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Archive for IPad

Great Free Fiction

Feb08

Who doesn’t love FREE books? My novel The Darkening Dream is still free on Kindle until midnight. So if you missed it, grab it now! Yesterday it enjoyed massive success reaching rates of over 20 copies downloaded per minute and hitting #4 in all Kindle sales, #2 in Fiction, and #1 in Fantasy!

Then flipping the tables around after so many helped me with the promotion of my own novel here are some other recommended free novels from “friends of the family” (my online family).

 

TWO DAYS ONLY: Wednesday, February 8th and Thursday, February 9th! Come and get ‘em!

 

For those with a love of YA paranormal: Family Magic (The Hayle Coven novels, #1) Sixteen year old Sydlynn Hayle is the daughter of a powerful witch and a demon lord but she just wants to be ordinary. Find it HERE.

 

And for those who like a thrill in their YA fiction: Run (The Hunted, #1) Reid thinks life has gone back to normal when his sister rescues him from the foster system. All that changes when he is kidnapped and dumped in the wilderness, forced to run from those who want to kill him. Find it HERE.

 

Don’t have a Kindle? No problem! Download a FREE app for your computer, iPad, smartphone and more!

 

Family Magic

 

Raising the Demon

“Haralthazar,” my mother glided closer to the statue, “we summon you this third night of Power, nine days and nine nights from Samhain Eve, to tighten our bond with you and your realm.” She knelt at the foot of the altar, the picture of the submissive handmaiden. Could she be any more ridiculous? Seriously. “My love, come and be welcome.”

The blinding flash that leapt from her to the statue continued to pour out of her in a deep blue rush of light. I turned my head slightly to the side, squinting in the glare, grateful for the edge of the cowl and the shadow it made. The whole room started to thrum, the floor vibrating with condensed magic as Mom used the energy we had given her to make the doorway that would let my father through.

Sixteen-year-old Sydlynn Hayle is the daughter of a powerful witch and a demon lord of the seventh plane. The trouble is, she just wants to be ordinary. Syd struggles to survive the minefield of her new high school while being torn between her attraction to football hero Brad Peters and the darkly mysterious Quaid Moromond. When her coven comes under attack, Syd is forced to face the fact only her power can save her family’s magic.

 

What readers are saying about Family Magic:

“This book has everything. Great family drama, hot boys, magic, witches, demons and difficult choices. This is one of my new favorite books of 2011 and I CANNOT WAIT to read the rest of the series.”

“With a fantastic, empathetic heroine, plenty of magic, an intriguing mystery and incorporating themes involving the search of self, familial relationships, duty and free will, Family Magic is an enchanting and enjoyable read.”

“I think Syd is one of my all-time favorite characters. She is funny and snarky but has a fierce love for her family. I am ready to follow Syd’s journey through this series. I was hooked from the first paragraph. I thoroughly enjoyed Family Magic, and I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys paranormal novels.”

 

(You can read the full reviews on Amazon.com)

 

Run

 

Kidnapped

 

Alone, Reid gasps in one deep breath, another. It hurts his ribs, his lungs. He manages to roll over on his right side and regrets it. His shoulder screams in protest. Still, he is finally able to wriggle his numb hands loose from what holds him and claws at the cloth around his eyes.

Darkness. But not complete. The moon is up. Trees loom over him, the smell of spruce and fresh air so sharp it almost hurts. He jerks at the plastic ties around his ankles while. his vision swims through a veil of pain-laden tears. He manages somehow to force his screaming hands to work the ties loose and he is free.

Sixteen-year-old Reid thinks life is back to normal. His sister Lucy pulls herself together and cuts him free from a year of foster care. She promises to take care of him, that her new boss and her new life are what they both needed to start again. Until Reid is taken in the middle of the night, dumped in a wild stretch of forest far from home with no idea why he is there. Lost and afraid, he learns to run from the hunters who prowl the darkness, their only pleasure chasing down kids like him. And killing them.

 

What readers are saying about Run:

“The fear, the thrill, the emotion that comes through in the writing is amazing. There is never a dull moment in this story of survival.”

“If you’re a fan of YA books that make your heart pound with the unknown and leave you cringing at places (but in a totally cool kinda way) then Run’s the book for you.”

“Reid is such a great strong character and when the story ends, we are left begging for what is to come in the next of the series. This story was unique and SUPER fast-paced! It was a great festival of suspense.”

 

(You can read the full reviews on Amazon.com)

 

Thank you for taking the time to check them out!
Happy reading!

