Hands-On With Google E-Books [SCREENSHOTS].
Google launched its long-awaited e-bookstore, Google E-books, on Monday, bringing more than 3 million books — many of them free — to any device with a web browser in the U.S.
We’ve now had a chance to play with the platform on our laptops, as well as on our iPhones, Android phones and iPads. So far, we like the experience.
Those of you who already read e-books on the various mobile and (in some cases) desktop apps offered by Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) and Kobo will notice little difference between those apps and Google’s. The apps for iPhone, Android and iPad most closely resemble the Kindle app, with list and grid library displays, the ability to adjust font sizes and types, read in “night” mode (i.e. with a black background — to conserve battery life) and swipe pages (3D page swiping a la iBooks is also available for iPhone and iPad via settings).
There are two big differences between Google’s apps and all of the others. One is that it offers a web version of its application, making it accessible to anyone with a desktop browser and on a relatively wide range of mobile devices (user experiences may vary). The second is that it lists page numbers and allows readers to quickly switch to see the actual scanned (rather than flowing text) page so that they can cite the printed edition rather than the electronic edition, if they so prefer.
In other words, it’s the first e-reading platform that is truly useful for students and, I expect, will gain major traction at U.S. universities. Universities have resisted adopting the Kindle and other e-reading platforms in large part because they simply weren’t accessible to students without the proper hardware. That is no longer an issue.
Try the apps for yourself and let us know what you think. I’m especially eager to hear from teachers and students about how they think the platform will fare at their respective schools.
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