Currently only the iBooks app renders embedded media files, but this may be more widely supported as more ebook readers begin to adopt the EPUB 3 standard, such as Readium which was launched by the IDPF on the 13th February. ![]() ![]() Jutoh has an easy to use interface and like Apple’s Pages supports the embedding of audio and video content into an ebook page. Unlike Apple’s iBooks Author that exports to the proprietary ibooks format, Jutoh saves EPUB files, compatible with a wide range of ebook readers, and mobipocket files readable on Kindles. It isn’t open source, but at £24, the licence cost is trivial in comparison to high end desktop publishing applications, such as Adobe InDesign. Jutoh is a cross platform application that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac and can also be carried on a USB stick, which allows it to be shared between workstations. Eventually I came across Jutoh, developed by an Edinburgh based software and publishing house Anthemion. I tried a range of solutions available for ebook publishing from conversion software, such as Calibre, desktop publishing applications, such as Adobe’s InDesign, to developer tools like the open source Sigil. Part of the success of an elearning technology is whether it can be adopted and maintained by learning and teaching staff – rather than technologists – and in order to promote ebooks within our department I was looking for an easy to use publishing tool that ran on institutional Windows PCs, rather than Apple hardware. ![]() In particular the adoption of interactive HTML5 technologies into the EPUB standard makes ebook publishing a promising platform for elearning resources. The ebook medium is gradually evolving from its text based roots into a multimedia format, as can be seen by the emergence of the International Digital Publishing Forum’s EPUB 3 standard and Apple’s announcement that its iBooks reader supports rich media content.
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