We did a fairly extensive rundown of eBooks for the iPhone/iPod touch in August; you can take a look back if you're new to the eBook universe for Apple's mobile devices.

BookReader [iTunes Link] , a US$4.99 app for devices running OS 2.21 or higher, has just joined the crowded eBook market -- but it brings little to the table to recommend itself. The app when first run looks beautiful. You are shown a wonderfully rendered bookshelf which looks very similar to the one found in Classics [iTunes Link], but a bit more nicely rendered, showing the spines of books instead of covers in a scrolling list.

Impressive, but now what? I really had no idea since there were no instructions on how to operate the app either in the app, or on the Readdle site. This, as I've often said, is a major downfall of many of the apps in the store. It would be fine if it were an adventure game, but not at all acceptable in something offering utility that you would like to get at quickly.

The only documentation in the app is a cursory explanation of one of three methods of getting content into the app -- connecting via Wi-Fi and WebDAV to your computer in a fairly arcane manner. You connect to an external server and provide an app-created numeric password. From there you can add books to the server folder... or so they say, but they don't go as far as saying how. I added books to the server, and they never showed up in the app. I was left stranded on the Wi-fi access page and didn't know where to go from there. Now I know that I'm missing something minuscule, but that's exactly my point; there wasn't enough given to me to allow me to complete the task.

The second method of acquiring content is through Readdle Storage. You need to set up an account on the Readdle site which gives you a free 512 megabytes; larger amounts of storage are available for purchase. Once you set up an account, it works fine, but unless you know what to do, you may not find it on your own. You can easily add documents to Readdle Storage and they do show up in the app.

Many documents, unfortunately, don't look very attractive. Anything that started as a .pdf document winds up looking like garbage since all the graphics are gone, and the formatting is stripped out. The list of formats that BookReader handles is also lacking. It doesn't understand some very popular formats such as Kindle, MobiPocket and Microsoft Word's .DOC as do other apps such as Stanza [iTunes Link]. DRM is not supported, but that's par for the course in the eReader market.

As if it isn't getting bad enough with the iPAD / iTablet rumors, now book retailer Borders has been adding to the rumor mill.

Numerous TUAW readers including Jennifer, who supplied the screenshot below, have received a marketing survey from Borders about using Digital Reading Devices (also known as e-readers or ebook readers). Hidden among the responses about Kindles and Sony Book Readers was the response "I plan to buy an Apple iPAD (large screen reading device) this year." Lest any of our readers think that this is just a doctored screenshot, we did receive multiple unique full-screen shots from several readers. This can mean one of three things:

1. The company performing the survey for Borders knows something about an upcoming Apple tablet device
2. The survey company is clueless and loves operating off of rumors and innuendo
3. The iPAD was thrown in there just to see if anybody would fall for it

The survey also refers to the iPod touch as the "iTouch", so I'm pretty sure that #1 is probably out of the realm of possibility. Still, it's fascinating to see just how pervasive this rumored device actually is!

Thanks to everyone who sent in this tip

An e-book (or ebook, or eBook, depending upon who you ask) is the digital equivalent of a paper book. According to KiwiTech, the publishers of Classics2Go, the market for eBooks has increased more than 60% over the last six years and growth from this point is expected to be very strong.

We can reasonably connect the start of this burgeoning market to the release of the Amazon Kindle in 2007. Strong sales convinced some wary readers that this was a viable option. You could carry a few hundred books under your arm, and the reading experience was, well, acceptable. Going on a long trip? Wouldn't it be nice to take about 20 pounds of paper out of your luggage?

2007 also marked the introduction of the iPhone; it took about a year for eBook apps to appear on the iPhone. Now there are so many of them that finding the right one for your purposes can be a confusing prospect. I would like to clarify all this a bit by categorizing the four types of eBook apps, at least so far, and letting you know what you can expect from each.

In deciding upon an eBook reader you need to consider: what sort of material you will be reading, how much you are willing to spend (if anything) and the quality of the viewing experience.

Last year, Andrew Kazmierski and Phill Ryu released Classics (iTunes link). Their idea was to take a bunch of books in the public domain, 22 in the current release, and control all aspects of the user experience. We covered the first release of Classics upon its original release when its price was $2.99. Since then, the price has dropped to .99 and the number of books has increased.

This app looked so impressive that it was featured in an Apple iPhone commercial. Upon launch, the reader is presented with a nicely rendered wooden bookshelf displaying colorful dust jackets. Click on a book and start reading. There is no wait, since all the books were downloaded with the app. Future updates bring more books. The books are all the kind of classics that are on school reading lists ranging from Frankenstein and Dracula, to Hound of the Baskervilles.

