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 discount, not 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:

Back to Heterocycles!

I guess this blog entry could be called "The Portable Chemist's Consultant Part 5” (see Part 4 here)

First off, we have new book updates (latest version 2.6.1), as listed in iTunes and on the book's website. 

In about ~2 years from the first launch of the book, its volume has roughly doubled in size. If you purchased the initial version of the book, all the updates were provided for free, and this will remain as such. This is in contrast to a traditional textbook, for which the consumer must pay every time a new edition is published. It is our belief that every good product out there should provide updates for free, much like Apple’s OS X Mavericks or Yosemite upgrades. Although our heterocyclic e-book may fall short of Apple’s contents and designs, our ultimate goal is to keep updating our work until we get there.

Speaking of a two-year anniversary, we also have another update to heterocyclic chemistry—that’s Phil’s Heterocyclic Chemistry Course 2015. The course is available on iTunes U, much like the class that was held in 2013 (but the videos are of better quality now and they don't have any cutting-off issues from last time). This course has been recently held every 2 years from April to June and we are currently headed into its final weeks, which includes the final exam. :)  Feel free to take a look at the midterm as well.

Happy Heterocycling!
Yoshi

iBooks on your Mac desktop/laptop

I guess this blog entry could be called "The Portable Chemist's Consultant Part 4” (see Part 3 here).

First off, we have a new book update (Version 2.4), as listed in Open Flask and on the book's website.

Secondly, with Apple’s new Mavericks system, iBooks can be used on a desktop or laptop. I have placed some screenshots below to show how the iBooks looks like on the computer screen.

Normally the iBooks page looks like this:

When you place your mouse cursor on the left hand side of the page, a little arrow appears, which you can click to go to the preceding page. Same thing for the right hand side of the page to go to the following page.

When you place your mouse cursor on the top part of the page, many icons appear: the book icon (it opens your iBooks library), the bullet point icon (it shows the book's table of contents in a side pop-up), the notes icon (it shows notes or study cards), the search icon (it finds text, media, notes, or a page number) and the bookmark icon (it adds or removes a bookmark).

 And finally, when you place your mouse cursor on the bottom part of the page, you will get a “back button” on the bottom left corner of your screen.

I actually think the iBooks program is faster on the computer than on the iPad—so check it out!

--Yoshi

iBooks will be coming to your Mac laptop this Fall

I guess this short blog entry could also be called "The Portable Chemist's Consultant Part 3" (see Part 2 here).

First off, we have a new book update (Version 2.3), as listed in Open Flask and on the book's website.

Secondly, Apple has announced a new OS X platform, OS X Mavericks, which will allow the use of iBooks on a laptop! So for those of you who own Apple laptops but who don't want to get an iPad, you will be able to read this book sometime in the Fall.
 
And lastly, Angewandte's book review is out, here. Thanks Angewandte!
 
--Yoshi

The beauty of a continuously updated electronic book

I guess this blog post could be called "The Portable Chemist's Consultant Part 2" (see part 1 here). The reason for the existence of this blog post is three-fold: 1) to write about the advantages of an electronic book that is continuously updated; 2) to show you how to update this book once you have it on your iPad; and 3) have a history of updates on this page so that you can check back to see when the next update comes out.