` Gadgets: Staff Favourite Devices & Apps Participant Package Toronto Public Library Public Toronto February 2012 www.torontopubliclibrary.ca http://vrl.torontopubliclibrary.ca Gadgets Outline I Welcome and Introduction • Review objectives of the workshop • Explain handouts II Introduction to Gadgets • What Is A Gadget • Types Of Gadgets • What’s the best Gadget for me? • Latest Trends • Productivity & Connectivity III eBook Readers • What’s An eBook • Different Format of eBooks • PDF vs. EPUB • eBook Readers and Mobile Devices • Library Compatible eBook Devices (OverDrive) IV SmartPhones • Apple Mobile Devices • Other Smart Phones and Apps • Mobile Apps and App Stores V Tablets • What’s A Tablet • Tablet Apps • Chart Comparing Popular Tablets • Things You Should Know Before Buy your Tablet VI mp3 Players / Audio Devices / Video Systems • Mp3 Players – Different Uses • List Of Audio Formats • Watching Video on the Go! • List Of Video Formats VII Misc. Gadgets • Devices for your TV • Other Friendly Gadgets VIII Glossary of Terms Page 2 II. Introduction to Gadgets What Is A Gadget? Gadgets, Gizmos, Device: call them any name you can come up with. One word won’t describe the thousands of different electronic and handheld devices that are available on the market. Gadget is a small technological object such as a device or an appliance that has a particular function, but is often thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are invariably considered to be more unusually or cleverly designed than normal technological objects at the time of their invention. Gadgets are sometimes also referred to as gizmos. Types Of Gadgets In the year 2010, we saw the biggest jump in new devices, here were the top 7: Top 7 Gadgets of 2010 1. Tablets 2. Smartphones 3. MP3 Players 4. Gaming Laptops/Systems 5. E-Readers 6. Motion Sensing Gaming Consoles 7. 3D TV’s E-Reader iPod / Mp3 Player Page 3 What’s the best Gadget for me? To answer this question, you first need to ask yourself, what is it you’re interested in doing with your gadget. Any one salesperson or expert can point you in the right direction and try and sell you on the latest device, but you need to decide for yourself. Ask yourself these following questions: Do I want to watch movies? Do I want to listen to Music? Do I want to read books? Check email and the internet? Look out for the Latest Trends The introduction of touch screen technology is one of the biggest advancements in the world of consumer electronics. Once you browse through the specs of the most popular mobile devices and music players of today, you will see a lot of them having a touch screen on top and a couple of user interface tweaks to go with it. Touch-screens are common in devices such as game consoles, all-in-one computers, tablet computers, smartphones and most recently televisions. Productivity & Connectivity Another reason why customers react positively to all the new devices is because of the allowance for staying connected while on the road. Check email, stay in touch with clients, and have internet access 24/7. In addition; productivity has also become an essential selling point. It has never been so easy to be able to produce and polish up presentations, papers, design graphics, websites and videos. Compatibility Certainly life is getting easier for novice tech users. Download a song on your computer, and you can expect to see it on your phone, tablet and laptop instantly. With the developments and inclusion of services such as iCloud, Google Sync, Dropbox and Microsoft Cloud, you’ll never have a problem finding a file on any of your devices. iCloud stores your music, photos, apps, calendars, documents, and more. And wirelessly pushes them to all your devices. Page 4 III. eBook Readers What’s an eBook? An electronic book (variously, e-book, eBook, digital book) is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e- books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book," but e-books can and do exist without any printed equivalent. E-books are usually read on dedicated e-book readers. Personal computers and some mobile phones can also be used to read e-books. Different formats of eBooks: The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books. A writer or publisher has many options when it comes to choosing a format for publication. While the average end-user might arguably simply want to read books, every format has its proponents. The file size for texts without images depends on the file format, but is always relatively small compared with a richly illustrated text. The following is a comparable chart on some of the more popular formats: Page 5 PDF vs. ePub By far, the most popular formats on the market at the moment are both the PDF and ePub formats. Most, if not all Tablets, SmartPhones, eBook