 

About the Author: Patti Larsen is a middle grade, young adult and adult author with a passion for the paranormal. Her YA thriller series, The Hunted, is available now. The first four books of The Hayle Coven series, Family Magic, Witch Hunt, Demon Child and The Wild are also out now. Her YA paranormal novel, Best Friends Forever, and steampunk series, Blood and Gold, are due early in 2012. She is a full time writer and a part time teacher of her Get Your Book Done program. Patti lives on the East Coast of Canada with her very patient husband and four massive cats.

 

You can find her:

On her website

On Facebook

Her writing blog

On Twitter

On Amazon.com

On Goodreads

Related posts:

  1. The Darkening Dream – Free on Kindle
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Amazon.com, Best Friends Forever, Family Magic, Free Books, Hayle, Hunted, IPad, Kindle, Patti Larsen, Run, Syd, Sydlynn Hayle, Young-adult fiction

11 reasons you should buy The Darkening Dream

Dec26

1. It’s a great book.

2. It’s only $2.99 — but the price might go up soon.

3. You loved Crash Bandicoot.

4. You loved Jak & Daxter.

5. I was a great boss, friend, or co-worker.

6. My vampires don’t sparkle.

7. There are several beheadings.

8. Decrepit ancient Egyptian gods are cool.

9. The girl on the cover is really cute.

10. I handed you a glass of $100 wine at some point.

11. The book includes a “cesarian by vampire scene.”

And 4 refutations to your protests:

1. I’m poor – but it’s only $2.99.

2. I don’t have a Kindle – you can read Kindle books on a smartphone, iPad, or the web.

3. I’m too lazy to click twice – bad excuse.

4. I don’t read – do you really want to admit that?

Buy it now!

Then after you do, retweet, share, like, or otherwise spam this post or a link to the book on all of your social media! 🙂

Related posts:

  1. The Darkening Dream for Christmas!
  2. The Darkening Dream – Soliciting Reviews
  3. The Darkening Dream
  4. All Things Change
  5. On Writing: Passes and Plots
By: agavin
Comments (6)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Amazon Kindle, Andy Gavin, Crash Bandicoot, E-book, IPad, Jak & Daxter, Kindle, Naughty Dog, The Darkening Dream

The Darkening Dream for Christmas!

Dec25

As a surprise move, I’m stealth launching The Darkening Dream — right now! — although only the Kindle edition.

If your stocking has been stuffed with a brand new Kindle, or you already have one, or you read on the Kindle app anywhere (iPad, Android, etc.)…

Buy it now!

Stealthy introductory price of $2.99. Which is certainly a bargain given that it took me two busy years to write and a lot of work to produce the layout, cover, etc.

So, you might ask (after you have purchased your copy — hint hint), what is a stealth launch?

Well, firstly, while the book is totally done and the E-Book version is all typeset, I’ve only put up the Kindle version. In the next week or so I’ll try and get all the other E-Book variants up (B&N, iTunes, etc.). Also, I’m still finishing up the paper editions. These will look great but they take a bit longer because I have to wait for physical proofs (5 days), make changes, then wait again, etc.

But also, I’m bucking the marketing machine that over the last thirty years has moved more and more to “big launch and then go away” mentality. Pretty much all big products: movies, albums, books etc. are marketed this way now. The marketeers build everything up for a big launch, hope for the best, then turn elsewhere a few scant weeks later. Truth is, this serves the marketeers more than it does the customer. Novels don’t age very fast. I enjoyed The Maltese Falcon as much as any book I read this year and it’s 81 years old. And the potential reader who happens to stumble upon my book doesn’t really care if it was published today — or last year. And it will take me time to collect reviews, get the other editions out, build up more web linkages etc. Later, when I have more of that in place I’ll begin the bigger marketing push.

So try it out and see what you think. Afterward, please review the book on Amazon. Reviews matter!

If you’re still not convinced:

Find out more about the book here
or read the sample chapters
or even check out a bit about the characters.

Related posts:

  1. The Darkening Dream – Soliciting Reviews
  2. All Things Change
  3. The Darkening Dream
  4. Christmas is for Dim Sum
  5. The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
By: agavin
Comments (8)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Android, Andy Gavin, Christmas, E-book, IPad, Kindle, The Darkening Dream

Book Review: Steve Jobs

Dec09

Title: Steve Jobs

Author: Walter Isaacson

Genre: Biography

Length: 656 pages

Read: Nov 23 – Dec 1, 2011

Summary: Character study, not history.

