BookZ

To import books to BookZ, a simple web server is needed and Mac OS X Web Sharing is perfect for that purpose. Users are encouraged to follow the “Web Sharing” turorial to set up the connection between BookZ and your Mac.

For some reason, “Web Sharing” doesn’t work for everybody and this tutorial explains an alternative web server, i.e. Abyss Web Server

You can download it here for free.

Setting up the server:

1. Copy the folder “Abyss Web Server” to your Applications folder (/Applications)

2. In your Applications folder, go into Abyss Web Server folder and run the “Abyss Web Server” application

Follow the on-screen instructions

Input a username and a password (needed for administering Abyss Web Server, can be different from your Mac OS X account)

after which something like this will show up (take note of the Port number, in my case it’s 8000):

Using the web server with BookZ:

3. In your Applications ->Abyss Web Server folder, there is a folder called “htdocs”

4. Enter “htdocs” and delete “index.html”

5. Drop a few txt books you want to read into “htdocs”

6. Go to your Mac’s System Preferences->Network and find out your IP address (in my case 172.19.169.138)

7. In BookZ, go to Utilities -> Surf and Download a Book, enter “IP ADDRESS:PORT NUMBER” (In my case it’s 172.19.169.138:8000) and you should be able to see something like this:

You can bookmark the address in BookZ with the “+” for convenience.

To add more books, drop txt files into “htdocs” as in Step 5  and download them with BookZ.

If you have any question, feel free to use BookZ support to leave a message.

written by admin \\ tags: abyss, import, server, web

BookZ 2.x is a free upgrade to all existing users. It comes with support for StarDict dictionaries. Better still, it’s possible to look up multiple dictionaries simulatenously.

In Utilities, a new button called “Download a Dictionary” is added. Step-by-step tutorials on how to download dictionaries can be found here.

There is also a new item in Preferences, namely “Manage Dictionaries” which allows enabling/reordering/removing of dictionaries.

When reading with BookZ 2.0, you’ll notice a new icon “Az”. Tap it and a dictionary will pop up, allowing you to look up any word.

With the new dictionary feature, reading foreign books will be a great pleasure!

written by admin \\ tags: dictionary, stardict

Question: what if I accidentally uninstalled BookZ, lost my library and the iTunes backup has already been overwritten (so that restoring is not an option)?

In Mac OS X 10.5.5, iPhone/iPod Touch is backed up by iTunes and iTunes is in turn backed up by time machine. Therefore, it is possible to restore an iPhone/iPod Touch to any backup in the past with the help of Time Machine.

The backup files for iPod is located at ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
Please follow this tutorial to restore the iPhone/iPod to an older state from Time Machine

0. Perform a Time Machine backup
1. Check if the iPhone/iPod is backed up by Time Machine. By default, it is automatically backed up in OS X 10.5.5
Go to Finder, navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Power up Time Machine and see if there are older backups on the right
If you are able to see something like Today at XX:XX, Yesterday at XX:XX, you have your iPod backed up! Otherwise stop here–there’s no backup and restoring is not possible.

2. Sync your current iPhone/iPod. Perform a full backup of the iPhone/iPod.
3. Under the same folder in STEP 1, there are a lot of random folders and one of them is your iPhone/iPod’s backup.
To identify which is which, go into a folder,

Look for Info.plist by typing i-n-f-o and Finder will highlight the file

Open in TextEdit/Quick Look and you’ll see something like this:

If the “Device Name” and “Display Name” is the same as displayed in iTunes, bingo! Otherwise, repeat STEP 3 for a different folder

4. When you find the folder you are looking for, drag the folder to your Desktop just in case. (You may delete it after successfully performing the last step of the tutorial)

5. Restore the iPod to factory settings

6. Quit iTunes

7. Go to Finder

Enter Time Machine

Select an older version of the backup folder

and restore–replace current version!

