iPodTouch as an ereader

[gmn314]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone uses their iPodTouch as an e-reader? I want to be able to read html documents (like technical help files), or pdf files during my commute. The small size of the iPodTouch makes it a perfect candidate for this. I tried the Sony e-reader, but it does not render html well, and it completely failed doing pdf files. I figure the browser on the iPodTouch would make it easy to read html files.

The only problem I see is copying files onto the device. I read posts where people suggest emailing documents to yourself, but that seems kind of bogus. Is there a better way to do that?

Any thoughts on using iPodTouch as an e-reader?

[Chaski]

This is similar to emailing the documents, but if you have a Google account, you can upload the documents to Google Docs & Spreadsheets then view them on your iPod. You can also edit as well. I think it allows you to view and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint & PDF files.

As for applications, I have no idea.

EDIT: You can also add a HTML file to Google Docs & Spreadsheets to view.

[DerekVOF]

For applications if you've jailbroken, there is an eBook reader that's designed for TXT & HTML files that works pretty well - as long as the files aren't large, then it bogs down. It's just called Books.app - http://iphoneebooks.googlecode.com/

PDFs, though, aren't as lucky. There is a PDF viewer called PDFviewer - however, although it renders beautifully, the big problem is that you can't just jump to a page which is a nightmare in a large PDF.

To get files up there, you need to SFTP into your iPod Touch and put them in specific folders under the ~/Media/ folder (~/Media/EBooks and ~/Media/PDFs respectively). Not hard to do, but not convenient either.

You can (as you mentioned) just email them to yourself which works too and uses the same rendering engine.