_

It’s no secret that I’m a huge Apple fanboy. I owned an Apple II+ back in January 1981, a first generation Mac, and countless Apple’s since. As of late 2011 there are no less than five Macs, five iPhones, and two iPads in my house. I use no PCs and even my router is an Airport Extreme! I even owned a Newton and, one summer, used a NeXT as my primary computer!

But there was more to the experience of reading this book than pure fanboydom. As a technologist, programmer, and all-around nerd I lived every detail of the personal computer revolution. So except for the very beginning of this book, set in the late sixties and early seventies (before my coherent time) I remember the launches, products and moments first hand.

This biography is primarily a character study. It seeks by detailing the man’s actions to try and quantify and qualify the traits that made him the iconoclast that he was. The hero of this book is not a particularly likable man or even that rational. He was a fierce demon of passionate opinion, amazing taste, and an extraordinary instance of talent at the intersection of technology and art. Steve was willing to look beyond the baggage of how things have been done and see the way in which people actually approach products in their everyday life. His passion lead him to place the fulfillment of his product vision — from top to bottom — above nearly everything else in his (or those around him’s) lives.

This certainly worked out pretty well for the products, although it did take about twenty years for him to really get his groove on and learn from some of his earlier mistakes and excesses. But he never lightened up. Still, since most of us didn’t have to live with him, but do get to live with his products, hundreds of millions came out winners.

There are tremendous lessons in the book about designing great products. About focus, about integration, about simplicity and usability. About not painting your factories funny colors or shipping with far to little memory or a ridiculously slow optical drive. There is what feels like a very detailed portrait of the personality. The prose is top notch and pulls you along effortlessly without getting in your face. Isaacson certainly had extensive personal access to the man (and his colleagues). It’s a good read.

But for me it was a bit lacking in detail. Mostly I think this came down to length and an emphasis on character. The book isn’t short, but the man’s life — despite ending tragically early — was full. Steve did a lot. A lot. So none of it is nearly as specific as I — with my extreme interest in the subject — would like. You can read this book and really have very little idea what the hell NeXT was doing for 10 years. I do. I used several of them. Wrote some code on them. Followed them from founding through launch and beyond. Shook my head at the product (too slow — too expensive — too incompatible!) and read an entire book just on the topic. So if you want to read this book to understand exactly how Jobs got ousted from Apple, or how he wrangled his way back into its boardroom — it’s there — but the details are compressed. Even things as major as the LaserWriter are given about two sentences in passing. I might go find some books that detail the blow by blows of the product decisions because… well… I guess I care.

Still, I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in products, creativity, technology, or even the psychology of forceful individuals. Likable or not, Steve was the defining idea-man of the computer age.

Read my eulogy for Steve or

Find out about my own books, here.

Or for my full list of book reviews.

Related posts:

  1. Steve Jobs is Dead :-(
  2. Book Review: The First American
  3. Book Review: Personal Demons
  4. Book Review: Lost It
  5. Book Review: Across the Universe
By: agavin
Comments (11)
Posted in: Books, Technology
Tagged as: Apple, Biography, Book Review, IPad, iPhone, Mac, NeXT, Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson

All Things Change

Oct05

So I’m about halfway through my last polish pass on my third major draft of Untimed. [Update 7:44pm, finished the polish] This is one of the umpteen revision passes. Only another day or two to go before I send it off again and get down to waiting for feedback (hands down my least favorite part of writing).

The book totally kicks ass BTW — biased opinion but true.

Anyway, this has me planning to spend my “downtime” (waiting) doing some really serious research on self-publishing my first novel, The Darkening Dream, and seeing if I can get it out there before the holiday season.

I’ve been following self-publishing blogs like A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing and Dean Wesley Smith for around a year. These guys — rhetoric aside — have made sense for some time but the arguments for traditional publishing grow lamer and lamer. Check out something like this, which lays it out there — albeit with a lot of flavor. Publishing is in the throws of the cataclysmic “doing digital” change that has or is shaking up all the media businesses. For example, in music the conversion from media (vinyl, cassette, CD) to MP3 during which the labels/studios stuck their head in the sand and found themselves nearly destroyed.

