The new iPhone and Touch are being released July 11, along with lots of third-party applications that will be accessible from the iTunes store.

Since it is already July 11 Down Under, you can see now on the Australian iTunes store, the new iPhone / Touch app store. You will first need to download the iTunes software update to v. 7.7 in order to view the store. Then select Australia from the country list at the bottom of the screen.

I was excited to see that there are at least two e-book apps in the store. One is the free eReader which I think would require you to use files in its own format. I think this is the Palm format, although I'm not sure. The other one, BookShelf, says it supports HTML and text as well. Anyway, this should give you access to a big library of inexpensive and free e-books on a platform that is the best I've ever seen for small-screen reading.

Of interest to travelers, I also noticed several language dictionaries and phrase books in the store.

When it's Friday wherever you are, you should be able to view and buy any of these apps in your own country store. But you will first need the iTunes 7.7, plus the new iPhone or iPod Touch software, if you have an older version of one of those. The 2.0 software won't be downloadable until Friday in your time zone. (Not sure if it's coming online at midnight, or if you'll have to wait till the time the iPhones go on sale at Apple.)

- Roz

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Roz,

Wow wow wow! Now we're getting somewhere.
With assisted GPS and Google maps and ability to read some kind of documents (I'll figure out how to format them for whatever reader) the iPhone is looking like a really good travel companion.

I can't afford the necessary AT&T subscription price, but that may come down in a year or two. Convergence is on the way!

I just wanted to update this topic, and mention a fantastic new application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is a program called Air Sharing that lets you mount your iThing on your Mac or Windows desktop. Then you can drag-copy files on to it just as you would copy them onto any drive.

It maintains a folder structure, so you can easily sort your files, and it displays them beautifully. The Air Sharing app on the iPod or iPhone can display all sorts of files -- Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Web pages, PDF, RTF, as well as movies and images.

This is a fabulous application for traveling, because it lets me put all sorts of documents that I have copied and saved on my computer right onto my little iPod Touch, which I can carry around in my pocket or purse.

It is free for a limited introductory period from the iTunes store. The iPod Touch now starts at $229 -- I think with this app it is a perfect travel companion. You can pick up your email and get on the web from any wifi hotspot, and now you can save all sorts of reference material.

- Roz

Hi Roz, thanks for the update. This feature sounds great! Can I ask you a quick question in your experience using it, how is the battery life? I know my regular iPod can last hours listening to music, less time running movie videos, so I was wondering with the added applications how that might affect the battery?

Thanks in advance for your reply.
Kathy

And I have a question too. After downloading documents into the i-device, how hard is to read on the little screen?

Nancy

To answer these questions:

1) I think the battery life is quite good. One thing you need to do is turn off the wi-fi and mail searching functions when you're not in a hotspot, because if it keeps trying to access the Internet, it will burn up the battery.

Just as with a regular video iPod, movies take the most power. The applications, once you have the documents on your iPod, take very little power, since it's just displaying them. Especially the ones that are mostly displaying text

I honestly haven't tested the battery life, but it definitely seems to run longer than my old iPod mini. Apple supposedly keeps improving the battery and claims the new versions of the Touch get 36 hours of music and 6 hours of video. I think reading text would be somewhere in between there. You'd still have the video display eating up battery, but certainly not taking as much power as a movie.

2) The display for reading text is FABULOUS. If you have not seen an iPod Touch or iPhone, go to an Apple store and look at them. I don't know how they made reading so beautifully legible on that little screen, but it is amazing. That "pinch" technology that lets you make the text size larger or smaller by flicking your fingers seems like magic.

I get the NY Times on my Touch, and find it just as easy to read there as on my desktop.

By the way, I think it may soon be possible to use the new Touch as a VoIP device -- i.e., make phone calls over the Internet, if you have a wi-fi connection. Mine wouldn't do that, because it doesn't have the microphone technology, but apparently you can get headphones with a mic for the new version.

- Roz

Hi Roz, this is exactly what I needed to know. I just love the feature (with the software you mentioned) to drag all of my travel notes on there (ie, restaurant lists, sightseeing notes, contact names and numbers, etc). Great tip on turning off the wi-fi and mail searching feature to save battery life. I think you just tipped the scale on my decision. Thanks so much.

