WordPress worked up an app ready for Day One that taps the internal keyboard

Of all of the surprises in the first two days of using an iPad, the biggest one may be the easiest to put my finger on. The keyboard built into this tool is good enough for a first draft at touch typing speeds. That Apple would have been able to concoct such a thing, when others have failed at including such a fundamental, says a lot about the creative utility of this device.

The paragraph above would have taken so much longer to draft on an iPhone, and would have been torture on a OLPC portable computer. I compare the iPad to the OLPC because the latter’s designers believed children would create music, stories, art, even programs with it. Apple hasn’t mounted a big push yet for creating via the iPad. It’s positioned this year as a tool to consume. But give the market six months to fire up the tools and attachments like mics, cameras, input devices and more extensive editing, and this might become the most mobile of workbenches.

The debate around the iPad has included questions about what it might kill, or just replace. These are the wrong questions, but it’s no surprise to hear them. Very new things rattle most of us. We need to find a place for them and so we compare. Like a Kindle? Not exactly, but you can read business books on it. Like a laptop, then. Not so much either, since local file storage and attached things like disks aren’t there yet. Like a netbook, maybe? The iPad might look the same size, but it won’t run several programs at once. Its Safari browser won’t even let you keep multiple pages open using tabs.

All such features that prove to be important to new users will surface. And some tools for existing Macs are already on hand to help. The Bluetooth keyboards and headsets, and a Mac app called PhoneView, are examples of how the demand will create tools for creation.

Phoneview is a gem I discovered during a Macworld 2010 session. You install it on your Mac, then tell it to talk to iPhone devices that plug in to your laptop or desktop. Phoneview knew how to let me move files between iPhone and Mac, giving me storage access to the iPhone’s disk. When I plugged in my iPad yesterday, PhoneView popped up, ready to let me swap work to and from Apple’s newest device, too.

That’s a sign that the future for this device’s creative powers will arrive sooner than later. Phoneview worked straight-off because the iPad shares its software with the 40-million-strong iPhone/Touch world. Some companies are rewriting software this week for the iPad, having just gotten their hands on a real one instead of a simulator. But for other tools, the leap is effortless.

Bluetooth keyboards work today. Phoneview is waiting. Editing software for video and photos is going to be arriving very soon, because there are millions more pixels of screen real estate to use than on the iPhones. (And make no mistake, there are already a raft of media editors on hand for the iPhone.) Dragon Dictation lets me cut a first draft without even using a keyboard, just by reading in an idea and then pasting it to the clipboard. Dragon’s a free app, somehow — just like it is on the iPhone.

Will any of this emerge so fast to kill off the existing tech business tools? Not this year, not even next. Change from the foundations up happens slowly, because the older tech hangs on so much longer than some mavens expect. Kindle, a great resource for reading business texts, won’t be killed off by an Apple iBook store that looks overpriced and understocked today. Amazon has too large a lead in titles to be overtaken on e-books, and the book vendor has already embraced the iPad as a supplementary reading device, if you own a Kindle.

The death of laptops and netbooks is a ways off, too. But for the most innovative — and, this year, stubborn — creators of content, a 24-ounce device that cooks up writing and ads and flyers and even blog entries over WordPress, plus runs for a full business day and a half between charges, the point of replacement, when their laptop gets old is the inflection point. Maybe I can get an iPad instead, just try it out. If that point is after the end of this year, they’ll enjoy a rich shed of tools. In the meantime, this Little Keyboard That Could again proves that Apple’s minimum standards will press the limits of expected value.

The OLPC -- how 2007!

But I knew I needed a better reach to scrape up creations, on the move. Two years ago I bought a One Laptop Per Child mobile PC, hoping to have something light and slim and agile enough to take anyplace to do my writing and research via the Web. When the computer showed up at the door — a twin of it had been donated to the the OLPC charity — the mini-laptop was a bust. Yes, it was brute simple and built to be rugged as a tank. Yes, it could touch the Internet and came packed with software. The computer was really the first netbook, but the comparison goes right to the woes that the netbooks will fight. Its keyboard was a plastic sheathed toy, its screen a shuddering reminder of the 1980s portables’ ghostly gray, the software cobbled from open source and freeware that made it easy to understand how it had arrived at its price. The battery was in regular need of charging, especially after any Web use.

