eReader Pro for the Blackberry draws good review from PDA-27 despite startup glitches
"eReader on BlackBerry is as impressive as many of us wished it would be, and once the teething problems are sorted, we should have a new king of the BlackBerry eBook hill." – PDA-27.com via Internet News and the The Digitalist.
Details: The PDA-27 review notes that you can "download your bookshelf to your device without the need of a desktop. You cannot buy books direct through the application, but the facility is available to do so via the mobile site (linked in the menus) and then you can head back to the application and download your purchase. That is the theory anyway."
The reviewer did have problems logging on to his account and believes that the real fault was with the server.
The models the software works on: BlackBerry Curve, Storm, Pearl, Bold, 7130, 8110, 8120, 8130, 8220, 8300, 8310, 8320, 8330, 8350i, 8703e, 8707, 8800, 8820, 8830, 8900, 9000, 9500, and 9530.
A few words on eReader, Mobi and the ePub format
While a version of the Mobipocket reader works on BlackBerry machines as shown by the screenshot at right, eReader might be a better bet. There are fears that Amazon may drop or downplay Mobi to focus on the Kindle format. So far no Mobi reader has appeared for the iPhone and iPhone Touch, although a Kindle one has recently come out. Another example of the perils of eBabel—all those clashing e-formats—for readers?
Some good news about eReader is that it will be switching to the ePub standard as a core format. That means that the same nonDRMed ePub books you can read on your Sony PRS-505 or PRS-700 should also work on your eReader-capable machine.
Speaking of ePub and ways to read it: Project Gutenberg, to its credit, is now experimenting with the new industry-standard format, as noted by Bill Trippe. See Mike Cook’s ePub Books Project, oriented at conversion of Gutenberg’s plain-text books into the ePub format. Meanwhile Stanza, which uses ePub as its main format, includes Gutenberg books within its Online Catalogue.
Related: Blackberry Storm shows promise as an e-reader, now that eReader app is on the way.
March 14th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Do you have a reference for the claim that eReader is going to support epub format? I’ve seen no mention of this previously, though I certainly hope it’s true!