Tip: Unsure which folder to restore? Use “Quick Look” to identify “info.plist” just like in STEP 3

8. In iTunes, “Restore from Backup” and select the appropriate backup with the same name as your iPhone/iPod

After the process you should have a clean iPhone OS installation with all old settings and apps in tact.

written by admin \\ tags: Backup, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, Restore, Time Machine, Touch

Darren has found a very useful utility for the OS X called Pordible. It supports conversion of .pdb (PalmDoc) to TXT files.

You can find it here.

When you finish downloading, simply drag-n-drop the file onto the Pordible.app and a BookZ friendly TXT file will be produced.

PDB files come in a lot of flavors and this utility handles PalmDoc only–so some .pdb might not be supported.

Thanks to Darren for this super helpful discovery : )

written by admin

Please follow this tutorial to transfer books from your Mac to BookZ.

Network setup: Your Mac and your iPhone/iPod Touch connects to the same WIFI network

0. Turn on “Web Sharing” in System Preferences->Sharing

1. Find out your computer’s address from System Preferences->Network (In my case 172.19.169.138)

2. Create a new folder called “bookz” under “~/Sites” and drop some text files into that folder  (~ stands for your home directory)

3. In BookZ, use Utilities->Surf and Download, type in the address found in step 1 followed by “~username/bookz”.

E.g. my username is “steven”, my ip address is 172.19.169.138. Hence the address typed into BookZ is “172.19.169.138/~steven/bookz”.

Tip: you can bookmark this address to avoid typing it again

4. Download books by clicking on the filenames

In case “403 Error” happens instead of the page shown above, please refer Apple’s official solution.

If you are unable to get things working, feel free to use support and drop me a message describing any problem you encounter.

written by admin

1. Open the pdf with Preview or Adobe Reader
2. Edit->Select All
3. Copy!
4. TextEdit->Paste (in Windows, Notepad->Paste)
5. Save as a txt file (if it appears as RTF, use TextEdit Menu->Format->Make Plain Text)
:p

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If you are having trouble producing TXT files with TextEdit that comes with Mac OS X, check out Text Wrangler

Text Wrangler is intuitive and straightforward: paste any text into Text Wrangler, save as a TXT file and you are ready to go!

Thanks to Ian for letting me know about Text Wrangler

Join the forum discussion on this post - (3) Posts

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Tap the blue arrow to the right of the title ; )

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If your Mac connects to the Internet via a WIFI router, click here for a simpler version of this tutorial.

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Step-by-step guide You only need to set up once following this guide.

1. Go to your home folder in Finder. In my case, it is “steven” with a house icon, right below “Applications” in the left pane.

2. Enter the folder called “Sites”.

3. Make a directory in “Sites” called BookZ

4. Enter the directory “bookz”, drop some txt files you want to read into this directory.

5. (CMD)-SPACE to bring up Spotlight. Enter “Web Sharing” and click enter.

6. Within “Sharing”, tick the “Web Sharing” option

7. Select the “Internet Sharing” item (not the checkbox), select “Airport” item (not the checkbox), and click “Airport Options” below.

8. Enter a name for your local network, in my case “MB”

9. Check “Internet Sharing” to enable WIFI connection between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Mac.

10. On the iPhone/iPod Touch, connect to the WIFI network you just established (”MB” in my case).

Click the right blue arrow to the right of the network name to get the Router address (10.0.2.1 in my case)

11. Fire up BookZ, use the “Web” tab, go to “10.0.2.1/~username/bookz” (repleace “username” with your Mac username, “steven” in my case). Tip: If the “~”sign doesn’t show when typing symbols, try the “Shift” key. Replace “10.0.2.1″ with your own router address obtained in the previous step.

12. This page correspondes to your “~/Sites/bookz” folder on your Mac. Click on the “.txt” files to import books into BookZ.

For subsequent imports, just drop the txt book into “~/Sites/bookz” folder, open BookZ and go to “10.0.2.1/~*username*/bookz”. (Replace “10.0.2.1″ with your own router address obtained in step 10)

Note: If you get “403 Error” instead of anything useful, please check out Apple’s official solution.

Please remember to turn off “Web Sharing” and “Internet Sharing” (otherwise people will be able to access your internet connection and see what’s under your “~/Sites” folder). You just need to turn them back on when importing books.

written by admin