Few people know that the iPad is actually very open when it comes to books. While the only means to purchase books for it is the iBookstore on the iPad itself (so far), it’s possible to import ePub files into iTunes and sync them to your device. Here’s some tips to (legally) fill up your iPad with books without spending hundreds of dollars.

You have several options for grabbing free books:

1. Download them off the iBookstore

The iBookstore has most of the Project Gutenberg library on it. Not all of them are listed, but if you search for them you’ll find them, including translations. These books lack cover art, however: you can add this in iTunes just like you’d add cover art to music. Use Google Images coupled with Tineye to find high-resolution cover art (trust me, you want it to be nice and high-res).

2. Get them off ePubBooks

ePubBooks is a website with a huge amount of free ePub-formatted books. A lot of them even have original illustrations and cover art included and are ready to drag into iTunes and synced onto your iPad. If you prefer different cover art, or want to change metadata, iTunes still lets you.

3. Convert PDF’s, LIT’s and more to ePub

While it wins no UI design prize, Calibre is a cross-platform app that outputs well-formatted ePub files from various input formats. If you have digital copies or PDF’s lying around, chances are you can convert them to a nice iBook. It handles chapter auto-generation, but sometimes you’ll have to tweak some settings to achieve the best results.

Lastly, since we did great cover art for Classics, I suggest you use some of those to decorate your free public domain books. You can find them on the Classics Facebook page here. Louie Mantia also made a fantastic Alice in Wonderland cover illustration.

If you have more sources for free (i)books and tips, feel free to add them in the comments.

A quick replacement icon for Photoshop. Blue squares (or cubes) don’t really qualify as icons for me, and I’ve been going between replacement icons for too long. I just wanted something similar to the Apple-supplied developer tools’ icons, so here you go.

Grab the icon here:

Photoshop Blueprint Icon – 1.56 MB

As usual, I’d like you to use it for personal computer customization only. Not endorsed by Adobe Systems Inc. in any way.

After Apple showed off its new Snow Leopard artwork and packaging, I immediately wanted to update my previous wallpaper, which was based on the first artwork Apple had made for it. However, I had a lot of other things to do during and after WWDC. Now, finally, after a few weeks of picking away at this during night hours, I present you new Snow Leopard wallpapers. There’s even a Server edition.

By popular demand, versions have also been included without the giant ‘X’.

Snow Leopard Wallpapers – 3.9 MB

It goes without saying that this wallpaper is intended for personal usage and desktop customization only. I cannot guarantee your safety if you use it on cars, nuclear devices, and other things that are obviously not your desktop. Mac OS X 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’ is © 2009, Apple Inc.

As I promised for my birthday, here’s a nice wallpaper goodie. I lost my files for it in a hard drive crash, but I must say the redesign looks a lot better than the original. Those familiar with the series may recognize it as the tunnel of light that ships enter when traveling at faster-than-light speeds.

I’ve expressed my love for the new Macross series before, and I’ve uploaded some pictures of nice new Macross Frontier toys on my Flickr stream, so the last thing that was missing was a nice wallpaper to go with it!

Space Fold Wallpaper – 1.4 MB

This wallpaper is intended for personal usage and desktop customization only. Macross Frontier is © 2008-2009, Bandai and the Macross F Production Committee.

Now here’s some speed icon drawing! :)

I did this simple icon drawing of Apple’s just-announced iWork.com service, which was previewed in the keynote on a slide. I based this icon off that.

Grab it here:

iWork dot com icon (Mac + PC) – 940 KB

Again, please do not use for anything other than personal computer customization. iWork.com’s logo and name are trademarks of Apple Inc.