iSilo

I'm a JW & with this awesome app I was able to put the files from my beloved watchtower cd rom into my iPhone. Awesome, amazing, fantastic.

*Many* faithful iSilo users have been waiting for the port of this great application to the iPhone. I would like to say that the administrator has been nothing but helpful and informative with telling the rest of us the process and status of submitting this application to the app store. Thank you.

As for the app, it's very easy to put files on the phone. iSilo's website has how-to's in regards to put the files onto the phone - step-by-step with pictures.

Thanks for all of your hard work! Two thumbs (err... five stars) up.

Worst UI ever on a paid app. No Bonjour file transfer. No smooth scroll. Crashes very often . No full screen support. Pathetic first release compared to the WinMo and Palm editions.

Finally...this is the killer app that makes my iPhone a functional medical reference where no network access is possible (such as our emergency room whick kills all radio signals from outside). Suddenly hundreds of medical texts that I relied on with my Treo are now available on my iPhone. (There are also tons of non-medical books out there that are now easily accessible on the iPhone too.) Great job on the first version, looking forward to it only getting better!

The only real quirk in this first version is that it isn't straigtforward to get docs onto the iPhone. In my case, I used a folder on a networked drive that has a built-in web server (SimpleShare NAS), just drop the files into that directory and quickly access it and download them via the web browser in iSilo. I'm sure Yahoo Briefcase, the method that the makers of iSilo describe for non-Mac OS users, would work just as well, albeit with some initial setup. I look forward to a better method of getting files onto the device in the future but this works well for me for now.

I was hoping this one would get me some of my psychology/psychiatry docs from the palm. Apparently the ones I need (DSM-IV, Psych Ped, etc), although they are .pdb files, come up as gibberish because they have some extra goodies that palm understands but Isilo does not. The other thing is that from this platform, accessing the gutenberg catalog is just the biggest pain. Further, there is no CIA Factbook included with this app. False advertising.

Now. It seems to be a very nice interface, it seems to connect easily to the MAC for downloading files, no problems there whatsoever. The help section on their website is pretty helpful and thorough. But I also have stanza, which was a free reader. Its interface with the gutenberg catalog and other sources of books is awesome and very easy. You dont just get sent to the website, as in this app. The downloads from several sources in stanza are so easy as to be childs play, and they present very nicely with a pic of the book if available. Stanza is much more user friendly, which means its much more likely to be used.

I would not say this is an awful app. If all you are doing is reading straight and simple .pdb files that you know have no extra data in them, I bet it does well. Its help page says it reads what it sees. Its not a smart app, just a simple reading app. So if you are getting more complex stuff, it hasnt proven itself effective at all. So basically at this point the app is useless to me, as I only purchased it in hopes of being able to read my palm app files. Stanza is much better for downloading books of all sorts, and it is free. I regret spending so much money for an app I cant use at this point. Since I paid so much for it, I cant actually completely delete it, but I did remove it from my phone hoping that some day it will become a useful tool.

If you want a good reader that interfaces well with sources of books to download and is very simple to use, I would highly recommend Stanza.
Suggestions: 1. Please look at stanza's means of accessing and downloading from the book catalogs. There is no reason we should be sent to a website that isnt even designed for mobile devices, and isilo doesnt allow landscape. 2. Please add landscape view. Anything related to reading should allow this. 3. Given the issues, 9.99 is a lot steep. I took a chance and was disappointed, but I am hoping for some updates that will allow my litte investment to be worthwhile in the future.
Update: the CIA world fact book is now available but to get it you have to go to the isilo website. I did some research to try to clarify the palm issue for others like myself. The .pdb is only an extension, not a format. A file can have an extension that isilo says it can manage yet still not be in isilo format. I believe that all the palm files you originally used isilo to read are good. But many palm files carry the .pdb extension but are NOT in isilo format. So before buying, determine whether your .pdb files are actually properly formatted for isilo, otherwise you will get gibberish. At any rate your best bet is to look around for isilo materials on your computer, download to your computer and then transfer to your isilo app, which works like a charm. I did end up finding a use for the thing, though. Found a good site sponsored by my church with some books I love. The reader is good, and even though it won't do landscape when it takes you to a website, I fund that you can read the downloaded books in landscape. So I will give another star.

