Tootable: mobile apps and digital books

Cooking with Poo

Liam — Fri, 18 May 2012 01:20:02 +0000

Cooking with Poo by Saiyuud Diwong (aka Poo - Thai for crab and a 'nickname') and published by Urban Neighbours of Hope is a fixed-layout iBook available for the iPad and iPhone.

The Waterhole by Graeme Base

Liam — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:53:06 +0000

The Waterhole by Graeme Base is the second app we have produced for The Base Factory. Upon release, the iPad version was featured on the Australian store. It reached #1 in iPad Book Apps and #14 overall in the Australian store and was featured on the iPad homepage.

Rock Climbing in Central Australia

Liam — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:13:41 +0000

I wrote this in 2002 and the article was eventually published in Rock Magazine in 2006. The particular issues raised by climbing in Central Australia force us to re-evaluate the reasons why we climb and may require us to take a different, more cautious approach. While Central Australia may not have the best climbing in Australia, it is one of the most interesting and beautiful places in which to climb. Don't let the challenge of access issues deter you—the sheer amount of rock should be enough to get you interested.

Warlpiri Warriors — Australian Rules football in Central Australia

Liam — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 06:36:09 +0000

Football is a part of every young Warlpiri man’s life. When discussing the origins and introduction of Australian Rules football in Yuendumu, the older men will often reminisce about a game called ‘Purlja’ that they used to play when they were kids. It involved a round ball of emu feathers bound together with hairstring. They would divide themselves into two teams along the ‘Ngawu-kurlangu’ and ‘Ngurrju-kurlangu’ division of Warlpiri society, or in anthropological terms, two ‘moieties’. ‘Ngawu-kurlangu’ refers to those people in the opposite moiety, ‘Ngurrju-kurlangu’ to those in the same moiety. These divisions, also referred to as ‘nyurrpu’, are occasionally used by boys today when playing football amongst themselves, but are not used for more formal games.

The Book is not dead

Liam — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 03:37:41 +0000

The Book is not dead, it’s just changing context. For The Book to be dead, we would have to no longer care about stories or understanding complex ideas that take more than 140 characters to convey. Books are more alive more than ever before. They don’t have to be linear. They don’t have to be bulky. Text and diagrams can move and be played with. Pictures can be zoomed or rotated in 3D. They can be personalised to the extent that if we downloaded the same book, your experience of it could be completely different from mine. They can also be updated in real time. We think of books as defined by their physical containers, but we’re the last generation that is going to think that way.

Chocalicious

Liam — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:26:49 +0000

Chocalicious by Kim McCosker is the first in a series of new mini iBooks from 4 Ingredients and AppBooks. Chocalicious is a fixed-layout iBook available for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch from the iBookstore (if your looking for it on your iPhone you need to use the iBooks app!).

4 Ingredients app updated

Liam — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:06:52 +0000

The 4 Ingredients app has been updated. It is a complete rewrite of the original app. Since release in early 2009, 4 Ingredients has been in the top 25 of iPhone lifestyle and is consistently the most popular cooking app on the iPhone in Australia.

Animalia for iPad updated

Liam — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:54:11 +0000

Animalia for iPad has been updated with two new sections and 100% more content.

4 Ingredients iPhone app

Liam — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 06:56:22 +0000

The 4 Ingredients iPhone app includes more than 400 recipes. To date the print version of 4 Ingredients has sold more than a million copies and has now come to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Remembering Darby

Liam — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:02:00 +0000

I was thinking about Darby today and came across these words which I read out at his funeral five years ago. First in Warlpiri, then in English.

Climbing Karinyarra: a cautionary tale

Liam — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 11:53:45 +0000

Karinyarra: definitely not the next Arapiles, but an impressive mountain in a proud position in the middle of the desert.

Scott Duncan

Liam — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:04:35 +0000

I met Scott Duncan at Yuendumu in 2000 when he came out to shoot a short film on the local painters for the NBC Olympics coverage and I was working at the local art centre.

Yuendumu is pretty much in the centre of Australia on land belonging to the Warlpiri and Anmatjerre people.

Scott came out to shoot a short film on the local painters for the NBC Olympics coverage and I was working at the local art centre.

I’d never seen so much film equipment in Yuendumu before. I think there were about 35 cases of gear! The drive out to Yuendumu was pretty rough back then and Scott’s crew had a bit of an accident on the drive out, so when they arrived they were all pretty dusty and fit right in.

The light in Central Australia can ... Read More »

Reflections on Yuendumu

Liam — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:07:47 +0000

I stumbled across this today. I wrote it about 8 or 9 years ago and thought I’d post it.

After returning from a funeral in Melbourne of a Whitefella who used to live in the community I was greeted by two Nampijinpa ladies. They wanted to talk to me and I offered them a cup of tea and we sat on the grass outside. We each sat looking in a different direction. We talked for a little while about my trip and the insignificant details of travelling 3000 ks in a Toyota. It soon became clear that the ladies wanted to discuss the funeral.

