The New York Times reading app (#38), Bloomberg (#51), and AP Mobile News Network (#80) are among the top 100 free iPhone apps that may be of interest to TeleBlog readers. All are news apps, and I suspect that the New York Times is the leader in part because of the popularity of its site.
Perhaps I’m overlooking something, but I don’t see any e-book-reading programs there. I’m in a hurry because the electricity is about to go off around here for maintenance purposes.
Within the entertainment category, the well-publicized eReader is apparently #28 and Stanza is #33, if I’m interpreting the sort order correctly. And I also see a new discovery, Shakespeare, #26, which is said to put all of the bard’s works "literally at your fingertips." Alas, no search or note-taking. So reports a user-reviewer—I’ll see later on. Another user praises the "easy to read format," which lets you change the size of the font.
Meanwhile, Hadrien Gardeur of Feedbooks has looked over the French-language rankings and says that that Stanza is #35–which means it’s beating the New York Times (#41) and MySpace (#87). One reason could be that Stanza offers a Kindle-easy way to download Feedbooks’ library of public domain classics in French and English.
Until late last week, both Stanza and eReader were in the top 100 (hovering between 80 and 95). We seem to have gotten crowded out by some of the new crop of applications like LOLCats. We expect that once the novelty of some of these new applications fades, we’ll be back in the top 100 list again.
Marc, I wish you the best of luck in returning quickly to the top 100. I continue to enjoy Stanza. My big question for Lexcyle is when a PC companion program will appear so I can import my own content. Or maybe something on the Web?
Also good, if the OS will allow, would be a line that you could toggle in at the bottom of the page to see your progress through the entire book? Or how about percentages?
I’d also like to see all of the settings reachable from within the program, not just via the global menu for the iPhone. And I’d like to see my fave setting to be lockable so I wouldn’t have to mess with just the right gestures.
Hope the above feedback helps Lexcycle. Glad to see your here.
Thanks,
David
David, I’m sorry if this is the wrong spot, but I have an observation about eReader v1.1. So we know that the program can download books from eReader.com and fictionwise.com. I, however, can’t access my bookshelf, and I haven’t really figured out why. I can, however, access the both website using the minibrowser from within eReader v1.1, and I’ve downloaded my books that way. I hope this helps other eReader users having trouble!
David-
Regarding the Windows version, we just released it last night!
http://www.lexcycle.com/forums/stanza/stanza_windows_release
As for the progress meter being a global one, we are investigating how best to do that. We do agree that it would be nice to have. And we are also planning on moving a select set of often-changed settings into the Stanza application itself, as we also feel that having to exit Stanza to have to launch the Settings application just to change a minor preference is tedious.
Thanks for the feedback, and we hope you enjoy Stanza Windows!
We’re pleased to say that since we released version 1.3, Stanza is back in the Top 100 list!
Number 62, when I last checked.
Congrats, Marc. Keep us posted. We know how subjective these things are, but I remain a fan of Stanza, and I think others will catch up when more features appear. I understand that things are rendered natively in ePub. If so, that’s just another positive.
David
(who of course already has 1.3 going)
An aside: The TeleBlog is like an op-ed page. People can speak up with their opinions rather than take a party line—and that’s especially true of software.