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Bubble Bursts for e-Books
Reuters has a piece noting that ebooks haven't lived up to the hype. Give it a few years, and publishers willing to issue non-DRM ebooks, and reading devices that go for days without being recharged and are as light as a paperback, and then we'll see...
I like to read lying down, to relax. It is difficult to do the same while watching tv because I have to keep my head propped up to see things right-side-up. I like to lay my head down and lay my hand down with the book on the bed or couch. It is a pain in the ass to turn pages, I have to roll over in order to see them, or hold the book up with my hand. I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about. What would be nice is something with the form factor of a book that had an easy way of changing pages so you could read it lying down just looking on one side. It may even work just to get like a mini swivel monitor stand (goddamnit, I should have thought of it earlier, before Apple's patent). I think that what needs to be done is they need to get the devices a lot lighter, and think of the ways that they will be held to make it more convenient.
I wonder are there any iTunes/P2P-like plans for distributing ebooks? Something that could give the 'little guy' who wants to publish a book a chance to get his work seen without having to go through a publisher? It seems like most ebooks have to be distributed under a specific hardware platform, and not under something more general like a PDF.
I've done over 200 on my flatbed scanner in the last six months, for processing through Distributed Proofreaders. Once you get into the flow, a decently sized octavo book can be done in less than an hour. Holinshed's Chronicles (my current project) is obviously taking a little longer :).
The very high-end overhead document scanners are effectively fixed digital cameras with groovy software, so there's no real reason why an enthusiast couldn't jury rig a home-made digital camera document scanner. 5MP still isn't enough, though, for anything serious. To scan an A4 page at 400DPI requires around 15MP, and you'd need even more to get a decent DPI on folio volumes like Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
I've often wondered why nobody has come up with an ebook reader that is based on the original Palm V (or Vx). Just make the screen 5x larger but keep the same thickness. The device could probably sell for less than $150 these days, and it could have basic PDA features. The idea here is to embrace the KISS strengths of a Palm, the thinness of the Palm V, and add a larger screen so that it's possible to read an e-book on the thing w/o constantly scrolling.
Amazing magic tricks
It's weird, My security prof was just talking about this yesterday. He basically said what I have believed for a long time. Books generally don't fall victim to copyright infringement, because it takes too long, and costs too much to make photocopies, or print them out, and because, nobody wants to curl up in bed with their laptop, and i don't believe they ever will.
Maybe i'm just and old timer, but I think there's something bred into us that likes the feel of paper.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
... but due to sales, since it was an early starter, it's since been discontinued.
.rb format. (Gemstar killed this concept with the GEB1150)
I'm talking about the REB1100. The successor to the original Rocket, precursor to Gemstar's now also discontinued travesty of a version, the GEB1150.
Why's the 1100 great? Lessee.
1. I routinely get 30+ hours of battery life out of it. It goes for days.
2. I can almost drive by the light of the backlight. I sure as hell could read a paper book with it as a light source, and it could be indirect when the brightness was cranked. (caveat, cranking the brightness like that will cut battery life to 10-15 hours tops.)
3. Weighs noticeably less than a hardcover, about the same as a thick paperback - think The Stand (unabridged). Unit is molded to fit fairly naturally in your hand, with the page advance button under your thumb, just as a curled-over paperback would.
4. Screen size is that of a normal paperback, give or take.
5. Could add your own content via USB port, and there's a project on Sourceforge for converting docs to Rocket's
Things it lacks: Could always do with more battery life (what can't?), was a black & white monochrome screen (GEB1150 did have greyscale 256, but...), and uses the now virtually defunct SmartMedia card for memory expansion - would've preferred Compact Flash. Could also use a bit more internal memory, as it only had 8 Megs - still enough for around 8,000 pages.
It's fairly durable, but the screens can crack on you if you drop it at the right angle. Mine's cracked in the corner (after 4 or 5 drops) but the crack isn't getting any worse, and there's a plastic sheet of some sort over it so nothing's getting in there either. What's more, the crack is around the non-active border, so it doesn't even affect reading/viewing.
You can find them on eBay, and I have stumbled across them as display models in a few stores, notably OfficeMax. I also found one in a Best Buy.
If anyone wants to build the ultimate eBook reader, that's a good place to start.