This mini computer suffered from the same curse the tech wizards claimed for the iPad’s fate: it did many things, none of them very well. It was a snazzy green and white concept car of a computer with lots of good ideas assembled by committee. It never made it out of my office, so immobile its charms proved to be. Recently the OLPC group asked us all if we’d donate our minis back to the foundation. They might have heard nobody was getting much use from them.

These are the battles that a mobile computer must win. Its interface must be seamless, intuitive, flexible. Its display must be attractive, enticing you to stay in its playground. It must be responsive in its speed and generous in its possibility to entertain and present. It must stay alive a single charge long enough to use it all day — and have enough left for it to be waiting for you to pop in that last sentence that came to you in the middle of the night. It must connect you to those you know and everything you don’t over the Web. And it has to be mobile enough to carry around as if it were a coffee mug: not something you would ever think of jamming into a pocket, but a thing you don’t even consider when you move from room to room, office to office, sandbox to chalkboard and back.

There are surprises among our iPad’s first day, but nothing to keep it from coming out to play, or work. I haven’t found Flash missing because I didn’t rely on it for anything but games. And this entry? Typed on the built-in keyboard of the iPad. I left the click-sound-effects on, to help me get used to the rhythm. (But that’s not a sound you want your wife to wake to, sleeping next to you while the words come upon you in the dark. You can shut it off.)

It’s addictive, intuitive and inventive, this slender device. It’s a tool that has made the leap from toy, turning mobile into a real option for creating as well as consuming. Pages for the iPad makes it possible to get a good start on my writing, then share it forward to the Web or my Mac.

Pages has got a more grown-up cousin on the Mac, an alternative to Word that made lots of people wonder why Apple bothered to create such a thing. The iPad actually gives Pages a better reason to be. You will be holding your breath for Microsoft to introduce Word running on an Apple mobile device, to be certain. With Pages ($9.95, App Store) you have a good enough word processor to draft memos and letters, or dress things up with graphics and built-in charting. You can forget about remembering to save, too, because Pages does that for you every 30 seconds.

What you don’t want to forget is to leave Pages on your iPad. Apple warns that if you delete the app, it takes away all your documents, too. Apple’s iWeb does something similar on the Mac, cramming all your creations into a big file that includes the application. It’s far from elegant, but only if you do a lot of manual document management. Exporting is easy enough, either to the Web using the in-beta iWork.com, or out to your Mac by way of the apps tab in iTunes 9.1. It’s great to write things on this little gem, but they need to go other places, too.

Pages has enough formatting and find and replace to get your it’s replaced by its, or to seek out whole words instead of part of them. It’s got a built-in spell checker and plenty of the usual document fundamentals. But where you see Pages sparkle is when you touch them, to adjust a graphic element by just dragging it with your finger to place it or resize it. It’s easy to see what kind of challenge Microsoft is going to have before it in creating a Word that can do this with the army of iPad-Killers that are sure to emerge. Apple has control of the program, the operating environment, and the hardware. Apple loves control, and with all the elements of making and sharing a page of writing at hand, our iPad is going to be creating a lot of first drafts.

The iPad does a bunch of things, but none of them exceptionally well. You can’t read it in full daylight, and its battery life is much shorter than Kindle’s. With no true built-in keyboard or ability to multitask, it’s not a substitute for a laptop — and unlike my iPhone, it won’t fit in a pocket, take pictures, or make calls. Unless you need it for one of its speciality uses, it doesn’t replace anything you already have; it’s just one more thing to carry.

Pages, from Apple's video demo

It appears McArdle is among the unwashed masses of journalists who didn’t enjoy a few minutes with the real product before writing her April piece on Kindle vs. iPad. I’ve owned the former for a year and expect the latter within the week. But it’s possible that McArdle will want to revise her gradecard about “doing nothing exceptionally well.” All she needs to motivate her corrections are the Apple videos online this week showing off Mail and Pages, the iPad’s e-mail and writing tools. Yes, this might be something else to carry — something more useful to a business than a copy of The Atlantic. Aside from a smartphone like the 3GS iPhone, I can’t see what else she would need to tote. And at just 24 ounces, this new Apple tool is likely to carry a heft to make the 6-ounces of April’s Atlantic seem like dead weight.

