E-books for the iPod Touch/iPhone

Last Friday I picked up some software by Michael Zapp of Zapptek called iPresentIt. It’s this great piece of software that allows you to turn a PowerPoint or similar presentation into something which you can put on any video iPod (not the Nano) that supports video out. Instead of having to bring a laptop to presentations, you just hook your iPod into a TV or projector and go from there. Very cool.

Because of his work, and the stuff I’ve learned turning out books in Second Life, I’ve done a quick version of an e-book that will work on the iPod Touch/iPhone. Right now I’ve prepped the first chapter from Talion: Revenant, which you can download below with complete instructions on how to install it on your Touch/iPhone. The download is free.

This solution isn’t as elegant as I’d like, since loading a complete book using this current method would take about a quarter-Gig of memory. That’s actually not that bad, but they can be MUCH smaller. Michael Zapp has been great listening to my ideas and is looking at working some of them into the next revision of his software.

As for the interface on the Touch, it works really cool. Not only is the print resolution good enough that I don’t have to read it with glasses, but I even get to flip pages. Seriously, the same finger motion that flips a page in a book, swipes one page to the next on the Touch. Easy to hold, easy to read, this method, no matter how inelegant, is a great proof-of-concept for reading on the Touch/iPhone.

The link you want is: Talion Revenant

To save the file to your PC computer : right click the above link and choose “Save target as…”

To save the file on a Macintosh computer : click and hold the mouse button on the above link and choose “Save File As…” (If you are using OS X, simply Option-Click on the link and the file will be automatically downloaded.)

If you pull this file down and try it out, please drop me a line to let me know what you think about reading on the Touch/iPhone. (And if you want to add a playlist to the experience, I was listening to a lot of Jethro Tull and Alan Parsons Project when I was writing the book.) You can reach me at “Mike” at Stormwolf dot Com. Just put something about Talion Revenant or iPod Touch/iPhone in the subject line. That way I can tell your email apart from all the stuff I get from those fine Nigerian businessmen who trust me so much that they want to give me millions.