The 1.0 release for iPhone is a little rough around the edges, but it's nice to finally have my iSilo docs accessible on my iPhone. Some problems: relatively crash prone; scrolling is sluggish; some special characters are displaying as question marks; links from one doc to another don't work; links sometimes don't line up exactly with the text when you try to tap them. The pros: My iSilo docs finally work on my iPhone and the last useful purpose of my Palm handheld can now be done with my iPhone! Nuff said! Once they work out the kinks, this will be absolutely awesome.

The best document reader. The .pdb files are readable across many platforms. Great developer support also.

Same lame experience. Transferring docs doesn't work unless you can set up server on the web. You'll need a public ip to do it at home. But the big problem is nothing displays properly. Formatting code and extra characters abound. The app is unuseable

I have a large collection of Palm Doc, iSilo, and Plain Text documents which I used on my Palm T5 and Compaq Windows Mobile. They have largely gathered dust since Palm and Windows Mobile were so bad. Now I can use them in iSilo! This is a great day!

You access your files via your wireless network. Mac OS X has a built-in webserver which can easily be turned on using the Sharing Preference Pane. It uses everyone's Home folder's Site folder. In the Site folder, put an "iSilo" folder, load it up with your favorite documents. The Sharing Prefernce Pane gives your Site Folder's website location, which is either MyComputer.local or http://192.168.1.3/~mycom puter/ or other similar address. All you have to do in iSilo, then is to give it the address: "MyComptuer.local/iSilo" or "http://192.168.1.3/~myco mputer/iSilo" to access your computer's files via your wireless network. Tah Dah!

Unless the files you want isilo to access are on a web server you're screwed! Do some major research before you buy this. Isilo should state something about this on their add. This is false advertising!

The major advantage iSilo has over other similar eReaders available for the iPod TOuch/iPhone platform is its insane compression ratio. A 1,035 paged document packed full of hyperlinks and references usually sized up to 145 to 240 MB on a DOCX or PDF format, but when compressed into iSilo's native (yet proprietary and different form other suffixes of the same name) .pdb files, can compress the files to 40 MB or less, and loads the files INSTANTLY and without any delay. However, there are some things about iSilo that I think could definitely be improved. Namely, it would really help if iSilo would adopt a similar GUI to that of the amazingly dazzling and feature rich Stanza eReader for iPhone which I would definitely prefer if it had not been for its inability to read iSilo's .pdb files. If you are looking for a eReader that can read iSilo's .pdb format only and can do it really quickly and efficiently, this is regrettably the only software that can do it. I would only recommend purchasing this software if you are locked into reading a file that has been encoded using iSilo X. Otherwise, consider downloading (for free), Stanza, a much better eReader with outstanding graphics and much more featurerich and userfriendly interface.

Program is sure to evolve into an even greater .pdb reader. Slightly buggy at present, but worth every cent. Special kudos to iSilo Forum Admin(s) - quick to reply, patient, and knowledgeable. Glad to part with seven bucks for a great program.

I've been waiting for this app for a year! Now its here and can do some personal study on the go. Thank you Isilo for being so helpfull and trasparent in the forum. This version still has a lot bugs but I trust the next version will resolve them.

Great for getting my reference materials on my phone. Loading documents was fairly straightforward and not too much hassle. As has been mentioned the user Interface is not very elegant at all. Seems the software was ported over from other smart phones with little regard for the apple user experience. Scrolling is sluggish but the interface is what leaves me scratching my head. Honestly, surprised Apple approved it as is.

Overall it gets the job done but I hope the developers don't feel their work is done. They would do well to study the functionality of other apps. I'm looking forward to a more refined update in the future especially considering the price.