Textkraft – A Writers Tool for the iPad

Textkraft for your iPad – Another different writing app

With a being a writer and especially this month, as I am taking part in the NaNoWriMo, I can’t help myself when I see writing applications available for the iPad. I saw small notice somewhere online about an application called Textkraft, saying that it was interesting for writers. So I had to get my hands on it and I shall tell you now, that I’ve managed to get a review copy from the developers of the application.

The Dictionary in other iPad Apps

If you are a writer, then you are without a doubt concerned about words, how to use them, alternatives for words and you want to know whether you are using the correct word for the meaning of your sentence. If you are using the Apple application for word processing, Pages and also you will find this in other writing applications, when you select a word you will see an arrow to the right of the pop-up and you can get a dictionary definition for that word.

Dictionary Dictionary Dictionary

Depending upon the word, there could be plenty of information in there about that word. for example, I have just selected the word article and done that little trick to get to the dictionary and I now have a little pop-up box, with plenty of information about article. I can see that it is a noun, I can see how that word is supposed to be used, with examples. There is also some information about the origin of the word and in this case, I can see that it comes from old French and from Latin – How lovely, very useful.

Working with Words in Textkraft

First of all when you open the application, you will see that you have a nice open space in which to start writing. Textkraft is iPad for writers tool par excellence. Not only that you will see the numbers 1 to 5 in the bar below. What that does is to allow you to work on five different texts at the same time in the Textkraft application. Well not quite at the same time, but you can jump from one text to another by tapping on those numbers 1 to 5. Of course, as with many applications, one of the ways to get files on and off the iPad into this application, or out of this application is by using Dropbox. The other way that you can do this, is to use iTunes file sharing. I have also found that using an application such as GoodReader, you can take text files and open in Textkraft using the Open In menu. So there is no need to be complaining about how you’re going to get files on or off the iPad. The main, tried and tested ways of copying files to the iPad or moving files from the iPad have been included within this app.

iPad for writers

One of the things that worry me with an application that has extra, wild and wonderful features is that these features would get in the way of being able to do the normal or standard things that I would like to do, in this case to write in the writing application. There is no need to worry about that with this particular application, with Textkraft you get an extra couple of lines of keyboard and although they take up extra space they don’t feel like they are in the way because they are actually very useful.

What can you do with the extra set of keys above the keyboard?

When you’re working with the touch interface in other writing applications when don’t have these extra keys available, then you always have to use your finger to place the cursor where you want it in the text and to do things like selecting text. With this set of extra keys you get the extra facility of being able to move the cursor one word at a time in either direction. Also you can move from where you are in the line to either end with one tap of one of the extra keys. There are also keys which will let you move the cursor one character at a time, left and right and also up and down in the body of the text. One extra key that you don’t normally find in iOS and you may miss when you compare it to what you have in OS X is the tab key. What the tab key does is to allow you to put in a space as you would do usually the tab key on your PC. You also get a single quote key and a double quote key. The other two extra keys that are incredibly useful are the keys which will take your word next to the cursor and either give it a capital letter, or if it has one already, then it will put the word all in lower case letters.

Careful what you do – It might be best to use the word think rather than the word cogitate

As with any writing you do have to consider who is your audience for your text. If you use words like cogitated when something simpler and more to the point would be better for the audience that you are writing for, then you would not be doing your writing job properly. Nobody likes a smartypants!

When you are using the dictionary to supply you with words to stimulate your creativity, you will see words that are placed within coloured boxes in the suggestion area. This is what the colours mean.

Green – The dictionary has recognised the word as being correct
Red – The dictionary is not familiar with that word.
Grey – If you have exchanged one of the words already you will see this colour to let you know that you have worked with this word already.
Yellow – These are synonyms and other related words.
Purple – These are words that are close to the spelling of the word you have in the text.
Blue – Words that are shown in blue are on the ones that are dependent upon the X button and are extensions to the word. For example with the word what in the text, the blue word shows as some… With that I could tap on Use It and change the word what into somewhat. When the X is in the middle on the X button it doesn’t give me any words in blue. When the X is at the beginning, I get a selection of whatnot, whatever, whatsoever and Whatsyamacallit.

Overall verdict on the text editor application Textkraft

Textkraft is a good writers tool and if you are a serious writer then it will be worthwhile having for the quick links to dictionaries. I will not be using this to do my writing for NaNoWriMo, because with NaNoWriMo I don’t want to edit as I go. When the month of November is over and I have my 50,000 words or more and it is time to do some editing of the manuscript, then I could see that would be a good time to make use of Textkraft.

