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Gemstar Ebook Crashes, Burns
Robotech_Master writes "In a lengthy announcement on its ebook catalog page, Gemstar, owner of TV Guide and the Rocket/Gemstar eBook, has announced it is going out of the ebook business. Gemstar will not be selling any new devices or ebook content after July 16th. Of particular interest to those who purchased the newer Gemstar eBook models that eliminated the ability to install free content directly on the devices: 'We will also continue to provide the newly released Personal Content feature available through the web bookstore at least through July 16, 2006.' It's too bad, really; I've heard that the Gemstar has one of the most legible displays of any of the ebook alternatives available. They could have done quite well as general-purpose reading devices, if Gemstar had not locked them directly to its own overpriced content in a stunning demonstration of self-proctology."
Gemstar provides the TV Guide-like listings for my ATI AIW video card. Will this still be operational?
If you can read this, you aren't using that.
I would have to say that I have not heard a better term for stupidity in a while. "...a stunning demonstration of self-proctology." is a wonder of the english language. I applaud the author.
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
... of ebooks when you've got handhelds?
The publishers themselves seem to kill the goldeneggslayinggoose themselves due to absurd copy restrictions and non-compatible standards. Hell: Do you really want to buy three e-book readers at 500Euros a pop for the really meager catalogue out there.
I don't get their paranoia, though. What stops anybody of scanning a book in plain, good ol' ascii text and releasing it on the internet (else that this is illegal, of course)?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I've always had trouble finding a nice way of reading books on LCD screen. If outside the sun destoryed the contrast or if inside you had to be just right so there was enough light. Nightmare. This is why I just went back to normal books. If the sun is to bright, put on some sunglasses. If to dark, turn on the light or use a torch.
Now I understand the size concept but somehow it just feels better. Similar story with me and PDA's. Best PDA I found was a diary + pen
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
To me, dedicated e-book readers seem to come from the same place as those portable DVD players that cost as much as a laptop with a DVD drive.
Why buy a one-purpose piece of hardware when there are solutions that perform that purpose well, and do other useful stuff?
To compound the problem, they release the content on a closed, proprietary platform that only runs on their hardware. It's the Vectrex of our time! (Not to slag Vectrex, I loved mine).
IMO a better path would have been to build a multi-purpose handheld optimized for e-book reading- license the Palm OS so that people could do all that other stuff too, but use a big, clear screen with dedicated nav buttons so it was the best darn e-book reading Palm money can buy. Or the best darn e-book reading Linux pad, I'm not picky.
It seems the downfall of this company (and many others) is they assume they are operating in a standalone universe. With that assumption, creating a closed system of readers and content makes sense (how else could someone have possibly thought DivX was a good idea?). Out in the wilds of the real world, they're murdered by their less annoying competition.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
The thing that strikes me most about this article is not the fact that ebooks have gone no-where, but the reason why. As the one linked article states they were trying to lock everyone into their content only. Anyone with a clue could ahve told you this wasnt going to end well, unless you had the sun and the moon and the stars to offer.
.. and so on. It feels like decisions made on the least negative instead of most positive.
However, I'm trying to look at the bigger picture here. In our recent memory there seem to be a bunch of really bad business ideas that some how make it thru the tedious corporate 'bad idea expeller'. Please recall 'divx' (caps not withstanding) the time limited psuedo-rental dvd scheme from Circuit City and a law firm. And now we have its successor, self-destructing media.
I have to ask myself have any of these clowns done any market research? How do they manage to ram thru these dumbass get rick quick schemes with no one noticing? I have to wonder what the pie charts look like at these meetings. 20% wont care what we do, 20% will be alienated, 30% arent customers anyway
I've been using my Franklin EBookMan for 3 years now. I love the backlight, I can read in bed at night and not bother my wife. It's also facing the same problems as the Gemstar.
I was really excited and taken in by all the hype several years ago. I like to read books. I also thought there was unlocked potential in the Rocket(Gemstar) or something similar for technical manuals. I frequently use Many different technologies(HPUX, AIX, WinNT, Oracle, SQL, Shell, ASP, Cold Fusion etc. etc.) in my consulting business. I always thought these devices would be great for carrying multiple reference manuals instead of those 10 pound books.
