Apple chief executive Steve Jobs ups company's social media game with Ping – a music recommendation and sharing feature that has been added to the latest version of iTunes

Apple has ditched the CD in the iTunes logo, upgraded its iPod range and revamped Apple TV, as we learned last night. Chief executive Steve Jobs also upped Apple's social media game with Ping – a music recommendation and sharing feature that has been added to the latest version of iTunes, iTunes 10.

Users with an iTunes Store login (there are 160 million of those worldwide, and they are the engine behind Apple's money-making content machine) can now click the 'Ping' tab in iTunes, create a profile and begin following and being followed by like-minded music fans.

However, initial reviews of Ping have not been flattering. No-one I follow had a good word to say about it:

@Moleitau: OK, Ping is terrible so far *apart* from being able to follow Rick Rubin and find out he digs Arvo Pärt

@Matt B: wow, Ping's personal artist follow recommendations are terrible.

@scobleizer: "The Who." Fail. "Beatles." Fail. "Elton John." Fail. Just what kind of musician IS in Apple's iTunes Ping? @myspace wins.

@DamoBiddles just downloaded iT 10 and 'ping' - monstrous. buggy. evil. Also seems weird being built into an application UI. not great so far.

Photo by striatic on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

A music-orientated social network is a great idea because Apple has a captive and very active audience among its iTunes user base. Privacy settings are simple – share everything with anyone, share a bit with people you approve or don't share at all. Where Twitter is all things to all people, Ping could become the default network for music chatter – gig reviews, album recommendations and so on – one of those niche social networks we thought might take off a few years back.

But there are problems, and not just that recommending Katy Perry and US to everyone is not a good idea. At startup, you can only pick three genres of favourite music; I picked singer-songwriters, blues and alternative. Where would you classify Katy Perry under those? Because that's what I was served up. Those of us used to Last.fm, among others, expect far more from music recommendation.

It is a strange experience using a social network locked within a tab of an already-busy programme. If I wasn't already (occasionally) using iTunes for music there would be zero incentive for me to use Ping at all. And I use iTunes more for apps than music... where's the social network for apps?

Apple's modus operandi seems fundamentally opposed to the nature of social networking, which is all about openness. Without importing existing networks from Twitter or Facebook (inviting friends through Apple Mail is not enough), there's a significant investment of time needed to set Ping up. Now social networking is more mature, there's less appetite for putting in that groundwork – and why should we have to when our networks already exist? Look at the success of Twitter, built on third-party development and off-site interaction. Ping could have pulled in existing intelligence about artists and public profiles of followers. It could have populated user profiles with your most listened-to tracks; a few album covers aren't enough for data-loving music fans. It could have thrown up the most listened to or downloaded tracks through iTunes in real-time. Buy Songkick or something, FFS. Where is everybody?

It's static, detached, and outdated. Perhaps we'll revisit it when it grows up.

A poor effort, Apple.

Good design is simple, reducing complex tasks to straightforward sequences of elegant interactions, making sure that there is no unnecessary step in the way.

The big design challenge for the next version of iPlayer was how to create this simplicity in light of more features and functionality without overwhelming our audience.

Let's consider the two basic tasks: find and play. The goal is to minimise our audience's time spent on the first task while maximising their time spent on the second one; ultimately discovery is just a means to enable people to watch their favourite show, which is why they come to the iPlayer in the first place.

Thus, the primary design challenge was to elegantly weave the new functionality and features into the iPlayer fabric while keeping the user interface simple. The following four design strategies informed our solution framework:

Navigation

We recognised that watching TV and listening to the radio are two different activities that respond to different user needs. The previous version of iPlayer mixed radio and TV content on each page. However, user data showed that very few people used the iPlayer for both at the same time. Radio and TV iPlayer use peaked at different times of the day and had little overlap. (Table 1 most likely overstates the overlap as the number reflect hardware not users).

