Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Portable Chemist's Consultant

This is my first ever blog entry, let alone the Baran lab blog but on all blogs web-wide. I thought this would be a suitable entry to celebrate this landmark of mine. I (Yoshi) came to the Baran Lab in 2007 and obtained my PhD last year but I'm staying here longer for a pet project of mine. And Ana's. And most importantly for those of you who visit this page for Baran lab news: Phil's vision. Case in point: we have been writing a book mostly on heterocyclic chemistry and today is our official launch date. The book is called "The Portable Chemist's Consultant." This is not a hardcover book but is only offered on the iBookstore; we also have a website dedicated to it.  While you can find the book itself and the sample book in the former, and cool graphics and a comments page in the latter, on this blog I decided to put up a quick video of myself talking through the features of this electronic book while holding up my iPad. 

 
 
Here is an impromptu video taken by Phil using his iPhone... he just stormed into my working area, brought me into his office and said "let's take a video of you talking about the interactive features of this book. Starting... now." 

Maybe one day I'll take a better version of this video that has my iPad on a more stable platform and without me stuttering, but for now this will do. I just wanted to showcase here that this is a highly interactive book with all sections hyperlinked to each other and all references hyperlinked to the original literature source on the internet. As well as a lot of Phil Baran videos for those of you who are not fortunate enough to be in San Diego to attend his heterocycles class (which started today, coincidentally... or not). Check it out!  --Yoshi

13 comments:

  1. Will this book be available on other Apple stores than the US one? Because from Switzerland it is impossible to buy it and it is also impossible to create an US account without an US credit card. Have a nice day.

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    1. Yes! I've been told by the powers that be that it'll be a few days (seems like they crashed the site when they tried to enable it for all countries at once).

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  2. Looks like a useful resource (though I can't get your video to work, I checked out the site), and a reasonable price.

    I like the description of heterocycles as the "bedrock of society". Take that, DOMA.

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    1. If you want to download the video, you can copy and paste the following link into your browser:

      http://www.scripps.edu/baran/Blog/BookIntroduction.m4v

      It is in .m4v format, so you'll need a played compatible with that. Hope that helps!
      -Dane

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    2. Cheers, I'll have a gander now. (VLC player for the win)

      Any plans for Android/Windows/etc. editions?

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  3. Move over pyridinium chlorochromate, this is the real PCC

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  4. I also tried to purchase the book with my Finnish account but could not do it yet. I cannot wait to get my hands on this one so I hope it will become available in other countries soon! Thanks a lot for your effort!

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  5. FYI a new update to the book is already up - lots of cool additions.

    Also, the book is now available in 37 countries.

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  6. For those of us nowhere near the cutting edge of technology, can this book be viewed on a PC?

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  7. Unfortunately not. On the bright side, Walmart has a special on iPad mini's for $299 :)

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  9. Just found out about the book and it looks really good. Unfortunately not available in my area (Singapore). Any chance it will be available in more countries in the near future?

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