Concentrate on your e-reader

The wonderful thing about standards is there are so many to choose from.

Apple iPadBefore and after publishing our first Juiced.GS Concentrate, we investigated also making these products available in the formats used by the iPad, Kindle, and other e-book reading devices. Our tests have suggested that the ePub format is best for plain text and not complex layouts or graphics, and that getting Juiced.GS to be both readable and recognizable as an ePub file would require an investment of time and effort that would detract from the print edition. This means you will not be finding or purchasing Juiced.GS in the iTunes or Amazon online stores anytime soon. (You can, however, subscribe to this blog with your Kindle.)

Fortunately, most e-book readers are quite accommodating of Concentrate in its native PDF format. As satisfied customer Wayne Arthurton wrote, “My goal is to put as much of my reference information on the iPad as possible. With that in mind, Concentrate is great.” As I don’t own any e-readers, I asked Ewen Wannop to provide some instructions for getting your purchased Concentrates onto an iOS device. Here’s the short version:

  1. Install iBooks on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.
  2. In iTunes, select “Add to Library” from the File menu, then select the PDFs.

Ewen also offers these more detailed directions:

  1. The iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, must be running OS 3.2 or later.
  2. Install the free iBooks app from the iTunes Store.
  3. Open iTunes, select the “Books” item from the Library menu on the left, and drag-and-drop the Concentrate PDFs onto the window on the right.
  4. Alternatively, use “Add to Library” from the File menu, and select the PDFs in the usual way.
  5. Sync your device. While the device is connected, you can manage which of the books or PDFs are synced; by default, all new files will be synced.
  6. Open the iBooks app on your device and select the book to read.
  7. Double-tap to zoom the columns for easy reading.

For the Kindle, please consult Amazon.com’s online help regarding “Transferring, Downloading, and Sending Files to Kindle“.