Tuesday, December 13, 2016

PCC in Your Stocking


Seasons' greetings! This blog post is about The Portable Chemist's Consultant (PCC) (see the last entry on PCC here). But it's not just another announcement on another update – in line with the Christmas spirit, we are announcing a significant price drop: you can now purchase one equivalent of PCC at only $9.99 (the surprise). [We want to make it a winter of our discountnot discontent.] You may recognize the unit "equivalent" as particularly "tantalizing" – we chose it because, unlike pyridinium chlorochromate (example chosen at random and no pun intended), our PCC is a chemical entity of ever increasing "molecular weight". In fact, in conjunction with this discount, we have launched a substantial update today, featuring about 180 new pages (ca. 21% increase in size).

The page count stands at 1003 – compared to its launch in 2013 (with 439 pages) – PCC has come a long way. This is only possible with the support of those who bought and used the book – our heartfelt thanks goes to you all. The number 9 is a homophone for longevity and eternality in the native culture of one of the authors (in Mandarin Chinese). $9.99 signifies our continued commitment to this project to provide the community (specifically those in drug, agrochemical, and materials science) with the most up-to-date information on heterocycles.  

More specifically, this update features:

•   a complete pyrazole substitution section
• a new chapter on quinolines (both synthesis and substitution)
•   updates to the speed consulting section, highlighting latest developments in the field
•   And a chapter on fused heteroarenes, including Phil's top-secret rules on how to disconnect 5,6-fused systems. 

We would also like to highlight the fact that PCC is gaining even more "portability" and can even be your "pocket consultant". Since multi-touch eBooks for the iPhone is now available through an iBooks Author upgrade, we’ve tested the PCC book on the iPhone and it looks and works great! The font is, of course, quite small but you can pinch and zoom to read the text, use the hyperlinks and watch the videos just like on your iPad or Mac.

Considering that there have been, under some estimates, a total of 1 whopping billion iPhones sold and a total of 225 million iPads sold, along with my non-statistical tallying of iPhone and iPad users around me, it’s safe to say that people are much more likely to have iPhones than iPads or Macs. With regards to the PCC book, this has been a pity because multi-touch eBooks worked for the iPad and even the Mac but not for the iPhone – but this is no longer a problem!

PCC on the iPad, Mac, and an iPhone













We're told that Phil himself uses PCC quite often when consulting for simple things like remembering which esoteric additive to use in an amide bond formation, or recommending just the right ligand in one of Buchwald's reactions, or even just a quick reminder on the best way to disconnect an awkwardly substituted imidazole.

In summary, PCC has no ego, no hourly rate, and gets better for free over time. And now, it will fit in your pocket. It's the perfect consultant.  Happy Holidays everyone!!

-Yoshi and Ming 

P.S. Screenshots of PCC on iPhone:





4 comments:

  1. Is there still any development on publishing on Android platform per se?

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  2. This is all in Apple's hands. Since we use iBooks software we are at the mercy of Apple to make iBooks available on the Android platform. Sorry!

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  3. Hi, I realize this is an old post, but on the off chance it is seen, is this ibook ever going to be released on the NZ iBookstore? I would love a copy but it seems I'm not allowed to buy it.

    ReplyDelete