Attention Apple-gadget-owning WordPress users! Have you been using the WordPress iOS app for iPhone and iPad? Or maybe you tried it a while back and thought it wasn’t for you? Either way, the new release — v2.6 — will knock your socks off. Why? A bunch of reasons:
- Video. Record, upload, attach, and play videos within the app. Yay for being able to catch your friends’ and co-workers’ most
embarrassing shenaniganscreative moments with iPhone video and publish them immediately for all the world to see on your WordPress site.- A total rewrite of the way local drafts are handled, to prevent the unintentional loss of your pending posts.
- Autosave/post revisions. Bam! One of the “oh, thank goodness” features of the web app makes it into the iOS version.
- Easier setup. Faster and easier process for adding your sites to the app.
- Media Library. We’re gradually getting closer to the media management you’re used to in the web app.
There are also numerous bugfixes and performance enhancements in this release, so if you haven’t been using the app lately, you should consider giving it another try. I’m personally pretty excited to start using the iPhone version more often now that there are all these fixes and new features. Especially the video upload. You know, for those creative moments that make life fun.
You can read the full 2.6 release post on the WordPress for iOS blog, and can download v2.6 from iTunes/the app store. Happy mobile blogging!
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Not an iPhone user? We’ve still got your on-the-go back! Check out the WordPress apps for Android, Blackberry, and Nokia (beta). They’re all 100% GPL, of course, and we’re always looking for contributors to the development projects, so check the blogs if you have mobile dev skills and want to get involved.
via wordpress.org
September 28th, 2010Letters of Note – digitized letters`
By Paul Biba
From the site:
Letters of Note is a blog-based archive of fascinating correspondence, complete with scans and transcripts of the original missives. For a little more background, I suggest reading this interview.
I have a seemingly endless supply of correspondence to plough through, but your input is always welcome. Get in touch via shaun@lettersofnote.com. If you wish to send images, please forward high quality versions where possible, don’t attempt to compress them to the point of illegibility and don’t crop them to death. If you happen to have an original you wish to post to me using regular mail, let me know via email. If you already know it’s fake, don’t send it.
According to Download Squad it is a:
blog with some extraordinary content: historical letters by people like Franz Kafka, Ray Bradbury, Jochen Rindt (the only posthumous Formula One World Champion), and other celebrities.
It’s not all celebrities, though. The letter in the screenshot, for instance, was written by a bank manager from Hiroshima on May 22, 1950, and it’s addressed to an American safe maker. The bank manager praises the quality of the safe, since it survived Little Boy’s atomic blast. Today’s letter is an extremely long diatribe by none other than Franz Kafka.
Each letter comes with an original high-resolution scan, a meticulous transcript (in the original language), and a very readable translation. The transcript includes any and all mistakes in the original – double spaces and all.
Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Paul Biba, library. Tags: digital library, digitise, digitize, letter, Paul Biba. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Also, please note that if you're commenting for the first time, your remarks will be held for moderation. If you still have problems, email TeleRead Editor Paul Biba. Pinging is currently not allowed.
via teleread.com
It comes as no surprise that longtime backers of OpenOffice.org are taking control over the open source project from Oracle, its new owner.
On Tuesday, the OpenOffice.org community announced the formation of the Document Foundation and the re-release of OpenOffice code under a new brand name — LibreOffice.
via zdnet.com
At one time, soda fountains were a fixture at the various drug stores, in St. Augustine – Touchton’s Drug Store, Hays Pharmacy, St. George Pharmacy, Padgett’s Walgreens Agency, McCartney’s Drug Store, McDonald’s Rexall and Lucas & Wiles.
The two five and dimes, Woolworth’s and McCrory’s had “luncheonettes” at which ice cream sodas and real milkshakes were served along with club sandwiches with potato salad and other light lunches. All are now gone.
via historiccity.com
If you’ve been thinking about creating an eBook but aren’t sure where to start, why not take a look at your blog? You probably already have a ton of carefully written content, that could make for an interesting eBook. And there are a few free online services that make it as simple as possible to take all of that online content and convert your blog to an eBook.
Whether you’re catering to Kindle or iPad users, whether you’re doing it for fun or want to sell your eBook online, each of these services has something for you.
Anthologize
If you have a Wordpress blog and want to turn your blog posts into a book, the easiest, no-hassle way to do this is to use the Wordpress plugin, Anthologize. Download the plugin and upload the zip file to your plugins folder through your Wordpress dashboard.
Once you’ve activated the plugin in, you’ll find two new tabs in your menu – the Anthologize tab, and the imported content tab. With Anthologize, not only can you use content from your own blog, you can also import content from other sites with an RSS feed.
Anthologize makes the process as easy as you could possibly imagine. If you’re using content from your own blog, you can filter your posts by tags or by category.
Once you’ve decided what content you want to use, you can start creating ‘Parts’ or chapters. Create a new part, and drag and drop the posts that you want to include. Any images in your posts will be included as they appeared in the post.
Once you have all your chapters and content ready, you can export it in one of several formats including PDF and ePub. You can also include a dedication or acknowledgement, choose between A4 or letter size, and select the font.
The final file includes a copyright page, where it states that the ebook was generated by Anthologize, while the table of contents consists of click through links leading you the content at the click of a button.
Zinepal
If you don’t use wordpress, Zinepal an easy-to-use alternative that will help you achieve similar results. Simply enter the URL to your blog or feed, and it will pull up a list of the latest posts.
