Kindle vs iBooks Quotations question

Question

Level 1

23 points

Kindle vs iBooks Quotations question

I fooled with an iPad briefly at the Apple Store yesterday in a crush of people and was generally impressed. However, I had a concern about the iBook reader.

I am a Kindle reader now, and I use the "quotation" tool frequently--highlighting the text and pressing the cursor button, which then automatically appends that quotation to a text file along with a location and a citation for the book or magazine I'm reading.

This is obviously a great tool for students and researchers or even business people who want to hang onto material they skim from memos or books.

However, on the iPad while I could "copy" the text, I couldn't determine if it puts the quote into a file nor whether it added the citation information. Obviously, I could 'paste" into a note or document, but without the rest of the citation, it would be an inferior system to the Kindle on this point.

There wasn't enough time playing with the mall toy to figure it out. Those who own one, please investigate and report. Also, without a USB port, how do you get a file out of the iPad?

HP, Windows XP, all updates applied

Posted on Apr 6, 2010 3:32 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 6, 2010 3:39 AM in response to rhkennerly

rhkennerly wrote:

Also, without a USB port, how do you get a file out of the iPad?

You basically cannot - files are put in via the Dock connector and syncing with iTunes, but you cannot move files in and out like a flash drive. Certainly books cannot be moved in and out other than the above mechanism, as that would defeat the object of DRM.

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Answer 2

stweath

Level 1

55 points

Apr 6, 2010 5:01 AM in response to Graham Outterside

Graham Outterside wrote: Also, without a USB port, how do you get a file out of the iPad?

Mmmmm... Email it?

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Answer 3

meitnik1

Level 1

8 points

Apr 6, 2010 9:17 AM in response to rhkennerly

Thanks for the note about a quotation tool in Kindle. I was not aware I could do that. Shame Apple failed to provide that for scholars like me. Btw, can you open the text file to then copy/paste into your text editor? And does this tool work only for Non-DRM books or all ebook files? Let me clear, I am not interested in stealing but fair use to do research. Am a disabled man who does everything via computer. I rather work smart than hard.
Thanks

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Answer 4

Apr 6, 2010 9:31 AM in response to rhkennerly

I believe the term you are looking for in the iBooks app is "Bookmark", which doesn't seem right, but it will put a "highlighter effect" on the text you have selected, as well as add the text to a meta-file called "Bookmarks" within iBooks that collects selections from all books that you've made them in and notes where it came from... as well as being clickable to return to that part of the book. You can then copy and paste to a text editor or email the file to yourself.

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Answer 5

rhkennerly Author

Level 1

23 points

Apr 6, 2010 10:16 AM in response to meitnik1

re: Kindle MyClippings.TXT file

You can read the txt file on the Kindle or Xfer it via USB cable to your computer (delete the old one and start over after the Xfer and Kindle will start a new one for you). And it works for DRM and non-DRM books and documents (I'll grab stuff off of .pdf's from work). The file is straight .txt, but there is enough in each citation to rough in a proper footnote. Here's an example from my current "MyClippings.txt" file on the Kindle.

If Apollo is a god of concentrated light, Dionysus, worshiped at night, is a god of dispersed sweetness. Under his influence “the earth flows, flows beneath us, then milk flows, and wine flows, and nectar flows, like flame.” Under the spell of Dionysus and his wine, all nature answers to our desires.
==========
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (Michael Pollan)
- Highlight Loc. 724-25 | Added on Thursday, December 31, 2009, 05:06 PM

Note that it uses the Kindle location instead of a page number (because that physical location changes with font size on the Kindle), but all of the citation systems I know of have an ereader or electronic style you can push into service.

I'm not in school anymore, but I hate not hanging on to material I read and I have a dB system I've developed to store, sort, search and retrieve all that I want for easy citation.

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Answer 6

rhkennerly Author

Level 1

23 points

Apr 6, 2010 10:19 AM in response to Stick Nutzman

can you copy and post an example of the iBooks Bookmarks quotation?

