If there is one thing that Google has taught me it’s that the best things on the Internet are FREE! FREE! FREE! Well, there is some advertising involved but I can ignore that.
Gmail… good god what would I do without Gmail it is a fucking godsend I tell you. It’s functional enough to do anything you might want like tagging and foldering and archiving emails OR it’s easy enough that you can ignore all that work and don’t have to do a dang thing, just get to your email. Their SPAM blocker is actually pretty damn good too.
AND IT’S ALL FREE! There are millions of annoyances I can ignore for FREE!
I have all my thousands and thousands of eBooks pooled between two laptops I use since I don’t have a dedicated eBook Reader yet. Which still does not protect me from sad events no matter how hard I try to keep the files synched between them and my iPhone. I lost a hard drive recently and BOOM! there went like five eBooks I had just bought.
So what to do, what to do? Where shall I stash my PDFs that all three machines can access? I mean without going out and buying another external network hard drive for my personal laptops since the one I have is used for “work” data and is specially encrypted for that reason.
I figured it out my friends and the best part is… IT IS FREE! and so the pig shall share.
The solution for all you prudent PDF eBook purchasers out there is GoogleDocs. If you use Gmail just go over and get yourself an account and upload some PDFs and maybe stick them in their own tagging and foldering setup like this…
Why look at that! Now this was a bit of work mind you. You have to upload these things one at a time but if you keep doing that with new purchases you are so good to go. Now this my friends is what is called CLOUD COMPUTING. See, anywhere I go from now on as long as I have a computer attached to the internet I now have my entire eBook collection at hand. Sony and Kindle don’t do all that for my ass so fuck them I will be off with my iPhone floating on my little eBook Cloud.
AND IT’S ALL FREE! There are millions of annoyances I can ignore for FREE!
But that’s not all! No No try this… Double click any non-DRM PDF and look at what happens in the browser window.
OMG! I am reading my eBook in the browser. Who needs Adobe Digital Editions? Well, unless you stored a DRM PDF and then you will have to download that puppy. But look! I am reading any of my non-DRM PDF eBooks from my collection in a browser window and nothing has to be copied to the machine! It’s not just convenient, this is SMOOOOTH!
AND IT’S ALL FREE! There are millions of annoyances I can ignore for FREE!
So Teddypig what about iPhone and the iTouch?
Yes, my fellow Apple Fiends there is of course an app for that…
All you do is install MiGhtyDocs on your iPhone for FREE! Then open the non-DRM PDF of the eBook you want to read and even if you end up somewhere without a cellphone data connection you will still be reading that eBook. Yes! Offline cache of those PDFs (AS LONG AS YOU REMEMBER TO OPEN IT BEFOREHAND!). None of this is totally perfect but… IT’S ALL FREE! There are millions of annoyances I can ignore for FREE!
Can you see how I can honestly say I am soooo ready for that Apple Tablet?
Hack The Planet!
*For those keeping track yes that is two movie references in one post Hackers & Wall Street*
Tags: eBook Tools, Google, iPad
Dee Carney wrote,
EUREKA!!!! Thanks for the info about the app! I just downloaded it and it’s FABULOUS! Off I go to upload my ebooks to Google docs which is where I stored final versions of my own books already. YAY!!!
Link | August 16th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Cool! Glad to help another Apple Fiend out. GoogleDocs is rockin!
Link | August 16th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Kassa wrote,
Great article and thanks for the information.
I had a few questions about the security of the google docs though. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that when you upload a book to google docs, the link is not secure. For example – the link you use to access the book (www.whatever) can be passed around or even “googled” thus creating an unsecure copy.
Is this true? Do you know anything about how secure these docs are and if they can be passed around? It almost seems similar to uploading to sites such as zippyshare and all those, except this allows you to read the document as well as download.
Thanks!
Link | August 17th, 2009 at 8:40 am
TeddyPig wrote,
The link to the file would be attributed to your “Google account” and your “real name” and everything else and Google is quick to shut down anyone doing something like that so just like if you Gmailed the eBook to someone Google can see you do it since it’s their app.
So no, if you don’t “share” the file or the folder or make anything “public” (Take a look at my screen capture which shows the folders and files are “not shared”) and do I have to say do not ever give your “password” to someone else to a Google account with “your name” on it.
In fact I say NEVER “share” on Google and think you control that “share”.
They have real issues with granular security and their defaults on something you “share” is full on shared to everyone. So my advice is never “share” any resource on Google with out considering it fair game for everyone.
If “not shared” then your docs are password protected much like Gmail or any Internet file backup service or Mac.com or your company VPN services etc etc etc. Just because something can be used to do something wrong does not make it automatically suspect. There has to be trust that people will not do bad things with any tool. Otherwise ePublishers would think twice about sending you download links in your email (How easy would it be to forward those to some Yahoo Mailing List?) or your employer would reconsider letting you work from home because your connection exposes their private network.
GoogleDocs is not SSL secure of course so like anything can be hacked if someone makes the effort and is tapping your internet connection or puts a trojan on your machine but then any computer you own is suspect and so anything on the internet is potentially not secure.
If non-SSL connectivity bothers you I have heard Google has SSL for GoogleDocs if you pay for the service making the connection to their website even more secure.
Link | August 17th, 2009 at 8:52 am
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