Everything Bianca

iPhone Application: Choice of the Dragon - Free and LOADS of fun!

A great choose your own adventure book / text based RPG. You play a dragon who pursues a life ... of well... I chose a life of hoarding riches. I made a few mistakes along the way, sustained a few battle scars, did battle with my enemy. I didn't get much in the way of infamy, but I think I made a nice bed to lie on.

Highlights? I chose my gender as female and I noticed that many of my enemies were also female. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I play as a male or as "gender neutral."

I think I'll play again, but this time, less forgiving and evasive. There are a lot of 'what ifs' I'll have fun playing out.

This story seems to be the first offering by the developer Choice of Games, but I'm looking forward to many more offerings.

I said on Monday, "I'd buy a kindle if I didn't already have an iPhone."

It was with great excitement that I downloaded the Kindle app in the App Store [for free, mind you].

Reading on a small screen. I was already doing this with eReader. It doesn't bother me.

Prefering Paper Books. I don't. I actually prefer audio books, but not every book has a good reader, and I do prefer a 'lively' reader. So, the lack of the "computer reader" that comes with the kindle is no loss at all.

No newspapers / magazines. No problem. I wasn't interested in those anyway.

Purchasing method. I go to the amazon website, find a kindle book, purchase (or preview!) it, and it syncs with my iPhone. Now, the eReader app has a fancier font / color, but I'm sure with time will come improvements. No, I can't buy books through the app, but this isn't the Kindle. It's the Kindle-lite.

Previewing. This is the greatest thing, really. You can check out a chapter of the book before deciding to buy it. Now, this is a true tribute back to the book buying experience, standing in the book store, reading those first few pages, waiting to see if something catches your interest. I've missed this. Buying books through the internet (the paper kind) robbed me of this experience.

Interface. Maybe I'm just easy to please, but I flick my finger across the screen, the page turns. It bookmarks where I leave off. I don't need anything else to read a book. No, you can't go widescreen, but I've never tried to read that way in the first place.

All in all, I'm incredibly happy with this offering. I have more eBooks available to me, and more ways of reading them.

One thing is amiss, Amazon says this will hopefully raise Kindle sales, but this app has finally put the death knell in any tickling I had to get one. I now have *everything* from it I wanted - the ability to read kindle-books from Amazon.