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Greetings!
This month has been busy for most people. As Cahir of the organisation that caters for professionals making digital resources, information and services, accessible to everyone, I enjoyed a very rich meeting in Perth. You may like to learn more about how people with disabilities, that is, people who find there is a mismatch between what they need and to what they can get real access, are catered for. You can visit our Conference website and watch videos or read notes. See http://ozewai.org/conference/
March Meeting of Bellarine Mac User Group - March 10, 2020
This meeting will have three parts.
Part 1
Professor Eva Mendez will be here from Spain and tell us about a number of interesting things she does as a digital information expert. For a start, Eva will, hopefully, tell us how a female library scientist came to be a prominent person in the digital space. What have libraries offered to the Web of information and services we all use.
Then, Eva will tell us about the work of a number of communities to take advantage of the technology and adopt an 'open' perspective to information. What does it mean to be 'open' and why is it attractive to those who operate in the open space.
In particular, Eva will tell us about open science - what is it and how does it work and help advance science in the world.
Part 2
We will learn about Brave. Have you heard of it? Brave is a new Web browser with new ways of working. Safari may be familiar but what would you get if you changed to using Brave? Ken Grinter will not be with us on this occasion, unfortunately, but he has provided some background materials for this and we will have a lively discussion of the issues.
Part 3
David Dixon has promised to help us learn to use the Reminder app as best we could. He will tell us about this.
And we have a question from a member that I have to admit I have lost. Please whoever wrote to me come to the meeting and ask the question again.
Can you help?
We have a request for help in Drysdale - if you can help with this problem, please let me know (info@bellarinemac.org.au)
The person says:
I am wondering if you can point me in the right direction to get some help.
"I have a new iPhone 11 and 4 year old iPad. I also have an old 13 inch Macbook Pro 2011, which I am considering upgrading if I can get some support on updating my skills. I am a Disability Pensioner, retired for 8 years due to illness. Prior to my illness I was able to use these technologies. However I have now fallen behind. I find the Apple on line tutorials difficult to use, as I have some cognitive issues caused by my illness Do you know of anywhere I could get some help? I would be prepared to pay someone for some tutoring or advice if required."
Some AppleInsider items of interest
The following items have been identified by Peter Poteralski as likely to be of interest to members:
- 27/1/2020 Avast antivirus harvested user data, then sold to Google, Microsoft;
- 28/1/2020 Amazon’s Ring apps (for Android) caught spying on users, sharing data with third-parties;
- 12/2/2020 Mac malware outpaced Windows PCs threats for first time in 2019, report says;
- 16/2/2020 Apple Maps vs Google Maps - smartphone mapping titans battle it out in 2020;
- 24/2/2020 Safari to reject HTTPS certificates with over thirteen months validity.
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Some Fun! Peter Baldwin has shared with us an interesting tale of activity. Happy reading and thanks to Peter! (2nd March 2020)
Creating an ebook.... my experience The curious case of systematic malfunctions
Have you ever tried to publish an ebook?
I thought I would relate my experiences when attempting to publish my first digital book in the EPUB format.
PREAMBLE:
I decided to embark on a project to write down my memories of growing up in the 1940’s in a small rural Town on the edge of the Mallee in Victoria.
I commenced the project partly as a cathartic exercise, thinking that if it ever reached finalisation, it may be of some interest to future generations of our family.
My original idea was that the final document may extend to perhaps fifty pages, including a few photos and that it would probably take me a couple of months to complete.
To my surprise, once I commenced the process of committing my memories to paper, the project seemed to keep expanding and it eventually extended over a period of more than twelve months before the final document emerged, being a book of approximately two hundred pages.
PROCESS:
The app of choice for compilation of my book was Apple Pages. My idea was to convert the completed Pages document to PDF, for printing and also to make it available via Dropbox or iCloud for various family members.
I had no intention of publishing an EPUB book and in fact I lacked any knowledge of the procedure involved in such a production.
However, once my book appeared in PDF format, it was suggested that I should perhaps consider publishing it in digital format to Apple Books.