Having said that I would not use it during NaNoWriMo, I should say that I would not use the facilities of finding synonyms and other interesting words to use, as that would spoil the flow of my writing. But certainly I would consider using Textkraft if I am away from the office and I just needed to use a text editor within the iPad to type out a scene or two. Textkraft gets a thumbs up from me and the only thing I would change is making those buttons in the black bar on the left more context sensitive.

Reminiscing My Visit to the Apple Store Barcelona

The Apple Store Barcelona

The Apple Store Barcelona is not right in the centre of the city, which could be a good thing. When you have a store that is right in the centre of the city then you will have difficulties with parking. Apple decided with the Barcelona Apple Store that it would be better if it was on a retail Park. So in Barcelona if you want to have an Apple retail experience you have to go to visit La Maquinista. In the La Maquinista shopping centre you will find the Apple Store on the first floor. The first time that I visited I found it a little bit difficult to find, because it is quite a large shopping centre. In fact I parked at the wrong end of the shopping centre and was looking all over the place for applestore Barcelona, without success and had to ask somebody in the end.

I had my iMac fixed in the Apple Store Barcelona

The Apple Store was quite new, I think it had been only open a few months and as you know Apple stores are usually pretty busy. Seeing as this store was still a bit of a novelty, it is only the second Apple Store within Spain, so it was extra busy. I was fortunate in that although I didn’t have an appointment to see one of the Apple Genius guys, I was able to be seen and have the broken iMac looked at. The only trouble was that it took nearly a month to get fixed. I decided to get Apple Care on the latest iMac I have on the desk now, as I couldn’t go through that again. I couldn’t be that long without my computer now. Especially as I have given the MacBook, my back up machine to my son.

Apple Store Barcelona - La Maquinista

After a few weeks of waiting…

I am not a patient man and I was really starting to get miffed at the delay of getting the machine fixed. So as you can imagine I was delighted when the Apple Store Barcelona did finally get their finger out and fix my computer. I don’t much like the drive down to the Apple retail store at La Maquinista in Barcelona. My car is old and not really good for the motorway trips. I also find it a pain having to have the cash ready for the toll booths on the way there and back.

My next planned visit to the Apple Store Barcelona

I really don’t like it going into big cities if I can help it, and that includes Barcelona, even with it being quite a nice city to visit generally. So even with the allure of going to visit the Apple Store Barcelona, it may be some time before I make that journey again. My nearest city to where I live is Girona and unfortunately there is not a proper Apple Store in that city. There is a small, very small Apple reseller, which I have visited a number of times just to have a quick look in. The only problem is that if you were to be buying a large computer from that shop then parking is a bit of a problem. The Apple Store Girona is right in the old town of the city and it would be difficult to get a car in front of the shop.

Also in Girona there is a large superstore type of electronic store called Mediamarkt and this does have an area where Apple kit is sold. It is not a pleasant visit in there, as there is generally only one person looking after the Apple area. I did overhear one time, a customer that was looking for advice regards buying Apple equipment and the person giving advice was one of the general store employees, that was giving very bad information and steering the customer away from buying Apple. The store is very noisy and I am always very glad to get out of there. The only good thing about this large store is the fact that there is a very big car park in front and if the item that you wanted to buy was available in the store it would be a very simple matter to do some guerrilla shopping.

Put on the combats and go Guerilla

Guerrilla shopping is my preferred sort of shopping. Know what you want, go in a shop, hand over the cash and walk out with it, go home and play with it – Done and Dusted. At least with that sort of shopping it is possible to have the new iMac or the new iPad, there and then without having to wait. My other sort of preferred shopping of course is the online shopping, where I have the toys sent to me. The fun part of the online shopping is where you have a tracking number to be able to see the route that your purchase is taking, and exactly where it is at any given moment. But if I can’t wait then I might be tempted to visit the Apple Store Barcelona.

Can you get Garageband for Windows? – What about Garageband for PC can it be done?

Yes you can do a Garageband download – No to Garageband for PC

It may seem a little bit strange to us Mac users, or to us iPad users that have legitimate use of the application Garageband, but large numbers of people online do a search looking for Garageband for PC or Garageband for Windows. There must be a a ton of people that have heard about the great fun you can have and the excellent music that you can create by using Garageband. You have the possibilities of using the Magic Garageband which assists you in a lot of ways to help you make your bit of music. You can take the next approach which will be to use the loops that come with Garageband for the Mac and for the iPad and craft your own piece of music. Then of course if you are a proper musician and you just need to do a quick recording of yourself with your guitar or your keyboard that you play yourself and add a number of tracks together to do something that’s a little bit or professional, then Garageband is just the job. I love the way that you get the image of a stage with some instruments on to waiting to be played, you choose what you want and build your song. Great for kids to start making music, Garageband Digital Audio Recorder might even get them on the path of learning a musical instrument.

