, I don't have a Mac and the Commander assured me that my keyboard wasn't Bluetooth-enabled so it seemed like I could skip that step. Yay!

Here is what I did to make the connection:

1. Go into "Settings" on your iPad. Pick "General" and then and make sure that the Bluetooth option is slid to the "On" position.
2. Turn on the wireless keyboard. The "on" button is at the upper right-hand end of the keyboard.
3. You will see a message on your iPad that the iPad is trying to connect to the keyboard, if this is the first time you have synched them together. It will ask you to type a short phrase or number combo on your wireless keyboard and then to hit the "Enter" or "Return" key.
4. Once I did that, the keyboard was discovered and the connection was made. Easy as pie! (Or at least, easy as eating pie.)

I brought up the "Notes" app and started typing to make sure that everything was working properly. Everything was good.

The size of the keyboard is actually quite small. That's perfect for those of us who love the freedom to be able to pop our iPads into a backpack or big purse and head out. I use a Tom Bihn Ristretto bag and I can easily put my iPad AND this little keyboard into the bag, along with other necessities, like my billfold and iPhone.

I placed one of our iPhones next to the keyboard so you could get a sense of how big it is. The actual measurements are approximately 11" long by 5" wide and the keyboard rises up a little over a half inch at the back to give it a nice angle for typing.

I have normal sized hands for a woman but long fingers (okay, they ARE a little arthritic and twisty from all those years of knitting and typing). I found it to be quite easy to type on this wireless keyboard. The keys are tile-shaped and have a nice, springy action to them. There are plenty of extra symbols along the top which might be more familiar to a Mac user. I'm not entirely sure what all they are used for. I was quite happy just using the normal alpha-numeric keys and the arrow keys in the bottom right corner. There are also "function, control, option, and command" keys at the bottom left. Frankly, typing on this is a piece of cake compared to typing on my netbook.

So that's my review of the Apple Wireless Keyboard. As an extra bonus, this is also another chance for me to use Blogsy, the blogging app on my iPad. I am really enjoying it and the ease with which I can insert pictures from my Flickr account. If you like to blog and would like the freedom to do it on your iPad, this is definitely a useful app to have as a blogging tool in your arsenal of apps.

Reading Magazines in Electronic Format

My iPad Zinio Library

I'm someone who enjoys reading magazines -- lots of magazines.  I usually have quite a pile of them at any one given time just waiting to be read.  When we go on vacations by car when I'm not driving, I always have a bag filled with magazines and I read them and toss them as we make our way cross-country.  Since I'm so used to reading a hard copy of a magazine, I was a little skeptical at the thought of reading a magazine on one of my electronic devices. The thought of reducing my paper clutter really appealed to me though.

Magazine Library on the Nook Color

 I started out by subscribing to a few of the entertainment tabloids on my Nook Color.  By golly, the experience was so enjoyable that I didn't hesitate at all to take the plunge once my iPad arrived. (Oh, by the way, I do NOT subscribe to "Elle" or to "Men's Fitness."  Those were "freebie" issues from Zinio.)  So how do the iPad and the Nook compare when it comes to reading magazines?  Here's my experience.

1.  Screen Orientation:  Let's look at the iPad first.  Since the device is bigger, the most obvious difference is going to be that you have a larger area in which to view your pages.  You can also turn the iPad so that you have a horizontal orientation that then shows you two pages at a time, similar to holding a magazine open.

Magazine cover on an iPad

Now let's look at the Nook.  The screen is smaller (6 1/4" x 3 3/4") so the viewing area will show a smaller image.  Duh!  You are also not going to have the capability of holding it horizontal and seeing the two pages at once.

Magazine Cover on a Nook

2.  Subscriptions:  I imagine there is more than one app to subscribe to magazines for your iPad but the one that is very popular and the one that I use is Zinio.  I noticed that when I found magazine titles that I wanted to purchase, I was given a choice.  I could either purchase a single issue OR I could subscribe to a year's subscription.  With the Nook, you search for the magazine titles at the Barnes and Noble store online and when you find one you want, you are given the option of purchasing a single issue OR subscribing, paying by the month.  Since you will have a credit card on file with B & N, you just click on "Buy Now" and it seamlessly goes through (provided your card is good, of course) and then the issues start arriving on your Nook.  The big advantage to the Nook in this regard is that you don't have that big chunk payment for the yearly subscription cost.  Barnes and Noble  charges your credit card monthly for the much smaller amount if you have picked the subscribe option.

Article on an iPad

3.  Article View:  If you have really good eyes, you can turn your iPad horizontally and read two pages before swiping.  My eyes aren't that good.  Most folks will be reading one page at a time.  Looking at the full page on the iPad, you can use your fingers to zoom in or zoom out on a particular part of the page.

Just remember that if you have zoomed in on part of the page, then you'll  have to move the page around with your fingers to see all of the article or the rest of the page or just compress the page back to its normal size.

The other option is to click on "Text" at the bottom of the page and it takes you to a text only version of the article in a special format optimized for e-readers.  You can then scroll up or down to read the article. 

iPad

When you are finished reading the article, click on "Page" at the bottom of your screen and it takes you back to the entire magazine page.

Page View on the Nook Color

Nook also gives you the option of looking at the entire page or going to a particular article on the page.  If you click on "Article View" at the top, you will see a drop-down menu listing the articles you can access from that page.

Touch the article that you want to see and it pops up in the special text format optimized for your Nook reader.  When you are finished reading, click on the "x" in the upper right corner and it takes you back to the page you were on.  As with the iPad, you can zoom and/or move around the page by using your fingers.

Single article view in Nook Color

4.  Hot Links - One of the great things about magazine reading on the iPad is that you can seamlessly click on hot links provided in the articles and go right off to see what is being referred to.

Hot Link in Magazine on iPad

 It might just be the magazine I was reading on the Nook Color but I didn't find any hot links in that magazine.  Even if other magazines DO provide hot links that you can touch and go when reading on the Nook, I have to think it wouldn't be as easy as it is to surf around the Internet on an iPad.  I use my Nook Color to read, play games, read email, and shop at the B & N store, not surf the Web.

All in all, I think both the iPad and the Nook Color make reading magazines an enjoyable experience.  I give a slight advantage to the iPad simply because it is a larger reading surface and because I find it easier to get around the Web on it, if I want to chase down hot links within an article.  I give the Nook Color the advantage when it comes to paying for the subscriptions.  Somehow, paying $2.99 a month (for example) just seems much easier than paying $24.99 in one payment.  I think Zinio would hook more readers (and get them to ultimately spend more) if it followed this "monthly" charge system.

One last mention should be that Amazon's Kindle does allow you to subscribe to magazines.  I have a Kindle, too but I just can't imagine how reading a magazine in black and white AND without the touch technology could compare with reading magazines in color on either the iPad or the Nook Color.  In this case, the advantage definitely goes to the later two devices.