I did not realise the affect this persons death had had on the community. One of the ladies, who people had begun calling my ‘mother’ after her only son died, took my hand in hers and ... Read More »

Third party solutions to making mobile apps

Liam — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:46:17 +0000

This is a quick look at the more popular third-party programs and frameworks for making mobile apps (mostly iPhone and iPad), including PhoneGap, Sencha Touch, Appcelerator, Corona and rhoMobile.

Looking to the future

Liam — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:25:21 +0000

I’m looking forward to the future…

When no one makes any money from buying and selling .coms b/c no one really uses them anymore because apps are the new .coms and they’re available on any phone.

When we don’t need phone numbers.

When paper books are something special and digital stories only scroll or slide without the annoying fake page turns.

When something new becomes available and it’s not just in the US.

When data limits are irrelevant.

When I can download something — film. book, music, navigation, television — and I only have to pay for it once and use it wherever and whenever I want across a range of devices.

When I can make a TV show and my friends can choose to watch it in their living room.

When gigabytes become bits.

When computer screens are 1:1 with real life objects and no one understands what ... Read More »

Animalia for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

Liam — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 05:35:25 +0000

New AppBook ‘Animalia for iPad’ based on the much loved children’s book by Graeme Base is now available on the iTunes store.

‘New and Noteworthy’ iPad app in the US and Canada. Feature tiles in Australia and New Zealand.

September 2010: #2 iPad app in Australia. #1 in iPad Books in the US, Canada and Australia. Top 10 iPad Book in 19 countries. Top 100 in 50 countries.

‘Animalia’ for iPhone and iPod Touch also now available.

For more information, visit www.appbooks.com

Book Design and Digital Books

Liam — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:49:13 +0000

Sandy Cull invited me to post some stuff related to what I’m doing on her Australian Book Designer’s blog. I thought I’d post an excerpt here.

My current passion is working on creating AppBooks for the iPad, and — as they come on the market — other ‘tablet’ devices running OS like Android, in the belief that the future is an inevitable one in which digital books outsell printed books.

Lately, I’ve been looking at cross-platform solutions for AppBooks with audio, video and/or animation enhancements.

‘Darby’

A few years ago, Sandy Cull designed my book ‘Darby’ — she did an amazing job — you can see a couple of examples of the design here.

It’s been a bit of a challenge. One of the issues with converting a physical book to digital and supporting two orientations is deciding whether to crop full page images for ... Read More »

Digital Books: the problem of a bad inheritance

Liam — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:07:21 +0000

Something has been bugging me lately. It seems that in our enthusiasm for digital books we have forgotten that actually reading them is important. Even Apple seem to have forgotten this when they made iBooks for the iPad.

I was disappointed to find that iBooks only give us a choice of 5 fonts, despite presenting books in a way that can only be for reading.

Digital books are failing us. Why? Because they are inheriting their style and presentation from websites.

When I was on dial up and it took a long time to load a single page of a website, I preferred that the images were heavily compressed and didn’t care what font the text was in, just that I could read it right away. But now that I have 3G and spend hours on the internet each day, I am much ... Read More »

The future of books on the iPad: AppBooks vs iBooks

Liam — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:54:56 +0000

As today was the first day for iPad pre-orders in the US and there is quite a buzz about it, I thought it timely to make my first blog post and share some thoughts on iPad books.

A book is a book is a book

Not anymore!

A few days ago Mobclix data revealed there were some 27,000 AppBooks (Book Applications) on the iTunes App Store. Significantly, they now outnumber games as the largest App category.

Here is a pic from their website:

These are iPhone Apps. What will happen when the iPad releases?

We will see even more AppBooks. Or will we?

AppBooks and the iBookstore

There has been some discussion in the last few days about the possibility of Apple removing some AppBooks once the iPad and iBookstore releases. This began with Jason Kincaid’s TechCrunch post ‘Will books be the next to go ... Read More »

Knots, Splices and Rope Work

Liam — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:23:37 +0000

Knots, Splices and Rope Work has consistently been in the top 100 of the Education category in the iTunes Store since release and has appeared in the top 100 overall.

‘Knots, Splices and Rope Work’ is based on the original 1917 classic treatise by A. Hyatt Verrill, the renowned American inventor, author, illustrator, archaeologist, explorer, zoologist and friend of former US President Theodore Roosevelt.

This App will appeal to outdoor enthusiasts, scouts, sailors, rockclimbers, bushwalkers, fishermen and anyone interested in exploring the use and history of knots. This App includes scrollable text of descriptions and 154 diagrams of classic knots, splices and rope work to help you learn and practice the art of knot making.

This app was featured as one of the top 25 Outdoor Apps by The Adventure Life Website.

“How much of an outdoor geek are you? The ... Read More »