When my smart business tool arrives by this weekend, I’ll spend awhile loading it up with inexpensive tools like Pages and Numbers, the Apple apps sold for $9.95 each at the iTunes store. I won’t have to buy Mail (included), and since the app uses the same information as my Mail on my iMac, the transfer is likely to be smooth. (Look for our report next week.) There will be a $2.99 purchase of Infinote to organize projects and communication, and maybe even a copy of OmniGraffle, although I use the same program on my Mac and the Omni Group wants $50 for its iPad version. I already own QuickOffice, providing me with iPhone word processing and spreadsheet tools that swap files back and forth to the Mac, or up into a smart online storage spot like DropBox. QuickOffice is already in my iPad toolbox, even though the device is still making its way through UPS delivery. See, it’s an iPhone app, so it runs on the iPad at no extra charge.

And if McArdle is lucky, I my find some time to read The Atlantic’s Web site articles in Safari on the iPad. But that slapdash research doesn’t merit the dollar-an-ounce price of the printed mag. For 11 years I subscribed to the print edition. Its business savvy has fallen way behind in the 150-year-old pub, a sorry state of affairs for an enterprise that’s trying to stay afloat in the media sector. If they’re lucky, they might have something out next year that supplies sharper reporting on business tools along with the other things the mag offers. As of this issue, its take is far from exceptional.

That’s likely to be the iPad at it’s best: the touch interface that delivers the index-card organization skills of the prior century, without all the erasing and the need for a full boardroom-sized table.

Infinote is going to sell for just $2.99, priced as any app for the iPhone. On the other end of the pricing scale, The Omni Group will be releasing its flagship OmniGraffle visualizer and process charting tool. While Infinote is certain to be worth its price, it will be interesting to see the takeup on an iPad program priced closer to Mac software levels.

Having worked with the $99 OmniGraffle a while on our Macs, we can testify to its endless ability to create the likes of mind maps, org charts, story flows for creative teams, even process diagrams for manufacturing if you’re stubborn enough. Graffle has ample flexibility on the Mac, and the company’s development team boasts one of the most loyal user bases and cleanest reputations in the Apple community. Their heritage comes from the NeXT community, which created the foundation for the Mac’s OS X.

For many years OmniOutliner was bundled in with Mac software, as recently as the MacBook Pro systems. Today there’s a handful of free apps available for download from the Omni Group site. And the Mac version of OmniGraffle can be used for two weeks for free as a trial. (We’d recommend tapping the Graffletopia site if you’re taking the 2-week trial, since it provides a nice jump start with shared stencils.)

Graffle, and perhaps to a lesser extent Infinote, will show off the new interface of the iPad while they help boost productivity. While the appadvice.com list is currently overrun with games like Flick Fishing, business apps as essential as organizers and databases (Filemaker’s Bento is on board; not exactly a surprise from the wholly-owned Apple subsidiary) will be certain to emerge over the first few months of the iPad’s life.

It helps if your blog already has an RSS/CSS feed, apparently, something that most blog services include as a tick-box. Yapper promises a means to create that brand-specific app for smartphones and perhaps the iPad too.

We’ll have a look at the tool when it makes its debut at Macworld next week. Early feature sets in the teaser information tout:

APPER (Your APP maker) is an online self-service for bloggers, newspapers, pod casters and others to make their own native mobile apps in WYSIWYG fashion. Key features:

• No coding required use existing RSS/ CMS feeds
• Multiple mobile OS support: iPhone, Android and Blackberry
• Optimized for mobile user experience: Mobile optimized UI (mobile friendly entire article content with images and videos), Content caching (users can read offline), Fast (no straight RSS feed parsing), Location enabled
• Customization options: colors and branding
• Push notifications for breaking stories and events
• Monetization and analytics support

Storytelling software is not word processing. Microsoft made a fortune from Microsoft Word, but a writer who wants to tell a story will want more than the super-formatter from Microsoft brings to their screen. The Mac and storytelling have always been a close fit. Novelists use it, screenwriters even more so. If you’ve got an extensive business report or an article to compose, this is the kind of tool that can help your business. How close your work habits match a tool like Storyist will determine how much help such this software can deliver.

Storyist has been around for more than two years, and I’ve aimed my work at it through several versions. I got excited about the 2.0 release when I saw creator Steve Shepard demonstrate it at the 2009 Macworld Expo. A few months later a shipping version arrived (a license-free review copy.) I’ve spent time trying to slip my chapters of a new novel into what looks like a handsome template.

What follows will lead you into the details of startup, something a writer with experience in submission formats cares about. This kind of software tool is as personal as a barber or a massage artist. You try candidates until you feel the fit. While I waited on the 2.0 Storyist, I poured a 300-page novel into the competing Scrivener, from Literature and Latte. The latter program was the first I managed to fit around the massive body of my work.

