Vertical PowerBook as ebook reader

Lately I've been collecting PDF books on my PowerBook. Titles include Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks, John Willinsky's The Access Principle, and Eric von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation. It's a treat to find these and other titles available as free downloads, but the clash between the portrait layout of books and the landscape layout of computer screens always winds up frustrating me.

The other day I had a brainstorm. Turn the PDF sideways, and stand the PowerBook on end. As you can see in this 2-minute video, it works like a charm!

I knew that other folks must have gotten there first, and of course that's true. Andrew Burke posted the same solution back in March, for example. Still, I'll bet this weirdly simple yet effective trick hasn't occurred to a lot of folks.


Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/07/13.html#a1485