Comment on releasing the 2015 IFAS calendar as a free pdf

Hi all,

Many thanks to everyone who purchased copies of the 2015 IFAS calendar.

I was talking with Seanie earlier this week about releasing the pdf of the calendar notes only as a free download from March 1st. The contributor images will not be included for file size reasons.

Feel free to post any reasons for and against not doing this and I will go with the general consensus.

Basically, I think we will only sell a handful of calendars, if any, at this stage. Generally magazines like Sky & Telescope's annual Sky Guide are removed from the shelves after a certain period because no further sales are likely, or diaries are discounted heavily after January.

My hope is that making the IFAS calendar available as a free pdf from March 1st will help promote the organisation even more. People that may not have heard of the calendar will now discover it via various web sites. They will also be able to add it to their mobile device (e.g., to iBooks as on my own iPad) making it an even more useful resource by having it to hand. I can also add other pages to the pdf such as the rise/set times (at Dublin) for the Sun, Moon and planets. A club listing page can be added too as well as some additional data on various events.

What do people think?

John

I think that it's a good idea John, will it be available on Android and Windows smart phones?

As another idea, you can offer the 2016 calendar as a download, for a small fee, perhaps the cost of the printed calendar, meaning a saving on the postage cost and you can carry it with you everywhere.

Just a thought.

Paul

Cheers Paul!

will it be available on Android and Windows smart phones?

I was looking at preparing a .ics file so it can update the calendar feature on smart devices. I haven't got around to figuring it all out yet but it should be straightforward as I've a list in Excel of the astronomical phenomena for this year.

For the moment I'll produce the pdf and can then maybe look at some way of resizing/reformatting the pages to fit the smaller screen of a phone. The .ics option to upload to the calendar would be ideal though.

Looking at the 2016 data already! Good idea about the download option. Pierpaolo Ricci produces his (450-page!) annual sky guide in this way and mails the password to open the pdf when you purchase a copy. Again, we might run into the size issue for smart phone screens. It's something we can mull over though as to the best solution ... maybe the .ics freely available but the full-size calendar available to purchase?

Chat soon,

John

Hi all,

I had started a thread inviting comments on releasing the IFAS calendar as a free pdf on March 1st. Some discussion above but I have not had the time unfortunately to create any version other than the original A4 pdf which we printed the sold copies from. We will have more time for 2016 to implement the other suggestions such as a version sized for smart phones and a .ics calendar file.

The link to download the calendar (without the photographs) is www.dropbox.com/s/yqg5otrcyrzwc44/astro_..._2015_final.pdf?dl=1
Enjoy!

John