How to get e-books onto your iPhone
By Paul Biba
How do you get books, and other files, into your iPhone from your desktop?
Adrian Graham, a British author based in London, has an interesting article on his blog.
He mentions a Windows solution, but I wonder if there is something comparable for the Mac. Ideally it will be pretty simple. Maybe it could involve using Stanza and an Http file server on your Windows machine if you own one:
HFS – Http File Server is a quick download (550KB) and works on Windows PCs.
To get it working. In Windows:
Click on the downloaded .exe file (the app opens but doesn’t install onto your PC)
Drag the files you want to use into the program’s main window (under the little house icon)
Open Stanza
Ensure your home Wi-Fi network is on and both your PC and iPhone / iPod Touch are connected to it.
Then in Stanza:
Press on ‘Online Catalogue’
Select ‘Direct Downloads’
Press the + icon in the bottom left hand corner
Type in the whole URL (exactly as it is in the HFS window on your PC – I’ve greyed it out on the screenshot above. If you click on the file it will show the exact ‘http://’)
Press download, and read now
This also works using other apps like Bookz (for text files) and TextGuru (which happens to work especially well with this method). It doesn’t work with all the apps I’ve tested.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
On a Mac? Since OS X 10.whatever has included a web server (apache) for as long as I can remember, all you have to do is make sure it is enabled in the correct System Preferences pane (Might even be called ‘Sharing’).
And then just put your files in the correct folder on your Mac and there you go. And since eReader allows you to download eReader formatted e-books from any web server…
(And the vagueness of the directions is because my Mac is at home – and I’m not. And I’m fairly sure that somewhere around here are directions on how to do this already.)
December 16th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I use the app called “Air Sharing” to move files onto my iPod Touch. Air Sharing is a file viewer so it can open quite a few file formats. You can read more about the app here – http://www.avatron.com/
Since Air Sharing also uses a URL to connect and retrieve files my guess is that Stanza should also be able to use the same URL to connect and snag files that it can open. I’ll check that out later when I am at home.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
For Bookshelf I just use my iPhone Browser and my jailbroken iPod Touch to drag and drop files directly into the Bookshelf documents folder. Works like a charm.