Garageband download – where do you get it?

When you buy a new Mac it comes with some excellent pieces of software that you do want to use. Not like when you buy a crappy PC and you get a bucket load of what can only be described as rubbish software, that is really only fit for the bin. With the Mac you get the iLife suite of software and included within that is Garageband. Without a doubt a new user to the Mac, in the first few days will have many hours of fun making music tracks. It’s all part of being a Mac user. Apple knows this, which is why we are given such a good selection of software with the computer when we buy it. It is to encourage new users to the platform.

Garageband for PC

Share your Garageband music

Naturally once you have created your musical masterpiece you’re going to want to share it out, so that other people can listen to it. It is easy to do that by exporting the song out into your iTunes library, you even have the choice of going for the CD quality format or saving out as an MP3. You can even take your song and turn it into a custom ringtone for your iPhone. How good is that? You will hear your song every time your friends call you.

Despite the fact that Garageband for Mac is so good and much better than anything that you would get on a PC, there may come a time when you want to upgrade to the professional musicians software Logic Pro. It is easy to bring in songs from Garageband into the Logic Pro software.

Garageband will also give you basic music lessons

You won’t get music lessons on an equivalent Garageband for PC. With the Garageband format you will get 40 lessons to choose from. With Garageband for iPad, you can use the iRig MIDI to plug in a keyboard, there is also a device, Amplitube for iPad, you can use to allow you to connect a guitar to your iPad. Then you can have Sting teach you how to play Roxanne. You can also use the iRig microphone to sing along to your newly learned song. Using Garageband is a great way to learn the chords and finger positions for the guitar. With the lessons you can also play along with the band as well as hear some of the stories behind the song, directly from the musician that created it in the first place.

Stop dreaming about Garageband for Windows

So if you want to be a rock ‘n’ roll hero and you can’t afford a Mac, don’t waste your time wondering about Garageband for Windows, just go and grab yourself an iPad. Garageband for iPad only costs $4.99 and you are in business to start creating some music.

There are so Many Apps for the iPad – How do you find the good ones to use

Finding the Best Apps to use on the iPad – Good iPad apps

We all like to have new applications on our iPad and it has long been known that finding good apps can sometimes be a little difficult. You have to kind of, go by the top apps list in the iTunes Store for apps for your iPad. But all that gives you is a fairly short list of applications that have been popular with other people. What we need is to have some way to be able to find applications based upon a specific need that we have or have the option to browse and search for interesting apps among the thousands that inhabit the store.

Other places to get good iPad apps

There have been apps created such as App Shopper, which is another way of getting some recommendations for apps that we might like to try. One way and I have found to be good for getting interesting applications for my iPad, is to listen to some of the iPad and Mac podcasts. Quite often at the end of these podcasts the presenters will give recommendations for applications that they have tried and either just enjoyed using or have found useful. I found out about Phatpad this way and also ThinkBook. good ipad apps - AppZapp HD

Using AppZap HD or AppZappPush

Another thing that is going to be useful for us for finding applications, especially if we are looking for a bargain is to use an application such as apps zap. At the moment I am trying out an application called AppZapp HD which gives me recommendations for iPad applications and the best part about it is that it gives alerts when an application that was previously one price has now lowered its price and is cheaper. It also has a section where it will tell you where apps were paid for apps and now free. you can set up this AppZap HD To push notifications to you for things such as the now free applications.

AppZap HD An Example of using it - good iPad apps

I am looking at the AppZap HD application now and just as an example, I can see that there is an application called Clean Energy Hawaii STEM HD which used to be £1.49 and now it’s free. If I tap on the button in AppZap HD, it takes me through to the App Store on the iPad, where I can use the install app functionality and have the application downloaded to my iPad. You can also use AppZap to get more information about the applications it shows you, when you tap on the list of applications in the main screen, a panel slides out with more information about the app. Getting good ipad apps is easy with AppZap HD. You can tap to see the thumbnails that the developers have put up to exhibit their application, or you can check out the description, application information, what’s new in this version information, as well as recommendations for other apps you may like. I can also tap on the button which gives me other applications by the same developer. If I decide I don’t want to see more by this developer, then I can block this seller if I wish.

