For the 20th Century photographers had a notebook and a pencil to keep a photographers diary, you can still get these.

What can we do in the 21st century now we have smart phones and tablets?
I was inspired to think about this because of someone who needed to know a setting for his camera and really the answer was rtfm but that got me thinking. The idea of lugging your manual around on a shoot if you have it on paper doesn't appeal. Most Camera manuals are available as pdf documents but they are formatted for A4 / legal sized paper which is ok on a laptop but do you want to drag a laptop around with you?

Most of us have smart phones and or tablets and I want to discuss what we might do with them.

Pdf's are too big for small screens something that can resize and reflow would be better like webpages and the closest thing to web pages is epub
There are readers on most platforms and most epubs will reflow to fit the page.

But we need the ability to write as well as read.

There is a handy program called sigil this is available for mac windows and linux and its pretty much a word processor for epub documents. You can infact cut and paste from other programs such as word or writer even highlight and copy text from pdf files. You could even take a reply from here on UHH and paste it into your document.

once saved as an epub this can be transfered to your phone or tablet. There are numerous ereader applications that you can choose to open the epub with.

I wanted more
so i started looking at android software.

Epubator was one app i found,free it converts pdf files into epub files on android. This may be able to transform your pdf manual into something you can read on your phone or tablet. I still need to test that out.

What i really wanted was an epub writer. So i could edit pages on a mobile device. Turns out there is an epubwriter available for different devices called bookcreator it's designed to be easy to use for kids even and you can add pictures videos from your phone or tablets gallery.

It appears to be free for the iphone and a paid app on android it is free for windows 10 and 8.

As far as first impressions go this looks useful.

Have you found anything better? Or am I on a fools errand and i should stick to a pen and a spiral bound note pad :)

If you have a tablet iannotatePdf is pretty useful and lets you make notes on a pdf file. Kind of useful when you decode manual speak and want to make an english note on the page. A tablet is still a fair sized piece of electronics to haul around with you so I think an alternative to pdf is needed for smaller devices.

For the 20th Century photographers had a notebook and a pencil to keep a photographers diary, you can still get these.

What can we do in the 21st century now we have smart phones and tablets?
I was inspired to think about this because of someone who needed to know a setting for his camera and really the answer was rtfm but that got me thinking. The idea of lugging your manual around on a shoot if you have it on paper doesn't appeal. Most Camera manuals are available as pdf documents but they are formatted for A4 / legal sized paper which is ok on a laptop but do you want to drag a laptop around with you?

Most of us have smart phones and or tablets and I want to discuss what we might do with them.

Pdf's are too big for small screens something that can resize and reflow would be better like webpages and the closest thing to web pages is epub
There are readers on most platforms and most epubs will reflow to fit the page.

But we need the ability to write as well as read.

There is a handy program called sigil this is available for mac windows and linux and its pretty much a word processor for epub documents. You can infact cut and paste from other programs such as word or writer even highlight and copy text from pdf files. You could even take a reply from here on UHH and paste it into your document.

once saved as an epub this can be transfered to your phone or tablet. There are numerous ereader applications that you can choose to open the epub with.

I wanted more
so i started looking at android software.

Epubator was one app i found,free it converts pdf files into epub files on android. This may be able to transform your pdf manual into something you can read on your phone or tablet. I still need to test that out.

What i really wanted was an epub writer. So i could edit pages on a mobile device. Turns out there is an epubwriter available for different devices called bookcreator it's designed to be easy to use for kids even and you can add pictures videos from your phone or tablets gallery.

It appears to be free for the iphone and a paid app on android it is free for windows 10 and 8.

As far as first impressions go this looks useful.

Have you found anything better? Or am I on a fools errand and i should stick to a pen and a spiral bound note pad :)

If you have a tablet iannotatePdf is pretty useful and lets you make notes on a pdf file. Kind of useful when you decode manual speak and want to make an english note on the page. A tablet is still a fair sized piece of electronics to haul around with you so I think an alternative to pdf is needed for smaller devices.

On iOS, PDFs are fully readable in iBooks. There is no issue with seeing them, since you can pinch, spread, swipe, and otherwise adjust the size to display what you want.

MOST camera manuals are available in PDF. HOWEVER, most camera manufacturers copy-protect those PDFs so you cannot cut and paste, copy and paste, alter, or import the document into another document.

I use an iPhone 7 Plus. My camera and lens manuals are all in iBooks. I use Voice Memos, Notes, Reminders, Calendar, Pages, Messages, and Mail to track what I need to track. It
is all synchronized via iCloud to my Mac, so if I do something on the phone, it shows up on the Mac moments later, and vice-versa.

The smart phone has revolutionized how many of us live, work, and play. My phone is my go-to for so much...

Couldn't agree more!


Watch (Clock, World Clock, Alarm, Stopwatch, Timer)
Calendar
Weather (Apple Weather app and local TV reports)
Calculator
Reading (iBooks, Kindle app, Dictionary, Social Media apps and blogs)
Radio (iHeart, TuneIn, and several others)
Photography (Photos, Camera, Camera+, Hipstamatic, Vint B&W Mii, PS Express, Snapseed, Epson iPrint, myLightMeter, Depth of Field Calc, Lumix Link, Panasonic Image App, and more)
Video (TV, Netflix, IMDB, YouTube, Samsung SmartView)
Voice Memos
Notes
Reminders
Cookbooks and Wine Spectator ratings
Travel Aid (Yelp, Urban Spoon, Open Table, Hampton, HHonors, Fly Delta, Expedia, RCI, Travelocity, Restaurant.com, Curb, Uber, Lyft, AMICA, Trip Assist...)
GPS (Google Maps, Apple Maps, MapQuest)
Messages (text)
Stocks
Utilities (Convert Units, Compass, and too many others to mention)
Video Phone (FaceTime and Skype)
Apple Mail (email)
Web browser (Safari)
Music
Microsoft Office
Pages, Numbers, Keynote
iCloud Drive
Garage Band (recording studio in my pocket)
iMovie (video editor)
Google+
GoToMeeting
WebEx
Dropbox
Scanner (JotNotPro)
Barcode Reader (ScanLife, RedLaser, pic2shop...)
News (Apple's general news reader from lots of different sources like Fox, NPR, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, whatever I want)
Shopping (Amazon, eBay, Target, Walmart, Zillow, NADA, etc.)
Online Banking (my credit union apps)
Flashlight (used every day!)

There is so much more... with over two MILLION apps available, who wouldn't want a smart phone around? Many people run their lives and businesses with these things.

In 2007, most people didn't understand the implications. Apple left Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Microsoft, and others in the dust, and only Google got it early enough to cash in at the cheap end. Now? I admit, I'm addicted.

Honestly I have not yet found a voice recognition software which is better than for entertainment purposes. There was one on I think windows phone which after around 3 tries she would just sulk turn off and refuse to speak. It was funny though.
Personally I think HAL in 2001 wasn't being malicious it was just struggling with the voice recognition.

"sorry I can not do that dave"

I am a lousy typist but after decades of hunt and peck i am reasonably fast. Faster than speech recognition anyway.

Maybe I will try it on a mac but usually i get results that are funny rather than practical

One christmas I had a nokia 3310 which was supposed to have "speech recognition" essentially you could assign a word to a number press a button speak the word and it would dial the number... well the word was arse. the more i tried the funnier it got my sister was dying of laughter in one chair and the way my brother described, i was like a farmer with tourettes..

Over the years i have tried various programs and ... struggled.

On android ok google is supposed to be the key to get my tablet listening. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Usually after its failed for the umpteenth time and then you say something inappropriate, then it listens and hears fine...

I will stick with typing :)