Michael Sheldon's Stuff

Michael Sheldon (mike at mikeasoft dot com)

September 12, 2012

Firestarter now called Erudite and version 1.2 released
Mike @ 3:58 pm

Erudite displaying a book fullscreen

Overview

Erudite makes it possible to use Amazon’s Cloud Reader service under MeeGo. You can either read books online, or download them for reading offline. Your progress in a book is kept synchronised between your N9 and other Kindle devices.

Name change

Unfortunately since Amazon own a wide range of “Fire” themed trademarks, and the application’s operation is heavily related to the same areas that these trademarks are used in, Amazon couldn’t really let me carry on using the name “Firestarter”. It was entirely my own foolishness that caused this hassle by going for a “clever” name without even considering the potential trademark implications, thankfully the lawyer who got in touch with me was very understanding and patiently helped me work through the various issues. I’m just glad that Amazon handled everything so amicably, rather than wading in with heavy-handed legal threats as some companies might.

So from now on the application is called “Erudite”, a name that’s clever in a different way.

New features

Added in 1.2:

  • The application name has now changed to Erudite.
  • A number of buttons and menu entries have been made larger and easier to press.
  • You can now switch in to and out of fullscreen mode by pressing a toggle button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Added in 1.1:

  • The application can now start up completely offline. You still need to be online for the very first usage and to download books, but once you’ve downloaded some books you can now always access them offline.
  • A progress indicator shows when the application is loading.
  • Keyboard bug is fixed. Previously you needed to tap on text fields twice to bring up the virtual keyboard, now it pops up on the first tap.

Download

Available for the Nokia N9 and N950 in the Ovi Store: http://store.ovi.com/content/307241


11 Comments »

  1. Cool: the requiring-to-be-online to start was particularly frustrating. Latest update sounds really useful!

    Comment by Andrew Flegg — September 13, 2012 @ 7:57 pm

  2. Thanks for this app!
    Will there be a Nemo build of the new version as well?

    Comment by Martin Grimme — September 20, 2012 @ 6:23 pm

  3. Martin – I’ll see about making a new Nemo build next month, I want to sort out all the things that are stopping it from being accepted into the apps repository first though and don’t have much free time until October.

    Comment by Mike — September 21, 2012 @ 11:29 am

  4. For those of us, who started with Firestarter and would like to buy Erudite, is there an alternate way to download and pay for the newest version? In my case, Ovi Store works only for free downloads and not for commercial downloads.

    Sorry for the troubles.

    Comment by Phil — September 28, 2012 @ 11:52 am

  5. Hi Phil, send me an e-mail and we can work something out.

    Comment by Mike — September 28, 2012 @ 5:55 pm

  6. Will this support bookmarks, notes and highlighting? Can i see these on the website as per what Kindle Cloud Reader does?

    Comment by Sam — November 3, 2012 @ 4:06 am

  7. Hi Sam, yep, bookmarks notes and highlighting should all work correctly, and any changes you make through Erudite will appear on the cloud reader website.

    Comment by Mike — November 3, 2012 @ 9:46 am

  8. Just wanted to say thanks. I purchased on the Ovi store and this really filled in the one gap I had left software wise on my N9!

    Comment by neowolf — February 20, 2013 @ 8:43 pm

  9. neowolf – Glad you’re enjoying it 🙂

    Comment by Mike — February 21, 2013 @ 10:57 am

  10. Hi,

    I really would like to buy this app (Erudite) in Ovi Store, but, unfortunately, I can’t purchase the paid ones, only the free content. Already open several occurrences with the Nokia support, but unsuccessfully.

    Kindly ask you to inform whether I can purchase through another channel (i.e.: Paypal), because I do not believe Nokia will solve the issues that are affecting me.

    Thank you in advance.

    Comment by Marcelo Marciano — March 11, 2013 @ 4:27 am

  11. Hi Marcelo, send me an email (mike@mikeasoft.com) and we can work something out.

    Comment by Mike — March 11, 2013 @ 9:48 am

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