Wow for Wowio.

Whenever there's a new ebook service or reader I usually like to check it out. In most cases I'm not very impressed and quickly lose interest. Sometimes, I'll actually keep going back and trying new things, but never be much more impressed. That has been the case, for example, with the Microsoft Reader. There are a few products, though, that I've been sufficiently impressed with that I could get into a long term habit of using them. One is the New York Times reader. Not the website, but an app you dowload and install on your pc and use to load the content of the paper. On a laptop or tablet pc it's pretty darn good. If they start making for my iPaq I think I'll be hooked for good.

Since they don't make it for the iPaq, the alternative is AvantGo. This is a sync and go program that gets you access to content from a number of good sources, the Guardian, the NY Times, and The Sporting News, to name a few. Today I took this handy little thing with me to the evil empire coffee shop and was able to read several articles from today's paper while I waited for my coffee to cool enough to drink it.

And finally, and the inspiration for this post (which is really, you know, just a test of a new posting technology) is Wowio. You can get free, and I do mean FREE, books from Wowio. They're formatted as pdf files, so you can read them on any device that will run Acrobat Reader. Note, they don't reflow, so you have to reduce text size to the point of barely readable on the ipaq. The selection is not as good a I'd wish for, but they have some really good content. And they do seem to be adding new things over time. So, this is worth checking out. Wowio.

Would you like to Get Live?

Well, if you want to you can download the betas at get.live.com. I notice that they seem to be going with the "Windows" name rather than Microsoft. What should we be reading into that?