Figures in Textbooks are Problematic

I mentioned in an earlier post that some students had bought the Kindle version of some of the texts for one of my classes. For this particular class, they are having a great deal of trouble. I have found iBooks to be great for straight text (and the Kindle owners have found the same to be true for Kindle), but the problem arises with figures, especially complex ones. One of my texts has computer screen shots to show the reader what their screen is supposed to look like on the computer if they are following the instructions. This can be difficult, but it is made more difficult by including text that the reader is supposed to type. Normal text can be easily adjusted and resized so just about anyone can read it. It seems that figures cannot be resized on either the iPad or the Kindle. On the iPad the normal pinching action does nothing for the pictures. The Kindles doesn't even have such a feature.

One student was so frustrated by this that she gave up on the Kindle version and went to the paperback version. Fortunately, I was able to loan her a copy of the book so she wouldn't have to buy it again (I wrote that particular book and have a few extra copies lying around). As a reference book, after the class is over, the Kindle version will probably be sufficient, but as the primary book for use during the class, it is not.

Apple Discussion Boards

Sometimes one just gets lucky with Tech Support people. Today was one of those days.

I got a young student from Minnesota studying Japanese (my area of expertise) who helped me out enormously with various iPhone 4 issues I was having. I strongly recommend buying the extended warranty on this phone - the tech support has been US based, and by and large quite good.

The Japanese learner, Tech Support Rep Mary also told me about an Apple Corporate Resource of a list of sponsored Discussion Groups to be found at the following link:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/index.jspa

To thank her, I sent a nice email note to her boss and cc:ed her on it saying what a great job she did. Upshot of it all is the Boss is now going to see if we can get our Blog listed with other Academic-oriented Apple Users Blogs / Groups.

So Stay Tuned!

Social Highlighting

I just went into a book I have on the Kindle app for my iPad, and I noticed a new feature: social highlighting. Apparently, you have the ability to turn this on and off (it was on by default), but it shows you what others have highlighted. I wonder how useful this would be for a popular textbook. I imagine someone would highlight just about everything in the book. For this free and obscure book, the highlights were rare and probably useful.

For those Interested In Publishing their Own iPad Texts

I just received the following links from a Colleague who got them from an Apple Rep. Would appreciate the communtiy's feedback on the efficacy (or lack thereof) of these various service offerings as I have never tried them.

Thanks! Mark Lennon



http://www.zamzar.com/
http://www.zapptek.com/legendmaker/
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_osx
http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/how_to_create_epub
http://code.google.com/p/sigil/

Soundnote - a $5 App That Let's You take Lectures and Notes Simultaneously

While this looks like the Memo Pad, this brilliant little App lets you concurrently make a recording of a lecture while taking written notes. The beautiful feature of this App is that rather than having to listen to hours of lecture time, just click on the word (or diagram) you jotted down during the recording and the play back will jump to that part of the recording.

How to Send Email Attachments using QuickOffice

Quickoffice retails for around $15, and allows you to edit/create documents (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint - though with limitations on the later ), or download any file from your mailbox into DropBox, MobileMe, or other file sharing service.

The great trick (work around) that Quickoffice offers though is the ability to then drag/drop these files into a Mail Icon and send them as attachments!

DropBox Video Tutorial

New Blogger

Welcome to Mark Lennon from Loyola's Sellinger School of Business and Management. He has joined our blog. You can see more about him at markphd.com.

Dropbox

I finally found a Web 2.0 technology that works well on the iPad (actually, I heard that Prezi has an iPad app so it probably works well, too). My new favorite tool is Dropbox. Sign up for an account, and you get a free 2GB of cloud storage. For Loyola people, this is similar in many ways to your G drive, but it seems to work more seamlessly, especially on non-Windows devices.

The idea is that you install the application, create an account and tie it to a folder (or folders) on your computer. The folder is then automatically synced to a server at Dropbox. You now have instant access to that folder from anywhere. If you have more than one computer, just install Dropbox on your other computers. If you have an iPad, install the Dropbox app. If you are on another computer, just go to Dropbox.com and download the files that you have stored. You can also set folders to be accessible by others (specific people or everyone) to share stuff or have stuff shared with you.

For the iPad, I find this particularly powerful. Without Dropbox, if I want to share a document with my iPad, I have to load it somewhere (such as iBooks) and then plug my iPad into my computer to sync. It's not terrible, but it's not quick and easy. With Dropbox, I just drop it in and within a few seconds I can see it in the Dropbox app on my iPad.

If you use this link to sign up, they'll kick my storage up from 2 GB to 2.25 GB. Try it and see if you like it. It will take less than 5 minutes to get it set up on your computer and your iPad.

David Marcovitz

iBooks Highlights in Date Order Now

I posted this earlier:

"The only thing I don't like about the bookmarks page is that the highlights are in date order, not page order so if I go back and highlight something earlier in the book, it sticks that highlight at the end."

At some point, they fixed this. In tonight's class, we will be discussing The Shallows, the book I read over the summer on the iPad. As I go back in re-read the book, I have been adding a few highlights and notes. I was happy to see that on the Bookmarks page these are now in date order. I don't know if I changed a setting and forgot about it or if an update to the software fixed the bug/feature. However it happened, I like it.

David Marcovitz