Productive Organizer

When I had my iPod Touch, the best application that I got my hands on was GoodReader.

I was astounded by how well and how fast it renders PDF on a 3.5 inch device. I never thought I could read PDF so well after my ordeal with past Windows Mobile.

When I got the iPAD 1G not long ago, the first app I got my hands on was GoodReader for iPAD.

Sure, there are iBook and Dropbox PDF readers but there are 2 upsides of GoodReader over these app.

Storage/Transfer via USB, Dropbox, Google Reader, SugarSync and other WEBDAV servers

I don’t really like to be constrain by Apple’s draconian way of file management. I store most of my reading materials in my 7.5 GB free dropbox (find out about DropBox here!)

With GoodReader’s USB app and these cloud storage I can access my current PDF materials from where they are and not need to bind it to iTunes.

GoodReader even allows you to sync PDF materials with Dropbox!

Annotations!

The second upside of goodreader is that it allows you to edit and add annotations to your PDF materials.

Take a look at what you can do on them. When you read your PDF on your computer these annotations will still be there. This makes it a great way to personalize your reading material.

Conclusion

As an avid reader and investor, I do have a lot of financial reports from various banks and it used to be awkward reading them on my iPod Touch, but the iPad really makes reading and keeping these reports filed properly easy.

Any professional who wants to keep a tool that will hold tons and tons of reference and reading materials should get a tablet such as an iPad.

It is really the main reason why we get a 10 inch device.

Here are some great find.

ezPDF is a third party PDF reader for the Android and in this video demo it shows that once you rooted a Nook Color you would be able to:

1. View 277MB PDF file!
2. Pinch to Zoom PDF
3. Text Reflow
4. Text Search by long press
5. Keep track of where you left off

update: you can’t view the video here but follow the link!

Here we see how to view word,excel, PDF and Powerpoint via Quickoffice

1. PDF Fit to Width for easy reading
2. Not smooth excel scrolling of large excel files
3. 5 columns of view space on landscape for excel

Folks would also like to contrast with how Archos 101 and 70 did in PDF reading:

PDF Reading Experience on Android Archos 101 on Video

I wish people can post more video reviews like these.  Today I have 2 videos showing Archos PDF reading experience.

This first video is good. It shows how responsive it is to read.

The three software demo are:

1. Adobe Reader
2. Laputa
3. Aldiko

What was demoed:

1. How smooth Launcher Pro Replacement is
2. Reading PDF Comic Book in Landscape
3. Fast Zoom In and Zoom Out
4. Portrait Epub book reading on Laputa
5. Portrait Epub book reading on Aldiko

What Czhincksx shows here is PDF reading on the Archos 101. It’s a 5 min demo where he shows PDF reading

1. a big 62 MB PDF file from internal memory
2. PDF file stored in a USB memory
3. PDF file from the internet

It’s a great demo that I am trying to find but could find any. I talked about my less than good experience with the archos 101 and 70 not too long ago and this review certainly shows it.

But on the whole this PDF software (I am not sure what is it) provides good enough rendering.

I would really love to know which software is it and whether it does annotations and last save location.

Kyith Says:

Here is a good article at MakeUseOf detailing why the author thinks that iBooks is a great ebook reader for annotations.

Granted the only app that we have come across now on this site dealing with Annotations have been GoodReader, I urge you to read this article to see its perspective

Pagination

First off, the pagination of the iBook is the closest you will get to the paper format. While the page numbering is not exactly the same as the paper format of the book, a slider at the bottom of the page tells you what page you’re on.

It also tells you how many pages are left in a chapter. This bit of information helps me to to determine if I‘ll have enough time to finish a chapter before I need to stop and do something else.

When you drag your finger across the dotted slider, you get to see the chapter number, chapter title, and pages of the book. This is seriously great for navigating pages. I’ll go into this more later.

Now compare the pagination of the iBooks e-reader to that of the Kindle app (the screenshot below).

For some odd reason, the page numbers of a Kindle e-book can run into the thousands, although the actual length of a book may be only a few hundred pages. Its menu slider doesn’t include the pertinent information included in an iBook e-reader.

The Kindle app only tells you the percentage of pages you have read. A percentage number is not very useful especially if you‘re reading an e-book for study purposes or for book group discussions.

