First of all I would say the name is very good, "PDF expert" straight away tells you what the app does. I personally had some experience about that. I used to use bitcommet for ptop downloading. After I switch to mac, I started using Vuze. Even though these 2 apps works exactly the same, I find using Vuze more painful that bitcommet. In the end , I think the reason is that, well Vuze with its blue frog icon, does not make me so certain that its function is to download stuff :D
K, that was just personal preference :D
Secondly, i think being able to connect to dropbox adds an immense amount of advantage to this app. It become a really great tool to catch up with project-related readings. Those readings usually do not require very indepth understanding, so can just happily read on bus and annotate those things you are not sure or stuff. Really really useful.
Another thing that caught my attention is that prof and Joshua was talking about things like books are going to get obsolete. I totally agree that part of the reason we buy this idea or not is related to our reading habit. Honestly I hate reading on my computer so , ya, i dun think books are going to disappear.
But there is a second part to the story. Digress a bit here, this reason is totally unrelated to how good the tools are that we use to read ebooks. But rather, books carries some value that other electronic devices do not.
Imagine you walk in some guys room, he has like 3 whole shelves of books. Ignore the factor of look :D what will you think about that guy? And imagine you walk in some guys room he has like 10 computers connected to each other, what would you think? Even if people do not read books anymore, it will not be the death of books :D Coz there will always be ppl buying Shakespeare act cute ma :D So I think books will be with us for a long time lah.
Thats about all I have to say abt PDF expert :D ty all :D
Hahaha, I like your comment about the books not dying. Now imagine you walk into a guy's room, and he only has an iPad on the desk, because it handles everything. How cool is that? :)
ReplyDeleteBack on topic, I do agree with you about the naming. I commented on another blog that his suggestion of dropping the word PDF (hence making the app 'Expert') would serve a good, 'cool' purpose, but I guess it depends on the target audience. 'PDF Expert' tells people hey, I'm an expert in PDF and yes, it really is. 'Expert' tells people 'I can do a lot of things' but this might make people look at it as jack of all trades, master of none. Again it's the target audience.
haha i would think the pad is cool the person is just rich :P
ReplyDeleteanyway , app names are really really important sometimes i feel :D i suppose if the buyer is really savvy then he would care about the name, but for normal guy like me, i really rely one the name to tell me everything
Totally agree with your view on physical books!
ReplyDeleteI couldn't really elaborate the advantages of books in the lecture due to time constraints, but one of the features of books that I really like is the feel when you browse: you can see your position in the book judging from the thickness of the remaining pages.
A recent article from NY Times expressed the same sentiment: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/books/review/the-mechanic-muse-from-scroll-to-screen.html
yea, i do agree that books will stay. Even if the children of tomorrow grows up in a world of digital contents but newspaper will stay. Digital contents are straining to the eyes. Your eyes will get tired after a while. Books also give a more tangible feeling that digital books cannot replicate. I also prefer printing notes to study than to study from my computer.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I always believe that nothing is gonna replace the physical books. But Joshua has the point saying that it depends very much on the learner's habits. Physical books would properly stay in the future but its influence to the learning habit may gradually reduce.
ReplyDeleteThis scenario is very hypothetical but I believe that if iPads are issued free to everyone (let say in NUS only), the learning habit will shift immediately and significantly! Personally, since I got my iPad from CS3216 (sadly only for one semester), I've started to use it to replace my printed notes and assignments (not ebook!) Browsing the assignment questions is really fun and convenience during the tutorial and lectures. And mine is not the only iPads in the room! Some (rich dudes!) also use iPads to read notes.
Okay, but I still refer books for long reading, at least for now!