Safari Books online. A Blackberry curve. One a kick butt service, the other a kick butt phone (ok, debatable…but its pretty good for Verizon) but never the twain shall meet. Or will they? I just got an email from Safari touting their new m.safaribooksonline.com site, so I went and tried it out on my Curve’s little screen. I have to admit it looked pretty darn good to me.
[caption id="attachment_107" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Main Screen - Safari Books Online mobile"]
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The top picture is the main Safari Books interface after login. Here you can search or go to various preset selections. I chose My Favorites.
[caption id="attachment_110" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="My Favorites - Safari Books Online mobile"]
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The second Picture is the My Favorites screen. Notice the green dot indicating that the book is mobile friendly. I didn’t encounter any non-friendly books in the short time I was playing around (before I started reading!).
[caption id="attachment_111" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Chapter 1 - Safari Books Online mobile"]
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The third picture is, of course, one of the books I had in my list. This shot is of chapter 1, scrollable to the end. Selecting 1 takes you to the previous chapter (the introduction in this case), 2 takes you to the next chapter, and 3 to the bottom/end of the current chapter. I found the text to be easy to read, though I am not certain how long I’d be able to focus on such a tiny screen without getting a raging headache. I plan on using it for those “in-between” moments, so that puts it in a 15-30 minutes of use category, which should be doable. If you’ve got a safaribooksonline account and an internet capable mobile phone (they claim support for Nokia, BlackBerry, iPhone,
and Windows Mobile) head on over to m.safaribooksonline.com and take a look.
