KC books on iPhone 3G (version 2)

[Candidasa dasa]

Hare Krishna,

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

If you have upgraded your iPhone to the new version 2 software or own a new iPhone 3G, you may have noticed that the free Books.app no longer exists for download. It has been replaced by the "Bookshelf" app (which costs money - but can also be obtained by "other means"). The existing means of installing KC books also no longer works.

I have cleaning and converting the previous HTML books for use with the Bookshelf application on the new iPhone software. You can download all the books (50 MB) here:

http://www.deltaflow.com/installer/books.zip

This includes Bhagavad-Gita, SD, CC, Brahma samhita, NoI, NoD and Krishna Book (new addition). 

You can use the Bookshelf.app in conjunction with something called the "ShelfServer" to transfer the books to your iPhone. See:

http://www.iphonebookshelf.com/quickstart.php

(be sure to unzip the archive before transfer in order to preserve the folder structure)

Some devotees have reported that the ShelfServer doesn't work for them. If that is the case you will have to jailbreak the iPhone, install OpenSSH and use an FTP program to directly copy the unzipped books' files into the Bookshelf "Documents" folder on the iPhone (/private/var/mobile/Documents/).

instructions for jailbreaking iPhone:

http://menoob.com/2008/08/03/download-and-test-iphone-apps-before-buying-from-the-app-store-2/

Could someone try this out and tell me if it works. If so, I will write a blog post to let more devotees know about this.

your servant,

Candidasa dasa

[Amala Gaura dasa]

Thanks for this information.  The $10 for the bookshelf application is reasonable if it works. I will be interested to know if this works too.

I was reading about  Shelfserver.  It is made the by the same company of Bookshelf for this exact purpose, so there is no reason it should not work.  The only issues may be some connectivity / bonjour issues.

I am tempted to be the guinea pig, but if someone does have a jailbroken iphone they could test it i suppose.

I had converted all the books into a plucker format for a palmtop before and read a lot on the palmtop, but i don't carry around the palmtop anymore.

Thanks,

your servant,

amala gaura dasa

[Eze]

It works.

I installed the bookshelf, the shelfserver and copied bg and sb to my ipod touch.

This is great for now but i think the best and easiest solution for devotees would be to create a real iphone app using the sdk.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

There is one app now called Gita
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=287415091
but it is 7.99 and is not our gita.

There has to be some source code to build an ebook reader, then we could add BG, SB etc and make a free app with all Prabhupada books. The price to be an iphone developer and submit apps to the itunes store is $99 now.

With this we could just send a link to devotees and they install the app and they are ready to go. No jailbreak, no ssh etc. And all for free.

Anyone has the time to do this?

your servant,
Gopa Kishore das

[Amala Gaura dasa]

Thanks gopa kishore prabhu

In order to get that app approved by Apple that you would need permission from the copyright holder, BBT.  BBT may be interested to sell an app with the books on it but i doubt they would give it away for free.  And Apple would have to approve selling an app with a book in it. 

Another option is to use ereader: http://www.ereader.com/ 

they have a free ebook iphone reader and you pay per book.  So someone would package the book and distribute it through the ereader company who would probably take the large cut out of the money.

The bookshelf is probably easiest and most practical.  I see it also supports plucker format.

ys,

agd

[Amala Gaura dasa]

Here's a free ebook reader with open support

http://www.lexcycle.com/

Looks like no reason to use bookshelf anymore ;-)

This supports a lot of standards.  I will try this later with the HTML books given by Chandidasa.

This is a nice system and we can convert to epub format and give links for a direct download to the iphone.  Would browse the link with the iphone safari browser and it would install in this ebook reader.

ys,

agd

[Amala Gaura dasa]

I started to play with this and it seems the stanza program has no support for these linked HTM files.  It wants a single HTM file.

Also I think most of the HTM files are broken.  Any chapters or texts linking to a 1 digit number, 2, links instead to 02 and the directory doesn't exist.  Many files were like that

a few years ago i had the same problem with the Plucker reader.  I wrote some word macros to strip stuff out of the exported RTF data from vedabase and then save it as clean HTML.  Then i would convert a few chapters at a time to plucker format.  Then I converted the windows diacritic fonts to a plucker format.  Took me a while but I finally had nice files with good diacritic support.  Unfortunately I don't have the HTML files ;-(  nor my macros, so i would have to figure it all out again 

I exported a file to HTML for testing and exported it to this stanza book reader.  The diacritics don't work and I don't think they will, there is not much font support on this thing.  Looks like a feature for the future.

If anyone wants to look at it, you can install stanza reader, and load this file from the inbuilt stanza book loader, have to type this into the iphone/ipod

http://www.mmdas.com/files/bg.epub

How were the fonts on the bookshelf reader?

ys,

agd

[Sitapati das]

I believe that Pancaratna prabhu is on this list, and that he is involved with Friends of the BBT.

I see this as early warning of a market that the BBT can either be in, or watch happen.

These mobile devices are going to be the primary medium for a generation of human beings.

EMI and others are now cottoning on to online sales and distribution of music, but iTunes has already eroded their market share.

The BBT is interested in three things:

1. Distributing Srila Prabhupada's writing,
2. Protecting the integrity of his writing (trademark and copyright defense),
3. and realizing a revenue stream from Srila Prabhupada's writing in order to perpetuate 1 and 2, as well as sponsor other projects that Srila Prabhupada wanted done.

To avoid being undercut by something like this the BBT needs to be ahead of the curve, offering these books in a legal fashion at a reasonable price.

The other day I bought a couple of Metallica tracks from iTunes for my iPod touch. I could have downloaded them from bittorrent, but iTunes was easy and cheap.

Make the material easily available and reasonably priced and it will move and continue to generate revenue. Ignore a new business model for too long and it will go to someone else, or at the least a growing potential market will go unserved.

- Sitapati

[Eze]

On my old pockecpc i had a copy of vedabase.net and i just opened it with the internet browser.
this file
http://vedabase.net/offline/ (it needs a password)

It was nice because chapter files linked to verses and all that. Can we do this on the iphone/ipod?
MobileSafari doesnt allow you to open local files but i have an offline copy of wikipedia (around 3gb) that uses a local server like 127.0.0.1 to access it. It even has search. This could be another solution.

I dont like that the bookshelf app is not free, maybe we can find another free app that allows copying over the air and has a good html reader. I tried stanza too but is not good enough.

it would be so great to have official BG and SB apps that you can buy on the itunes store but free would be even better.

This is the way to distribute stuff nowadays. Just check the download stats for developer apps and you will be amazed at how much some of them are making and how many downloads they get.

There are many more possibilities. I can imagine some krishna related puzzle games, mantra meditation apps (like the ipod+nike thing but for mantra meditation) etc...

Anyone downloaded the sdk? There are many getting started videos on itunes too.

your servant,
Gopa Kishore das