Readers and Computer Systems can read these formats. More and more publisher are producing one of the following formats to ensure the audience will have no problem downloading and reading a eBook. The PDF file format created by Adobe Systems, The EPUB format is rapidly gaining popularity and as initially to provide a standard form for storing printable of 2011 is the most widely supported vendor- documents containing a set of page images. The independent XML-based e-book format. The format format derives from PostScript, but without language can be read at least by the Kobo eReader, Blackberry features like loops, and with added support for Playbook, Apple's iBooks app running on iOS devices features like compression, passwords and DRM. such as the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, Barnes Because PDF documents can easily be viewed and and Noble Nook, Sony Reader, BeBook, Bookeen printed by users on a variety of computer platforms, Cybook Gen3 (with firmware v. 2 and up), COOL-ER, they are very common on the World Wide Web Adobe Digital Editions, Lexcycle Stanza, BookGlutton, AZARDI, FBReader, Aldiko, Moon+ Since the format is designed to reproduce page Reader and WordPlayer on Android, Freda on images, the text traditionally could not be re-flowed to Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7, and the fit the screen width or size. As a result, PDF files Mozilla Firefox add-on EPUBReader. Several other designed for printing on standard paper sizes are less desktop reader software programs are currently easily viewed on screens with limited size or implementing support for the format, such as resolution, such as those found on mobile phones dotReader, FBReader, Mobipocket, uBook and and e-book readers. Adobe has addressed this Okular. drawback by adding a re-flow facility to its Acrobat Reader software, but for it to work the document must The only notable device lacking integrated support for be marked for re-flowing at creation. the EPUB format is the Amazon Kindle, although there has recently been speculation that the Kindle However, this tagging process will not work on most will soon support this format. locked or password protected PDF documents. It also doesn't work at present (2009–10) on the Windows Adobe Digital Editions uses .epub format for its e- Mobile Device Center (the successor to Active Sync) books, with DRM protection provided through their as found in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Thus, proprietary ADEPT mechanism. The recently automatic tagging support during synchronization is developed ADEPT framework and scripts have been limited to Windows XP/2000. reverse-engineered to circumvent this DRM system. PDF files are supported on many e-book readers including: Mobipocket, iRex iLiad, iRex DR1000, Sony Reader, Bookeen Cybook, Foxit eSlick, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, the iPad, PocketBook Reader, Bebook Neo and the Kobo eReader. Also, pdf files can be read on the iPod Touch using the free Stanza app. On iPad, there are also many readers such as Stanza, iBook, FlipReader, ... Scientific papers and books are often found in PDF format. In this case, the problem of showing tables and equations correctly has been dealt with, when the PDF was created. When trying to reflow such text, ereaders typically obtain very poor results Page 6 eBook Readers and Mobile Devices There are basically 2 kinds of devices that you can use to read eBooks: eReaders and Mobile Devices. eReaders eReaders can hold eBooks so that they can be read anywhere, without the need to be connected to the internet or a computer. eReaders are dedicated to displaying eBooks. Often displaying ebooks is their only function, but some of them can do more. Where do you get ebooks? • You can get them from Toronto Public Library • You can buy them from a store, by connecting to the store on the Internet. o Kobos are linked with the Canadian bookstore chain Indigo Books & Music. o NOOKs are linked with the bookstore chain Barnes & Noble. o Sony Readers are linked with Sony’s Reader Store. o Kindles are linked with Amazon.com, however they are not currently supported with the download of Canadian library content Mobile Devices Some mobile devices, such as phones or tablets, can directly download content from some services, through the use of mobile apps, which are applications designed specifically for a mobile device and are made available through their app marketplace. o Apple devices, such as the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch run the mobile operating system iOS. o Android is a mobile operating system created by Google and several mobile phone manufacturers, and runs on many different phones, tablets, and even recent eReaders (Kobo Vox, Kindle Fire).