The feature set is slim. Tap the right side of the screen or swipe right to left and the sepia toned pages turn using a pleasing animation. There are two buttons on the top of the screen. One brings down a maroon and gold bookmark and sends you to the bookshelf. When you click on the book again, you are brought to where you left off. The second button takes you to a table of contents. The bottom of the screen tells you the name of the chapter you are reading and what page you are on. The top of the screen displays the title of the book. Illustrations in books like Alice in Wonderland are nicely rendered, and the text is attractively formatted. A change in color of the title bar gives you an idea of where you are in the book.

The internal email list for all the TUAW bloggers is a busy place. Some of the best conversations from the list, including musings, rants and raves, don't ever appear on the site. Today we wanted to give you a taste of one of those conversations, about Apple's 'next big thing.'

There has been plenty of discussion lately about Apple's next category-defining product. For months, I've dismissed tablet rumors. I know that Windows-based tablets are plentiful, but I've never used one, and don't know what the most useful applications are. I immediately think of a guy conducting inventory in a warehouse, but I know that's only because I have no experience with these machines.

Some suggest something that's essentially a laptop inside a touch screen, much like the iMac is a computer within its display; of course, Axiotron already makes a MacBook-based tablet. I don't see the practicality. I certainly enjoy the internet and email on my iPhone, but the amount of typing I do on the iPhone is a small percentage of what I do on my MacBook Pro.

Still, I think a similar device is coming.

Last month Amazon released the free Kindle application for the iPhone in the US [App Store link], shortly after the Kindle 2 hit the market. If you haven't used it yet, it works quite well. Users can buy books (but not subscriptions) from the Kindle Store via Mobile Safari for reading on their iPhones, although the purchasing process is easier from a desktop browser. Unlike the Kindle, the iPhone app is able to display color images, but it lacks text-to-speech as well as a direct connection to the Kindle Store. Whispersync, which synchronizes ebooks between the iPhone app and Kindle, works as advertised.

A few weeks ago, we posted a comparison of ebook readers featuring, among others, the iPhone app Stanza [App Store link]. As Steve mentioned, Stanza works with nearly every ebook format, even Project Gutenberg etexts. I only used Stanza briefly to check it out and I can say that the UI was very nice. Additionally, the folks who created Stanza have an existing relationship with ebook seller Fictionwise. In fact, Fictionwise created an ebook store just for Stanza users.

This week, we've learned that Amazon has acquired the company behind Stanza. We can only assume that aspects of Stanza will make it into a future release of Kindle for the iPhone.

Good news for those who like to read books on their iPhones (as opposed to listening to them read by other people). JKontherun reports that ebook seller Fictionwise is licensing support for the eReader format to Lexcycle for use in Stanza; Fictionwise is also launching an eReader store for Stanza users. This adds more than 40,000 titles to the Stanza family, and allows multiple options for licensed book content on the iPhone family; Fictionwise will continue to offer the eReader app that's already on the App Store. For users with libraries of eReader-format content bought for previous platforms like the Palm handhelds, those books should work.

The press release quotes Lexcycle COO Neelan Choksi: "Just in time for the holidays, Stanza readers are going to be able to find their favorite authors like Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts. This relationship with Fictionwise is a big step forward in our ongoing effort to expand the selection of works available to our large and growing user base."

While we love the sleek UI of Classics for books on the iPhone, that app doesn't let you choose your own premium or free books to populate the shelves -- and with thousands more ebooks now available to Stanza users, filling the shelves is going to be easier.

Thanks James.

Forbes is reporting that the iPhone has become the country's top eBook reader. The claim is based upon the number of downloads of Stanza [App Store link], an ebook reader for the iPhone and iPod touch (395,000 and counting), versus the number of projected US Kindle sales (380,000).

For those unfamiliar with Stanza, it's a free application that lets users download books over the air, as does the Kindle. All of Stanza's offerings are free works in the public domain, and flipping pages is a breeze with the touch screen.

Of course, it's silly to compare an iPhone to a Kindle. The screen is very tiny and I wouldn't want to read anything longer than an email message with it. However, many people will, some of whom do it just because they can. I can remember reading a Stephen King book on my old Palm ///e simply because I thought it was neat.

Still, combine the 395,000 downloads of Stanza with nearly 380,000 Kindles sold (plus the Sony eBook reader figures), and it seems that many people enjoy reading very tiny type.

[Via MacDailyNews]