Safari Books Online, provider of an on-demand digital library materials including books and videos for technology and business professionals, has introduced Safari Bookbag. It allows the download of chapter and full book PDFs to the iPhone and iPod touch.
Safari Bookbag can be installed via the Apple App Store for no additional cost. Safari Books Online is the first online publisher to open their entire library to iPhone and iPod touch users.
Bookbag users can synch their Apple devices with the “My Downloads“ section of their Safari Books Online accounts, which houses PDF versions of books that have been downloaded. To access titles on the iPhone or iPod touch, users can select the chapter of the book they want to download by simply tapping on the title of the book. With the Bookbag application, any iPod touch or iPhone with Internet access (Edge, Wi-Fi, 3G) can automatically transfer chapters of books from the Safari library. Once the books are downloaded, the PDFs can be read and accessed at any time, even without an Internet connection.
“The Safari Bookbag project represented an exciting programming challenge,“ said Erica Sadun, lead developer on Safari Bookbag and author, co-author and contributor to almost two dozen books about technology. “The iPhone mixes Internet-connectivity with the realities of palm-top access. We succeeded in making Safari Books Online‘s Bookbag intuitively accessible. Between the simple Coverflow-based book selection screen to the tap-to-download chapters list and the friendly network access screens, Bookbag brings Safari Books Online into a native reader that takes Apple’s design philosophy to heart.“
“As the popularity of portable eBook readers increases, more and more of the people accessing our digital library are requesting Safari Books Online content on the go,“ said Dennis Kilian, vice president at Safari Books Online. “The technology and design community -“ a significant portion of our customer base -“ are often Apple enthusiasts, and already use the iPhone and iPod touch on a daily basis. We created Safari Bookbag to offer another channel for the vast array of materials in our library, allowing people to create their own portable readers without having to purchase an additional device.“
Safari Books Online chose to integrate with Apple devices as its first mobile platforms after conducting a survey of its users. The company plans to continue rapid expansion of its mobile strategy with other devices and readers in the months to come.