Burn? Wouldn't they melt really? I mean I can see Books burning, but ebooks? Hmm
This was the best article summary I have yet read on slashdot. The stunning self-proctology of their ebook business model is classic. Now time for some sleep.
Fnord.sig
As long as the current copy protection mechanisms (of which Lawrence Lessig talks about in his excellent free_culture are in place, ebooks will not become common. Or I should say I hope people can see how useless they are and opt to not use them.
When you think of what the technology could do... You could have access to the digital version of any book, there would never be problems with acquiring a copy of a book. You could always get the book you wanted instantly from your local library, even through the net. Right now, the only thing they have is "gee-it's-new-technology"-effect, and they're really just severely restricted versions of real books.
But it's all inevitable. Even if every library in the world will decide to buy these pathetic excuses of a book, the unrestricted versions will come. They just won't be in the library. They'll be in p2p. Because we all know the ebook protection is fundamentally flawed.
It would be nice if they put out the specs on everything so some enterprising and bored guru could find a way to stick a teeny version of linux on it and make it a reader again. Why waste a good display?
To refer to this sort of behavior as self-proctology is a common mistake.
This was really about Gemstar having their head up their ass.
Eulogies and post mortems should strive to be accurate.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
PDA: small, lightweight, but small screen, larger files may be a problem.
Tablet PC: great when reading in portrait mode. can also double as a regular laptop but heavier (around 3lbs), more expensive.
Personally, I think the tablet pc is great. i have an acer. portrait mode is great for reading not just ebooks but web pages as well. It can get a little warm though and it's tiring to hold it after a while. Still, i'm able to use it as a laptop and tablet and that's exactly what i wanted.
Thoughts on stocks, markets and trading
If I ever decide to buy an eBook, I will need it to do two things: (1) cache and display any HTML I choose, and (2) cache and display any PDF I choose. Without these two features, no amount of other features is sufficient; with these two features, no other features are necessary.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Actually, I've had the 1100 for a few years now, and I just use the old Rocket Librarian software to convert html and text files to its own .rb format. Works fairly well, the device has quite possibly the best indoor/outdoor lcd I've seen to date, and usually has 35 hour plus battery life. I also have a pda, and one just cannot compare the two, reading for any length of time on any current pda is a pain due to limited amount of screen real estate. The only pda with a screen large enough to be a comfortable ebook reader would have been the Newton or the Vadem Clio.
It seems to me that a PDA would fill the same need. I have a Palm IIIxe and have no problem reading eBooks with it. Not to mention that I can also read PDFs with it...something dedicated readers can't.
The low-end model is/was? ~$79...
Palm sells a refurbished IIIxe for ~$89...
And acording to this link, the Gemstar has 8MB of memory...the same as the IIIxe...less if you count the extra memory available from the Flash ROM through an app like JackFlash...
Keeping in mind that the screen on the IIIxe is very legible and features many functions not available through the Gemstar and that battery life can be increased on the palm by underclocking the CPU with one of the apps available for hackmaster...why would anyone want to buy a single function handheld over a PDA???
Not to mention that the PDA market itself has weakened signifigantly in recent years...
An AC asked:
What's the point... of ebooks when you've got handhelds?
Although I use a Handspring Visor for reading "ebooks", the dedicated readers are far superior from standpoint of their display quality. The Gemstar GEB-2150 has an 8.2" diagonal display. The resolution on the Gemstar models is typically (always?) over 100dpi. That's a lot of pixels and screen real-estate compared to the average handheld.
Yes, but chances are that if you're using any of these you're at a computer.
You could probably have done almost as well with some version of these on CD-ROM. HTML would be ok, or perhaps something with a database for quick searches. The only disadvantage is not having a screen and then reference material, but perhaps a peripheral to handle this would still be a more affordable solution (USB/LCD maybe?)
Come to think of it, I haven't seen many really innovative USB2 (that's real USB2, not 1.1) devices yet, perhaps a USB powered/controlled LCD would be something useful along those lines, or is there not enough juice?
Pay $300-$700 for a locked and proprietary ebook device or for 30-100 books. Decisions, decisions...
in a stunning demonstration of self-proctology ,
... it seems that most of them used some sort of "proprietary device" that regulated the usefulness of the product ...
Microsoft discontinued nearly all of their products
It's a shame that Gemstar is going down in flames, but eventually ebooks will go mainstream. How much longer can we keep producing books out of paper? Some type of handheld, non-paper, book will eventually have to replace the paper book.
