The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video, I will do a comparison of two PDF readers — LiquidText and Goodreader. Just so you know a bit about my user profile — I am finishing up a graduate degree in social work and I work primarily on an early version of the iPad Pro.  I have been using Goodreader for some time, but I am pretty open to other apps if they would better suit my needs.  I use GoodReader for two reasons: to read and highlight PDFs and to manage PDF files. I use a different app, Notability, for handwriting/drawing, so I don’t need either of these apps to perform that function for me.  OK – let’s get started on this side by side comparison of GoodReader and LiquidText. First, Price - Goodreader is $6 in the App Store and you can download LiquidText for free.  Liquidtext has a pro version for $30, but most of those extra functions were outside of my basic needs.  I will happily throw down $6 for an app that ma...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share my trick for getting just about anything read out loud to you using the Goodreader app for iPhone or iPad.  I really like the convenience of having things read out loud to me.  I spend A LOT of time in my car driving my kids to activities and practices. I also like to make use of the time I spend doing mindless chores like unloading the dishwasher, raking leaves, or cleaning the house.  I listen to books on tape with Audible and I’m fully addicted to podcasts, which I listen to using the Stitcher app, you can see my video on that if you are interested. But sometimes I want something else read to me — an article, a lengthy email, my notes from a class, or a webpage. iOS does have a way to do this.  You can highlight text in almost any app and choose the Speak option. The problem for me is that there is no way to control it once it gets going. You have to go i...

Hi, everybody!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I’ll show you how I use the Goodreader app to stitch together multiple PDF files. I have really resisted spending money on expensive PC apps when I can get the same thing done using much cheaper iPad apps.  I frequently need to join two or more PDFs into a single document.  The Adobe software that allows you to do this among other editing features is Adobe Acrobat DC.  Last I checked, it costs $14.99 PER MONTH.  That is nearly $180 per year and WAY too pricey for me.  The good news is -- you can do many of the same things on an iPad using the Goodreader app, which is a one-time fee of $5 and TOTALLY worth every penny to me.  I did a full tutorial on the GoodReader app if you want to check that out, but today I just want to point out one feature that I use all the time -- stitching multiple PDFs together. I seem to have to do this a lot -- particularly f...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll take you on a quick tour of my favorite iOS PDF reader and manipulator, the GoodReader app. There are a billion apps out there that will allow you to view and edit PDFs.  I use Notability if I need to draw on PDFs, but if I want to interact with the text in a PDF, GoodReader is by far my favorite and has the most robust functionality that I have found.  It definitely trades simplicity for function, so although it does almost everything, it can feel complicated AND some functions are kind of buried, so it helps to have someone show you all the things it can do. So, this is my whirlwind tour.  Here we go!  First, let’s talk about Getting PDFs into GoodReader Goodreader offers lots of ways to get PDFs into the app. I almost always use iOS’s intra-app exchange system. Meaning that when I am in Safari and viewing a PDF, I simply hit the share button and choo...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll show you how I export all of my highlighted passages from a PDF on an iPad using the GoodReader app.  I’m in graduate school and when I am researching for a project or paper, I spend a lot of time cut and pasting quotes or data from documents into my citations spreadsheet.  When I’m getting information from an online source, sometimes I have no choice but to painstakingly cut and paste each passage.  But when I’m reading a long PDF, wouldn’t it be easier to just highlight all the passages as I go and THEN export them all at one time?  I figured out how to do this from a Kindle — you can see my video on that — but now I’ll show you how I do it for a PDF document on an iPad using the GoodReader app.  First of all, you’ll need to send your PDF to the GoodReader app. I’m planning to do a longer tutorial video on the GoodReader app which has LOTS of great functiona...