Just a month short of it's 14th birthday as a printed magazine, Computeractive has launched its dedicated app for the iPad. A number of magazines have beaten us to it, no doubt, but many of them have opted for what we think is a cop out - a replica of the magazine pages that can be 'turned' with a swipe.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that approach as a solution to electronic publishing, and indeed Computeractive is available in that format.

But a page turner is not an app. Limiting the iPad version to this simple format would negate the possibilities this revolutionary device can deliver. 

One element that we have incorporated into the app is a smarter way to display our Jargon Buster columns, which can be displayed or concealed with a double-tap of your finger.

That's just one example of how the iPad complements our approach to technology - interactive tools that are clear and simple to use. Unlike the magazine, Computeractive for iPad includes animated step-by-step guides, screencast videos that enable you to watch what we're doing on screen in software tutorials, product reviews that let you see the great (and not so great) features that we base our star ratings on. And we'll be working to constantly develop and improve the app.

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We end the week with the sad news of the deaths of two of computing's unsung pioneers.

On Sunday September 4, Bill Kunkel, known as the Game Doctor, died aged 61. He was the co-founder, in 1981, of Electronic Games magazine, and he worked on it until it shut down in 1985.

The magazine was responsible for introducing the terms 'screenshot' and 'easter egg' into gaming, and Kunkel was even an early advocate of the phrase 'video game'.

In 1985 Electronic Gaming closed among the wreckage of the games industry, but Kunkel continued writing as the Game Doctor and even relaunched the magazine in the 1990s.

Here's a good obituary of Bill Kunkel from 1up.com. You can read more here about his achievements.

On Tuesday September 6, Michael Hart died, aged 64.He was the founder of Project Gutenberg, which was largely responsible for popularising ebooks, making them available for free download for everyone.

The Los Angeles Times obituary of Michael Hart says that he came up with the idea of ebooks in 1971.

It's fair to say that both of these people changed and defined how we think about and use computers.

The cover story in the latest issue of Computeractive magazine is all about ebooks and ebook readers, such as the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. The issue is on sale in the shops from today but those who subscribe to the magazine receive their copy a few days earlier, and some have already been in touch to say they found the article really useful. We've had lots of feedback from people who have already purchased an ebook reader, with their views of the respective pros and cons of ebooks and their printed forebears.

Angie Ford said that while she had no intention of giving up her collection of books, a sudden impulse to buy the Amazon Kindle had convinced her that books and ebooks could live alongside each other.

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A fascinating video has appeared on Youtube. It's called Making Books (though the Youtube clip, below, has a different title, and it describes how books are made. Or at least, how they were made when the video was filmed in 1947.

"This gentleman is a typesetter. He types the story on this machine, letter by letter," the narrator says near the beginning.

It was made by Encyclopedia Britannica Films Inc in collaboration with a gentleman named Dr Luther Evans of the Library of Congress, which fulfils roughly the same function in America as the British Library does here.

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