adir1

Yes, this is not a typo – printing To your iPhone, I know it sounds weird! It is actually very handy, saves plenty of trees and makes “printouts” easier to carry around and find in the future. There are specific cases where you want to “print” a confirmation of an appointment from a website, both to remind yourself and to show at the business you are heading to. Other times it could be a receipt for online order, or any other “generated” page which you can’t easily link to, but may need to reference in the future. Some places will accept coupon printed this way, where you can simply show it to the cashier or scan it from the phone.

Step 1 – If you don’t already have one, get a free account with Skydrive, Dropbox or Google Drive. Right now Skydrive gives most free space while Dropbox had more native clients for iOS, Android and many others. For those unfamiliar with this category – this basically creates a file system in the cloud, where everything you drop into special folder gets synchronized

Step 2 – Works best from Chrome browser, because it has excellent Save As Pdf feature in the Print window! If you are on the Mac, Print window for Everything comes with Save As Pdf button. Finally, on Windows you can install PDF driver, like this PDFCreator which is open source and free. Then, simply Print to it from any App.

Step 3 – Save the PDF into a Dropbox (or Skydrive, etc) folder on your computer. I recommend you actually organize things with subfolders into categories. I have Confirmations, Coupons, Manuals, eBooks, etc.

Step 4 – Open the Dropbox (or Skydrive, Google Drive, etc) dedicated client on your iPhone and just access the PDF whenever needed. Depending on the client app, you may need to “pre-download” the file before going out of Data range or on a flight.

In fact, you can use this simple trick instead of things like Instapaper, Readability and others. There’s really nothing wrong with these other options, I just find that having too many accounts and places to keep information is distracting and chaotic. If anything, Evernote is the one you should consider. Coupled with Clearly addon, it is sometimes better way to save large articles for later offline reading.

There are tons of Free eBook PDFs online: educational, fun and classics. Simply download and drop into your Cloud folder – Voila.

Forgive the loud title of this post, but I promise that it is totally relevant! For the past few weeks I have tremendously enjoyed several audio-books from my local library. Our local Gwinnett county library had Digital Downloads for a long time via OverDrive Media Console. However, the big breakthrough is my discovering that they are offering iPhone App!

Actually, the Media Console client software is also for Android, Blackberry and it even works on iPad 2 ! This is most likely US only (sorry International friends), and probably not all local libraries offer it, though I hear very high percentage do.

Pretty simple to use – just look up your county’s library and login via your mobile device’s browser, using your library card. Then select latest blockbuster eBook or Audio Book in your favorite category, and click Download! Voila, it should download and be available for you to enjoy in seconds! Although, having selected long Audio Book myself, I had to wait until I was in Wi-Fi zone to be able to download it. It works just like any other Library material, in that it will expire within 14 days (or whatever your library designated). No need to “return” anything to the library, it will just disappear off your device.

I started off with absolute classic 1984 by George Orwell, which I enjoyed even more than expected. Then, I continued onto modern fiasco tale in All The Devils Are Here – The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.  Ironically this “other side of the coin” book seems most appropriate to me, and will undoubtedly stimulate my further exploration into alternative structures for society next.

Did I mention that OverDrive Media Console is Absolutely Free? I haven’t checked on all platforms, but I can confirm that it is free on iPhone, Android and Windows. Enjoy!

PS: I read that some libraries offer Audio Books in WMA format – these won’t play on iPhone (not sure about Android), but can be enjoyed on your Windows PC. Just glance at Audio Book format which should be listed on your library’s Audio Book page, before the download.

I was wondering when PBS will jump on the web bandwagon and offer their shows on-demand via the Internet.

I checked again today, and looks like their library is growing nicely. It used to be just one or two shows available last time I checked, but library is much bigger now.

But, what was most thrilling is that finally majority of Nova programs are available online, in full length and decent quality glory! Looks like video web delivery was tough for the team, but maybe it’s for the best, as you should be able to download the shows, if you’re so inclined.

A lot of interesting things to learn, presented in popular fashion. So, check it out. I decided that this is even worthy a small entry on my videos page, for later reference.