[gui-talk] read2go review

[Hoffman, Allen]

Just sending this along in case anyone else is thinking about using
read2go to read their bookshare.org content in the near term.
 
First:
 
I suck at using the Apple I Phone, IPod, or IPod.  but I have persevered
and have improved in my abilities.  I have, with help of my kids,
learned the little flicking and tapping nonintuitive things to make
VoiceOver read me most things--including read2go.  For those  who don't
know, read2go is an application to read your bookshare Daisy books, or
other Daisy books which don't have locks on them.
 
Second:
 
The IPad, IPod, or I phone you use will use batteries fairly quickly
reading books, so be ready to recharge more often than ten hours as IPad
batter life seems to indicate.
 
third:
 
the set up is easy.  Select the read2go app, get past the tiny buttons
on the app store to purchase, and it loads itself.  Setting the options
for speech is easy, double tapping the voice speed and then flicking it
above 100% makes for good reading speeds.  You can ignore most of the
visual options if you are only listening.  Set up your account on
bookshare to login by putting in your user name and password, and
telling it to remember you makes things very easy.  If you have issues
with this due to sharing your IPad with others, I think the thought of
entering this when you download new books will change your mind as the
keyboard on the I Phone or IPad is sloooooooooooow to operate if you ask
me.
 
Fourth:
 
Once set up, finding books is pretty straightforward.  You can select
bookshelf, and then categories, select recently added or such to get the
list of new books.  When you double tap a book that comes up on the list
you can find the download button and "bing" you have the book on the I
Phone/IPod, or IPad.  its quick, average time I saw was about 3 seconds.
You don't have to go through unzipping or any such either.  No copying
to d3evice, just open and read in bookshelf.  It asks if you want to
read the book now or not, but the buttons are kind of small so finding
them by tapping around is annoying and flicking is faster.
 
fifth:
 
Reading is pretty good, but, my only real gripe, is the play/pause
button is small--in the middle "mostly" of the bottom of the screen.
Play/pause seems like it should be at least as large a button as next
page, etc.  Navigation by page, or other level is pretty easy, but I
found the play/pause button sometimes gets confused with next page, but
simply tapping the next page button once to hear it spoken seems to
resolve this oddity.
 
That's it.  I recommend the Read2Go app.  use an old I Phone as you can
get them cheap now and you can use Wi-Fi most of the time and not have a
cell plan.  use an old IPad 1 and it will work fine.  
 
 
As I get better at the I Phone voiceOver interface I plan to document my
learning so others who are as dense as I in learning might benefit by
simple tips.  For example, it took me a while to understand the simple
thing that putting three fingers on the screen and pushing them
horizontally left to right moves pages backwards, not forwards.  It's
basically the motion you use if flipping an actual book page.
Additionally, scrolling seems backwards to me unless you think about
pushing paper on screen in the direction you want the text to go, then
things are OK.  To scroll when reading a table you can put three fingers
on the screen and push up--exposing the text below by scrolling it in to
view from the bottom.  This seems counter intuitive to me as you say
things like scroll down, which seems like you would push down, but you
push up as that the way you want words to flow!
 
anyway, hope someone gets some use from this review and tips on
VoiceOver usage.  this still feels like when I moved from DOS to
Windows--Windows felt like learning little magic tricks to accomplish
simple things I used to "tell" DOS to do.  So, remembering to single
click some things while double clicking others took time to remember,
but finally got burned in to me to become second nature.  Hopefully I
will learn Android well enough to share tips as well soon now that I'm
finally making some progress with VoiceOver.
 
 
 
 
Allen Hoffman