My wonderful editor Tonya Engst sent along a clipping—yes, paper!—of a review of my book Take Control of Media on Your iPad, Second Edition that appeared in the August 2011 issue of Recording magazine. It’s a fun review by Mike Metlay, with several quotable gems:
Take Control of Media on Your iPad (v2.0) is 158 pages of good advice, step-by-step tutorials, background information, occasional snarky comments about digital rights limitations and stupid design blunders, and sneaky workarounds to the above (with at least one carefully boxed sidebar entitled “Is It Legal?”)—all concerning the iPad as a media consumption device.
and this extensive bit:
I fancied myself a decently-knowledgeable iPad media user before I picked up this book, certainly on the basics of “easy stuff” like watching movies and listening to music. By the time I put it down, I had to hang my head in shame, because I’d learned a good twenty or thirty tricks that would have saved me hours of sweat and a fair bit of money, too. Did you know there’s a freeware program specifically designed to help you import movies from your DVD collection to your computer, with optimization settings for iPad use? (See the “Is It Legal?” sidebar first, naturally.) What’s the difference between the PDF and EPUB formats for electronic document delivery, and in which areas does one format win over the other? And are you aware of the seemingly innocuous dialog box in iTunes that can pop up when you’re adding a video to your library that can destroy everything on your iPad before you know it? How about “The Best iPad Camera Tip Ever”?
Reviews are good (yes, even critical ones) and I have to admit that even after publishing dozens of books and probably hundreds of articles in this electronic age, getting a review as a clipping, tri-folded in a #10 envelope (and better, nestled against a royalty check) gave me a little electric thrill. It was like a delicate artifact had been transported from the past.
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 