Aura received - first impressions

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Razi

Got mine today. It is a nice device overall and processor (my main gripe concerning ereaders) is noticeably quicker than the ones on my 2 Kobo Touch units. Light is even. Is there some way of controlling this light? Would it not be too bright in total darkness?

In the top right corner of the screen there are some icons. A light when it is on, the WIFi indicator, the battery and the settings menu. Press them and a panel will drop down with some options. One is for the light control. Another is the settings. You should have a look at them to see if there are other things you want to adjust.

[TechniSol]

davidfor,

I may be at just the right text size, because page after page I'm left with an extra blank line at the bottom above where the menu dialog box would display -I know because I did open the menu box and almost walked to the shop for the calipers. I'm reading an epub, and I'm almost convinced somebody made a minor miscalculation in the code that decides how many lines should be displayed. It's not the end of the world, but when you're a picky sumabatch known to spend an hour recompiling to move things to just the right pixel location it grates a little.

I agree the menus could be tighter. But white space is important to design too. Still, tighter does not have to be squashed.

As for the dictionary & annotation functions I'm pretty sure I've never opened either, except by accident. I don't have an eidetic memory, but I do pretty well most days when I manage to get five or six hours of sleep.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

I may be at just the right text size, because page after page I'm left with an extra blank line at the bottom above where the menu dialog box would display -I know because I did open the menu box and almost walked to the shop for the calipers. I'm reading an epub, and I'm almost convinced somebody made a minor miscalculation in the code that decides how many lines should be displayed. It's not the end of the world, but when you're a picky sumabatch known to spend an hour recompiling to move things to just the right pixel location it grates a little.

I suspect the page sizing algorithm is erring on the side of leaving to much space rather than losing the tails of some letter. But, I know what you mean. I've spent far to much time tweaking dialogs to be just right. The worst is when you look over a colleagues should who is OK with it being almost in line. I had a well practised speech about professional looks for this.

I agree the menus could be tighter. But white space is important to design too. Still, tighter does not have to be squashed.

Definitely important. I did raise it with Kobo and they said they would think about it. I don't expect a change unless they decide to redo the icons used in the interface.

As for the dictionary & annotation functions I'm pretty sure I've never opened either, except by accident. I don't have an eidetic memory, but I do pretty well most days when I manage to get five or six hours of sleep.

I don't use the dictionary much, but I make a lot of annotations. Mainly to mark errors in books so I can fix them. All those older books that have been scanned and not proofread.

[FJames]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I don't use the dictionary much, but I make a lot of annotations. Mainly to mark errors in books so I can fix them. All those older books that have been scanned and not proofread.

All the scanning errors are sometimes quite distracting while reading those older scanned books.

I wonder if anyone has ever actually tried the paper book digitizing technique that Vernor Vinge described in the SF book "Rainbows End"? What he proposed (not seriously, I'm sure) was using a variant of the shotgun genome sequencing technique like this:

Shotgun genome sequencing:
- create many copies of the DNA
- break it into many random fragments
- sequence each fragment
- use a powerful computer to string the many fragment sequences together into a coherent whole using the overlaps
- use multiple redundancy to eliminate gaps and errors

Shotgun book digitizing (as described by Vernor Vinge):
- take every available paper copy of a book and run them through a shredder
- blow the shredded paper fragments down a wind tunnel lined with cameras that capture the images of the fragments, each with a few words or phrases on it
- use a powerful computer to string the many fragments together etc. etc.

The older viewpoint character in Rainbows End was of course horrified at the wanton destruction of entire paper libraries, but the idea has a certain fascination.

[John F]

Originally Posted by FJames

...

Shotgun book digitizing (as described by Vernor Vinge):
- take every available paper copy of a book and run them through a shredder
- blow the shredded paper fragments down a wind tunnel lined with cameras that capture the images of the fragments, each with a few words or phrases on it
- use a powerful computer to string the many fragments together etc. etc.

...

Something similar:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2009...ing-recaptcha/

[TechniSol]

Or you could scan them, using a software that looks for words below a certain recognition accuracy and flags them along with a sentence or two for context so a human being can make the decision absent a really accurate context sensitive algorithm. Send the output to college kids and everybody makes a buck. Better yet, include software in your reader apps annotation engine that lets users highlight the mistakes and send you corrections for free while you respond by updating their copy of the ebook. Duh! Too easy for the corporate mindset, as there is no apparent method of further screwing your customer.