Fortunately, I had used a blank Portrait Pages template and had applied “Paragraph Styles” to the headings and chapters in the book which made the document suitable for publication to an EPUB including an automatically created table of contents.
I should point out that there is also a simple process to export a Pages book to EPUB on your computer or IOS device so that it can be viewed as an EPUB book in your Books app. You are able to share the EPUB book via email if you so desire but this is not usually practical due to the large size of the file.
1st Step in publishing from Apple Pages to the Apple Books Store
(1) Enable my Apple ID for iTunes Connect.
iTunes Connect is a service developed by Apple Inc. that allows digital content providers to upload and manage content distributed through Apple's online stores: iTunes Store and iBooks Store. It allows you to manage your content, including contracts, pricing and availability.
This process was relatively simple, requiring my Apple ID and Password, together with a selection of “media type”, which in my case was the “Books” category.
My Apple iD had to be verified and I was required to have a valid credit card number on file.
Once my iTunes Connect account was enabled, I was required to sign a Book Store agreement.
There are two different types of agreements within iTunes Connect:
Free Books and Paid Books. The former is the agreement that I completed as I had no intention of ever selling content in the Apple Book Store.
Further Steps:
(2) Save the book to my iCloud Drive folder;
(3) Open the book in iCloud Drive, then choose Publish to Apple Books;
(4) Click Continue, then sign in to iTunes Connect;
Once connected to the iTunes account (which can take several minutes), I was requested to provide various bits of information about my book, which I will not elaborate on in this article.
(5) Preview and upload the book;
After entering the book information and clicking continue, I was given the option to either preview or upload the book.
This is where my problems started!
I tried both options several times and on each occasion a dialog box appeared with a message “Uploading to iTunes Connect...”.
BUT, alas every upload attempt went into a never ending inconclusive process with the spinning circle icon at the bottom of the dialog box. The only way to stop this “in limbo” process was to “Force Quit” the Pages app.
I researched the Apple Books topic thoroughly and tried everything that I could think of, all to no avail.
In desperation, I turned to Apple Support via telephone contact.
After numerous lengthy consultations over a period of three weeks, including several sessions of screen sharing, we were not progressing to any satisfactory solution. The Support Advisers, although trying their best, could not offer any additional information over and above what I already knew or had tried.
During one consultation, it was suggested that I should complete the “Paid Books” section of iTunes Connect as this was thought to be the possible reason why my book was not uploading. I was dubious about this piece of advice, but heeded the suggestion. However, part way through entering details in this section, I came to an abrupt holt when I was required to enter an Australian tax file number and an ABN number, neither of which I could supply.
So, the “Paid Books” section remained incomplete and to my frustration I was not able to delete the information which I had already inserted. The summary record for this section appeared with the comment “Pending User Information”.
After all of this wasted time, I was finally advised to contact “iBooks Author Worldwide support” by telephone. They are listed as the specialists for the Apple Books section and the “Go-To” people if you have any problems with your book publication..
Over the next four weeks I went through many “trial & error” scenarios with various consultants in the iBooks Author Worldwide support section, but nothing worked to resolve my problem.
The final messages from that section were-
Message One:
I understand that you’ve attempted to submit your book numerous times.
However, our engineering team is requesting that you attempt to submit your book using Pages, again.
If you continue to experience a submission issue, please provide the following:
• The email address associated with your iCloud account.
• Date & Time the issue last occurred (including time zone)
Please understand that our engineering team needs the above information to further investigate your issue.
Thank you for your assistance.
The case number to this correspondence is ...........
Message Two:
Thank you for providing the requested information.
I’ve provided this information to our engineering team and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have an update.
Final Solution.....there is no solution!
Several weeks have now passed since receipt of the above two emails and unfortunately no further advice has been offered to fix my problem, despite my weekly “harassment” via email.
I keep receiving the same reply, “the engineering team is still investigating your problem”.
I would love to hear from anyone who has had experience in publishing from Pages to Apple Books.
Out of frustration, I am currently investigating other sources for the publishing of my book in EPUB, one being Amazon Kindle Publishing.
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