Select the posts you want to use and add them to your ebook. Of course, the list is limited to the most recent stories from any given site. If you want to include older posts, you can use the handy bookmarklet and clicking on it on any given webpage you want to add to your eBook. You can also use this method to create an entire eBook without using an RSS feed at all.
Once you’ve added all your content, you can choose the fonts and preview the ebook in PDF format. The ebook itself can be created as a PDF, in ePub format or in Kindle format.
Zinepal uses a magazine-like layout, but you do have a certain amount of control over the appearance as far as fonts and the number of columns used. When previewing your eBook, click on ‘Customize eBook’ to change the orientation, page size, number of columns and more.
You can also add your own logo and advertising to your eBook using Zinepal, and although it would appear that you can choose to keep your ebook private on their site, there seems to be a glitch with that feature at the moment.
ePub Bud
Although ePub Bud doesn’t provide an easy way to convert your blog to an eBook, it has a great feature that earns it a spot on this list. Catering primarily to a children’s books audience, you can create any kind of book on their site, share it with the community and download the .epub file ePub Bud’s best feature by far is that it gives you the ability to sell your book through their site, and they don’t take a percentage of your profits. The only payment method accepted through the site is Paypal.
Creating the ebook itself is a cinch. If you already have your book in PDF or .doc format, you can upload it to the site and convert it to the .epub format. If you want to use content from your site, use Zinepal to conver the RSS feed into a PDF file and upload that to ePub Bud.
And if you’d rather start from scratch, use their intuitive, easy-to-use interface to get all your text and pictures into your ebook, and format the text exactly the way you want it to appear.
Also be sure to check out Saikat’s in-depth review of another similar service, eBook Hood.
Which of these free eBooks services is right for you? Let us know in the comments.
Image credit: Lichtmeister
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September 27th, 2010University of Toronto digitizes 250,000 books
By Paul Biba
From a post at the Internet Archive by Brewster Kahle:
When I talked with Carole Moore, the fantastic librarian from University of Toronto, about 6 years ago, she had a vision of scanning 250,000 books from their libraries. Well, a few days ago she succeeded. ( http://www.archive.org/details/university_of_toronto )
It has been a winding road to here, with financial help from Yahoo and Microsoft, from the Canadian government and from the University of Toronto– but she got there in grand style.
She had books from the 1400′s scanned, she has done all sorts of things with the able help from Jonathan Bengtson and Sian Meikle. The Internet Archive scanning center (our first) was started by Molly Davis and Gabe Juszel operating a cool page turning robot. The center is still run by Gabe with support from above and below and employs about 40 people.
All in all it is a hero librarian’s tale and a successful one.
250,000 books for free to the world from one of the great libraries in the world.
Go University of Toronto!
via teleread.com
Although they don't call this a magazine, it is the closest thing I've seen to what I think a digital magazine should be. It is stunning, but that might be because it's all about my favorite topic - food.
148AppsiPhone App Reviews, iPhone Game Reviews, and iPhone News :: 148Apps
Condé Nast Digital’s latest addition to Gourmet is the launch of the official application for iPad, called Gourmet Live, allowing users to explore their “passions for every aspect of food in a brand new way” (Condé Nast). The application is free, includes some recipes to get started, and is available to download now.
“This app brings together the key components of a good meal — great company through access to social networks, the best ingredients in the form of fantastic content, and a beautiful presentation,” said Juliana Stock, General Manager of Gourmet Live, and Creative Marketing Director for Condé Nast Consumer Marketing. “We’re serving up content developed exclusively for Gourmet Live and curating the great content of Gourmet magazine in reimagined ways.”
Gourmet Live brings more than just recipes, offering news and food-related information from celebrities and even President Obama: “Read about how the Obamas’ eating habits reflect on national food trends. Hear a four-time Oscar nominated actress talk about her love of food, family and butter. Follow one man’s quest for authentic British food in NY and LA” reads yesterday’s release.
New covers are updated every day on the application, with new stories and recipes “at least once a week.” The application also includes a social networking ‘reward’ feature, allowing you to save articles and get inside tips if you connect with Facebook or Twitter. The application’s design is modern and pictorial, placing emphasis on images on the home page and text within the articles. The layout is clean and the font smart, but there is no interactivity (like check boxes).
Whether this will become another essential utensil in your kitchen, or just an application that you’ll try out once, it’s free to download and quick to install – meaning there’s nothing to lose. Just be sure that your hands are clean when you tap the iPad, otherwise there’s going to be even more cleaning to do!
For more information and frequently asked questions, see here.
[Image courtesy of Gourmet]
[ Kitchen, Say hello to iPad with Gourmet Live is a post from 148Apps ]
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The Next Web
In a year of shaky relations between Google and China, the latest news that we’re hearing is that some Gmail users are experiencing attacks on their accounts from Chinese IP addresses.
According to Threat Post, there is no pattern to the activity, though one particular target appears to be Alexander Hanff of Privacy International in the UK.
If you happen to fall victim to the attacks, you’ll notice a red warning bar at the top of your Gmail that states “Your account was recently accessed from China” and then a listing of the IP address(es) in question.
Google, of course, suggests that you change your password immediately if you notice the warning.
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Cassie Jones at Designer Digitals has a great tutorial on Painting Vintage Photos using Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. The $4.99 tutorial includes a mini-kit of digital papers and scrapbooking elements that make this a great value. If you've considered colorizing an old photo to use in a family history project, here's how to do it.