I heard something a while back about electric "paper" that could change it's own print. I think it would be really nifty to have a book where you could pop in a flash card and have all the pages change their text. Anyone else heard anything else about this technology? (Other than it's expensive, like all new tech.)
I too was impressed, and it seems that the company understands it at some level as well. When you go the page referenced in the author's blurb and click on the "price" link, the resulting page has a picture of one of the devices. It has the cover page of a book titled "Enough Rope."
Thought they both work very well, I believe 'auto-proctology' would be more correct... :)
A-Bomb
(self-)proctology
n : the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the colon or rectum or anus
And you can do this yourself?
That means turning it over to our tame racing driver, the sig.
Funny you should ask because I just saw this on TV the other day. They are called flash lights because early batteries didn't last very long so you'd just flash it on occasionally to see what was ahead and then turn it off to save the battery. So there....
I've had a Franklin ebookman for a while now, and I can honestly say it's much better than reading off a standard PDA. The acklight rocks for reading at night, reading in the daytime just too hard with all the glare coming off the screen. Cheap too.
One day one of these ebook readers will be a success, or a PDA will get a good enough screen to replace them. Wouldn't touch the proprietry books though, they seem next to useless.
It isn't, you know. I'm not going to compare it to other electronic devices, I'm going to compare it to its competitor - a piece of paper.
Paper has resolutions the IIIxe, or my PDF-based Powerbook for that matter, can't dream of. Paper's anti-aliased fonts are superb, unless you include my handwriting of course. Paper doesn't dim the screen to save batteries. Text on paper can be read in bright light. Paper is faster to boot as well, though admittedly the search times are longer.
No - I'm afraid legibility is one area that print is still miles ahead in.
Cheers,
Ian
I got a sony clie PEG-T415 with a hi-res monochrome display for like $200 bucks. The display is the same size as the palm screen, but twice the resolution, and since it's monochrome it's especially crisp. Slap in a 128meg memory stick and you've got a pretty good ebook reader (I use plucker to display html). Plus I picked up a wireless keyboard (micro innovations)so I can write my own ebooks too :)
Concerning a question made above, the format specs and a Linux software both exist here.
Now I'm pretty happy with another device, i.e. the Hiebook (site; groups), that provides the same, important capability: you can upload to it any .txt/.htm content.
Not as as good a display as the rocket, though...
I have the entire series of The Wheel of Time in hardcover (and a few very tattered in paperback). Its my favorite fantasy series and I re-read it often.
:).
I was lucky enough to "stumble" upon the entire collection OCR'd, proofed, and converted in nicely formated HTML (with chapter icons). Some fans put a good amount of time to produce these files and I'm thankfull for it.
I'm in the middle of the series again. Some of it was read via paper. Some of it was read on my PDA. The PDA actually makes a very handy format, available where ever I am and needing to kill some time. And it has its own backlight (no reading light needed). I tried to go from PDA to book a few times and found myself simply sticking with the PDA more often than not (although right now I'm back to paper as I've not had much oportunity to read at work, etc.
So where does this lead the publishers? Have they missed out on sales? Perhapse. I've bought the entire series in expensive hardcover - even when I had access to the illicit data versions (as well as old papperback). So there's no loss of sales there. But then, they could have made another sale by offering me a one-stop, inexpensive location to purchase a proofed and nicely formated electronic version. Especially if they offered it in a cross-platform, open standards based format that enables me to use the data I paid for in whatever method I have available.
General-purpose PDAs (like Palm PDAs) may not have quite the resolution of the specialized readers, but single-purpose units are a bad idea when you have to carry them around (who's going to carry 50 devices around?). Even sillier is the locked format; do they really expect us to buy 12 ebook readers, and pay again to download freely-available content on it? I routinely download documents and websites, and read them at my leisure.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Now people with a library that can not completely fit on the device will lose content they paid for. And people with expensive rocket eBooks in perfect working condition will not be able to buy new content for their device because it will come with its own, incompatible DRM. Now can you see legitimate uses for Dimitry's "advanced e-book processor"?
The only good news is that this particular group of screwed customers is rich. Just maybe they can really get on the case of fair use and make their voices heard by the government.
What?
