Perseus Signs an EBooks Deal for the iPad
By MOTOKO RICH AND BRAD STONEApple’s iBookstore on the forthcoming iPad is set to get larger. The company has just signed a deal with the largest distributor of independent publishers to sell electronic versions of it books on the new device.
Apple’s iPad
Perseus Books Group, a large independent publisher that also distributes works from 330 other smaller presses including Grove Atlantic, Harvard Business School Press, Zagat and City Lights Books, signed a deal last week with Apple, following five of the six biggest publishers that have already signed agreements with Apple.
Perseus’s deal comes as Amazon.com, the largest online seller of printed books and the biggest e-book seller in the United States, has put pressure on publishers who have not yet signed deals with Apple to refrain from doing so. Amazon, which makes the Kindle e-reader, holds about 90 percent of the e-book market. With Apple’s iPad coming on the scene, Amazon is fighting to keep as much of its market lead as possible.
Publishers have provisionally welcomed Apple’s entry into the market because Apple’s deals allow publishers to set consumer prices, within limits. Publishers have had no control over consumer prices at Amazon, which has generally sold new releases and best sellers for $9.99, a price that publishers feared would erode profits in the long term.Like the five other publishers who have already signed with Apple, Perseus will set consumer prices and Apple will serve as an agent, taking a 30 percent commission on each sale. E-book versions of most newly released adult general fiction and nonfiction will cost $12.99 to $14.99. All publishers whose books are distributed by Perseus will be allowed to opt in to the deal.
Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, confirmed that it had signed a deal with Perseus. In an e-mail statement, David Steinberger, chief executive of Perseus, said, “We’re working with Apple to make books from The Perseus Books Group and the independent publishers we represent available on the iBookstore starting on April 3. As the leading provider of distribution services for independent publishers, including digital distribution through our Constellation digital service, Perseus is thrilled to be making our books available on the iPad.”
A person with direct knowledge of the talks between Apple and Perseus said that a Perseus executive had flown to Seattle to meet with Amazon this week. A spokesman for Amazon could not be reached for comment.
In talks with publishers, Apple has said it would not let other retailers sell any book for a lower price than the price in its new iBookstore. Several of the larger publishers are seeking to renegotiate agreements with Amazon and other e-book retailers to mirror the deals with Apple.
But Amazon has only agreed to those terms so far with one publisher, Macmillan, and is still in talks with the other big four, as well as other independent publishers. Amazon has told smaller presses that it does not want to enter into so-called “agency” agreements with them. These publishers fear that if they sign deals with Apple, Amazon will discontinue selling their books, as it did briefly during a dispute with Macmillan.
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It may be a little early to say this, but to me it seems like Microsoft took all the disappointment and fear resulting from Apple’s dominance of the mobile devices category over its own products through the years and used that energy to create
Gartner's 

As we move closer to the iPad's release date, more information is becoming available regarding 3rd-party content. Just this week, an internal memo from Condé Nast
Detect iPhones and iPods using Javascript
When developing for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, the first thing we have to do is obviously detect it, so we can apply specific code or styles to it. The following code snippets will detect iPhones and iPods using Javascript, and redirect those users to an iPhone specific page.
1.if((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)) || (navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i))) {2.if(document.cookie.indexOf("iphone_redirect=false") == -1) {3.window.location ="http://m.espn.go.com/wireless/?iphone&;i=COMR";4.}5.}Source: http://davidwalsh.name/detect-iphone
Detect iPhones and iPods using PHP
Although the previous snippet works great, Javascript can be disabled on the iPhone. For this reason, you may prefer to use PHP in order to detect iPhones and iPods touch.
1.if(strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPhone') ||strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPod')) {2.header('Location: http://yoursite.com/iphone');3.exit();4.}Source: http://davidwalsh.name/detect-iphone
Set iPhone width as the viewport
How many times did you load a website in your iPhone and it just looked like a thumbnail? The reason of this is that the developer forgot to define the viewport (or didn’t know it existed). The width=device-width statement allows you to define the document width as being the same than the width of the iPhone screen. The two other statements are preventing the page from being scaled, which is useful if you’re developing an iPhone-only website. Otherwise, you can remove those statements.
Defining a viewport is easy: Just insert the following meta in the head section of your html document.
1.<metaname="viewport"content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0;">Source: http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk/blog/2008/06/19/tutorial-building-a-website-for-the-iphone/
Insert an iPhone specific icon
When a user adds your page to the home screen, the iPhone will automatically use a screenshot of your website as an icon. But you can provide your own icon, which is definitely better.