In other words, very few people are indifferent to whether they watch TV or listen to the radio when they come to the iPlayer. This makes sense as watching TV and listening to radio are not perfect substitutes; TV is an immersive experience that tends to get the audience's undivided attention while listening to the radio tends to complement other activities and is a less immersive experience. People come to the iPlayer to either watch TV or listen to the radio.

Therefore, we decided to make TV and radio the top navigational choice. The two pages, however, are identical in terms functionality and look and feel; it's only the content that differs. The TV page is the home page as more people come to the iPlayer to watch TV than listen to the radio. As a matter of fact TV and radio are the only two top navigational choices down from five in the previous version.

This reduces V3 to three key pages: TV, Radio and media player. Fewer pages imply less navigation between pages and therefore less clicks to find content. The radical simplification of top-level navigation implies, however, that most of the navigation has to take place in context and in page which poses different challenges which will be discussed next.

Browsing

Collapsing Home, TV Channels, Radio Stations, Categories and A to Z into one page required us to rethink how content is accessed and bundled. Our design guidance came from considering the three primary discovery modes that we identified: browsing content, finding missed shows and exploring content of a certain type. The design of the TV and Radio page therefore consists of three parts that directly respond to the three user needs: the drawers on top of the page allows users to discover shows that they might not know about; the EPG on the lower left half of the page allows users to find what they missed; and the categories module on the lower right hand corner enables users to browse content by type.

The drawers enable all scanning behaviours, combining four different sources for content discovery: Featured (editorially selected), For You, Most Popular and Friends. Each of them has a different flavour that might appeal to different users at different times. As it is impossible to know beforehand what might be of interest to the users, they can easily switch between the different sources. Upon arrival the drawers are partially open to reveal the available options. As soon as they interact with any of the drawers, the chosen one expands to show more content. As soon as another drawer is selected, the focus shifts accordingly.

The drawers are a playful and efficient way to surface content, making the best use of the limited screen real estate. Earlier design treatments considered having four different modules, each containing one of the sources. However, it became clear that that solution would break the simplicity of the navigation.

The EPG and the categories module, on the other hand, are more utilitarian by nature. The users know what they are looking for; the primary design challenge is to enable users to navigate the EPG or the categories and to get them to the searched item as quickly as possible.

Personalisation

V3 personalisation features consist of For You, My Categories and Favourites. The different features are revealed over time as users engage with the content rather than all at once potentially overwhelming them. Favourites accompany the users throughout their iPlayer experience giving them universal access to their favourite shows at all times. Like a shopping cart it is pervasively accessible on top of the page connecting discovery - where shows are added - and watching - where they are consumed.

My Categories are woven into the categories browsing module, in essence bookmarking the ones of interest to the users. Once users have chosen their favourite shows and categories and new content gets surfaced in the For You drawer, discovery requires less active engagement: users will always be only one click away from accessing their favourite BBC shows. Less time spent discovering means more time enjoying.

Look and Feel

The new carbon fibre look and feel of V3 replaced the shiny look of V2 while keeping the distinct and iconic black and pink of the iPlayer. The new "materiality" of the interface gives the interface depth and texture that adds dynamic to animated components such as the drawer.

To underline the selected state in the top navigation a visual element inspired by the old radio dial was introduced while a streamlined font and color hierarchy was created to maintain a simple user interface.

In a nutshell V3 offers new functionality in a new user interface that aims to make it easier for our audience to find what they want to watch or listen to. Streamlined navigation, new functionality and a new taxonomy will enable our audience to find more quicker giving them more time to enjoy the content.

So what's next? We keep working to improve the experience with the goal to enable our audience to spend less time looking and more time enjoying on all platforms. The new iPlayer on mobile devices with Favourites launched recently and will soon launch on the other platforms as well.

Fabian Birgfeld is Head of Product Planning, BBC FM&T

As the fugitive businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain from his North Cyprus bolt-hole last week, Sean O'Neill, the crime editor of The Times, scooped Fleet Street by being the only print journalist on the plane. Yet those searching Google for the latest on the breaking story that morning would have found no sign of O'Neill's exclusive – only follow-up stories by rival news organisations such as The Guardian and ITN.

