Archive for December 17, 2008

This HowTo shows you how to read “Full view” Google books offline. (thanks to rlwc on the message forum for posting it)

Google has taken on the task of digitizing (scanning) all of the world’s books and making them available at their http://books.google.com website.

The AA1 is great for reading these books via a web browser (my preference is Firefox), and even better for reading them offline when you don’t have an available internet connection, or want to disable wireless to save your battery. The screen format lends itself to viewing a page, and the weight of the AA1 is comparable to a hard cover book. A subset of the books Google makes available are known as “Full view”, meaning you can read the entire book through the website, or even download a PDF of the book for offline reading. The latter is what we’re going to work on.

The XP version of the AA1 comes with Adobe Acrobat reader, version 9. This can be used to read any of the books you download as a PDF file, in a natural way. Start by bringing up your favorite web browser and open up the Google Books page: http://books.google.com. Type the name of a book you’re looking for (or an author’s name) in the search box, and click “Search Books”. I’m searching for the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars.

Full guide here