Roz, thanks for this info. When I got my new Macbook, I was also given a free iPod touch (it was an educational purchase incentive), which I thoroughly enjoy. But I'm still discovering its many advantages, and this looks like a great app.

Hi Roz, I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for sharing the Airsharing software information with us. I just finished loading all my of notes, sightseeing information, restaurant/tapas bar lists, train schedules, etc. And it is fabulous!

The wi-fi feature is working really well too and I can't wait to test it out while on the road.

Thanks again!

I found Air Sharing fabulous, too, on our recent trip to Italy. We also took a Mac laptop, and usually had wi-fi in the places we were staying. So if we found additional online info that we wanted to carry around with us, it was easy to transfer it to the Touch. For example, I was able to download pdf maps of towns we decided to visit and then move them over to the Touch.

Also, if you have your laptop and decide you want to transfer something from there to the Touch even without a wi-fi network, you can do it by going to the Airport icon in your menu bar and choosing "Create Network." That lets you communicate wirelessly between the computer and the Touch even if you don't have a regular network running in your location.

It really meets a lot of the needs that you often wish you had a printer for when you are on the road.

- Roz

Roz, I just used AirSharing this weekend on my iPod Touch, and it was very easy to do. I really like this app, and will definitely utilize it more with my upcoming Italy trip in the spring.

Good to know about the Create Network option - thanks!

Hi Roz, thanks so much for the additional information on the "Create Network" option. I'm not sure if I will take my little laptop since I'll be traveling by train, but this is a very good feature to know about just in case I have one of those night before departure last minute decision changes. I can see how this feature is useful on the road without a printer available and how it can make new information you find along the way accessible and portable. Very nice.

It's good to know that it worked great in Italy on your trip. I'll be in Spain (Whoo hoo!), so I will report back on how the iTouch works there.

Thank you so much.

Hi Roz, just had to stop by to say that the iTouch and wi-fi feature is working brilliantly here in Spain!

Gracias for checking in! We'll be hoping for full details when you get back!

- Roz

Hi Roz, Thanks for the tip on Air Sharing - it is fabulous!! I hadn't heard anything about it until I read your post - now I can trade in my blackberry for an IPhone!

Voip Girl

This may be a naive question ... can I use the ITouch as a GPS device any where in the world? I'm leaving for Italy next Sat and will run out and buy the iTouch if I can get the GPS feature. Would be better than buying or renting. I'm not interested in changing my phone but would gladly upgrade from my video Ipod (which I love) if I could get international GPS along with the other features you mention.

quote:

can I use the ITouch as a GPS device any where in the world?

No, the iPod Touch does not have GPS. It does have a map program and it can plan routes, but that only works when you are on a wi-fi network, so it's not much good when you're moving around!

There is supposed to be a program that finds out where you are if you are within reach of any wi-fi networks, even if you're not connected, but I don't think it works very well, and it is no substitute for GPS.

- Roz

I'm wondering about getting an iPod Touch for use mainly as an offline document reader. I borrowed a Touch for a short period and used the browser to read an online leaflet in pdf format. This seemed to work very well except that, whenever I zoomed or scrolled, the text would go fuzzy and take several seconds to become readable. Presumably, the machine had to wait each time for more data to be downloaded from the internet.

Would this problem be solved if I was able to download and read the document offline? (I wasn't able to try offline reading because the Touch didn't have Air Sharing installed.)

I don't recall having the problem of the text going fuzzy, but I don't think I read too many pdf documents with my Touch. Most of the ones I have saved are not too long, so I don't know if there would be more of a problem with a longer document.

- Roz

There is a rumor circulating that Apple plans to release a large screen ipod touch this fall. If so, it might be a nice electronic reader.

I've had another play with the Touch and I realise that the display goes temporarily fuzzy every time the zoom factor is changed. In most cases (ordinary web pages and photos) this is corrected within about a second so I scarcely notice it, but the pdf files I have tried all seem to take longer, sometimes several seconds. Presumably, the software that displays pdfs is not as slick as the software that handles ordinary html and jpg files. Apart from this minor issue (which presumably will go away in the future with faster processors and/or better programming), the Touch seems wonderfully well suited to reading books. I wonder why Apple don't make more of this.