More than 30% of Sky's total subscriber base, which stood at 9.86 million at the end of June, now watching in high definition

BSkyB has signed up the 3 millionth subscriber to its high definition (HD) television service just over four years after it was launched in the UK.

Nearly 50 channels are available in high definition on the Sky digital satellite service, including BBC HD, ITV1 HD and five high-definition Sky Sports networks. Living became the latest broadcaster to join the HD platform today , with several more ITV channels due to join it before the end of the year.

More than 30% of Sky's total subscriber base, which stood at 9.86 million at the end of June, is now watching in high definition, a key driver in boosting the satellite broadcaster's average revenue per user.

Sophie Turner Laing, Sky's managing director of entertainment, news and broadcast operations, said the broadcaster had "recognised the potential of HD early", adding that the superior quality broadcasts had now "grown into something which our customers utterly love and now demand as standard".

However, the latest milestone also suggests that the growth rate of HD has slowed after a bumper second quarter boosted by the football World Cup. An extra 429,000 customers were signed up in the three months to the end of June, taking total HD subscribers to 2.94 million.

A slowdown was predicted by the BSkyB chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, who said in July that he expected to see a "pause for breath" in take-up of the new technology. The next set of subscriber figures, for the third quarter of 2010, will be announced at the end of October.

Sky's high-definition service launched in May 2006. High-definition channels are also available on Virgin Media, Freeview, the BBC and ITV's free-to-air satellite joint venture, Freesat.

Living HD, which broadcasts programmes including Britain's Next Top Model presented by Elle Macpherson, became the 46th high-definition channel on the Sky platform, following the launch of Good Food HD earlier this week.

Jonathan Webb, managing director of the Living TV Group, said: "Living is home to some of the glossiest UK and US programmes on television and they deserve to be seen in their pin-sharp HD glory."

Eden HD, ITV2 HD, ITV3 HD and ITV4 HD will all launch before the end of the year, taking Sky's total number of HD channels to more than 50. BBC1 will also be simulcast in high definition in its entirety for the first time this autumn.

Sky Sports' biggest HD audience to date was Manchester United's 3-0 win over Newcastle in their opening Premier League fixture of the season last month, which was watched in more than 800,000 homes.

Sky's next big marketing push will be 3D television, with the broadcaster set to launch Europe's first dedicated 3D channel on 1 October.

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Press Complaints Commission confirms it was told two months ago that journalist was under investigation over new claim

The News of the World is facing a fresh allegation of phone hacking against one of its journalists, the Press Complaints Commission confirmed today.

The commission was informed by the paper just over two months ago about the allegation, and the journalist involved has been "suspended from reporting duties".

Stephen Abell, the PCC director, confirmed today that the press regulator was informed by the paper in June "of the existence of the recent allegation of phone-message hacking against the reporter". Abell said that the PCC was prevented from launching its own investigation because the allegation was "the subject of legal action".

The new claim was revealed late yesterday in a New York Times article on the News of the World phone-hacking affair. The paper reported that the News of the World was conducting a new phone-hacking investigation and had suspended a reporter, after a "television personality" had been alerted by her phone company to a "possible unauthorised attempt to access her voicemail" and the number was traced back to a journalist at the paper.

Bill Akass, the News of the World managing editor, confirmed in a response to the New York Times that an internal investigation was under way and that a journalist had been "suspended from reporting duties".

It is understood that the News of the World was first made aware of the phone-hacking claim around Easter this year and that the internal investigation is ongoing.

"A serious allegation has been made about the conduct of one of our reporters. We have followed our internal procedures and the reporter has been suspended from reporting duties, and a very thorough and extensive investigation carried out into that allegation (involving, for example, external forensic specialists)," Akass said.

"The allegation is the subject of litigation and our internal investigation continues in tandem with that, which means I am unable to comment further. If the conclusion of the investigation or the litigation is that the allegation is proven, the reporter will be dismissed for gross misconduct without compensation.

