Blog Archives
Why I’m not rooting my NOOKcolor
After careful consideration, I’ve decided not to root my NOOKcolor. I’m no troglodyte; in fact, I’m an early adopter and an Android OS fan. I bought the G1 and, later, the Nexus One, the day they came out. I was aware before I bought the NOOKcolor that it was, at its core, an Android tablet. I had read the reports that you could root it; that is, hack into it to unlock total access to the Android OS and all the apps one can download and install from the Android Market. I considered rooting or, rather, having a friend root my NOOKcolor for me, but then my wise husband asked me, “What would you be able to do on it rooted that you can’t do now?” After some time, I realized the answer was, “Well, um… nothing, really.” Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry
My first week with the NOOKcolor
Here’s my real-person experience with the NOOKcolor. I’ve owned and used my NOOKcolor for a week now. In my review, I will answer three questions: “Why buy the NOOKcolor instead of the iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab?”, “What do you wish you had known before you bought the NOOKcolor?”, and “What do you love about the NOOKcolor?”
Why not just buy the iPad or Galaxy Tab?
The NOOKcolor is half the price of the cheapest iPad, and even with a cover is less than half the price of the Galaxy Tab; it has a beautiful 7″ wide-screen-format full color LCD (which I actually find to be a better fit for my hands than the iPad); it comes with 8 GB internal memory and a MicroSD card slot for expansion (which the iPad doesn’t have); it has a full web browser (Google Chrome) that allows you to view anything on the Web that isn’t made with Macromedia Flash (which the iPad doesn’t support, either), and it has QuickOffice software that allows you to view Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents. It allows you to drag and drop (with a standard MicroUSB cable, not the proprietary iPod/iPad connector) files such as audiobooks, music, photos, documents, etc. for listening and viewing (even in a photo slideshow) on the pretty screen. There are a few games (Chess, Crosswords, Sudoku), and you can use the Pandora app to listen to streaming music if you get bored of the music files you loaded into the device. There may be more “Extras” to come (free or for purchase), as well. As for the Galaxy Tab, I don’t need a portable videoconferencing device, and I don’t need another Android phone. I still like my Nexus One, thanks.
As for the NOOKcolor’s web browsing capabilities, so I have watched YouTube videos, checked my GMail, caught up on Facebook and Flickr, read content on news websites, downloaded content from the Barnes & Noble store (some free or 99¢ public domain books) and free ePub download sites, and managed my Netflix queue. Primarily, though, I enjoy the NOOKcolor for reading e-books. Go figure! I’m not a big gamer, so I don’t care about iPad games designed for the accelerometer, and I don’t expect to do much document creation on a tablet, so I don’t miss iWork. For my intents and purposes, the NOOKcolor does everything I would want the iPad or Galaxy Tab to do— for half the price.
What I wish I had known before I bought the NOOKcolor
Choosing the right font styles & variants
for beautiful, readable documents
I’ve spent the last few days in my spare time learning and re-learning about choosing the right fonts, styles, and variants for writing and reading. Since other Web authors have taught me so much and answered so many of the questions I pose to Google, I like to give back by sharing what I’ve learned with others. Allow me to distill hours of my research into minutes of your time.
I’ve been puttering around with fonts again ever since I got an eBook reader and started noting the lack of advanced typography in eBooks of the ePub format. I also started to think about tinkering with ePubs to improve their readability or even publishing my own texts in the ePub format. One of the places I went to read and discuss typography in eBooks was the MobileRead Forums. Another place I learned a few things about fonts was Ralf Herrmann’s Typography Weblog, which turned me onto this funny video about some of the fonts we all know and love.
