Useful tools for the iLiad

[vranghel]

Hello everybody!

The iLiad sounds like it is a great device, but why complain about features that the company hasnt even planned on adding to the device?

The MAIN feature of the device is reading (mainly) ebooks. Ok, thats great for the majority of people. Then they added the MP3 player-- that makes it even better. And they also have added a WiFi card.

But why on earth would people want to browse the web on a black and white scren with a refresh rate of 1 Hz? You all have to remember that eInk is still a very new technology. They are still working hard on improving it.
We are not talking here about the replacememt of LCD screens (well...maybe we are, but its too soon to know), we are talking about the replacement of paper as the medium for content.

In my opinion the WiFi should be used for a more than just connecting to the IDS server, but the main purpose is to push content to the device wirelessly.

A great use of the integrated WiFi would be the ability to download content from a source other than the IDS.
I would lik it very much to set up a server (on my machine or using a hosting service) to put all my ebooks, then connect to it when i need more content to read. Seeing that this device is aimed at business people and geeks, the limitations of the WiFi has a bad impact on most of us reading this forum.

I can also see how RSS could play a major role; each day, the server pulls up the headlines(and maybe the complete stories), and you connect the iLiad to the server just to download the stories; You dont need the iLiad to connect to various websites out there; that creates lots of problems to deal with, such as formatting, flash, javascript, gif, etc...


In my view, the best upgrade/modification they could make to this device is to allow it to connect to a different server, other than the IDS.

[Rosentredere]

I think books, magazines and newspapers have different formats because of different content, and I don't ask for magazines or newspapers to come in paperback format...

But apparently iRex sees one of its main markets in delivering Broadsheets in 12x16cm.

I agree that a lot of pages on the web are ill suited for reading on the iLiad. Not really because of size but because of the slow refresh rate of epaper. Reading a threaded Forums or navigating an online shop is not something I would enjoy doing with an iLiad.
But there are also many pages with content and formatting not fundamentally different from an ebook (think Wikipedia, reference Sites in general). Why should users be forced to make a local copy on their PC and then to transfer onto the iLiad using a memory card if it could be downloaded in a few seconds via WiFi.

As soon as it becomes multipurpose, the price shoots up (just see the Sony Reader vs. iLiad for that).

I don’t really see how a small change in the network configuration can shoot up the price. According to this tutorial http://e-paper.i-merge.net/epapermanual.pdf the iLiad connects to your LAN like any other network component. And as the OS used is based on Linux it should be trivial to expose the iLiad via SAMBA or at least SSH.

[ElaHuguet]

Originally Posted by Rosentredere

Why should users be forced to make a local copy on their PC and then to transfer onto the iLiad using a memory card if it could be downloaded in a few seconds via WiFi.

The opposite is also true: why should it work differently to the way you plan to put books on it?

[LittleTalker]

So much for my 'tools for the iLiad' thread.. now it has become a 'internet yes/no' thread (my fault as well).
Anyway, this begins to look like a beatles vs rolling stones discussion. As I expressed, I'd love to at least browse the wikipedia and yes, I think eInk is suitable for that. But if browsing is not implemented, I'll use an offline browser and I'll be almost as happy

[ElaHuguet]

Ok, so to bring the thread back in line, I think a tool to "easify" offline browsing would be good.

[R2D2]

Just my 2 cents regarding...

Offline Browsing:
You can use the Microsoft Internet Explorer to save a complete Web page. Selecting the appropriate "save as..." option will result in a website and a directory with all the additional files inside it. Copying file and directory on the Illiad should work.

Browsing PC files:
Apparently the Illiad is using a Linux operating system, isn't it?

I am pretty sure that some geek will compile samba and a terminal application for it. This way we freaks ;-) could be able to browse our shared windows directories.

Irex would not have to support these features, but they could compile all the applications which are necessary to pimp up the Illiad and we freaks would be able to use them while the casual business user wouldn't even know that what about the additional possibilities.

What I would like to have even with a 1fps refresh rate:

• full blown internet acess with email and ftp client
• calendar, to do list, notes and contact list with Outlook synchronisation
• printing over network
• very special but with great potential: xThinks handwritten computer algebra system

Just send an Illiad to some of the geeks you can find on the Zaurus User Group and - believe me - they will do everything with it.

[TadW]

Originally Posted by LittleTalker

Also, there is an opensource, free offline explorer here which I haven't tested but might do the task just as well.

I've tried many website copier tools in the past, and this open-source tool, HTTrack, beats them all. Perhaps some people here would appreciate a small how to?

Another important tool will be ConvertLit if you want to turn your (legally purchased ) Microsoft .LIT e-books into HTML.

If you own a lot of books and e-books, or if you are going to once you've bought the iLiad, you should maintain a database to keep track on what you've already read and what's on your upcoming reading list. A great free Windows tool is eLibPro which can be downloaded from here. It can fetch all relevant information including cover image directly from Amazon.

If you deal with a lot of HTML files, you should probably also get one of these HTMLTidy tools to reduce the markup. I assume that the fewer the markup, the faster the iLiad to parse it.

[ElaHuguet]

Thanks, TadW, I already have the HTMLTidy, which is very useful, but the library db will be very good, I think.

[LittleTalker]

Hi again. Another interesting tool for using along with the iLiad is openOffice. You can get it for free at www.openoffice.org. It will help in two ways:
1. It has converters/parsers for many Microsoft office file formats, including .doc
2. It has an excellent PDF export tool that you can use to convert any text you can open using openOffice to a text-searchable PDF document. You can format the page size to match the iLiad screen size, then export to PDF, then... enjoy!

Since most of us read MS office documents frequently, openOffice and its quite faithful converters will be very useful.

[LittleTalker]

Yet another potentially useful tool: a free java comics viewer that will convert your cbr/cbz files to PDF. The URL is:
http://jomic.sourceforge.net