"We have a zero-tolerance approach to any wrong-doing and will take swift and decisive action if we have proof of any wrong-doing."

Abell said: "The PCC was informed by the News of the World in June of the existence of the recent allegation of phone message hacking against the reporter. This is currently the subject of legal action, which has prevented the PCC from becoming formally involved at this stage.

"However, once the legal action has been concluded, the commission will consider the matter further. It was right that the News of the World disclosed the existence of this claim to the PCC, and we will address the issues when it is possible for us to do so. The PCC has made publicly clear on a number of occasions that phone message hacking is deplorable and that view – of course – remains."

The News of the World's editor, Colin Myler told the Commons culture select committee last year that he had introduced new procedures to avoid a repeat of this behaviour. Myler became editor in 2007, when Andy Coulson resigned over the Clive Goodman phone-hacking affair.

Myler told the committee that all staff were ordered to follow the PCC code of conduct and warned that failure to comply could result in disciplinary proceedings. Stricter controls on cash payments and sources were also introduced and all staff had to attend workshops on the PCC code, he added.

The committee called several current and former executives from the News of the World's publisher, News International, including Coulson, last year as part of its inquiry into privacy, press standards and libel.

This fresh round of hearings was prompted by the Guardian's revelation that News International had paid £700,000 to settle a breach of privacy claim from Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, after a private investigator working for the News of the World hacked into his phone.

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Facebook is in what’s called a recruiting sweet spot right now. Out of control growth in users and revenue and a nearly certain IPO run in the near future. That’s when employee growth expands at the greatest rate for a company as it grows from hundreds to thousands and then tens of thousands of employees. And with low priced private stock as currency, companies in that position can generally get anyone they want.

Yahoo of course does more than its fair share of feeding the beast, but they’re everyone’s favorite recruiting pool right now. But plenty of Googler’s are heading to Facebook, too – LinkedIn is tracking 118 of them to date. For some Googlers, it’s paying off just to go get an offer from Facebook and then tell their employer – a counter offer is almost sure to come, and it may be stratospheric.

One recent Googler, we’ve confirmed, was recently offered a counter offer he couldn’t refuse (except he did). He was offered a 15% raise on his $150,000 mid level developer salary, quadruple the stock benefits and…wait for it…a $500,000 cash bonus to stay for a year. He took the Facebook offer anyway.

Sources close to Google tell us that about 80% of people stay when they’re offered a counter to a Facebook offer. But some still leave. Part of that may be that Facebook is quietly telling people, never in writing, that there’s no reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation over the next couple of years. No guarantees, yadda yadda, but hey if you get 1/10 of 1%, that’s $100 million in stock. Now it’s a party.

Google isn’t making these kind of counter offers to everyone, but it’s not a one off, either. It seems to me that every Google engineer at least should be taking a personal day to go collect a Facebook offer. Even if it’s just to get a counter offer from their current employer.

Art: Audrey Fukuman

With the BBC now providing links to the scientific research it reports, will 2010 be the year when science journalists discover the web link?

It's funny how things can be connected. I was looking up the recipe for Worcestershire sauce last night and ended up idly clicking through Wikipedia. It turns out that the sauce is made from anchovies, which can cause amnesic shellfish poisoning, a brain-damaging illness that may have caused thousands of frantic seabirds to invade towns in Californian in 1961; events that may have provided some inspiration for Hitchcock's film The Birds. I found all this because of links.

Links are the foundation of the world wide web. They take us beyond whatever we happened to be looking for, on journeys to places we never even imagined existed. Every minute of every day, millions of curious apes click billions of links, each travelling on their own miniature voyages of discovery.

Of all the differences between science blogging and mainstream media reporting of science, one of the most profound is the use of links. Science bloggers often come from a scientific background, and as scientists we were drilled on the need for citations. Any factual statement or assertion you make in a research paper should be backed up with a reference to primary evidence supporting the claim.

It's a habit that translates well into journalism, a profession which, like science, should be concerned with studying the world and reporting its findings on behalf of the public in an open and accountable way.

