This is a good idea, and I've thought about this since before the launch, but honestly I have to say that reading a full book on the iPhone would be a miserable experience. The screen resolution is beautiful -- that's not the problem. The issue is the screen and device size. It just gets tiring always having to flip the page. To read comfortably, it's just too little text on the page to make for a good experience. Also, the size of the device makes it difficult to hold without obstructing the view.

But not to steal the thunder from the post... this is a great idea (and one that was overdue.)

devron

Great tip, but I thing that for mac WordPod
[wordpod.berlios.de]
which converts .txt to notes and adds html links that allow you to read continuously through chapters.
and for windows the ambience iPod book converter
[www.ambience.sk]
seem like better options.

scfaulkner

I've tried similar tools, and always had trouble getting it to look decent. Also, they took a long time to process and the resulting output was quite sizable, which rapidly limited the number of books I could keep on my device.

In the meantime, I've discovered TequilaCat's Book Reader, which lets me convert eBooks into Java MIDlets for my mobile phone. It's surprisingly feature-rich including multiple font sizes, search, bookmarking and auto-scroll functions (if you're not into page flipping).

By and far it's my preference in this field.

palmerkun

hm - how does this compare to iPodLibrary? ( [www.sturm.net.nz] ) I've used iPodLibrary for over a year and, yes, it can be a little tedious to read on the postage stamp screen of my Nano, but it does a great job. Funny, the first thing I read was the Christmas Carol as pictured on your page.
... click... install..

Hm - I don't see that it wants to let me use my nano. Oh well, it wasn't like I NEEDED to replace iPodLibrary.

mrklingon

Sounds like a great idea ... but it's lack in instruction.

I tried the program, gave it the iPod Classic's dimensions (funny that it only has one player's settings), picked an ebook and so on.
When it came time to save it to the player, I assumed it needed Disk Use enabled and pointed it to save in a new folder under the iPod's 'photo' directory.

From that... nothing. I ejected the ipod and it doesn't seem aware that there are any new pics.

The next option would be to save the text-pics into My Pictures folder and have the iPod include that folder in its sync (and not need Disk Use). ...{wait, trying that now}... Yes, that worked but it would have been nice for the software to tell me (or for it to assume 'My Pictures' first?)

xanderificus

Hi,

My vote goes to iPodLibrary...

I have been reading books with my iPod using iPodLibrary

([www.sturm.net.nz])

its a shame that its windows only... maybe it might work with wine...

mark_ellul

Has anybody got an OS X clone of this?

markadm

Everything is always iPod, but what about the Creative Zen, the better player?

Creative invented the iPod's interface and gets no recongition.

This should work on the Zen as well.

davinp