, Touch Press is unquestionably the front-runner among app producers. The London-based company has set out to “forever transform the act of reading,
Gems and Jewels, which highlights holdings from Chicago’s Field Museum
The Waste Land, which includes a stunning reading of T. S. Eliot’s iconic poem by Irish actress Fiona Sha
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (Moonbot Studios).
Beware Madame La Guillotine (Time Traveler Tours, LLC), an audio tour of Paris that stops at the French Revolution’s most significant sites
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road at an impressionable age. The app (Penguin/1KStudios) offers the complete text of the seminal work supported by a rich variety of print resources, video and audio recordings, and visuals culled from Viking’s archives and the Kerouac estate.
Spot the Dot (Ruckus Mobile Media/Unicorn Labs) embodies the medium’s potential to create entertaining educational materials for all children, including those with special needs.
. Al Gore’s Our Choice (Rodale), which targets the climate crisis, was first published in 2009, and this app (Push Pop Press/Melcher Media) updates the book
video introduction by the author sets the agenda, while a cogent text, video clips, fluid interactive graphics, and spectacular photos address our world’s most pressing environmental issues
Nosy Crow’s Cinderella: A 3-D Fairy Tale puts a fresh, modern spin on the classic slipper story. The app features animated scenes and reader-controlled text speed. And if it’s interactivity you’re looking for, this one can’t be beat.
Edward Bell’s Journey to the Exoplanets (Farrar/Scientific American) explores the little-known planets beyond our solar system. The app offers many cool options, including a regularly updated “Exoplanet Feed,” animated explanations of key concepts, and gyroscopic views of these far-flung orbs
"The ability to easily create and share information is an essential requirement for businesses and classrooms alike. Since many computers and mobile media devices now support digital reader applications, the use of digital books as a means of content delivery has dramatically increased."
Thinking twice about our use of digital media, what our practices are doing to us, and what we are doing to each other, is one of the most important priorities people have today-and Douglas Rushkoff gives us great guidelines for doing that thinking. Read this before and after you Tweet, Facebook, email or YouTube. -Howard Rheingold