So I had a standard to compare with Storyist. But the disadvantage any competitor brings are also its distinctions. “This is the way we do it,” Storyist says while I push words, sections, and chapters into it. Like understanding the difference between Swedish and Shiatsu massage, getting comfy with this program’s style was my first step in the road to crafting a story with Storyist. But the program is very big on pre-planning. Novelists call these distinctions “plotters” versus “pantsers” (as in by-the-seat-of).

I wish some of Storyist fundamentals didn’t need me to belt up my pants so early on. When I type a tab in a creative writing tool, I expect an indent — not a beep that rolls you into a menu of styles. That feels like a screenwriting choice, and I wanted to be able to keep my manuscript drafting simple. Storyist’s defaults and styles need to be scrutinized before your storytelling can begin.For example, Storyist’s template for a Novel gives you placeholder instructions (A Getting Started Guide) on how to format a manuscript. Then its says “hit Command-A and delete” and get started. I got started by wondering where my chapters just disappeared to. This newbie went to start a new project, read the included dummy text,  then hit the Cmd-A key and delete. I was left looking at a blank page in text window without even a page number until I scrolled up. Along the way I noticed I had four pages in my new chapter, which seemed a bit odd, since I’d created nothing yet.

Developer Steve Shepard disagrees, but Storyist appeared as if its default is for composing screenplays. In the help text for Editing Project Item Preferences, Editing Mode help started right off like this:

1. Screenplay—Used for screenplays and stage plays.

The docs then go on to detail all the elements “like scene intros, locations, times, characters, extensions, and transitions.”) Hey, I chose the Novel template. Why are the program’s default preferences for screenplays?

I found the in-program startup instruction missing a key step, and so forth. The beta testers on the Storyist forum find the documentation “pretty good,” although one said that “as intuitive as Storyist is, ‘Kind of confused…’ is not a unique situation.” He did go on to praise the current version now in beta-test as “brilliant.”

Steven Sande, another reviewer who praised the product at The Unofficial Apple Blog, had a similar first encounter.

The reason it took me so long to write the review is that Storyist works differently from my brain, and it took me a while to get used to it as a tool. Every writer has his or her own particular style of writing, and I find that pre-planning the writing process just doesn’t work very well for me. I prefer to jump in and start writing, but want a way to capture important information about characters, settings, and plot points so I can refer to them later. Storyist can also be used for this method of writing, so I found it to be more useful to me after learning how to navigate its many features.

Storyist’s Manual options

I found enthusiastic and exacting help and answers, beyond the manual and help files, on Storyist’s registration-required Forum, which helped me kick-start Storyist for writing a novel. (Your task might be a report, or an article. You get the point.) Forum postings are an unusual training experience for me. Storyist’s startup may be more intuitive for screenwriters, or anybody who loves using styles while they compose. But my Mac experience doesn’t usually lead to a forum to untangle early attempts to create with a program. Could this documentation be a roadblock to the many users who need General Editing Mode, or haven’t the time to wait for a board reply or e-mail? It was for me.

I won’t be recommending Storyist’s documentation. Subscribing to the user forum should be a part of program installation. I’m told there are novelists who jumped right in and started composing, hitting their Tab key and loving that those styles, including screenplay transition formats, popped right up. And while there are writers out there who still adore Courier as a default font, even the most prolific beta tester found it antique. “There is no real reason, in the 21st Century, to insist that a manuscript look like it had been typed on a typewriter,” one said. Create a novel of above 80,000 words and you’ll be submitting a two-box manuscript. Nobody will even open those in an agent’s office today.

There’s so much that’s right with this program, like its writing session and project targets, or an easy way to create and manage bookmarks, or the corkboard index card arranging and coloring. What could be better? Make it easier to choose your own format to start, instead of drafting a screenplay. Give me early, easy directions on how to format pages for 1-inch all around margins, so I can keep track of my MS page count. There’s the Courier debate. Let me use my tabs to indent as a default, rather than making me go to Preferences to tinker with Editing Project Item Preferences.

Moving work out

It’s great to have an RTF export file to print out for yourself. But chapters don’t appear among the Export Project Items… dialog box. You can get a Section, but Storyist doesn’t export a section’s contents, just the section’s synopsis sheet, bereft of details. I had to choose my whole manuscript to export and then trim away what I didn’t want. Makes it one extra step to get pages ready for a review group.