Sounds like the *decent* thing to do is for them to release a txt/html/pdf converter to the general public for their soon-to-be-abandoned product.
Odds are they won't though. Bastards.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
GuidePlus is a horrible piece of software. Get rid of it's piss poor design and buggy interface and try myHTPC. http://www.myhtpc.net/ I actually had GuidePlus give me this error on launch before quiting itself. "A is not a number" It refused to operate after that and I had to reinstall all of ATI's AiW software. Anyone know where I can get the mac drivers for ATI's Remote Wonder?
Regarding proprietary formats, etc -- there's a simple rule to remember here, I think.
The more programmable your portable device is, the less likely you are to be screwed. Programmable as in, the end-user can write and load code into it that will alter it's behavior. If a consumer wants to find a device that's a good investment, this is practically all the information he needs.
That, and perhaps access to a few local geeks who will hack the device, in the event of a corporate meltdown.
Now here's the question: How can we keep each other informed of the real programmability of a shiny new device we may see in Circuit City? Is there a yardstick, or a website, or a consortium, or a forum out there -- that measures the hack-ability of new gear?
(Or should we all just chuck everything out and buy really good laptops instead? I've had one for a year now and it's replaced my desktop PC, my PDA, my television, my DVD player, my stereo, my Playstation, my Nintendo 64, my bookshelf, and my mixer... and obsoleted my CD burner, monitor, keyboard, remote controls, maps, slide projector, darkroom, modem, zipdrive, tape deck, cookbooks, and alarm clock. Mostly due to it's immense programmability.)
Any reccomendations for good freeware text to speech programs? I'm trying out freetts at the moment.
If anyone here has access to a Tablet PC, enjoys ebooks, and has a moment or two to spare, could they see whether my freeware reader program works on it? It's a standard windows app with no drm crap - you can load txt, html and so on. It's called yBook, and I basically wrote it as a dare - as in, why the hell don't ebook readers look like books?
Cheers
Simon
(http://www.spacejock.com)
I have a Rocket eBook, the precursor to the Gemstar eBook (before Gemstar bought Nuvomedia) and I've seen this coming for a long time. For me, ever since Gemstar bought out Nuvomedia its been downhill. They immediately closed down the "Rocket Library" which was a place full of public domain books you could get for free. Then they canceled their deal with Barnes and Noble. Powells is great, but come on... Barnes and Noble is Barnes and Noble!! I stopped seeing books being published for my eBook so I haven't used it in a very long time. I guess I shoulda sold it on eBay earlier, now it won't get as much!
I did a lot of research before I bought the 1100. The thing that I like about it was that you could use the old Rocket Librarian to convert HTML and TXT files to RB files. Then use the new software to upload it to the device. I have found enough software to convert anything to HTML so hense going to RB format is a cake. I have over 1000 books in my eBook library most beign from Gutenberg. As for why you would buy a Palm or similar. The Gemstar models feel more like a real book, with buttons placed for scrolling and it keeps track of your book marks. So any way if you can find one for under $100 its well worth it.
Cranio-Rectal Inversion.
Not only can you describe someone as having his head up his bum, you do it such a way that it sounds like a random medical condition. As a bonus, you don't sound like an insensitive clod for *saying* he has his head up his bum.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
In fact, this happens frequently on newsgroups.
But these authors should look at the bright side:
1) Somebody cares enough to go through, scan, and correct their work.
2) They are now officially immortalized.
3) Oddly enough, nobody cares about Harlan Ellison's work.
...As an angry, disillusioned Rocket eBook owner, I'm very disappointed that they could have gotten so many of the basic technical aspects of the device RIGHT, yet screwed up the marketing so badly as to discredit the entire eBook concept. The Rocket eBook is pleasant to use and I can and do read long novels on it. Alas, Gemstar's business model was irretrievably customer-hostile, and both price and availability of content were poor.
.txt and .html files--like Project Gutenberg texts) from the later devices themselves, they have now put it back IN as a Web-based service. Not a problem for owners of the original Rocket eBook, which can convert and download from a PC or Mac, but later buyers can ONLY download over a phoneline from Gemstar's servers. But now they can UPLOAD personal content to those servers and have it converted.
I want to acknowledge that Gemstar is treating their customer base reasonably well under the circumstances and far better than might have been expected.