Mind your Language – AppZap HD

You can set up some filters within AppZap HD so that you can have it just show you applications in the English language or you may choose to have all languages. You may select to show just two or five languages, maybe you want to see applications in English, Japanese, Norwegian and Korean. It is also possible to filter by the categories. I can choose to look at all categories for example, or I may just choose to watch for applications in books, educational apps, and photography. AppZap HD will also show Mac applications, as well as applications for IOS devices. I have no interest in seeing any good ipad apps from Asia, as I can’t read Chinese or any other Asian language, so it is quite nice I can specifically tell it to hide Asian apps. The Amazing iPad

Actually Using the Book Creator and Does it Offer Enough

Did you know that you can make ebooks right on your iPad? You can open up an application bring images and text in from other applications on your iPad, arrange them how you want them to be and the end result will be an e-book that you publish into the iBook store. You can make iBooks that you can sell or you can make iBooks that you can give away, whatever you prefer.

Testing an iPad Application to make an actual eBook

I’ve been testing out some of these applications for making eBooks and the one that I have downloaded and paid for is called Book Creator. It has a simple interface which makes it easy to use. The other side of that of course is that it is a little bit too simple and it doesn’t do enough, considering the price of it. There are other e-book creators out there and I may have to check them out to see if they are better in terms of what they can do.

The e-book ePub format is quite strict, for example it is difficult to set up text to flow around an image, images have to be inline. Alignment of text and images is something that you can do quite easily if you’re using Pages. With Book Creator what you have to do is to split your text into smaller text boxes, so that you can have one text box which will go to the side of your image. Then you put the rest of the text so that it flows on downwards after the image has been inserted. So it is possible, but completely manual.

Getting your text onto the pages of your eBook

When you put text into Book Creator, if it is a large piece of text, it will flow right off the bottom of the screen and you will be wondering how on earth, you are going to get it to fit onto your page. What you have to do is to scroll down until you find the blue dots which are the markers for the middle of the vertical sides of the text, so that you can change the shape of the text box. Another possibility to set up your text so that you can have it fit on the page, is to change the size of the text to something really small. When the text is really small you are able to see all of your text box and can shape it to fit the space where you want it. There should be a way to put the numbers in to set the size of the text box manually, but there isn’t.

Overflowing text has to be split into sections

Another thing that makes putting text into this application a little bit more difficult than using a standard word processor, is the fact that you do have to split the text into sections that will fit to the length of the page. In Book Creator I found that the way to do this was, to set the width of the text box and just see how much of the text I could keep in that particular text box. Then I would double tap to enter the text editing part of the application to select the text that would be overflowing, to cut it out of that box. The next step is to create another text box and paste in the text I had just cut out. Then I would have to do the same until all of the text was added to my document.

e book creator

Formatting only possible per text box in Book Creator

Something else with the text editing that I don’t particularly like, is that I am not able to apply formatting to text areas that I have put in. Perhaps I want to have a line of text as a level 3 header, or I want it to be in bold so that it stands out as a header. The problem is, is that with this application it is not possible to format just one part of a text area. To be able to make titles for parts of the text, I had to separate the text out into a text box of its own. Then I was able to apply the formatting to that text box.

It really shouldn’t be that difficult to be able to apply formatting to certain parts of the text, as the underlying technology of the e-book format is HTML. Although adding text is something that needs to be improved upon, adding images to an e-book with Book Creator is much easier. Take the images from the Photo Roll of your iPad and resize them as you see fit once they are in. You can’t do any rotating of an image, which is a bit of a shame, but you can make images bigger or smaller, no problem at all.

Putting the assets of your book in order on the page

With the items that you have included in your e-book, when you have selected something, you can tap on the Inspector icon in the menu bar at the top. Within the inspector in Book Creator you can change the size of text, make it bold, italicised or underlined. You can change the font and the colour of the font. If you want to have a background colour for just that text box, then you can do that to. You can move items to the front or the back and generally that would be used to put an image behind some text.