The dialog on where you’re exporting is kind of Unix-y, too: Displayed as a Unix directory “seybold/documents/etc” after you choose it, rather than the standard file folder interface on Just About Every Other Program. I found that the exported manuscript had my beloved tab indents where those first-line indents used to be.

Am I being fussy about these opening cuts from my barber, this story stylist? I’m sure. The range of tools in Storyist is vast, from character sandboxes to writing goal countdowns, structure storyboarding and built-in research bullpens. But somehow, using Scrivener didn’t drive me to the help menu over and over. It simply took on my words, kept the formatting basic, and gave me a way to compare the way a variety of versions would look in my storytelling (scrivenings, it calls them.)

I’m not crazy about a second reference to another review, but Sande hit it dead-on with this startup summary.

If there’s one negative point to make about Storyist, it’s that it can be confusing to beginning users. Sure, the novel manuscript includes a Getting Started description, and there’s an extremely complete User’s Guide available for download (if you’re thinking about using Storyist, read this first!), but I think it would be useful for Storyist to include a short video summary of the tools for those who don’t want to “Read The Frickin’ Manual.”

(To be fair, there are screencasts available such as one that shows how to Customize Project Templates. But finding them is a matter of getting a message from Shepard, who’s extraordinary in his interaction with customers. I ran into a show-stopper bug using 10.6.2 Snow Leopard and a fix came out within two weeks.)

Other reviews say that Scrivener has a steep start-up curve. I’ve worked both programs from scratch and found one a lot steeper than the other. I’m glad to have my picayune fundamentals explained by the Storyist community. But the Facebook feeds for both of these programs say a lot about the vendor’s communication priorities. Scrivener posts a tip of the day on how to use the product. Storyist posts invitations to create, sparking ideas. Many other places to get those invitations, frankly. Program instruction only comes from one source — unless your beta testers step in.

Documentation is really hard, a dying art. Testing it is even harder. Consider my whining to be a bit of unsolicited testing on the 2.1 docs. I want to see Storyist get friendlier on startup to writers launching something other than a screenplay. I believe in such a future — I bought my 1.0 version of Storyist. It just needs more comprehensive 2.0 documentation. On the upside, you get to meet a community of writers in the Forum while you’re learning how to use a good product.

You can download a free trial time-limited versions of Storyist to try it out. Be certain to go to the Storyist support Web site (available as a selection right off the program’s Help menu) to get the User Guide and Forum links you will need.

The upcoming 5.0 release of PDF2Office converts PDF files directly to native Excel spreadsheet formats. It has added formatting options refine to cell formatting and worksheet/workbook composition. Version 5.0 will convert PDF files directly to Microsoft’s Office 2007/2008 (.docx, .pptx and .xlsx) formats.

When collaborating with other small businesses and colleagues, work sometimes arrives in PDF format. The Recosoft tools unlock the basic contents so they can be reshaped for enhancement and more content. If you’ve ever been expected to edit a document that arrives as a PDF, this can save a lot of time. The company also sells a product to transform PDF files to Adobe’s InDesign format.

PDF2Office sells for $129, with multiple-license discounts available.

This year the conference includes a first ever Mac Work track in the User’s Conference. The eight sessions in the track are designed to ease a user into employing a Mac in a business environment. The session lineup:

Thursday, February 11
10:30 AM – 11:45 AM Branding Your Small Business Better
1:00 PM – 2:15 PM Mac at Work
3:00 PM – 4:15 PM The Paperless ‘Mac’ Office

Friday, February 12
10:30 AM – 11:45 AM SOHO Survival Guide
1:00 PM – 2:15 PM Connecting with Your Customers Using Snow Leopard

Saturday, February 13
10:30 AM – 11:45 AM Social Media Demystified

The User’s Conference also includes tracks on the new Snow Leopard environment, Music, Creative Tools, Video and a lot more. A discounted registration is less than $150 using the above code.

The iPod Nano could become a key business tool for creative pros and writers on the road. The device comes with a voice recording app, a built-in mic and a video camera. “We want to get in on this [Flip] market,” Jobs said after a standing ovation and more than 45 minutes of other product rollouts.

Jobs thanked the Apple community for its well wishes during his battle with liver disease that culminated in a transplant. “I’ve got the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash,” he said in opening remarks at the event, “and was generous enough to donate their organs. I wouldn’t be here without such generosity.” After urging the audience to become organ donors, Jobs said “I’m vertical, I’m back at Apple, and I’m loving every day of it.”

