Do you know why Apple's revenues are up 75% lately? I'll tell you why: my family and friends. This holiday gift giving season has left me with four iPods, and my entire mp3 collection doesn't even begin to fill one. So I've been trying to put them to alternative uses.
Since the iPod is just a big disk drive in tiny form, I've been loading one up with reading material. I've been using this site that paginates text files into an iPod Notes usable format: http://www.ambience.sk/ipod-ebook-creator/ipod-book-notes-text-conversion.php . It uploads any text files, small or large, and generates a zipped archive of the paginated text for you to use in Notes on iPod. Just extract the files into your Notes/ directory, and then when you access your iPod go to Extras->Notes.
So far it’s worked brilliantly for:
- excerpts from John Stewart's "America"
- my travel itineraries
- notes from the last staff meeting that I napped through to review on the plane
- screenplay draft
- quotable lines from Napoleon Dynamite, Stripes and The Life Aquatic
To try to give the converter a workout I also converted the entire HTTP 1.1 RFC and loaded it onto my iPod. You’d never believe how often I need tip-of-my-fingers access to this.
OK, I haven't needed it yet. But it'll be there when I do.
If you want to develop your content on your own or go after a Notes design award, have a look at the Style Master CSS podGuide: http://www.westciv.com/news/podguide.html.