The fact is, the change is coming no matter what any big old-school companies want or try to do. Readers are well on their way to embracing ebooks, the rise of the tablet (aka iPad), and dropping smartphone and reader prices (order your Kindle Fire here! 250,000 preorders in 5 days!), has etched the writing on the wall (in blood). In a few short years print will make up 20 or less percent of the market. Paper books (and I say this as someone who has a two story library with over 15,000 of them!) aren’t going to vanish instantly, but they won’t be majorly relevant for novel sales.

So this basically guarantees completely and without any doubt that print revenues will crater, leaving publishers unable to support their big overheads. Borders (and nearly every independent) going bankrupt will just hasten this. Barnes and Noble is next. They tried with the Nook, but Amazon is going to crush them (again, Kindle fire, not to mention $79 regular Kindle). And publishers, being large old-school companies that employ LOTS of people under the old model are showing lots of signs of panic, but pretty much not a glimmer of adapting to the changing business.

But they won’t have one soon. Because without control of the gates to bookstores, they don’t control anything.

Right now they still make the better product. But as an author they:

1. tie up rights

2. take way too much money (15% vs 70% doing it yourself)

3. take way too long (15 months instead of like 1-2 to market!)

4. charge too much for ebooks

5. don’t actually do any marketing

6. often have really stupid ideas about “marketability” (like “sex doesn’t sell” or “vampires are over” *)

Eventually new meaner leaner packaging companies will make the murky ground of processing books a bit easier, but in the meantime. Time to get researching.

If anyone knows a kick ass indie book marketer, I’m looking to hire one (that’s the only part I can’t really do myself).

For more posts on writing, click here.

* From above: The Vampire Dairies and True Blood both prove both statements simultaneously asinine. And while TDD does have a vampire, he does not ever sparkle in daylight (900 years and he hasn’t seen a glimpse of it) and he is not in the least sexy. He is, however, frightfully smart, cautious, and happy to decorate your house with the entrails of your closest family members.

Related posts:

  1. The Darkening Dream
By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Books, Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Andy Gavin, Arts, E-book, IPad, Kindle, Kindle Fire, Nook, Publishing, Self-publishing, The Darkening Dream, Untimed, Writing, Writing & Editing

iPad 2 – Less is More

Mar25

Second Generation iPad

Being the consummate gadget man, I succumbed to the iPad 2 upgrade. In fact, I even ordered it at 1:01am, only 1 minute after they went on sale (at the Apple online store). Despite my jumping on the bandwagon, it took 13 days to come too. Mostly because I got a 3G model and those were slow to ship.

In any case, over the last year I have been pleasantly surprised at how incredibly useful the iPad is. I’ve already written one article about it, which is all still true. I owned a kindle before the iPad and found that to be of very limited use. Primarily it was good for long vacations where I previously would have dragged 20-30 paperbacks (weighing down my suitcases). With the kindle, just one little device covered that. And the thing had a tremendous battery life. But reading on it was annoying, mostly because the page turning was so slow and the screen only held about 60% of s single paperback page.

Enter the iPad. Seemingly just a giant iPhone, it’s actually radically different. As a book reader it holds a full page, and it’s fast. You can flick back and forth fast enough that it’s “browsable.” This was excruciating on the kindle. The screen is a little harder on the eyes, and the battery life only 10-12 hours instead of weeks, but the speed and size are more important to me. Plus, when you get an email, or feel the obsessive compulsive need to check today’s blog stats, you can just flip over instantly (IOS 4.2 on — so useful I was running the beta for months). It’s also just a darn comfortable way to do all your casual computer crap in bed, in the kitchen, watching tv, etc. There are a number of reasons why. Unlike even a laptop, it’s instant on, you can tuck it in the couch and grab it when an email comes in or you feel the need to look up actors on imdb (which I now do constantly). The battery life is such that as long as you charge it while you sleep, you can do whatever the hell you want with it during the day and not worry. This is so not true of any laptop, including the amazing MacBook pros and airs with their long battery life. You still have to plug them in if you are going to use them all day. The iPad isn’t a necessity, but it sure is convenient.

The First Generation, in a Tuff-luv case

Now as to the iPad 2. If you don’t have an iPad and are at all interested (plus have the disposable $500-829). Get one. The first gen ones are going on sale cheap now too. But if you already own a first gen iPad, it’s more about personal tolerance for being slightly outdated. The new one doesn’t do anything the 1st can’t except for video chat. But it is thinner, lighter, and about twice as snappy. For me, that alone is worth it. As I said, I’m a gadget freak and I use the pad all the time, everyday. The thinness and weight are noticeable, as is the speed. It’s certainly snappier. Apps load faster, the muitasking flips between apps much more smoothly. Not that the first iPad was slow, but this is faster. If you are into the games the GPU is supposedly 9x faster. Infinity Blade and the like seem very zippy now, and they weren’t bad before.

