Android 7.1.2 / "Goodreader-type" app needed

Q&A about the latest versions
BHanson
Posts: 51
Joined: Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:40 am

Thanks, Keith. I checked out the Google Play link and will investigate further. I haven't used one of those before.

Can I ask what your business model is with those? Are you creating those ebooks / publications for fun, or are you contracted by someone to photograph an event and create this type of documents?

In all candor, I am a salesman of security software who has never enjoyed the quarterly quota/grind nor the corporate culture. It completely lacks any capability to be creative and I am much interested in a project focus. I've enjoyed photography and videography as a hobby and consequently when my youngest child goes away to college in 3 years, I plan to downsize, transition into a career doing something I enjoy and clearly be set to make less money while I get started in the industry. At this point, the only thing I know is that I don't want to do wedding photography, product photography for websites/publications, etc...

For now, I get to explore and hone my skills while collecting a great base salary and commissions.
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360Texas
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Joined: Sat Sep 09, 2006 6:06 pm
Location: Fort Worth, Texas USA
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<Thinking out loud>
Fortunately, in 1999 we too successfully transitioned from tedious government construction contract negotiations into retirement. Just because one retires or leave the work force does not mean that we stopped working. Two years before retirement we took up a hobby of learning panorama imaging. We learned what equipment to purchase; how to improve our photography technique and learned enough webpage design to be able to post our own demonstration work for the public viewing (read advertising).

Demographics: Medium to large businesses like apartment managers and owners. Hospital property managers, Advertising and marketing companies (read only money managers). Professional photographer companies who needed our products for their clients and were willing to subcontract for services out that segment of their contract. Travel Agencies/ Tourist destination and hotel chain owners. I am sure there are others but essentially we marketed to budget decision money managers. We avoided (for personal reasons) Realtors and other high turnover companies like used car dealers who needed volume based imaging with short useful life cycles. Only exceptions might be Realtors marketing homes over $500 to $1m homes that have their own advertising budgets.

We consider panoramas including 360°video imaging to be an Added Value product. In of themselves do not add value to the clients product. The objective is to "Show the clients product to buyers in order generate client revenue" in a fashion that single image still photography can not. Our imaging is only a stepping stone technique and not the final product. Often time we think others incorrectly view their panoramas as the final product. Your imaging of the clients product is what is important.

As a part of your business plan, go out on the internet and so searches for other photographers, virtual tours companies and read their public pricing pages in order to determine pricing. Many sites only read: Tell us how many you need and call us for a package price. Others might offer package pricing. Look for imaging at the local, regional, national areas. See what your competition is marketing and how they are pricing projects.

IMPORTANT: Don't leave your day job until you absolutely are sure your hobby work is high enough quality to be able to compete.

You will need a website for marketing samples of your work. If your portfolio (samples of your work) is high enough quality... then maybe, just maybe you can start your own company (sole proprietor); Get a Doing Business As (DBA) state certification; Get a State "Sales and Use" account for collecting Sales Tax; setup book keeping for tracking your sales revenue. I would suggest you look into State law requirement for running your business as a Contractor as you will be contracting your work as a 'Service provider'. As your products are all digital photography there will be no recycling waste like wet photography chemicals. You probably will not have any "Return products" to deal with. Suggest your billing be done in email .PDF fashion. You will need to setup a separate bank account for business sales revenue. As a business owner your salary is paid to you from the profits you earn.

Profit definition is "Whats left over after all the bills have been paid".

There is a lot more to running a business and that is another story.

</Thinking out loud>
Dave
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BHanson
Posts: 51
Joined: Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:40 am

@360Texas thanks for your input.
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keith@fachwen.org
Posts: 136
Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:34 am
Location: North Wales
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Sorry about the very late reply... I have been somewhat incapacitated in the later ½ of 2017... :cry:

Happily retired now, so pension covers all of my day to day expenses. Re-engaging now with 360 and Pano2VR, as well as other things. I now have the luxury to either do this kind of work completely free, for friends and people I like, etc. Or charge full cost (to me) if I'm approached by a client I don't know beforehand.

Good luck with your business venture :D
oli
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2016 10:33 am
Location: London

Hi Keith,

Can I ask you how you do to output your epub? I did it aswell but it is quite long and not automatic (declare the different files/images used, do the proper epub file/folder structure, ...). Did you manage to write a script to output it directly from P2VR?

thanks,

Olivier
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keith@fachwen.org
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Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:34 am
Location: North Wales
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Hi Oliver,

It’s some time since I created the ePub to test out the process. I just followed Hopki’s instructions on this site. Wasn’t too complicated if I remember correctly.

A bit tied up at the moment, but if I find the time I can go over what I did to refresh my memory :D
oli
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2016 10:33 am
Location: London

ok I see. So it was not straightforward. And Hopki tutorial is about outputting an ebook...
The .ibooks format is created with the free iBooks Author ebook layout software from Apple Inc.. This proprietary format is based on the EPUB standard, with some differences in the CSS tags used in an ibooks format file, thus making it incompatible with the EPUB specification.
I was looking to output an epub as it is crossplatform (android, ios, windows)

Never mind and thanks for the reply.
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