As soon as I published the post about Astrid being bought by Yahoo and mentioned I was looking for a new app, my in-box started chiming with suggestions. Wunderlist was one of the more interesting ones, and I’ve been checking it out this week. It has some interesting features that make it worth downloading. It’s usable across multiple devices. I currently have it downloaded on my computer, installed on my iPhone and Nexus 7, and there’s even a Web-based interface if I should need it. It mostly looks and acts the same across all devices, so there’s little learning curve as you move from one...

This book had me diving into my current e-book projects within the first few minutes of opening the review copy, looking at how to improve the preview, feedback hooks, tagging, category choice, etc. And by the end, I had a whole checklist of sites to visit, tweaks to make, programs to sign up for. That's how useful it is. Irish author and self-publishing proselyte David Gaughran has turned himself into quite an advocate for the e-publishing revolution. Advocate is putting it mildly; I wouldn't like to be the publisher or vanity press on the receiving end of a diatribe like this....

Spotted my first Kobo Aura HD this weekend! My local Indigo had added the new 30-percent larger 6.8 inch reader to its in-store display, and I got to play with one for a few minutes. And my first impression? It was fine. That's it. That's all I can really say about it. It's bigger and it weighs a little more, but other than that, it was virtually identical to my Kobo Glo. It has the same font controls, the same general interface, the same glow light for reading in the dark. All of those were great features on my Glo, and they...

As you’ve probably guessed from previous posts, I’m a big fan of Pocket Informant for task and calendar management. But sometimes an app like Informant is just too much. Or perhaps you want to keep track of certain tasks separately. I’ve found Astrid Tasks to be a good option for those times. It has many features of a full-function task manager, but it can also be used for the simple things. Besides, who can resist the cute octopus? I use it for grocery lists, meal lists and packing lists for camping. Sure, there are apps out there for all of those, but I’m comfortable with task...

The Ultimate Evernote Guide: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Welcome to Part 2 of our Evernote series! In this lesson, we'll be exploring notebooks and tags, and we'll make a second notebook to show you how you can begin organizing and sorting the different content you put into this wonderful tool. Firstly, let's start with a terminology lesson. What is the difference between a notebook and a tag, and when should you use each of them? Well, both a notebook and a tag will allow you to mark your information with a keyword, which will let...

I’m sure you’ve experienced this. You go to the doctor or dentist, and you’re informed that “someone will be with you in a minute.” Yeah, right. Knowing you’ll really have a lengthy wait, you try to find a magazine to read. Hmm. People from three months ago. Time from one month ago. Conde Nast Traveler's fall edition. Why aren’t there any current magazines? Foli aims to fix that problem. Instead of ancient, dog-eared periodicals, Foli offers businesses a way to offer current magazine content to their customers through an iPad app. I was fortunate enough to have my home temporarily transformed into a Foli spot, so I could...

The Ultimate Evernote Guide: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Welcome to TeleRead's newest how-to series! We'll be exploring a wonderful tool called Evernote, and its many uses for readers who want to organize and synthesize books, articles, quotes, websites, ideas and other information. I've written before about my recent Evernote love, and TeleRead's Juli Monroe has shared with us how she uses this wonderful app in her role as an author. But the truth is, we've barely scratched the surface, Juli and I. There is so much you can do with Evernote, and I'll be walking you through...

Poems by Heart is a new app from Penguin Classics designed to help readers memorize great poems. It's a clever concept. You can browse the available poems and read them—or have them read to you with narration. And when you're ready to learn the poem, a fill-in-the-blanks game that gets progressively more difficult helps you learn the poem in stages. The app comes with two free poems, a Shakespeare sonnet and a William Blake poem. I tried the sonnet first because I actually know this one already; I had a college Shakespeare professor who let us earn extra credit by memorizing...

People tend to be a little too excited about the multimedia e-book 'experience' these days. In the vast majority of cases, most books would be better off staying as books; the quest for multimedia add-ones leads to cost, bloat and complexity. But sometimes it doesn't. And that realization has been a surprise to me. I may be a Luddite when it comes to my fiction reading (plain and simple EPUB, please!), but there are three apps I use regularly—and love—that would have been books back in the day. And the ability to de-bookify them and transform them into a different type...

I always keep an eye out for freelance work. I enjoy writing, and sometimes I like to get paid extra for it. I recently saw an ad on Craigslist for a book reviewer. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was better than nothing for something I enjoy doing anyway. I like reading, and writing reviews afterward on Goodreads, sometimes Amazon, and always on Smashwords. So I put together an email, complete with a copy of a recent review I wrote of a self-published book, along with some basic information about myself. The ad didn’t ask for a resume, so unfortunately...

With tablets becoming part of the classroom, new apps regularly arrive on the market to aid educators. One of the newest releases for Android devices is Nota, an app that allows users to add videos, links and images to the pages of textbooks. Nota could aid a wide range of people, providing a comprehensive way for students to learn that goes far beyond mere words. “Cost has been a disruptive factor in education, with soaring student debt and escalating tuition causing many families to wonder whether they can—or even should—pursue a traditional degree,” Nota Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Ray wrote on the company's blog....

Earlier this month, I wrote about the launch of Bookish. At the time, their e-reading apps were "coming soon." And now they are here. Are we impressed? Not really. It's a bare bones e-reading app with nothing to recommend it. The Android version isn't bad. You can override publisher defaults to get some font and formatting choices. There is a night version, if you like that, and you can personalize both background and text colors. The layout on the page is serviceable but unexciting. I'd still say you're better off downloading the book and using Aldiko, which does work with Adobe...