What they're NOT doing, of course, is to provide a Gemstar-format-to-something-else conversion tool. Or replacements for the Gemstar-format eBook titles we "own" with some other format.
There won't be any new content available after July 16th, but they say they will keep the servers up for at least three years--so the people whose eBooks can ONLY download directly from the server will be able to use their purchased content for that long. They also have a sort of warranty policy under which, for as long as supplies last, they say that if your eBook fails, even if you didn't buy it from them, they will replace it with another Gemstar eBook device (but possibly not the same model) for $30.
And, having designed OUT personal content (the ability to download arbitrary
I'm not happy, but at least the Gemstar eBook is being gently euthanized, not shot at dawn.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"How much longer can we keep producing books out of paper?"
Forever.
They're cheap, the require no electric power, they're rugged, they're trivial to use, you can loan them, you can borrow them, they don't infringe on anyone's right.
They're virtually perfect.
Of all the technologies around, name another that has survived as long as the book, and ask yourself why.
Like taco has a dick.
Microsoft just took a major international customer away from them. What's scary is MS's interactive guide is more user friendly.
Many years ago this guy at Prevue said in reference to partnering with an eager Microsoft: "We'll make our product so good they won't want to compete with us." I said to myself. "Man, what kind of crack is he smoking? It doesn't matter how good your product is or how crappy Microsoft's is. They will still crush you."
The point is Microsoft loves to partner with companies whose markets they want to horn in on. Then once they have the knowledge they need they dump the partner.
...eBooks want to be locked up. Apparently. At any rate, with regard to fonts, Cynthia Hollandsworth, a VP at Simon and Schuster, in this article, is quoted as saying
âoeWhat is absolutely clear to me (working for the largest e-book publisher in the industry) is that there is not any business left for font makers who want to play in this e-world. We use fonts in our e-books, of course, but the font companies have a very skewed view about what these products are worth in this environment. It is likely that a market will come up for renamed and redigitized fonts tuned for e-books and other screen technologies that are sold with unlimited rights to reproduce. In a paperless world, itâ(TM)s impossible to manage the rights of these products with royalties and permissions.â
In other words, Simon and Schuster doesn't want to PAY bloated prices for locked-up intellectual property. I wonder whether they will ever realize that book readers feel just the same way about eBooks as they do about fonts?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Honestly, TV Guide is probably read more these days than the bible. But how on earth the same people that have staked their fortune on people _not_ reading (see: TV) decided to get into selling books in the first place...well its beyond me. I guess that constituted playing both sides of the fence and it makes sense in the fact that they certainly have their fingers on the pulse of the majority of americans. But something about the publishers of TV guide trying to carve out a niche in ebooks is just dirty.
Up next: why johnny cant read-the video
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
"Book piracy will likely be around as long as dead tree editions are still available; there isn't much there but the effort required to stop potential pirates. While the barrier to entry for piracy is higher than with other forms of media (like, say, CDs), remember that all it takes is one dedicated pirate with access to some fairly common equipment."
It's still an order of magnitude harder. Plus you couple that with the reading public's preference for dead-trees and book piracy is not as big a problem. Also the only thing that book piracy really does is delay the movement of books to a electronic format. Note your history, music piracy only really took off when we got away from analog media and formats. Don't think that book publishers haven't taken that lesson to heart. So next time you see a book pirate, thank them. As far as hardware well it may be "common" it is still a cost, especially if one is actually going to be doing the job "right". And last as it concerns broadband. Has everyone (pirate or not) forgotten the caps, and quotas that were discussed last week? The "free" ride is coming to an end people. The few have spoiled the barrel for the many, thanks folks.
Gemstars GUIDEPLUS+ doesnt get its listings through the transmission medium like other devices. actually the Guide+ used on other things like VCRs are just a coding system which makes it easier to record programs by entering a number that is listed in a TV guide rather than manually programming it. (instead of programming the date, time and lenght you just punch in a series of 6 to 9 digits that are listed in the tv guide listings)
the GUIDEPLUS+ that comes with AIW cards is a program that downloads the TV listings from a database on Gemstars server and displays it on your screen.
You may be talking about a system that displays what you are currently watching, the catagory/genre, length, time left, station ID on the screen. Thats called XDS and unfortunately not all tv or cable stations take advantage of it.