Setting up the formatting of the eBook in Book Creator

Also within the inspector you can set the formatting for the page. You can set a background colour for the left side and also for the right side of the page separately. Then you have the editor settings set up, to show guides, snap to guides and snap to grid. Mind you I couldn’t see how to turn on the grid in order to be able to see it. Get the book creator app for the iPad

The Amazing iPad

Photographs on The iPad Photo Roll or There is Photo Folder

Using the Photo App that comes with the iPad

The application that comes with the iPad to let you look at your photographs gives the ability to look at all your photographs on your iPad. Also in there since iOS 5 you can look at what you have in the Photo Stream. These are the photos that get taken and pushed out to your other IOS devices and also to iPhoto or Aperture on your Mac, if you have that setup in those desktop apps. From Photo Stream you can save a photo so that you have it saved and kept in your Photo Roll. From the same menu you can do other things such as assign the photograph to a contact, use as wallpaper, tweet it or send it to a printer.

You can then organise photos into albums in the standard application. In your Photo folder You just tap on the edit button and you can create a new album, there is the button for that in the top left-hand corner. Then it is a fairly simple mechanism to choose from all of your photos and put them into a your album. You also have your photographs divided up into events and faces. To have photos sorted by faces you will have to organise that in iPhoto.

The standard application that comes with your iPad is not too bad at organising your photos, visitors and doesn’t do much more than that. And this is why you may be interested in finding something that will give you a way to sort photos by a filter, give you the ability to rotate photographs and also get access to the meta data. There are times, when a photographer will really need to have more information about the photograph, you will find useful information in the meta data of the your photos.

Using Photo Folder to Get More Functionality

Photo folder

Filtering will get it sorted

There is a button on the lower menubar, the third from the right which is your filtering a button. To be able to view the photos that have been tagged, then you do need to be inside a folder where the photos are. It doesn’t seem to be possible to search for photos that are tucked away inside sub folders. It would be very handy if it would be possible to search through all photos, otherwise you have to remember which folder that you should start looking in, before you can start your search.

Boolean searches – AND – OR

The filtering search is quite good in that you can do a Boolean search, where you might look for photos that are tagged with two different tags. With an AND search then you will just see photos that are tagged with both of the tags. With an OR search you will see all of the photos even if one of the photos only has one other tags applied to it.

You can also do a search in your photo folder that is based on favourites. If you have identified a photo as being a favourite then you can have that as one of your search criteria as well as looking at the tags. Photos can also be given ratings from 1 to 5 stars and again this can be one of your search criteria. You might want to look for all of the photos in a folder that have the tag of Catalonia and the tag of Clouds and has a five-star rating. That is how specific you can be with your photo search and to a certain extent, how well it work depends upon how good you are at tagging your photos.

Metadata is there but what can you do with it?

Being able to see the meta data can be handy, if you need to see things like the pixel height or width of the image, the shutter speed value, the exposure time or any of the other data that is stored within the exif data. The only thing that you are able to change in this data is the name of the file. It is not possible to change any of the other data while looking at the Meta data after tapping on the information button. The tags are stored in this area too, but you can only change them from the tagging dialogue box. To do any tagging you have to be looking at the thumbnails within the folder. You can’t tag an individual photo when you are looking at the photo full-screen.

Doing things to the photo when looking at a single photo

When you have the photo full-screen you are able to rate a photo with one to five stars, in the bottom right-hand corner. With the icon to the left of that, you can see all of the data associated with that photo. With the next icon you can choose to send the photo to Facebook, Twitter, Picasso, Flickr, e-mail and to print. If you have brought the photo in via the Wi-Fi and the photo is not in your photo library on your iPad then you can hit the Save to Library button.

If the photo has been geo-tagged then the icon in the middle will take you to a map to show you where the photo was taken. I was not able to test that as none of the photos I have available have been geo-tagged. From the fullscreen mode you can also start a slideshow. You may choose how long the slide is to show for, whether you want to have music playing during the slideshow and the type of transition that you would like to use. You can even have the slideshow repeat or do a little bit of a shuffle as it plays. When you are in the full-screen view, looking at your photos, you can tap on the dustbin icon if you want to get rid of a photo from that album.

The Verdict on Photo Folder

I found the Photo Folder application to be quite useful, there are number of facilities within the application that are quite handy. This app would be very good if you have a large number of photographs that you need to sort through to find the one that you want for specific purposes. For me, the tagging and filtering of the photos makes the application worth having. It would be nice to have a way to find files even when they are tucked away inside folders or subfolders. Without that application wide searching for photos then a solution would be just to throw all photos into one folder and make sure that you do the tagging diligently.

