As a photographer one of the iPad accessories I was most anticipating was the iPad Camera Connection Kit. This kit consists of TWO adapters that connect right to the iPad's Dock connector. The first one is a standard SD (SDHC) Memory Card reader. You connect it to your iPad and then insert a memory card with images/videos on it and transfer those images to your iPad. No software to install because the iPad already has this ability built-in to the Photos App. The second adapter has a standard USB port on the oppositie end of the Dock connector. With this one you can not only connect your camera via USB and transfer images directly, but as my video above shows you can even use a Card Reader with it! This overcomes (although not as elegantly) the problem of wanting to use Compact Flash or other card formats.
These are exciting times in the publishing industry! The tools have never been better to get your word out. With the introduction of Adobe Creative Suite 5 and in particular InDesign CS5, my head is spinning thinking about all the possibilities. I can use one industry standard app to publish for Print, for the Web with NEW Interactive features and now more easily than ever to standard eBook Reader formats such as ePUB. There's also a lot of excitement around the Apple iPad. The beauty here is that I can use my new found publishing power and Apple's popular device to get my content in front of more eyeballs than ever.
The Project
As you may know I co-authored one of the best selling books for the iPhone, "The iPhone Book". I've been very happy with the success of that book and of course as soon as the iPad was introduced, many eyes turned towards me to question if I was going to write a book for this new device. While the project seemed interesting (and still is), I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I wanted the iPad Book to be an iBook on the actual iPad. All of my books are already being laid out in Adobe InDesign. So there's nothing new there, except there is something new there in terms of capabilities. The enhanced capabilities around the ePUB format and Interactive Document publishing beyond PDF. So I wanted to do two things: I wanted to get a sample out there of what an iPad book on the iPad and I wanted to experience first hand what it was like to create one from scratch using InDesign CS5. So I enlisted the help of my colleague at Adobe, Colin Fleming (eBOOK guru) and Colin gave me the inside scope and even some sample demo documents that he had put together. This was a great jump start and helped me avoid some stumbling blocks. Yesterday, I started my sample "25 iPad Tips" and today I have a FREE iBook that you can download right here.
The Making of my 1st iBook (ePUB)
The iBooks App on the iPad reads standard ePUB documents and Adobe InDesign CS5 just so happens to export them out directly. Great! There are some limitations that you have to be mindful in your document itself. These are limitations on the standard more so than of InDesign. For example, InDesign is an amazingly powerful page layout application that pretty much allows you do do anything you want on the page. However, ePUB has limitations on how the content has to flow to make it possible to have this single document on a multitude of different devices. I recorded this video to walk you through some of those things to look out for:
Downloading and Installing my FREE "25 iPad Tips" Book
The first step is to download my ePUB file here. Once you download the ZIP file, unzip it and you'll have a short readme.txt file and the actual "25 iPad Tips.epub" document. Open iTunes 9.1 and higher and simply drag the ePUB into the Library area of iTunes on the left side. It should now appear in the Books Area of iTunes and once you plug in your iPad via the USB cable, you can select it as a book to sync in the Books Tab in iTunes. Enjoy!
Now that Adobe has taken the wraps off of Creative Suite 5, there are lots of questions on the minds of our customers. So we thought it would be bennificial and fun to address your questions LIVE via Adobe Connect. Not only will Adobe's Worldwide Creative Suite Evangelists (Greg Rewis -- the web guy, Jason Levine -- the video/audio guy and myself) be on hand to field your questions, but we'll also show Creative Suite 5 tips and tricks for our Design, Web and Video suites.
Details to Participate
This special Q&A session will take place Thursday, April 22th @ 11 AM PDT (2 PM EDT (GMT-4). and it will take place via Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. Here’s the URL: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/askcspro
Sign on as a GUEST with your real name. While there is no pre-registration required, this session will be limited to 100 attendees. So it’s first come, first served. I advise you to log in 15 minutes before the 11 AM start time as we plan to start on time.
What if you could watch me show you the features of Photoshop CS5 in 45 minutes for FREE? Well you can! Here's my complete walk through of Photoshop CS5 Extended on Adobe TV. Enjoy!
Honestly, if you haven't checked out Adobe TV, you're really missing out on TONS of videos on all of Adobe's products.
I've been using YouTube for a long time now as a way to provide video content on this blog. I remember the early days of YouTube being primarily for teenagers and vehicle for people to show off their babies and pets. The quality, well, um, kinda sucked! I just didn't really find it remotely good enough to host the kind of content I wanted to share. Well all that has changed now. YouTube is GREAT for sharing videos in 720p HD quality, up to 10 minutes in length. It's easy to use and to embed the clips right on my site. Now don't get me wrong, I know that there are other GREAT video sharing sites out there too like Smugmug (which does all the way up to 1080p with a paid account), Vimeo, BlipTV, etc. However, I find that YouTube seems to be the most universal and has the largest audience. After all, if I go through the trouble to produce a video and make it available for free I wan to have the largest possible viewing audience I can get. Also since YouTube is BUILT-IN to the iPhone and now the iPad, I can reach millions more people with this one service than I can with any of the others. Another nice surprise was that Apple gave the iPad's Safari the ability to view embedded YouTube clips right in the page without having to launch the App or go to another browser window. Sold!
I'm thrilled to finally be able to talk about Adobe Creative Suite 5! Today is the day that Adobe launches the biggest and most impressive release of Creative Suite to date with over 250 new features across the Entire Suite.
I'll quote one of the freelancers that I showed CS5 to under NDA in Germany, "It's not only Cool, but it's Useful!" That's exactly how I feel about many of the features throughout the entire suite. A lot of times you have a really "cool" technology or feature, and it demos really well, but you may not have an everyday use for it. However, with CS5 there are so many Cool and Useful features that I will use every day that I'm just giddy! The Official CS5 Launch will be broadcast here at 11AM EDT TODAY, but since you're a visitor to my site I will share with you these 5 "Pre-Launch" videos (in YouTube HD!) of My Top 5 Favorite Features in Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium right now so that you get a jump on some of the new exciting features:
My Top 5 Favorite Features in Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended
As you know Adobe will be Announcing CS5 on Monday, April 12th. At that time ALL of the details will be revealed about this upgrade and all the mind blowing features throughout the entire suite. This Creative Suite launch will be one of the most highly broadcasted events in Adobe's history because never has there been a time like the present where video content will be made so freely available. Of course I'll have lots of video content here on and on my Creative Suite Video Podcast, my YouTube channel and Adobe TV but the folks over at NAPP are doing something really special on Monday and throughout the week. Check out their video here:
I will cover the technology, gadgets, events and cool toys that have affected me in some way. I will also give recommendations on the products that I have actually used.
I will cover the technology, gadgets, events and cool toys that have affected me in some way. I will also give recommendations on the products that I have actually used.