~Tommy Boomfiger http://www.gotapex.com/forums
About three years ago I got to check out the Nuvomedia and their "Rocket eBook" (as it was known then) at the BookExpo America. Sure the screen had above-average resolution, but the device itself was about the weight (and size/shape) of a brick.
Also, about the same time I was getting into AvantGo on my Visor (which I still use btw) so I asked the eBook rep what the Rocket eBook had that my Palm didn't. She couldn't give me a solid answer, besides "the screen is bigger" and "you can download books to it over the phone" (whoop-dee-doo). Then she would change the subject by playing goofy "South Park" sounds on the eBook's speaker (books need speakers). I saw her use the "SouthPark" technique, so there wasn't much there.
Interesting sidenote - it turned out the NYC ooffices of Nuvomedia / Rocket eBook were just two doors down from my (then) employer - so I was able to con them into loaning me one of the ebooks for a week (we were "thinking" about putting our web site's content on the eBook - but had no such plans because it turned out Nuvomedia was making its money by charging an arm and a leg to convert content to eBook format). Long story short - the device sat on my cubicle shelf for a week.
Later that year they released the eBook for sale nationwide - complete with a promient point-of-sale display at Barnes and Noble stores...but several months later sales were so low that they didn't even release the figures to the public.
Later, when Gemstar (TV Guide?) inexplicably bought Nuvomedia / Rocket eBook my only thought was "are they crazy." Obviously, some TV Guide bigwig decided that they need to get "in" on the digital media revolution, and the eBook was their ticket.
I still don't see a market for the eBook reader...not when we've got AvantGo and Plucker to fill up our Palms' memory. And now most Palm devices can play goofy South Park sounds too!
Correct link to the PW article about Gemstar purchasing Nuvomedia:
Later, when Gemstar (TV Guide?) inexplicably bought Nuvomedia / Rocket eBook my only thought was "are they crazy?"
Another story about ebooks, another chance for a long protracted argument about the pros and cons of ebooks. "Lower costs!"
"But I can't read them on the toilet!"
As one who had an old Rocket eBook and just bought the new Gemstar 1150 about a month ago, I was, needless to say, not pleased to hear the news of their demise. Fortunately, I qualify for a refund since I purchased the GEB so recently. I plan to use it to purchase another eBook device -- after I do some research to make sure that whichever one I buy comes with PC software! (I assumed the GEB did when I bought it, since that's how its predecessor, the Rocket, worked. My bad for not checking.)
People have posted asking why anyone would spend so much money on a one-function device with a proprietary format. Here are a couple of reasons. First, compared to most handheld devices like tablet PCs, the GEB was very cheap; I paid $140 for mine and got free shipping, while tablet PCs run in the $1000 range. Secondly, eBook devices tend to have a longer battery life than non-dedicated devices because eBooks have no moving parts. And finally, I personally have no real need for any other functionality in a portable device than the ability to read books, and I like being able to store hundreds of them on one small card.
I love my eBook, and I've downloaded tons of Gutenberg texts (and yes, bought content as well, although there's definitely a shortage of ones I want out there). Next time, I will just make sure to choose one that isn't dependent on someone else's servers!
I've already addressed some of your issues.
"As long as the current copy protection mechanisms (of which Lawrence Lessig talks about in his excellent free_culture are in place, ebooks will not become common. Or I should say I hope people can see how useless they are and opt to not use them."
The things that are holding eBooks back are:
1-Cultural inertia. (We love our paper)
2-Cost. (Reader)
3-Technological. (Limitations vs paper)
4-Copyright abuses. (Would you willingly walk in front of a firing squad?)
"When you think of what the technology could do... You could have access to the digital version of any book, there would never be problems with acquiring a copy of a book. You could always get the book you wanted instantly from your local library, even through the net. Right now, the only thing they have is "gee-it's-new-technology"-effect, and they're really just severely restricted versions of real books."
See my reasons above, also even with restrictions they have advantages (search capability, compact format).
"But it's all inevitable. Even if every library in the world will decide to buy these pathetic excuses of a book, the unrestricted versions will come. They just won't be in the library. They'll be in p2p. Because we all know the ebook protection is fundamentally flawed."
If things are "inevitable" were's my flying car? Anyway you've made the best argument for why it isn't inevitable. Any publisher walking into the eBook business without paying attention to what's happening with the music and movie industry deserves to have their head handed to them. Paper may not be an absolute defence, but hard work is a better deterent, than hoping people will do the right thing.