SteamPunk Novel Published using iBook app for Ebook Creation

Getting your novel published and into the iBook store with iBook App

Smashwords Ebooks from independent authors and publishers

It is not that difficult to make an e-book in the e-book format to get it into the iBook store. If you are prepared to go out and buy your ISBN numbers, then you can deal with Apple direct. What may be a better thing to do for your first two or three books that you write, would be to use a service of one of the e-book aggregators such as Lulu or Smashwords. I know that Lulu will give you an ISBN number for free and they are able to recoup the cost of the ISBN numbers by taking a percentage of the sales. Apple take 30% of sales anyway and Lulu will take 20% of that which is left. Lulu has a calculator for working out how much you will get paid from each sale of your e-book. One example is that if you sell a book for $4.99 then you can expect to earn €3.14 from each sale. When you consider what your earnings would be from the dead tree versions of books after the publishers off taken their cut, then the Lulu self publishing method actually looks quite attractive.

Getting published and making electronic books with your iPad and iBook app

The first thing to do of course is to write your book, as I have suggested before when you’re using the Mac, Scrivener is the way to go. In fact the developers of Scrivener have recently brought out a Windows version, which I think is now out of beta. Of course as I am a Mac guy I’m going to recommend that you are better off with a Mac and an iPad. One of the good things for users of Scrivener, is that you can export directly from it to the e-book format. I have tried this out, tested it a number of times and have found that the format is just right to convert your writing and be accepted by the Apple iBook store.

iBook app Demi Books COmposer

The iBook App application looks to be very good for creative types, to design and make books that are not just text. For instance, in the example book in there, called ‘A Is for Aardvark’, on page 2 there is a button which will when tapped, play a sound. Within the settings at the top of the application there is a preview button. I am trying out that book at the moment and when I tap the button for the sound I get to hear the sound of the Buffalo. On the next page there is a similar button that plays the sound of a cheetah. It is all quite impressive really, I like it.

In the top menu bar, there is a book icon and this is where you set the details of the book. You have the title, icon title, store description and other settings that relate to how the book will be in the Apple Store for books. There are also settings in there for the page navigation and transitions. You can choose from curl left to vortex or have the pages fade into each other when you tap to change your page. At the bottom of this set of book details settings, you will find your button to export out to iTunes or Dropbox.

E-Booking to the Bitter End!

This application, Demi Books Composer is free and looks very accomplished. I plan to create a book with this and take it all away through to the finished product, to see how it all works. I will update this post with more information when I have done that. In the following posts about creating a books I will also be looking at Book Creator, Creative Book Builder, e-Book Creator and also e-Book Magic. I have already bought the application, Book Creator and I am looking forward to trying out that iBook app, which I will also to bring a fully formed book into fruition.

NaNoWriMo for iPad owners writers and Authors using dictation software

National Novel Writing Month

Taking Part in the NaNoWriMo Contest – A Novel in 30 days using dictation software

Now it is the time of the year for writers and authors to start thinking about the National novel writing month otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. This is where totally crazy writers join in a contest to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of one month. You have 30 days to just get stuck in and create your novel, it works out at around about 1700 words per day. I have never attempted the challenge before but I think that this November, I will give it a go. While I’m using the Dragon dictation software I find it very easy to actually get the words written for the articles that I write. Just looking at my stats for so far this month in October, I can see that I have had an average of 2200 words per day. I expect that it will be more difficult to write around about the same number of words per day, writing prose for a novel, but I am going to give it a try.

Starting with writing an outline for the novel in iThoughtsHD

The first thing to do to get started with this, will be to use the 10 days between now and the end of the month to use the iPad mind mapping software I have, to work on an outline. The mind mapping software that I plan to use will be iThoughtsHD and it is within the rules to have an outline, you can even have some back stories written for your characters if you wish, just so long as you don’t actually start writing the novel itself until 1st of November.

I feel challenged by NaNoWriMo even with using dictation software for faster writing.

I have seen that the organisers do try and help you keep to the program as it were, by giving you challenges on a daily basis. For example they might say in a tweet -okay you have 30 minutes now to do non-stop writing, don’t think about it just do it. Then there might be suggestions such as have your character go into a Starbucks and meet somebody. It will be little things like this, that the NaNoWriMo organisers will be sending out, in order to make sure that there are no writers blocks being formed.

Kindle for iPad

Buying books for the Kindle and free books for the Kindle

I have the Kindle app on my iPad and I have downloaded a few free books that are available. It is nice to know that there are free books for the Kindle for the iPad. There are also free books that you can get to use in the iBooks application on the iPad too. I actually bought a book from Amazon called No Plot No Problem! Which is by the author Chris Baty, who was the person that instigated the NaNoWriMo idea in the first place. Aside from the outline of the Story of how the NaNoWriMo came into existence, there are lots of tips and tricks for the authors and writers that take part in the exercise can use to help them be a winner in the contest.

