In my constant search for a way to save and annotate webpages like I used to do with Instapaper before it cut off access to Europe instead of complying with GDPR laws, I came across a great service called dotEPUB.
This quick-and-easy service lets you save and convert any webpage into an EPUB document. Then you can open the file in Apple’s Books app and mark it up just like any other ebook. Let’s take a look at how dotEPUB works.
MarginNotes is an interesting app that may just be a little too confusing to use, or may be the perfect document markup app ever. I still can’t figure out which.
The app will open EPUB and PDF files and let you mark them up, adding comments, margin notes, sketches and anything else, and also lets you add entire outlines, or turn the document into an outline – I’m not quote sure. Let’s take a quick look:
It used to be fairly simple to add e-books (of the epub format) to your iPad or iPhone via your Mac, using iTunes file sharing. You’d simply drag and drop the book into iTunes, connect your iOS device, and sync the non-iBook file via the file sharing system in iTunes, just like any other file supported by apps on your iPad
With the advent of iBooks on the Mac with OS X Mavericks, there is no longer a way to sync epub books in this way. You might be stymied on attempting to get epubs from your Mac to your iPad, but thanks to an intrepid Cult of Mac reader, we all get to learn how to do just that.
Marvin is a neat little e-book reader for iOS – free for now, but likely to cost about $2 by next week. It’s packed with useful features for serious readers and students, plus some ingenious new ideas we’ve not seen in other e-book reading apps.
If you are a gamer like me, chances are you’ve spent the last couple of weeks pretending to be a slight-of-build, slightly effeminate elf or oil-slathered beefcake of a Nord in Bethesda’s new epic RPG, Skyrim.
The game (which sadly isn’t available on OS X) is detailed to the point of absurdity, but here’s one of the details that most emphasizes exactly how epic in scope and minutely detailed Skyrim is: in Skyrim, there are hundreds of in-game books to be found, equalling thousands of pages of text total. And most players never read a single page of them, because who wants to sit around in a game and read when there are orcs to hit with a flaming hammer?
If you’ve got an iPad (or Kindle, or iPhone, or Mac), though, there’s no reason these beautifully written in-game texts need to languish in obscurity. Just download this ePub file and read all of Skyrim’s text on your device of choice, not in some grubby dungeon somewhere.
