This is not a post discussing the merits of Apple’s iBooks 2 announcement … that has been done all over the web. Instead I did what I typically do when a new publishing engine emerges, I try to publish content with it. So attached to this post is a first shot at publishing some content … and again, as I typically do, I grab content that exists and re-imagine it within the construct of a new platform. This is the same content that was published a long time ago by my team in the IST Solutions Institute via the D3 platform we utilized. I have since published this old content numerous times across various platforms including Drupal, WordPress, and MoveableType. Now it is reborn as an iBook — with a few extra pieces of media thrown in. This is not a full test and it certainly is not a “publishable” piece of work … although the process to get this much content packaged and online was next to nothing — maybe 30 minutes of work.
If you have an iPad you can download and install (I guess that is what happens when you click the link) this text into iBooks 2. The process of getting it onto the iPad seems a little slow and outmoded without the aid of the actual iBook Store. The link takes quite a bit of time to bounce me from Safari to the actual iBooks app on the iPad. I did sign up to be a publisher, but I have yet to receive all the information back from Apple even a couple hours after I submitted it. If I can find a way to become a publisher, this would be much simpler and would probably integrate very nicely with the new iTunes U functionality. I will keep looking at it.
I’m fascinated by iBooks Author and want to start playing around with it more. I’ve already been approached by one person running a lecture series that sees it as a way to offer yet another possible point of consumption. A lot of people are up in arms that it’s not an open ePub capable of being viewed everywhere, but I don’t get caught up in that battle. I’ve seen very few publishing platforms come anywhere close to the level of interactivity they’ve nailed here and most that are trying are building large expensive programs to do it (Adobe). Speaking of iBooks have you played around with the new templates a third party released? http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/book-palette/id497704085?mt=12
Hey Tim … I haven’t played around with the templates, but handful built ones are nice. I am trying to get into the iBook Store so I can look at how this integrates with the new iTunes U platform … have you looked at that? I have been using that as a quasi LMS for a week or so with the class I am teaching and again, it is quite impressive.