It’s not a game, but the iPad app of TS Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” is the best implementation of print, video and audio we’ve ever seen. It defines what “multi-media” should be.
The app has the five-sections of the poem in very readable text and a reproduction of the original draft showing Ezra Pound’s edits in 1922. A complete set of notes, including some of Eliot’s, help explain the poem’s more obscure passages for those who are interested.
There are recordings of six different people reading the poem including two that Eliot did, one by Viggo Mortensen, the “Lord of the Rings” star and one by the Obi-Wan Kenoba Alec Guinness.
The video of Irish actress Fiona Carter speaking the entire poem in front of a burning fireplace in a Georgian home in Dublin is alone worth the $14 the app costs. Her performance is remarkable, inspiring even, in part because it’s such a verbal poem but mainly due to her animated performance. She does the foreign languages too.
It has an image gallery and interviews with more than 30 people.
The London-based publisher Faber & Faber where Eliot worked, the BBC and Touch Press produced the app. Perhaps the two will do other Eliot pieces in the near future.
As Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock might have said:
“Let us go then, you and I,
To the Apple store and buy.”
What better use for all this technology is there?
Toshiba’s 10.1-inch, Wi-Fi-only Thrive tablet has reached the pre-order shelves of Amazon.com, Office Depot’s Web site and Toshiba’s digital storefront.
The tablet runs for $430, $480 and $580 for the 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models, respectively. The devices run Android 3.1, have two cameras and feature a wider variety of ports than most tablets on the market.
The Thrive differentiates itself somewhat by including a Log Me In app that allows people to connect to home PCs from the tablet as well as a file manager that allows users to search through USBs and SD cards attached to the device.
The crowded market is bulging at the seams and there’s still no official launch date set for the Thrive.
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