As for content, someone's already mentioned Baen. To note, last I checked they released in RTF, Mobipocket, Rocket, Microsoft, and plain-duck HTML. (The interface for HTML is nice as well; it will keep track of the paragraph you last had the mouse cursor hovering over in whichever chapter, I think by cookie, and when you close, then reload the main book page, it brings you directly to that point. It also has a chapter list in a frame, and allows you to set the font.)
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
I love books. I've got hundreds of them. When they sell an ebook that I can hand down to my great-great-great grandchildren without worrying about DRM, formats, and ease of use, I may buy one.
I just bought a bunch of books to give as Christmas presents. Can I do that with ebooks? Will my 68 year old mother read one? Can I give a 3 year old grandson an ebook that he can color in, put stickers on, and possibly chew on?
I have books that are over 150 years old. Some of them have notes that were written that long ago. Where will today's ebooks be in 150 years? Can I highlight in an ebook, underline text, and make notes that will still be there in 150 years?
Yeah, eBooks suck. I read exactly one eBook I bought from Amazon when I had an iPaq handheld. It wasn't worth the trouble.
eJournals, OTOH, are likely the most important thing to happen to research since email. The simple fact that one can read an academic journal article in one window, then pull up the original text of a citation in another, changes everything.
As an undergrad 93-97, I spent some serious hours in the library waiting in line, photocopying, and fucking around with microfiche machines. I hated it and did as little as possible.
As a grad student today, I spend some serious hours with my wifi laptop, using Proquest from UMI, formerly known as University Microfilm, to get the content fast.
And Proquest sucks, in comparison to other services - it's just low-quality images of journal articles. When I use the ACM Portal, or Emerald, JStore, or any number of other services I get press-ready PDF files. I get citations I can copy and paste straight into my bibliography. It completely changes the experience.
And the great thing is, there's no lack of a market. eJournals are not going anywhere. It's cheaper for a University to pay for subscriptions to eJournal servicesthan it is to keep paper copies or maintain microfilm hardware.
eJournals are definitely where it's at, and I see most nonfiction and reference going that way in the near future. Pleasure reading - eBooks? Maybe next year, maybe never.
Advantages of e-books:
- they don't take space. You can take a few hundred books with you anywhere you go, and at home you don't need bookshelves to store them.
- they are easy to search - just type a word/phrase, no need to turn pages over and over
- they don't get worn out, no matter how many times you read them or how long you keep them.
- they are easy to quote, if you want to quote some phrases/passages in email or blog or essay, you can just copy/paste, no need to type.
Until the print display on ebook readers is at least 600 DPI, forget it. The print you read on a cheap paperback is 1200 DPI. The text displayed on your ebook reader is about 96 dpi, or the quality of a poor dotmatrix printout.
Studies have shown that difference in resolution slows reading by about 30% and causes eyestrain and headache.
The interesting thing is, most people will not identify these problems, rather just express a dissastisfaction with the overall experience.
a 600 DPI reflective display for an ebook reader is essential for the technology to take off.
Digital ink may be the answer. It will be interesting to find out.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
even ebook advocates tend to forget (or didn't even realized?!) the hidden pros of ebooks:
;)
- taking books on a trip
i remeber spending some time in irland some five years ago. i had 20 kg of books with me, after arrival i had to spend a day in bed - my back ached like hell - and i read maybe just 5 kg of them! this year i spend a whole month in ireland with some 20 books on my clie - ok, i just read 3 of them, but without any of the problems five years ago..
- reading in the darkness:
it's just a total difference (at least for me) between reading in the darkness without any distractions like even a bird flying by or my cat entering the room - i get much more sucked into a book when reading in the darkness..
- reading one-handed
if you like to read a book in bed you know what it means! you read on the left side, you left arm begins to hurt, the right gets stiff, you turn right.. - reading on my clie the problem suddenly completely disappeared!
- reading in the cold
if you ever read in a cold bedroom, you must know about the uncomfortable situation. after 10 minutes, both arms are cold. ok, you put them under the blanket - you hands get cold. nowadays i just crawl completely under the blanket and read in the darkness - and my cat loves that!
all thes sounds a bit silly - but for me it's such a difference!
PAT
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