One other thing worth mentioning is the developer only multitouch gestures added to iOS 4.3. Now to use these, you have to connect the iPad to your Xcode 4 enabled Mac and turn on developer mode. This is a free download for devs, or a $5 purchase from the new Mac AppStore. I’ve only been using these for a few days but they’re awesome. Here’s yet another example of how Apple likes gets the little things right. There are 4 gestures. One to bring up and down the multitasking bar. Another to go back to the home screen, and a pair to flip back and forth between apps. It’s surprising how convenient and natural these are.

I haven’t gotten used to the subtle button changes on the new iPad yet. There is more angle to the bevel and this gives the physical controls, including the docking jack, a slightly increased inset, but I’m sure in a couple of days they’ll seem normal.
I got one the the crazy new covers too. I love the cool magnetic lock and the auto turn on / turn off feature. We will see how well the cleaning component does. The thing is ultra slim and light in the cover, particularly compared to the cushy but bulky full leather case I had on the old one. But on the other hand it’s a bit slick, and I’ve already fumbled it once and certainly don’t want to drop it. I might have to see if someone sells some sticky little tape/decal. That was a nice thing about my old case.  I have a thin sticky rubber case on my iPhone 4 for just for the texture.

All and all the iPad 2 is like everyone says, a typical Apple evolutionary tuneup to an already brilliant product. Certainly it’s better in nearly all ways, and the combination of Apple design, software, and heavy vertical integration makes it hands down the only tablet worth considering. I’m writing this blog post on it while out on the town, and while theoretically I could do that on my phone, I never would.

My previous iPad article can be found HERE.

Side by Side

The thickness

 

Related posts:

  1. Why the iPad is a Document game changer
By: agavin
Comments (10)
Posted in: Technology
Tagged as: Apple, AppleStore, IPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro, Macintosh, Tablet Computer, United States

Scrivener – Writing the old way is crazy

Feb25

For my first novel, The Darkening Dream, I started in word and then switched to Scrivener about 60% of the way through the first draft. I’ve never looked back.

Scrivener is a specialty word processor designed for those who write large documents or books. It totally and utterly rules in nearly every way, and anyone writing a long structured document (any book) is pretty crazy to be using a flat editor like Word. And it only costs $45.

Here are just a few reasons why it’s so great:

1. Scrivener is about 50x faster. It starts instantly, it remembers where you are instantly. It scrolls instantly. It searches instantly. Word counts are instant and live. It never spins the beach ball. It saves continually. It crashes about 1/10 as often as Word. I write 8-16 hours a day too, all the time. I’ve written a book that was at one point 186,000 words in it, so it’s no toy.

2. Most importantly, Scrivener is structured. You break your project down as you like (I use folders for chapters and documents under those folders) as scenes. This allows you to SEE the structure of your book in a tree like binder on the side, and to instantly hop around between different sections, or put multiple sections up against each other. Reorganizing the structure (dragging scenes between chapters, reordering chapters, splitting scenes and chapters) takes seconds instead of many error prone minutes.

3. Scrivener has meta data on the “object” (document) level. You can assign fields like the POV, notes, arbitrary custom fields etc etc to scenes and chapters. You can view these in outline form with various filters and even “live” calculated metadata like scene or chapter word counts. You can even color tag fields. This allows you to again SEE your book at the high level, to know that a 3,000 word chapter by Character A follows a 1,500 word chapter by Character B, and evaluate how that will feel to the reader. If you want to reorder, you just drag. There are all sorts of additional meta data too, like synopses which you can add to scenes, and are easily viewed.

4. Scrivener allows multiple custom views. You can test out multiple ways of ordering scenes, chapters etc, without actually changing the document. Or you can create lists of particular scenes that you want to edit as a whole.

5. You can select structured parts and instantly bind them all together into a single “virtual” document you can read and edit all together. For example section 2 non consecutive chapters, or just a couple random scenes, and virtually edit them as a single continuous document.  Once you get used to this, it’s incredibly fast and convenient. You just click what you want to see.

6. You can have documents and data that are part of the project (planning, research, character sheets, changelogs etc) that are easily accessible in your tree, but are not generally printed/exported out when you send to others. It has some very extensive features in this regard, but I won’t get into them.