By providing links to sources (or indeed posting full interview transcripts), journalists can show that they're honest, open and trustworthy and allow the reader to judge whether the interpretation they've presented of someone else's work or words is the correct one.

And links can do much more than that. By embedding links in text, journalists can turn their articles from static descriptions of the world into platforms that open up avenues for exploration and discovery to their audience, tapping into rich veins of knowledge and intrigue to provide the reader with far more value than one journalist could provide on their own.

Links are beautiful, so why are newspaper websites so utterly reluctant to use them? In particular, why do science journalists who write about scientific papers so often fail to provide a link to a copy of the paper in question?

It's an issue that Ben Goldacre raised with the BBC earlier this year, but with apparently little success. As Ben pointed out at the time:

"It's very important that the public are able to get access to information, especially since media reports – for many structural reasons – can be light on information, or even contain errors."

But now the Beeb seems to have relented. It has come to my attention, courtesy of the commenter soveda, that the BBC are – occasionally at least – now adding links to the original research in their articles, for example in the 5th paragraph here.

This is to be congratulated. It's easy to moan when journalists get things wrong, but fair play to the BBC here – they've listened, and they appear to have changed their practice. For that they should be congratulated, and if you give a crap about news outlets linking to research (and if not, why on Earth are you still reading this?) then you should go immediately to their feedback page, and leave a friendly comment.

So will other organs follow the BBC's lead? Unfortunately, the scientific journals themselves are putting barriers in the way of journalists who want to link to the original research, as the science editor of the Times Mark Henderson told me earlier:

"I think it's good practice to provide direct hyperlinks to journal articles where practical, but this isn't always easy to achieve. The main problem is that while some journals (eg Nature) provide such links on their embargoed press releases (or tell you how to work them out using DOI numbers), others do not. It can thus take time you don't have to establish the correct link.

Worse still is that some journals (PNAS is a particular offender) don't have papers available online when an embargo lifts. It is thus impossible to link even to an abstract."

Embargoes themselves are a difficult and controversial subject best left to the likes of Ivan Oransky, but clearly there's a problem with the way that PR officers at some major journals are operating – by failing to support busy journalists, they're failing the public. One simple solution would fix this problem, as Mark suggests:

"I would encourage all press officers dealing with journal articles to include a hyperlink to the paper, that will go live when an embargo lifts, on their press releases as a matter of course."

Let's hope that the BBC's decision will start putting pressure on journals to do just this. But let's not forget the wider problem here. As blogs and mainstream media draw ever closer together – a long-term shift epitomised by my own move to the Guardian – there are opportunities for each to learn from the other. One of the most obvious things that bloggers can teach mainstream media journalists is the proper use of the link. It's not enough for journalists to simply report on the world, they need to let people see it for themselves.

It was a dark and stormy night on December 18, 1908. Okay—maybe it wasn't so dark and stormy. But it should have been, because that was the night Thomas Edison tried to hijack the motion picture industry.

"With his beetle brows, long wispy hair, and beatific look, Edison might have seemed the addled inventor," writes the historian Neil Gabler, "but he was a shrewd businessman and a fearsome adversary who was never loath to take credit for any invention, whether he was responsible or not."

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Cable provider publishes promises monthly average speed tally, and publishes survey claiming 93% of public support its case

Virgin Media has promised to publish its typical broadband speeds each month, as it publishes a survey suggesting that most customers find internet service providers' advertisements misleading.

Only 9% of respondents surveyed by ICM for Virgin Media think broadband advertising tends to be accurate, and 93% of people believe ISPs should only advertise the typical speed received by the majority of customers.

It is common practice for ISPs to advertise broadband speeds of "up to" 8Mbps, 20Mbps or 50Mbps, although according to the poll 98% of people believe there is a clearer way to advertise speeds.

Virgin Media has thrown its weight behind a move away from advertising "up to" speeds, proposing that ISPs advertise "typical" or "average" speeds qualified by independent experts.

But BT has already signalled its opposition, saying that listing "average" speeds would be disadvantageous to larger networks operating in rural areas that require longer copper lines.