Here is a review of another application to turn your iphone/ipod touch into an ebook reader.

Stanza

By coincidence I came across Stanza while googling yesterday. It seems to have the advantage of being free!

We have noticed, while trying to use the Notes program on the Touch, that it doesn't seem to incorporate a "Search" or "Find" facility. How easy is it to search within pdf files and other documents?

I have both Stanza and Air Sharing, and Air Sharing is a lot more versatile. It can display many more types of documents (no graphics or pdfs in Stanza) and is easier to use for transferring documents from your computer. But you can't search within documents with Air Sharing, and even in Stanza, the searching is pretty lame. Stanza is better for long documents, such as e-books.

In fact, much as I like my iPod Touch, I must say that there are some key features it lacks that really should be built in. One is searching (other than web searching in Safari) and another is copy and paste.

- Roz

quote:

there are some key features it lacks

It seems that Apple hasn't appreciated the Touch's great potential as a PDA. Perhaps these aspects will be improved in a future model.

Here's an article from today's Walt Mossberg column about two new programs (not yet released, I think) for e-books on the iPhone and Touch. It sounds like things are moving in the right direction for those of us who want somewhat reasonably priced e-books, although not there yet.

- Roz

I bought an iPod Touch today. My husband has had his for a very long time. He got the Kindle as a Christmas present from one of our sons. He loves the Kindle for reading books.

We are trying Stanza, but the Iceberg and Shortcovers (in the article mentioned by Roz) look interesting for books.

Like everyone else, I want to create my own trip files to take with us and had hoped Stanza would handle formats better. Still playing with the different possibilities.

Cameron

Roz -- thanks for the AirSharing tip! We love it. My husband and I each have and iPod touch and installed it.

Works great and keeps the format of the documents!

Thanks,
Cameron

More news of ebooks on portable devices like iPhones: Google brings Shakespeare and Twain to your iPhone

Along with the google ebooks, there is rumor that Amazon is going to release Kindle titles to cell phones including iPhone.

NYT article - Google and Amazon to put more books on cellphone

What I think Amazon should do is to adopt a model for ebooks something like Audible (which they in fact own) does for audiobooks. When you set up a subscription with Audible, you get one audiobook a month (there are different plans, but this is the most common, I think), and can then buy additional books at a reduced member price. You can use the audiobooks on any MP3 device, but they can only be saved on a limited number of computers.

As long as you keep your subscription, you can download the books you've bought again at any time from the Audible site.

The only problem I see with putting Kindle books on the iPhone is that Amazon would have to cut a deal with Apple, since as things stand now the only items you can download to your iPhone or iPod have to come from the iTunes store. So I don't know how easily Bezos and Jobs could reach an agreement.

There are some ebooks available though that can be read through applications that you download first via iTunes, and then you can get the content elsewhere. So it could work.

- Roz

I've just read an article about a new version of the operating system for the iPhone. Amongst other changes "iPhone OS 3 also brings ... a universal search application called Spotlight which will allow you to root through all apps, emails and messages for a search term." Does anyone know whether this will include PDF files in its searches? If so, that could be what I've been waiting for.

Also, does anyone know whether the facility will be included in the iPod Touch?

The upgrade is supposed to be available for the iPod Touch also . It will not be free but $9.95.

Spotlight is a feature Leopard Mac OS and it sounds like it can search PDFs. It doesn't say specifically that the iPhone OS 3 will be able to do it but it does look promising.

On a different subject: Wired Magazine has a review of the latest update to Stanza. It mentions that the new version (1.8) has improved the search capabilities. It doesn't specifically call out pdfs so I don't know if it will help.

(Should this discussion be continued in your new iPhone Travel Apps thread?)

Thanks for your info and links, Marta.

I wonder whether the new OS will include the ability to transfer PDFs from a PC and to view them on the iPhone. Or will it still be necessary to install a program such as Air Sharing or Stanza?

When viewing a PDF on an iPhone can you zoom in and out in the same way as in the web browser?

This just in: Lexcycle, the company that produces Stanza, the iPhone e-book app discussed in this topic, has just been purchased by Amazon, which seems to be staking out ownership of the e-book market. Story here. Stanza has for some time allowed users to save their own documents in a Kindle format (among many others).

- Roz