7. Scrivener has a huge host of other organizational tools like the cork board that I won’t get into. It’s spotlight-like find is 10,000x more useful than Word’s, and because of the chapter/scene metadata will show you where you have words or phrases in your book. It has a full screen / no distraction mode.

8. Incredibly importantly, it separates format from content and structure, like the division between HTML structure and CSS formatting. Documents (scenes) DO NOT generally have formatting (except bold, italics etc). Separate compile templates can be used to output the whole book or parts to different targets. Want to get the whole book as a PDF to put up on Lulu. CLICK compile.  Want just 2 chapters in double spaces MS format for your editor. CLICK compile. Super fast, no loading up the giant word doc and carefully cutting blocks out and reformatting them.  I whip off versions of my books 5-10 times a day.

9. It’s much easier to have good backup habits in Scrivener, and you can automate backing up the entire project. If you are technical, you can even use SVN or another fancy version control system.

10. The interface is much simpler, with the things writers need and not the incredible clutter of Word.

11. Scrivener can directly output EPUB and MOBI files (although there are some limits on how sophisticated your formatting can be).

12. Lots and lots of reasons I left out.

 

There are a few things that Scrivener is worse at:

1. Elaborate formatting, tables, graphs, equations, full styles etc.  Although you can use it with Multimarkdown and Latex if you are hardcore.

2. Track changes. This is fairly minimal, but i just output to word and do that there.

3. It’s footnote, page layout, table of contents type features are more minimal. It isn’t really intended for final press layout.

 

This all being said, you still need Word for occasionally interfacing with others, or possibly for final layout. I basically use Word for track changes and compare documents. It’s trivial to compile out scrivener revisions and use “compare documents” in word to build like deltas.

Currently Scrivener 2.4.x is out for the Mac and fantastic. You PC dweebs (I weep for your lost souls) can use a 1.x version which is still good, but is in beta. The betas are very stable. I spent 6 months writing full time in various betas last Summer/Fall with almost no problems.

I can be found at:  or blog

Or for a peek at my novels : The Darkening Dream and Untimed

Related posts:

  1. Why the iPad is a Document game changer
  2. On Writing: Revising, and Waiting
  3. On Writing: Yet Another Draft
  4. On Writing: Passes and Plots
  5. On Writing: Line Editing
By: agavin
Comments (11)
Posted in: Fiction, Technology, Writing
Tagged as: Book, Book Formatting, books, Creative Writing, HTML, IPad, Latex, Macintosh, Metadata, Microsoft Word, Page layout, Personal computer, Scrivener, Structured document, Technology, Word count, Word processor, Writing

Why the iPad is a Document game changer

Oct25

iPadI work with a lot of documents. By this I mean things one reads, usually mostly text and often PDF’s or Word docs. I always did, but especially now that I’ve been writing. I have drafts of my books, drafts of other peoples books, notes on them, peoples screenplays, programming manuals downloaded off the internet, etc. Books and other printed versions of documents have always been the nicest way to read or edit these things as you can sit somewhere comfortable and you can mark on them easily, but books take a long time to print. The two traditional solutions were:

1. Print it out, which takes a while and wastes paper.

2. Sit at your computer, which is uncomfortable.

The iPad changes the game because it makes it  so easy to read these things. There are lots of ways to get your docs on the device, including just emailing a PDF to yourself and clicking “Save to iBooks.” But you can also use Dropbox. This free app allows you to drag files into a tree of folders on your computer and have them immediately accessible on any iPhone, iPad, or computer with a Dropbox client. You can read there or save to a better app.

Goodreader is a decent and cheap PDF/doc reader ($0.99), although for PDFs the free iBooks is great. Goodreader even allows you to do markup on top of the files and email out annotated PDFs. But the interface for this is a little clunky. For serious editing I use iAnnotate which admittedly is “expensive” for an iPad app ($9.99), but has a really slick interface for marking up documents. I’ve sat on my couch and highlighted, crossed out, edited 500 pages that way. If someone emails you a doc you can do it anywhere without even going to your computer, and no destroying a big hunk of tree for the ream of paper and toner needed to print. Not to mention that 500 pages of looseleaf is hardly convenient.

Basically if someone sent me a draft screenplay or something before I’d put off reading it because sitting at the computer was no fun. Now it’s no different than a published book — I read those on the iPad too.

By: agavin
Comments (6)
Posted in: Technology, Writing
Tagged as: Document, Dropbox, IBooks, IPad, iPhone, Microsoft Word, Portable Document Format, tech
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