William's Blog

I have an iPad 1, which I purchased last year after I sold one of my robotics blogs. I love it and it makes grad. student life a bit easier. 

I do a lot of paper reading. Usually papers with detailed graphics and color images - things that work well on computer screens and not e-ink displays like the Nook or Kindle. Unfortunately, reading in front of a computer screen for a long time is a huge pain the butt.

The iPad has a built in PDF reader, which works well, but if you want to notate or mark papers you need something else. Enter Goodreader. Paper reading and notating, file management, Dropbox syncing, FTP access. It’s got it all. That, combined with the Mendeley app and website is invaluable for grad. student life.

I store all my papers on Dropbox which automagically syncs them all to the “cloud”. From the Dropbox app on the iPad, I can load up a paper, or you can directly sync a Dropbox folder in Goodreader. Read the paper. Make notes, highlights and drawings. Goodreader will save the edits to the file, which then gets pushed back to Dropbox. 

It’s quite nice.