ICM's sample of 1,000 respondents found that 90% of people find it difficult to compare and contrast broadband services advertised by rival providers because they cannot be sure of the speed they will actually receive, while 54% are unsurprised when shown the difference between advertised speeds and delivered speeds.

Data released by communications regulator Ofcom in July showed the average broadband speed is now just 46% of what was advertised, down from 56% a year ago. "There is a very big difference between the headline services that are advertised and the actual speeds that are delivered," said Ed Richards, Ofcom's chief executive.

Last month the Advertising Standards Authority – which had asked the Committee of Advertising Practice to review broadband speed claims – banned a broadband advertisement by BT, the UK's largest fixed line broadband provider, following complaints from BSkyB, TalkTalk and Virgin Media.

The ASA ruled that BT could not back up its claim that the 20Mbps service was consistently faster than its 8Mbps offering, saying that the advert was "likely to mislead" and banning it in its current form. BT said it was "disappointed" by the ASA adjudication, saying it had no intention to mislead customers.

Virgin Media is the second-largest fixed-line broadband provider in the UK, with 22.5% of the market share; BT has 26.7%. From today, Virgin will publish monthly updates of the typical speed being received by 66% of customers over 24 hours.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, said: "People are paying for faster and faster broadband but being ripped off by unscrupulous providers who can't deliver their promised speeds to even a single customer.

"A change in advertising is urgently needed to build consumer confidence in super-fast broadband and the industry more generally. In the meantime, I hope other ISPs will quickly follow Virgin Media's lead by disclosing their own monthly performance data so people can make an informed decision about how to spend their money."

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It seems only weeks ago that I was reviewing a BeBook Mini ebook reader here; so what on earth possessed me to buy an Amazon Kindle? And what do I think of it so far?

Well, first – the justification.

I’ve used my little BeBook mini a lot. An awful lot. Every trip into London has been spent with my nose in a book – whether Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (just excellent, by the way), the usual Sherlock Holmes mysteries, or Stieg Larsson trilogy (downloaded illegally, but I own the printed books). I’ve purchased one book – an Android programming book. I’ve used it to hold my notes when speaking at conferences. It lasts forever. It’s a marvellous device.

The downsides are relatively few: but all surround the availability and price of content. The likes of Waterstones and Foyles do sell eBooks, but at prices that are the same – and sometimes more expensive – than the print versions. To download these requires the PC open, with the myriad of distractions it offers. And the 5-inch screen – not quite large enough – was just too small to comfortably read freely-available Google books in PDF format.

The new Kindle offers respite from these downsides. The prices are very cheap. That new Tony Blair book, A Journey? It’s £12.50 (down from £25) on Amazon.co.uk in hardback right now; but just £6.99 on the Kindle. And a look at the Kindle store seems to show that this kind of discount isn’t too unusual.

Something else I wasn’t too aware of – Amazon.co.uk offer samples. The first chapter is free to read – they’re hoping that it hooks you in and that you buy the rest of the book. This is a wonderful idea, and I suspect will be very costly to my wallet; it certainly worked in the case of the Blair book, which I found fascinating (never having read a politician’s autobiography before).

There will always be the curmudgeons who want a proper paper book; but, for me, the above two points outweigh the undeniable niceness of a paper product in your hand. Cheap books that you can start reading before you buy them? Count me in. And there’s nothing to stop you buying the proper paper books if you want to.

So: to the device.

I’m sure you’ve read the other reviews, so I’ll not bore you with details you could read on the product info page anyway.

My initial reaction was that it’s very well built. It charges using a micro-USB: the same as my mobile phone (hurray!). The power button is an annoying slidey one of the type loved by Sony for some inexplicable reason and loathed and hated by anyone with common sense; but even this feels expensive, not cheap – even though all indications are that this is a unit that’s been built for volume, not luxury. The unit is all nicely rounded, and sits well in the hand. (The plastic is a bit too easy to scratch though. Buy a case.)

