A real page-turner
I don’t like reading multi-page documents online.
I’m trying to be more environmentally responsible with the amount that I print, but like most people I scan rather than read online text. With more than a few pages, or with complex topics, online information just doesn’t lodge in my brain in the same way.
But I know I could do better with my tree-consuming behavour. So I was intrigued when I happened across FlipViewer. I don’t know if more book-like (‘multimedia interactive’) software has existed for a while, but this was the first time I came across an e-book that really felt like reading a book.
The Lancet sent out an email that they’re currently offering a free e-book online, Darwin’s Gift. The visuals are like real pages turning, and for me the experience is way more pleasant. I also love the cover art. There’s even audio of paper pages turning. So I’m going to try again to do more big readings online.
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My next quest in improving my environmental behaviour: an all-in-one printer that offers easy two-sided printing.
Any printer I’ve ever owned has pitiful functionality for two-sided printing. The whole document prints out on one side first, and then you have to manually feed the same pages back in again. Every printer I’ve ever done this with either misses a sheet, or sucks in several pages at once, and the numbering of the pages ends up chaotic – pages missing, pages only partly-printed, and a real annoyance to try to find pages as you’re reading through a document. Though at an office I almost always ensure I’ve selected two-sided printing, at home I’ve given up. If anyone knows of an inexpensive small office/home all-in-one printer that does an excellent job of two-sided printer, I’d like to know.
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The free e-book is a promotion to bring in new subscribers to The Lancet, but you don’t have to subscribe to read the book. I couldn’t find a way to download and read it offline, so from what I figure, you have to read it online.
This is an excerpt from the blurb (the links are mine):
Darwin’s Gift celebrates the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. You’ll find essays about Darwin’s life and work, and the enduring legacy of his remarkable theory of evolution. These were Darwin’s gifts to all of us.
