Reading these books on Ipod touch of Iphone

[David LaFerney]

I got an Ipod touch for Christmas - which is pretty much an Iphone without the phone - and I really like it.  I had to buy an app ("Readdle book reader - about $5) to do it, but it's just about perfect for reading generic .txt .doc .htm and .pdf files like these archives.   There are also free apps - Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle - for reading purchased books that you download from those places.

I've used other ebook readers before, and in some cases they make it very difficult (or nearly impossible unless you're a "hacker") to read anything but book files that you purchase - so not free internet texts like these or the thousands available from project Gutenberg.  And even if you could those devices usually can't be used for anything else.  Where as the ipod/iphone does all kinds of cool stuff.

If you aren't familiar - this thing is about 1/4" thick and the size of a pack of cigs or smaller - but the screen is much bigger and better than on most phones or similar devices.  You can of course use it to listen to music - including music that you already have on CDs or mp3.  Your family pictures look great on it.  You can even browse the internet, do email, watch youtube, etc - if you have access to a wifi connection.  Pedometer, mapping, gps, movies and other videos etc.

The main thing I wanted this for was to listen to podcasts on, which it also does very well.

Anyway, it's amazing how much technology can be crammed into such a small package.  Soon something like this will replace all of the personal electronic devices you ever had or wanted.