I'd like to hear what you're going to buy next. A year or so ago, I considered buying a Gemstar but just never got around to doing it. I'm not sure what I'll do now.
search for "cryptonomicon" on gnutella.... scanned from the source, zipped, and published. publishers are rank idiods for thinking that stopping electronic media stops people from ripping. sheesh...all my good mp3's come from cd's, not from kazaa.
eBook
is this another idea waiting for Apple to do it the right way.
If anyone can design the best eBook reader it is Apple. Perhaps using some of the new screen technologies being developed such as flexible displays, OLED and digital paper. They already have an OS built around PDF.
I am really glad now that I returned my GEB1150 right after I bought it last month. I have a bunch of BAEN books and there was no way to load them on the 1150. Plus I refuse to let someone else hold my books hostage. I snagged an old Rocket 1100 from Ebay and it is working out really well and my ebooks live on my PC and CDs.
When .mp3 was first released the copyright owners had absolutely no idea what was coming.
Now they know.
eBooks are never going to make it because the copyright owners know what will happen if eBooks actually become big.
They'll lose money.
I've yet to see a distribution scheme out there that is sucsessful (read: profitable to the copyright owners an popular with the populace) though apple's iTunes Music store comes close.
Basically what I'm saying here is that copyright owners learned their leasson with mp3s and as a result they WILL prevent ebooks from ever truly taking off. Not intentionally, but since they refuse to lose money their actions will prevent it.
Question everything
So far all the comments from people about how useless the ebook is, don't own them. I have one, and i wouldn't want to live without it.
.rb file
I never upgraded to the 1150 software so i'm not stuck with the crippling DRM, I can use the rocket librarian(and a few other software tools) to make anything into a
I can use it any light, the battery last so long i can go a week without charging it, i can even toss it in a zip-lock bag and take it in the bath with me.
I think i bought maybe 5 books from gemstar, the other gazillian i found online. There *are* ways to find current books online, many of which find their way into to HTML or TXT format.
I think the best part is that i don't have to lug around a giant book. I tend to read tomes, or sometimes just a large series. couple of thousand pages, and it's the size of 200 page paperback. I've got a 64 meg smartmedia card in the thing, when i go on vacation, rather than the stack of books i usually take, i dump a large selection on the card and go.
And the whole get a PDA thing, i just don't use a PDA, I've owned a newton and a palm 7, and as cool as they were, i just never used them, i'd enter my addressbook, and occasionally play drug warz. thats it. i'm just not a PDA person.
What we really need to see now is a REB Hack, someone needs to figure out how to reset all those locked up 1150's back to open and free 1100's. Then all will be well with the world. that was long winded, sorry, josh.
Zyrotin
it's called a double standard cause it's twice as right.
I first got a Rocket eBook back in 1999 - I thought it would be a great way getting decent reading material before a 6 month assignment in Moscow. It was great! I used to come in to the office on the weekends to fiddle with my server back at home in California, eventually putting together a bunch of perl scripts that would suck down web content, convert them to Rocket format, and send them to me to read in the taxi on the way back to the hotel.
The REB community was wonderful back then - we even had a one-and-only convention in San Francisco to meet and talk about the electronic publishing business in general. Martin Eberhard - then CEO of Nuvomedia, stopped by and gave us his perspective on the industry.
Then Gemstar jumped in, fired Martin, and made the REB into, well, god knows what. Still, you could get decent content, so before we moved to Kazakhstan last December, my wife and I both got new RCA eBooks. We download new content and get to read real, new books on a device that is made for reading (not those stupid Palms that have type so small you couldn't read them if your life depended on it). I don't even mind paying full book price.
Now, I'm literally half way around the world with a useless piece of plastic - at least in terms of new content. I guess I can still download stuff from Pheonix Library, but I don't think I'll be seeing another William Gibson release anytime soon, or anything from Ludlum or King. This sucks big time.
It is beyond me how something so useful, so easy to use, and so simple could go so terribly wrong. Now I either get to learn how to read Russian, or wait read torn up cast off books from the latest traveller.
"You can't have everything. Where would you keep it?" -- Steven Wright
postscript you fool!!!!
As I will not miss any device or company that comes to the point of "eliminate the ability to install free content directly".
