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Last year October, Chapters introduced the Kobo Vox, the ultimate e-reader in their Kobo line of products. Although Indigo technically no longer owns Kobo, the Vox was designed to provide a vehicle for the greater distribution of their e-books. Undoubtedly feeling the competitive pressure from both Amazon and Apple, Indigo has released this latest Kobo as a full Android tablet. This is excellent news for the self-employed, small business owners, contractors who are always watching their bottom line and often face information overload. This new Kobo is approximately half the price of the iPad. It does lack a few features such as cameras but has more than enough power to be fully functional. I should also mention at this point this article can also be applied to any third party generic Android tablet. Just make sure you have at least 512 RAM and at least Android 2.2 OS. I picked the Vox because it is widely available. This article will lay out a step-by-step process to turn the playful little Kobo into a lean, mean, lime green, Indie Media Machine (IMM). It already handles books and magazines obviously but I'm going to show you how you can use it to also review PDFs, long e-mail commentary, podcast reports, twitter updates and video interviews. Step 1: Get it Go into any Indigo, Coles, Chapters bookstore and pick up a Vox. They are $200 and come in black, green, baby blue and pink. Not being secure enough in my manhood to choose the blue or pink AND knowing that black is really only for analysts, auditors and actuaries, my only choice was Lime Green….seriously. Step 2: Learn it Once you're sitting in a WiFi area and have it plugged in and updated, it's time to set it up. The Vox is an Android tablet and specifically runs the newest Android phone software 2.3. If you're unfamiliar with how to use Android, there are two basic concepts to fully understand: 1. Touchscreen Basics. To move apps, you simply hold down the icon and drag them to another page or drag them to the trash can, which only appears when you press down one of the icons. To get rid of the large Kobo icon for example, simply press down on it and drag it to the trash can to free up screen space. You can access most recent actions by dragging down the bar from the top of the screen. This is where you see the time and battery charge level. You have five screens -scrolling sideways- that you can fill with icons. 2. The three icons on the border at the bottom are Escape, Menu, and HomeScreen. Escape reverses you out of what you are currently doing, Menu lists additional options for whatever screen or app is open and HomeScreen returns you to the home screen. One of the included books on the Vox is, of course, the Vox Manual. That is also a good resource to review. Step 3: Set up Hit the Menu icon and choose Settings, then choose Applications. Then tick off the box that says Unknown Sources. This is important because the Kobo cannot access the regular Android Market. Step 4: Download Some Apps Scroll sideways from the HomeScreen, and you will see a bunch of secondary app icons, including YouTube, Twitter, Scrabble, etc. Press the 'Get Apps' icon and it will take you to the Kobo app market. You can poke through the apps but to get your IMM set up you to search and download the following apps: (the links are to the apps' website, not the app store) * Pulse Pulse is a news aggregator that combines your Facebook entries with your Twitter and RSS Reader feeds. Don't have any and maybe don't know what I am talking about? Then it has many built-in news websites for you to browse and customize as you like. Just use the Search function to look for websites you like and it will automatically load the relevant RSS feed if available. Just as important, it also allows you to forward articles you like to Facebook, another's email etc. This is a slick, slick app. * Evernote You want this. You may not think you do, but you do. It's a permanent, searchable, accessible personal archive for your saved websites, information and notes and documents, PDFs and email. Once you set it up you can access the articles from your laptop, Blackberry, iPod Touch, just about everywhere. * Springpad You also want this one. Yes. This one you can use to track books, ideas, tasks, websites, mutual funds, anything you specify. It looks overwhelming because it is so comprehensive and flexible. Don't fret. Download it, set it up and let your teenager know you now “pwn websites”. * RepliGo This is a PDF reader that streamlines reviewing PDF reports and documents. Most PDFs it can reformat to make more readable on the smaller screen. * OfficeSuite viewer This app will open Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets. There is a paid version that allows you to actually edit and create those documents. But for now, we just browsing. * Textplus This little program allows you to send text messages to phones anywhere in Canada or the US for free, open group chats, etc. This is more useful than you think since the Vox is running on a wifi connection and not a data plan so texting is normally not an option. * Nimbuzz This allows you to access AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, Yahoo messenger, GTalk etc all under one app. * TweetCaster There is a lot of talk about using social media for marketing. Maybe but here is a simpler use of Twitter: Think of it an excellent news wire if you 'Follow' the companies, writers, products, places and things you are interested in (follow @KevinCork to get started). * AngryBirds You may as well see what all the fuss is about, set aside five or six hours… a day. Step 5: Use it So once you have all these apps downloaded, then look for the app icon 'Downloaded' and tap each app to install them. You can then slowly add them to whatever screen you want. You can also draw the top bar down to see recent actions like downloaded apps. You will probably also want to set up your Gmail and your regular email accounts. If you don't have a Gmail account set up then it is worth to set one up, just so you have a place to forward all those emails reports, update documents and PDFs so they don't clutter your work Inbox. You can also of course sync your contacts to the Gmail site and access them from the Vox If you don't email files to your Vox, then you will have to figure out how to load something like Dropbox, Box.net to then sync your files to the Vox automatically. You can also use the above mentioned Evernote to store all needed files in the Cloud and access them from the app but for that to work you need also have Evernote on your desktop computer. I'd actually recommend this anyway since it is such an excellent way to build a virtual library of saved web pages. You may also want to add games, music, photos and of course, books. Aside from games that you get on the market, most of these others you will need to plug the Vox into the computer and load them to the removable drive that pops up or use the YouTube app and watch amazing classic movies and videos. Now, once you are app`d up and locked and loaded, you use your IMM as a tiny, portable and accessible library of needed material. It can literally hold thousands of documents, PDFs, emails and with apps like Gmail and Evernote you can have access to millions more. Download what you need, read it over, make notes on it and then forward it to staff or a client. The same flexibility applies to any website you visit. You can forward it to another`s email or your Springpad or Evernote account, share it on Twitter or Facebook, etc. This means that when you are sitting on the bus or train, when you have fifteen minutes between appointments or are sitting waiting for a lunch companion you can whip out your lime green IMM and quickly catch up on the latest, heart-stopping, ground pounding industry newsletter! Pure PDF pwnage!

 

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