Mobile devices led the pack of announcements, although no new iPhone models made a debut. Apple put its new 3GS units into the market in June. Jobs said that 30 million of the phones have been sold since Apple introduced the game-changer about two years ago. But a near-cousin to the iPhone, the iPod Touch, got a nudge in Apple’s targeting that makes the Touch look like Apple’s answer to netbooks from PC makers. The Touch, however, received little in the way of improvements except a new $199 price point and more storage in larger models.

The Touch has become Apple’s stealth entry into the netbook arena by virtue of its size, Apple’s VP of Marketing Paul Schiller said. The media event flashed a shot of a Dell netbook hanging out of a back pocket as a poke at PC netbook solutions. The wi-fi features are key to making the Touch a $200 portable computer with a screen a little larger than a business card.

But you touch the Touch to deliver its goods, just like the iPhone, and most apps built for iPhone work on the Touch. Apple rolls out a 3.1 version of the software that drives the iPhone and Touch today, free as an iPhone upgrade and a $4.95 lift for Touch users who’ve bought the 3.0 release. Apple says accounting rules force it to charge Touch users for the updates, since those devices have no mandated data plan like iPhones.

A 64GB Touch costs $399, the price for just one-fourth of that storage 18 months ago. A 32GB model is $299 and the entry-level unit is 8GB at $199. More notable: the new iPod Nano, which includes a video camera, an FM radio and a pedometer in addition to the microphone. Recordings can be synced with iTunes or up to a YouTube account, although not through wi-fi.

Apple has segregated its recording features away from the Touch, giving full photo, audio and video to the iPhone and adding audio and video to the Nano. Meanwhile, the net connections of wi-fi aren’t available on the Nano. It’s a strategy that Apple hopes will push business toward the 4GB Nano, which is priced at $149.

Speculation before the event ran to rumors of a camera on the Touch. One guess proved correct, as Apple added album liner notes, videos and lyrics as options for buying music from the iTunes Store. A new iTunes 9 is available as a free download today, supporting better sync options for devices and the added album features, among other entertainment upgrades.

Business users can overlook the power of pictures. The Web has become a high-value marketplace with social networks and blogs. Every one of these sites — Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, even free blogs on Blogger — is a marketing tool. And these messages from businesses stand out when they have a graphic element.

You could start with your own picture, and Pogue’s book begins with taking photos. He’s got a clear and illustrated 13-page Taking the Shot section right up front that answers questions of how to frame and shoot. This is all subjective, of course, but adding things like The Rule Guideline of Thirds shows flexibility. And Pogue has his own artistic sensibility, since he was a Broadway musical conductor in a prior career.

The book also covers 10 Decisions to make on camera options, like flash, manual mode, how much exposure. I’ve been taking photos for more than 25 years as a journalist, and Pogue’s advice refreshed me. Every enterprise has access to easier photography tools today. The basics are in this book, but it adds so much more in details, too.From a fun section on camera-buying tips, the book moves through the photography skills and into The Lab, where camera meets computer. Picasa and iPhoto are the primary programs he details, giving both PC and Mac users a chance to learn about free software available online — or in the case of the Mac, right on your computer in iPhoto.

His advice only goes as far as iPhoto 8 in this book, printed in January of ’09. Apple didn’t make iPhoto 9 available until February of this year, but the iPhoto lessons in the book will keep everybody busy. iPhoto has become a deep, rich application. This book lets you dig in for advanced tips, as well as explanations about where photo files go to live and how to get others into the app.

There’s colorful illustrations throughout, really helpful when the book gets into Fixing Photos (straighten, sharpen, fix exposure). You can even learn about saturation and how it can make a picture more vivid.

Best of all, maybe, is the section called The Audience. Editing and shooting may be easier to grasp, because these photo tasks have been around for years. Sharing your photos with the world, like onto that blog on in a Facebook album, is a new option — and probably the most important one to getting more than a fun payoff for your pictures. A 12-page section on Publishing Photos on the Web explains how to get your camera skills working to impress the world.

Being a Missing Manual, the book has a healthy 10-page index and a couple of appendixes, plus lots of links to helpful Web sites. I’ve been in publishing long enough to remember darkroom work and slides. Neither is a part of a modern photo experience, but I wish something like this could be in every business bookcase. We’d have a better picture from the working world. You can, too.

David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual
January 2009, 304 Pages
Series: The Missing Manuals
Retail $24.95; Amazon.com $16.49