Navigating Pages

One of the most frustrating aspects of e-readers is getting back to a designated page. All e-readers I’ve used do open back to the last page you were on before closing the application. That’s great. But when you’re reading an e-book and decide to “flip” back and forth between pages, it’s often very difficult to get back to a designated page if you don’t make a note of the page number.

You can bookmark the page, but that means you have to open the bookmark menu and then tap on it to get back to a particular page. When you read an e-book for study purposes, you often compare information in different parts of the book. You might also frequently check references as you read. Having a way to quickly return to a designated page can a huge time saver.

Navigating pages is even more frustrating in the Kindle app because if you leave a page, the number of that page may actually change for some reason when navigating away from it.

In both the iBooks and Kindle app, there is a Resume button that when tapped takes you back to the last page you were on, but not necessarily the last page you were reading, or a specific page you want to return to. I would like to be able to stamp any page and then tap a single visible button to take me back to that page.

Highlights

I believe the iBooks app is the only one that provides multiple color markers for highlighting. iAnnotate, an e-reader app for PDFs, also includes this feature.

The default highlight color is yellow, but it can be changed to green, blue, pink, or purple. I assigned a definition to each color to make them more useful.

[Read the rest of this article here >>]

One of my top reviews at productive organizer have been how you can read PDF books or magazines on your iPhone or iPod Touch via good reader.

The medium of transfer have always been through WEBDAV WIFI transfer, where your iPhone becomes a webserver temprory and provides a url that you can assess via your desktop browser to transfer your books:

Key in the address in (1) in the picture in your browser:

The new USB Manager

What I like about the new USB manager is that it’s a portable application that does not require installation.

Once you plug in your iPhone or iPod touch into your USB, it should detect it!

[Download the Windows App here >>]

[Download the Mac App here >>]

Now i got intrigued by the name of this application for the iPhone and iPod Touch called Fast PDF [itunes >>].

If its name is Fast PDF, you can guess that their are assuming that their edge over other PDF Readers are the speed and performance when viewing PDF documents.

How much does it cost

Its retailing at USD 2.99

What is the competition out there?

For PDF readers on the iPhone and iPad, the FREE alternative for reading have always been putting your documents in Dropbox and viewing it on your pc as well as on your iPhone.

I review a good PDF reader previously called GoodReader [Review here>>]. GoodReader was great at USD 0.99 so if this cost more than Good Reader then i would expect it to do what it does better and more.

UI and Functionality

The prevailing UI for reading application seems to be the book shelf metaphor and Fast PDF uses this as well. On this book shelf you would find PDF books and magazines and documents you have uploaded.

To upload a PDF document from your computer, touch the start server and you will find a link where you can use in your desktop browser to upload the PDF document in

You can also browse for PDF documents located on the web via the other 2 options. But really i question when i would ever face a situation when i will need this.

Perhaps when i am browsing through Safari on the iPhone and copy the PDF link, i can switch over here to let Fast PDF download for me.

Reading and Browsing

I have created a video here showing its performance. What i notice is that loading on the iOS is very fast even for large PDF files like a 40-50 MB Magazine images scanned.

Here is a video showing Fast PDF’s performance on an iPAd. Looks bloody good don’t you think?

Conclusion

Overall i feel that in terms of speed of loading definitely it is faster than Dropbox and GoodReader, although GoodReader also prides itself to be a fast reader.

The end state is that overall reading is fast on the iOS Platform compare to Android currently.

However, what i feel is lacking in Fast PDF is categorization or tagging in folders. Backup and Exporting and integration to other applications such as Dropbox, Box.net is something they can look into to improve competitiveness.

At the price they are pricing, GoodReader still looks much more attractive here.

I would like to thank the folks from FAST PDF for giving me the opportunity to test drive this application.

Popular iPhone PDF  Reader have a major update to version 2.3 with numerous feature:

• Reflow – a technique of translating what is in PDF that you are reading to text
• Auto Scrolling the Reflow Text – Very useful for lazy people and a good reading technique. When i learn speed reading you do not re-read a sentence again and again. this one is suppose to help you. Unfortunately it only plays that particular page!
• USB transfer of file improvement. Haven’t tried this one yet.
• PDF brightness.night mode and day mode.

I blog about the major uses of GoodReader in a pervious post, do try this as a main mobile pdf reader.