I’ve been awed by ePaper (or whatever we’re supposed to call the screen) already; but the Kindle’s contrast is excellent when compared to the BeBook: black is nicely dark, and the screen is nicely light. It’s very easy to read – and really comes into its own outside.

The inbuilt wifi (I just went for the wifi version – couldn’t see the point in the £50 for 3G) is dangerous. One click of the clicky thing, and you can buy a book – no passwords, no credit card information, nothing; it comes preset to your Amazon account, y’see. (Incidentally, you can cancel a purchase just as easily, so don’t panic). The inbuilt (experimental) browser seems to do a moderately good job should I wish to log into a free wifi hotspot like The Cloud in the pub; and it connected quickly and flawlessly to the wifi networks I have access to.

Ah, yes, the browser. This was another justification for buying the device. I reckoned that it might be a perfect Google Reader client for sitting outside and catching up on the world. It uses Webkit, so renders quite well; and the standard Google Reader website works acceptably on it (keyboard shortcuts and everything). As a browser, it’s adequate, though. Yes, it works – the BBC News website (bookmarked on the device at the now-defunct news.bbc.co.uk URL) renders decently enough once zoomed in; but it’s fairly slow. An iPad this isn’t. Mind you, at £109, you’re probably not expecting it to be.

So, to the book reading experience.

A genuine Kindle edition book works well: you have a surprising amount of control over the text density, line height, and so on. A neat trick is moving the cursor down to a word you don’t understand (“toper”, in my case) and a dictionary definition pops up and helpfully tells you that it’s a person who drinks a lot. Highlight a sentence or two, and you can save a quote in your own Amazon account – or hit ‘share’ to publish it to Twitter, like this. Page turns are snappy – far faster than the BeBook, though the speed didn’t worry me. The page-turn buttons confused me at first (I thought the left-hand one went backwards), but turning the pages is now second-nature. It’s an enjoyable experience.

The font geek in me is disappointed at the lack of embedded fonts for books. Everything is rendered in a standard Amazon Kindle font (which looks like it’s Caecilia). I can change this to a slightly condensed version (which is what you see above), or a variant of Helvetica, but that’s it. The choice of typeface in a book is part of the book’s charm; and it’s disappointing that Amazon deem it unimportant.

However, all this changes when you try to read a PDF on the device – for example, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Follow that link and you’ll see a wonderful old book, owned by someone called Russell Gray in February 1884, and now the property of Harvard. Download the PDF, and stick it onto the Kindle, and you still get this old feel. Unlike the BeBook, however, the Kindle copes admirably with this format: pages load in less than a second (unlike the BeBook, which took four seconds or so). And – more importantly for me – the extra inch of screen makes the facsimile much clearer to read. If only I could get rid of the progress bar at the bottom it would be clearer still. Please, Amazon?

Finally, I haven’t had it long enough to fully comment on the battery – only to say that it looks significantly worse than the BeBook; but then, that wifi doesn’t come cheap. You can turn the wifi off in the menu – and I have – but it looks as if it’ll still outlast the longest flight possible.

Oh, and if you’ve got a Kindle 3 already? Go to the home page, and hold down Shift + Alt + M for a little easter egg… (grin)

So far, then: most impressed.

As per my disclosure, links to Amazon in this article are affiliate links. Products won’t cost you any more as a result, and I might earn enough to buy a small pint of very cheap beer.

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It's no secret that Twitter for iPhone (née Tweetie) is often regarded as the gold standard for mobile apps -- it blends functionality, performance, and usability together with a dash of playful quirkiness that works so well Twitter just bought the app and hired developer Loren Brichter in back in April. That delayed the release of an iPad version, but Twitter's finally come through -- and as you'd expect, Twitter for iPad does things just as uniquely as its sister apps on the iPhone and Mac. In fact, we'd go so far as to say a few of its interface conventions will become as commonplace as slide-to-refresh, which was first introduced in Tweetie for iPhone -- but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Read on for more!

Continue reading Twitter for iPad review

Twitter for iPad review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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