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.

It hasn't been a week since Amazon released the Kindle for iPhone app [App Store link] but the aftermath has been almost seismic. Kindle for iPhone has remained in the top ten free apps list since it was released. For a few days, it was number one. It looks like it was a good gamble for Amazon, and probably for Apple as no other smart phones (so far) have this app available. The Kindle for iPhone app also runs on the iPod touch.

How is it to use? Actually, pretty darned good. Readability is high, and you can change the font size to your liking. Turning pages is just a matter of swiping your finger across the screen. A single touch gives you access to the table of contents of any book, and you can bookmark pages.

I liked the idea of the Kindle app so much, I actually broke down and bought the Kindle 2. The two devices interact, and you can have all your books on both devices. In fact, the iPhone Kindle app will come up on the same page you left off on the Kindle 2, or vice versa. I thought that would be an automatic function, but you have to tell each device to sync when you leave. Your mileage may vary, but that's what I am seeing.

Of course, even that rather cool function is a bit tricky with the iPhone, because its smaller screen can't display as many words as the Kindle 2 screen. Even though you are synced, you won't get a page that looks exactly the same. No big deal, though.

Read on for more...