Actually, IMO, they are late to go, and take any other company on the likes of it with them.
Could you imagine paper on which you could not write, because you could tham copy copyrighted content onto it? Why to accept such an e-book device so?
May the responsibles for DRM on this level lie on hell for a while.
-><- no
What? Burning E-Books? Damn, I don't remember anything about E-Books being burned in Farenheit 451! Nothing is safe from censorship!
http://mediagoblin.org/
Are there any decent alternatives to these? Ones that will preferrably take txt/html and possibly even PDF?
Or will the old ones do it? Can I buy an old 1100 or whatever on ebay and still get all the software tools (non-crippled ones?)
In the law there is no overlap between theft and copyright infringement whatsoever.
It wasn't just pricing that killed this unit. I attempted contact with Gemstar repeatedly over a two year period when we were trying to decide on a portable unit for all our internal documentation, whitepapers, etc, for our Network Operations Centre.
I really wanted to go with the REB units for this, but I could never get commitment from them on the ability to produce/convert our own content for both the 1100 and 1200 series. If we had ever received useful feedback from them it could have resulted in several hundred unit sales over the course of a couple of years.
Poor customer service and refusal to deal with technical issues killed this company.
In possibly related news the SEC has charged officers of Gemstar with fraud for inflating revenues by some $223 Million.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I can't see any benefit to an e-book. I can get just about any book worth reading from the library. For free. The type is easier to read, and no screen of any sort can show type easier than ink on paper. Plus, I can survey a bunch of magazines and newspapers, for free, and even check out CDs. For free. It'll be a long time before an e-book is worth a tinker's damn. Not to mention, some of the women at the library are, uh, kind of cute. Can an e-book offer that?
Cereberal Rectal Inversion Syndrome(CRIS), the next sound you here will be the author pulling his skull from his colon...*POP*
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Having been a willing victim of the third (? I lost count of the real number) attempt at an "eBook Revolution" ... I can honestly say that *this time* (meaning the period between 1998-2000) it looked like they really had a chance.
... primarily those who wanted the product to "be" something other than what it was intended to be. A lot of that came down to the old "convergence vs. divergence" debate, and we certainly aren't going to settle that here.
... eBooks were (and are) a disruptive technology that simply needed a bit more time to settle-in ...
... and that is still the case.
.... LOLOLOLOLOL
... maybe I should.
The Rocket eBook *WAS* (by any standard) a great product, which made extremely good use of the technology available at the time. Of course there were plenty of naysayers
I was there (in '99) trying to start a company that would capitalize on this (at the time) nascent technology. I was there "rubbing elbows" with the guys (and gals) from Nuvomedia, from SoftBook (don't get me started!), from the N.I.S.T., and many, many others. When we all went to the CES in Vegas the Winter of 2000, it really seemed like things were starting to click.
You have to keep in mind that NuvoMedia (especially) had really got something started with the online "RocketLibrary" site. There was a rapidly-growing "community" there, much like the community that had provided the PalmPilot (and other technologies) with the buzz needed to "go mainstream." The bubble had not yet burst, and things were on-track for finding other commercial applications for this technology.
I wish the blame could all be laid somewhere on Wall Street, but unfortunately the lion's share belongs to those incompetent boobs at Gemstar. They shot themselves in the foot, but they shot the eBook community in the head.
The folks at Gemstar wisely chose to single-handedly DISMANTLE the entire eBook community brick-by-brick, within the first six months after their purchase of Nuvomedia and SoftBook. Combine that with the frigid technology climate during the fall of 2000 and the Spring of 2001, and the deal was done.
The Rocket eBook (especially if it could have continued to benefit not only from the "open community" but also from subsequent technology advances) could have served a real niche. And those who "don't understand why you need one when you have a PDA" just don't get it. OF COURSE they weren't going to displace PDAs
It was never a question of "if" but "when"
The best humorous footnote?
In their corporate email to eBook users this week, Gemstar phrased it as "we are SCALING BACK our eBook operations"
Jeez, I could write a book
- - - - - -
See you space cowboy
They failed to realize the golden rule: you can't strong-arm your customer base until it's reached a critical mass.
So long, see ya.
Gigs of ebooks lurk in the newsgroups.
alt.ebook
alt.ebooks.flood
to name a few
Anyone reading this should be able to convert to and fro desired format without much hand holding.