Defining a custom iPhone icon is easy: Simply paste the following in the head section of your html document. The image should be 57px by 57px in .png format. You do not need to add the shine or corners, as the iPhone will do that for you automatically.
1.<rel="apple-touch-icon"href="images/template/engage.png"/>Source: http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk/blog/2008/06/19/tutorial-building-a-website-for-the-iphone/
Prevent Safari from adjusting text size on rotate
When you rotate the iPhone, Safari adjust text size. If for some reason you’d like to prevent this effect, simply use the following CSS declaration. It has to be inserted in your CSS file.
The -webkit-text-size-adjust is a webkit-only CSS property that allow you to control text adjustment.
1.html, body, form, fieldset, p, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6{2.-webkit-text-size-adjust:none;3.}Source: http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk/blog/2008/06/19/tutorial-building-a-website-for-the-iphone/
Detect iPhone orientation
Due to the fact that the iPhone allow its users to view a page in both portrait and landscape modes, you may need to be able to detect in which mode the document is being read.
This handy javascript function will detect the current iPhone orientation and will apply a specific CSS class so you can style it your way. Note that in this example, the CSS class is added to the page_wrapper ID. Replace it by the desired ID name (See line 24).
01.window.onload =functioninitialLoad() {02.updateOrientation();03.}04.05.functionupdateOrientation(){06.varcontentType ="show_";07.switch(window.orientation){08.case0:09.contentType +="normal";10.break;11.12.case-90:13.contentType +="right";14.break;15.16.case90:17.contentType +="left";18.break;19.20.case180:21.contentType +="flipped";22.break;23.}24.document.getElementById("page_wrapper").setAttribute("class", contentType);25.}Source: http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk/blog/2008/06/19/tutorial-building-a-website-for-the-iphone/
Apply CSS styles to iPhones/iPods only
Browser sniffing can be useful, but for many reasons it isn’t the best practice to detect a browser. If you’re looking for a cleaner way to apply CSS styles to the iPhone only, you should use th following. It has to be pasted on your regular CSS file.
1.@mediascreenand (max-device-width:480px){2./* All iPhone only CSS goes here */3.}Source: http://csswizardry.com/2010/01/iphone-css-tips-for-building-iphone-websites/
Automatically re-size images for iPhones
On recent websites, most images are above 480 pixels wide. Due to the iPhone small size, there’s a strong chance that images will break out of the wrapper area.
Using the following CSS code, you’ll be able to automatically re-size the website images to 100%. As the device max width is 480px, images will never be wider.
1.@mediascreenand (max-device-width:480px){2.img{3.max-width:100%;4.height:auto;5.}6.}Source: http://csswizardry.com/2010/01/iphone-css-tips-for-building-iphone-websites/
Hide toolbar by default
On a small screen such as the iPhone screen, a toolbar is useful but also wastes a lot of space. If you’d like to hide Safari toolbar by default when an iPhone visitor open your website, just implement the following javascript code.
1.window.addEventListener('load',function() {2.setTimeout(scrollTo, 0, 0, 1);3.},false);Source: http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/iphone-development-12-tips/2
Make use of special links
Do you remember those “mailto” link that were very popular some years ago? This prefix automatically open the default email client used by the person who clicked on it. The iPhone has introduced two similar prefixes, tel and sms, which allows the person who clicked on it to phone or text automatically.
I’m definitely not a fan of those, but maybe that will be useful to you. The only thing you have to do to implement this, is to paste the following anywhere on your html page.
1.<ahref="tel:12345678900">Call me</a>2.<ahref="sms:12345678900">Send me a text</a>Source: http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/iphone-development-12-tips/3
Simulate :hover pseudo class
As no one is using a mouse on the iPhone, the :hover CSS pseudo class isn’t used. Though, using some Javascript you can simulate the :hover pseudo class when the user will have his finger on a link.
1.varmyLinks = document.getElementsByTagName('a');2.for(vari = 0; i < myLinks.length; i++){3.myLinks[i].addEventListener('touchstart',function(){this.className ="hover";},false);4.myLinks[i].addEventListener('touchend',function(){this.className ="";},false);5.}Once you added the code above to your document, you can start css styling:
1.a:hover, a.hover {2./* whatever your hover effect is */3.}Source: http://www.evotech.net/blog/2008/12/hover-pseudoclass-for-the-iphone/