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iBooks 1.2 available now, bring collections, AirPrint, illustrations

iBooks 1.2iBooks 1.2 has just been released by Apple, and with it comes a bunch of new features. You get support for full illustrations, AirPrint functionality for printing PDFs and notes in books, and more text fits on the page in iOS 4.2 and higher with auto-hyphenation. iBooks 1.2 also brings a new feature called Collections. These allow you to group your books similarly to how you can group apps into folders.

You can download iBooks 1.2 now for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Read More | iBooks

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Google Editions ebook service set to launch this year

Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Google, Internet

google ebook store

Google Editions is an initiative Google has been working on for a while now, their own e-book venture that aims to compete with Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and others. Word is now making the rounds that t's set to launch by the end of the year in the US. As Google describes it, one of the main features that sets it apart from competitors is the fact that the books sold through this service will be open, available through a web browser, and thus readable on any device that can connect to the Internet. They also plan to have native applications so people can access the e-books offline. Finally, referrals will be available, in order to create an ecosystem between Google and publishers of all types. The company will obviously need to create deals with those various publishers, but that is said to be well on its way. Prices are not known yet, but they should be equivalent to other stores.

Read More | WSJ

Apple adds eBook publishing to iWork with 9.0.4 update

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Software

iWork 9.0.4

In an apparent effort to make it easier for the common-folk to publish eBooks, Apple has added the ability to export documents from Pages using the ePub format. As many of us know, ePub is the eBook standard used by Apple’s app, their eBook reader software for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The update also addresses other issues in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, but that’s the most significant change. You can grab the update now by firing up Software Update.

Read More | iWork 9.0.4 details

iBooks 1.1 now available for iPad and iOS 4 iPhones

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Books, App Updates, Apple, Free Apps

iBooks for iPhone

Just a heads up—one of the benefits of (which is available now) is that you can install iBooks on your iPhone. It’s not included in the OS itself, which allows Apple to update the app without updating the entire iOS version itself, so you’ll have to download it manually from the App Store. The good news is that it’s available now—so go ahead and grab iBooks, it’s free!

[Thanks again, Jason!]


iTunes 9.2 released, plays nice with iOS 4

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Music, Software

has released iTunes 9.2, which plays nicely with and the as well. Once iOS 4 is released in under a week, you should see much faster backups and syncing, among these other new features:

  • Sync with iPhone 4 to enjoy your favorite music, movies, TV shows, books and more on-the-go
  • Sync and read books with iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4 and iBooks 1.1
  • Organize and sync PDF documents as books. Read PDFs with iBooks 1.1 on iPad and any iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4
  • Organize your apps on your iOS 4 home screens into folders using iTunes
  • Faster back-ups while syncing an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4
  • Album artwork improvements make artwork appear more quickly when exploring your library

You can download iTunes 9.2 now.


iBooks for iPhone now available on iOS 4

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Books, New Apps, Apple, Free Apps

iBooks for iPhone

Just a quick heads-up for anyone wanting to start reading books from the iBookstore on their iPhones—the iBooks app is now available for download in the App Store. In fact, if you go into the App Store from the iPhones itself, you’ll get a notification letting you know that iBooks is available, and asking you if you’d like to download it right then and there. As Apple announced at , iBooks for iPhone will sync your book data, including bookmarks, notes, pages read, etc., across all iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads that you have them running on.


iTunes 9.2: Sync iBooks to iPhone, Organize PDFs, App Folders

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Music, Software

iTunes 9.2

Apple has released a beta version of iTunes 9.2 to developers, and the feature list seems to be almost exclusively related to . The next version of iTunes will allow you to sync the , sync iBooks to and from the iPhone and iPod touch, organize and sync PDFs to iBooks, and organize your apps into folders in iTunes and then sync everything over to your device. Other improvements are there to make iTunes faster, both in scrolling, and in backing up your iOS 4 devices.

Click to continue reading iTunes 9.2: Sync iBooks to iPhone, Organize PDFs, App Folders


iBooks Enhancements: Native PDF support, notes, bookmarks

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Software

iBooks PDF support

During his keynote, Steve Jobs announced some upcoming enhancements to the iBooks app. The biggest, by our estimation, is the addition of native PDF support. You’ll be able to drag PDFs into iTunes to have them sync up with iBooks. In order to keep things nice and tidy, PDFs will even have their own bookshelf. Other enhancements include one-touch bookmarking of a page, as well as the ability to add notes. The notes appear as post-it notes on a page. These are in addition to the currently available highlighting. Very nice.

[Image Credit]


Google Editions eBookstore to Launch by Summer - Let the ebook wars begin

Google Editions

According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal Google Editions—Google’s attempt to elbow its way into the ebook market—will launch sometime this summer.  When it does become available, Google Editions will launch with some 400,000 to 600,000 titles available.  When you compare this to the 330,000 titles available on Amazon.com for Kindle supporting devices, it is clear that Google means to be a major player in the ebook market right from jumpstreet.  With Google Editions, not only will people be able to buy books via multiple devices—including the —using Google’s book search service, but independent shops will also be able to sell Google Editions copies of books via their own personal websites.  With the availability of titles coming directly from their search engine, and not from a typical store-based website, Google is betting heavily on its massive web-presence to make Google Editions the standard of the ebook market. Cry ‘havoc’ and let slip the (ebook) dogs of war!


Apple iPad: Over one million served

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Corporate News, Handhelds

iPad one million

We’ve really gotta hand it to . Just 28 days into the availability of the , and they’ve already sold over one million units. That’s 300,000 on day one, 450,000 within five days, and then another deluge with the launch of the iPad 3G model this past Friday. According to Apple, iPad users have downloaded over 12 million apps, and over 1.5 million ebooks from the iBookstore. Yup, the iPad has become another money printing machine for the company. Oh, and in case you were wondering, it took the iPhone 74 days to sell a million.


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