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Answer 7

Apr 6, 2010 10:39 AM in response to rhkennerly

I used iBooks at the Apple Store for a few minutes yesterday and I could not figure out how to copy and paste text in iBooks. Can anyone confirm that it is possible to paste copied text from iBooks? The manual for iBooks does not indicate that this can be done. If this is not possible, then it seems that this is a major problem for students when the iPad is compared to the Kindle.

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Answer 8

DrJackie

Level 1

10 points

Apr 6, 2010 5:19 PM in response to Roger Lier1

I spent three hours at our Apple store today, giving the iPad a very hard test drive. I was able to copy text from an iBook and paste it into a word processing document. Then I was able to add my own thoughts and comments. But, unlike with the Kindle, the block of text I copied and pasted did not automatically include a citation. If I were doing scholarly research, I would need to type in that information myself.

For me, the deal-breaker is the limited ability of iBooks to allow for freehand annotations. I was hoping that iBooks on iPad would function similar to electronic books on a SONY Reader. I want to be able to jot notes in the margins of electronic books, to save those notes, and to find them via search. I know we can toggle back and forth between an iBook and a note-taking program, but that's an awkward process. I'd like to take notes directly on the book pages, which the SONY Reader does allow.

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Answer 9

meitnik1

Level 1

8 points

Apr 6, 2010 6:19 PM in response to Stick Nutzman

Oh cool. OK, Please walk me through what you are doing and can you post an example of the file contents (the passage/highlight/citation). Thanks. This allows me to work smart not hard with my disabilities.

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Answer 10

meitnik1

Level 1

8 points

Apr 6, 2010 6:43 PM in response to meitnik1

Ok, just off phone with a tech gal. She told me you can only copy/paste one hilighted/bookmarked passage at a time and that meta file cant be emailed or opened. Explain to me otherwise. I want to grab all my bookmarked passages and email/export to me. Come on Apple, help us scholars do our work.

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Answer 11

rhkennerly Author

Level 1

23 points

Apr 7, 2010 2:42 AM in response to meitnik1

yeah, this is a pretty big deficiency for hardcore readers, researchers and scholars. It would certainly give the Kindle an edge in educational markets as a textbook replacement.

I just finished databasing my latest myclippings.txt file from the Kindle, about 200 entries. Needless to say, I was a little behind.

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Answer 12

dwb

Level 7

32,920 points

Apr 7, 2010 7:25 AM in response to DrJackie

It is silly to talk about deal-breakers with a version 1 software product. Sure, at the moment the iBook application is missing some features that would make it more usable in the classroom. But if you think Apple is going to sit on its hands and do nothing you are quite wrong.

The timing of the iPad is very strange to me and it 'feels' like it was supposed to have happened earlier this year or late last year. Just a few days after it releases we are going to learn about version 4 of the iPhone/touch/iPad operating system which will probably reach us sometime in July or shortly thereafter. Apple has been feverishly working on that project while, at the same time, working on getting the iPad OS and applications ready. Talk about splitting resources! I suspect we'll have some big questions answered in the next couple days.

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Answer 13

rhkennerly Author

Level 1

23 points

Apr 7, 2010 8:02 AM in response to dwb

Not a deal breaker? How long has Apple had to look at what Amazon has done and spot a few good ideas?

I'm ready to jump for an iPad today, but I can't give up researching and cataloging the results to just wait around for Apple to get the basics of this app right. For academics, it is a deal breaker.

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Answer 14

dwb

Level 7

32,920 points

Apr 7, 2010 8:11 AM in response to rhkennerly

sigh - you are an experienced software engineer now? You know the iPad's APIs and the amount of time the programmer had to put the program together? And this missing feature is a deal breaker? Deal breaker would be no bookmarking or text marking!

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Answer 15

rpduval

Level 1

52 points

Apr 8, 2010 6:52 PM in response to rhkennerly

Can you use the Kindle app on the iPad and accomplish the same thing? I am going back to school soon to finish my degree and really would like to use the iPad instead of a MacBook+KindleDX but only if I can make use of digital textbooks in a reasonable manner.

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