Stanza - the best iPhone/iPod Touch Application

Update - 28th April 2009 

Lexcycle, the company that produced Stanza, has just announced that they have been acquired by Amazon.  I hope that that is not an anti-competitive move by Amazon. I would have preferred Lexcycle to remain independent but I suppose it is hard to refuse when a big company offers you sacks of money.

ReadWriteWeb notes that

"Stanza has been a proponent of open eBook standards like EPUB, while Amazon has always kept its system relatively closed. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Lexcycle announced that it was working together with Adobe to develop an open standard for eBook catalogs, which would make it easier for smaller publishers to offer their books through applications like Stanza. Overall, this seems like a curious acquisition by Amazon.

It will be interesting to see how Amazon handles Stanza. If they just leave it in a corner to die it will tells us a lot about Amazon.

 Stanza

Wired has a glowing review of the Stanza iPhone/iPod Touch application. I agree with everything the author says. For me, this is the best app available to date. Read the review to see what Stanza does.

 

  

I had noticed Stanza when it first appeared in the Apple Apps Store but had not appreciated just what it does.  I suspect a lot of people have done the same and passed over the app without realising what it did, or how well it did it.

The app is free and once it is installed you can download free books directly to your device. I don't think that the phone/touch plus Stanza will bring e-books to the tipping point.  Reading on the phone/touch is ok for a chapter at a time. E-books and Stanza will really come into their  own if Apple bring out a larger touch screen device [the iPad?]. Then the Kindle will have a serious competitor.

Added 5th September 2008

Since I wrote the above Stanza has added the following

Summaries or full contents of ten publications including the Atlantic, NYT, Economist, Le Monde, WSJ, Time and USA Today.

A long list of public domain books from Munsey.com

O'Reilly have also described how their ebook bundles can be read via Stanza.

Stanza is clearly under active development and new features are appearing regularly.

Added 2nd October 2008

"Stanza, iPhone’s free e-book reader application, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and is installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to the app's creator Lexcycle.
This number is greater than a recent Citigroup estimate of 380,000 Kindles that it predicts Amazon will sell in 2008, reports Forbes."  Wired

21st October 2008

Stanza has added nine new features. Some of them are just cosmetic, such as cover flow views of book covers.

Others are more significant, such as the ability to click through hyperlinks in book or magazine pages.

Added December 2008

Random House are offering free full length books through Stanza.

"The Random House Publishing Group and Lexcycle, Inc., jointly announced today that Random House and Ballantine will be the first major book publishers to make full-length books available for free on iPhone through Lexcycle Stanza..


This promotion will allow  Stanza users to enjoy free eBooks from a varied list of authors including Alan Furst, Julie Garwood, Charlie Huston, David Liss, Laurie Notaro, Arthur Phillips and Simon Rich. " link

This is an excellent offer. I recommend the book by Alan Furst. He writes very atmospheric thrillers about life in Europe before and during WW2.

Added March 2009

Lots of new features. link