The risk of bragging about being able to take on the task

Chris talks about how to find time to do the writing. He says that is a good idea to brag to all of your friends before you get started, that you are taking part in NaNoWriMo, so that you are obliged to start it and finish it. The ignominy of being teased rotten and the lambasted by your peers for not being able to finish what you started, is a good motivation to keep your nose to the grindstone with writing your novel.

Will not make a reader vomit

One of the things that is also necessary for completing the NaNoWriMo and being a winner is to first of all lower your expectations of your novel. Even the best writers will tell you that the first draft of any novel is complete shit. All of the work that you do in the rewriting is what turns it into something that is readable. We should not expect to have something brilliant, a 50,000 word masterpiece after one month of writing, but we should aim for something that would not make somebody vomit.

Week by Week plan for NaNoWriMo

After gathering up a stockpile of incentives to make sure that the novel gets written, Chris goes on to talk about how to work out some of your characters and plots. He also moves on to suggest a week by week overview of how you might attack the writing process of bashing out your book. He suggests that the first week might be easy enough with the first flush of excitement and fun of making the characters come to life and actually do something. Then the second week will hit and reality will hit even harder. The allure of various tasks around the house will be almost impossible to resist in a flurry of procrastination. It may well be that at the end of the day around about 11 PM and no writing has been done yet, that you have to dive into throwing out some words just in order to keep up with the word count.

The deadlines and the intense pressure that you put upon yourself to do the 50,000 words within 30 days, is really what it is all about. Without having something like this, it will be a case of always saying – I will do it tomorrow. As we all know tomorrow never comes, the book never gets written and you never have your bestseller.

Using Dragon Dictation software and Scrivener with iPad

I would like to say that I would use the iPad to write my 50,000 words, but that may be a little bit unrealistic. What I plan to do is to use DragonDictate to write my novel. I could use the free Dragon Dictation software that is on the iPad, which is actually very accurate, but I think I will get more done if I use the Mac version of the software. I will be using Scrivener of course to organise the novel. Unfortunately there is not a Scrivener for iPad, though many people have suggested to the developer that he should create an iPad version. There are other writers software out there and I think it is true that Storyist does have an iPad application that you can work with. I must check that out, even though I am unlikely to change, because I do very much like the way that I can work within Scrivener and iPad.

Scrivener for iPad SimpleNote for the iPad, will automatically go into Scrivener. What I can see happening is that I will have a day or two, where getting out of the office and writing somewhere else will get the creative juices flowing. Taking the iPad out and going off to do some writing elsewhere of a couple of thousand words could be just what I need.

Getting the novel published and into the iBook store helped by Dragon Dictate iPad dictation software. The writers software for mobile computing, dragon dictation for ipad means that I can also work at NaNoWriMo away from home. iPad dictation is not as fast or as accurate as using the Mac version but fairly good all the same. The iPad for authors is invaluable as you can use it as a place to write every bit of a note or part of a story that would otherwise end up on a piece of papre that would get lost easily. I took part in NaNoWriMo 2011 and I am not sure if I will do NaNoWriMo 2012. I also used the Scrivener software which is a tool for the professionals. My writer for iPad could be one of a number of iPad apps for writers. Textastic is my favourite at the moment.

Leave a comment below if you have made an eBook already.

Book Creator for iPad or The Creative Book Builder – Which One To Use

Book Creator for ipad

The Book Creator for iPad compared to Creative Book Builder.

So we have our e-book all written, that is all the text has been extruded from our brain and put in some sort of logical format. Now what we want to do, is to get it out there so that other people can take advantage of it. The creative part is done with the words, and aside from some creativity in terms of making the cover image and adding any illustrations to the book, what we have next is the technical aspect of getting it into the right format for publication.

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Buy an App or get a Free EBook Creation Tool

We could go the free route with the Demi Books Composer, Or we might decide that what is need is an application for the iPad, that will allow us to create our e-book, and we don’t care even if we have to pay for it. Let’s have a look at two paid for applications, one is Creative Book Builder which is coming in at just under four dollars and compare it with the book creator which is costing just under seven dollars. Unless we get a good set of reviews of the book creators for iPad then we are going to have to actually try these out to see which works best with our book.

Creating eBooks From Start to Finish or Are There Limitations

We need to know whether the application software is easy to use. Are there any limitations as to what the e-book iPad application can do? We will want to know if the final published version of the book is going to be up to the standard that we expect for our creative endeavours. Which application is going to give us what we need, without any further steps or cost or will we come across surprises in the form of extra charges to be able finish the job off.

Write the body of the book in Book Creator and then import into the eBook builder app

Creative Book Builder is easy to use to the point, that anybody could start a book, edit and publish it in just a few minutes. Obviously that’s not taking into account all of the hard work and time involved in actually writing the words. What we’re talking about here is the piecing it together and having is ready to publish. In Creative Book Builder there is no limit to the number of chapters that you can have. You can do the usual things like adding titles, descriptions, pictures, video, audio such as sound effects and music and even be able to put in links, both internally and externally to the book.

Book Creator

Great project and Educational use of iPad

What can the iPad do for the teacher – One of the uses that applications where creating books is being used, is within schools. Students in classrooms love to be able the to take work that they have created for a class and put in it in a format that allows the work to be presented to their classmates, their family and of course, the teacher. Being able to see a finished piece of work creates an incredible feeling of achievement and pride. Being able to give your mother an actually book to read on her iPad in the iBook application, is a whole lot better than having your drawings displayed on the fridge door.

Proper format for ePub as required by Apple

Your book will work properly in iBooks fixed layout format, even if you’re using double page images. So far it has been easy to learn how to use this and it seems to be very intuitive iPad app for eBooks. This application is also great for professors and teachers to use to be able to create the booklets to be passed to the students. The students being able to read the book like this, in some ways are able to connect better to the subject matter, compared to if the same content was being presented as a Keynote presentation.

Design a Cover for your Book

Designs for the front cover can be created in other applications such as using Pixelmator, the Mac application. Or you might do it in Art Studio, right there on your iPad. It is also possible to create your cover within the application bringing in pictures and formatting text as you go. It is but a hop, skip and a jump to have put a book together and published in iBooks. It is quite possible to easily have your professional looking e-book published and ready for reading in about half an hour. Depending on the size of the book and having all the assets ready to insert in Book Creator. Now you can make books for iPad on the iPad. You can make books for free using the creative books ebook creator. Do you buy books for iPad I have bought a couple but I also have a load of books for iPad free from Amazon. Some of the ebook creator apps are free apps for iPad, which is very handy. Book Creator.

The Amazing iPad

Leave a comment below if you have made an eBook already.

Using eBook Magic to Make a PhotoBook on the iPad

Ebook magic ipad magic

E-Book Magic – Presenting your photos in a Book for iPad Magic

While applications like Book Creator, Creative Book Builder and Demi Books Composer are more about creating books that are text based with some images and other multimedia, E-Book Magic is more concerned with making photo books. You can also put text with your photos, but the whole thing is more designed for showing off your photographs.

It is really easy to get started and make some iPad magic, just tap on a button to start a new book, then you choose which of the template that you would like to use, there are about 100 of them. With these templates you basically are dividing the screen up regards how much of the photograph you want to take over the screen and how many photos on a page. You’re also deciding there, where you want the text to go to. Above the photo, to the side or below the photo. The text is there to give you titles and descriptions of your photographs. Although it is not specifically set up for telling a story, I imagine it would be possible to use E-Book Magic, to do that if you really wanted to.

iPad Magic – Choosing backgrounds for your Photo book

It is very easy to change backgrounds for your photos, you have the options of the opacity of the backgrounds. Background can be chosen from your own photo roll or can be selected from a few places on the Internet, including the E-Book Magic website having their own supply of backgrounds available. You can use the opacity setting to overlay colours on the top of text boxes and photo boxes in order to create different effects.

Easy manipulation of the photos

You can do the usual pinch and zoom to handle your photographs and you can add images to the photo boxes or the text boxes, as well as to the background of the page. With iPad Magic, as you would expect it is easy to add borders, frames and colours to the assets that you have on the page. If while you are making the book you find that it is the wrong shape, it would be better as a portrait shaped rather than a landscape shaped, then you can change as you see fit.

iPad Magic – Cheap enough to buy and try out

You will be able to get the book that you create into your iBooks application on your iPad, but you should be aware that the books will be PDF-based and not the proper e-book format of E-pub. This is quite a simple application that will be just right for some users and at the price of £2.49 is cheap enough you to try out if you think it might suit you. Overall I would say that the application is well-designed with the menus being contextual, so that you have the right menu for the job that you have in hand. Attention to detail like that makes it much more intuitive and easy to use. Hey Presto iPad Magic!