Slashdot Mirror
Digital Books Start A New Chapter
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on the latest advancements in eBooks, and how this time they might just take off. From the article: 'Portable devices are becoming lighter and more appealing. The most important step forward may be in digital ink, the technology used for displaying letters on a screen. A small company called E Ink has created a method for arranging tiny black and white capsules into words and images with an electronic charge. Because no power is used unless the reader changes the page, devices with the technology could go as long as 20 books between battery charges'."
Have to admit that about a year ago, I bought an e-book for my ex. But, we run nothing but *nix. Turns out that it did not work well with anything. I could never even load a gutenberg on the ram. I will not be buying one of theirs, and at this point, I have cost them more than 12 sales. It would be nice if they got the hint, but I seriously doubt it until somebody else comes along with a good product (apple perhaps?).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
funny but sad.
i've been thinking about this a lot today. our realtor has been here, helping us get our house ready for sale and has me boxing books like there is no tomorrow. apparently it is highly irregular that a home has the number of book cases that we have. and for the book cases we are keeping in the house, they are not being used to hold many books. they are more like curio cabinets now, with a few books here and there.
so it gets me to thinking about how many folks don't read any more. and then as i'm boxing i'm thinking about whether or not i'd like for most of the books i have to be in a digital format so that i wouldn't have to do all this heavy work. but i'm pretty sure, if someone offered to instantly digitize my entire library, i'd hold onto most of the actual books. for a variety of reasons. many having nothing to do with the content. i just really, really like books.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I was leading a test group at Sony last summer to examine 200 ebooks for visual bugs as the reader was Japanese-language hardware with a English-lnaguage BIOS. The technology does work as advertised and I had no problem reading the display for the 20 days that I was on the project. It did suck batteries like a Gameboy Advance. That should be fixed in the American hardware.
E-Ink has been working on this, for, uh, ever.
..then you need to make it damn near indestructible, and no thicker than a small pad of paper.
I was thinking about this the last time I was flying transatlantic; there's no way I can justify the added expense of business class - so no power. That means you're lucky to get a notebook to run the whole way. Nevermind you might be hopping off one plane and onto another one for another six hours. It's HARD to beat paper. HARD. It's cheap, disposable, recycable, everywhere, and you can easily print on it at rediculous interruptions. No biggie if it's lost or damaged. Infinate battery life. Great capacity (look at a newspaper).
All of these ebooks have the power problem, and the price problem - even if they've finally come up with an attractive display.
I'm convinced the only thing that would make e-books possible would be if the Federal Government stepped in and issued one of these to every person in the country for a nominal - like $20 or less - fee. That would create a defacto platform. It still wouldn't solve the power problem - I think you'd almost have to be able to run the thing off self-contained solar cells.
It's a tough problem.
I'd be tempted to pick up one of these if it came in 8.5x11 form factor in paper resolution for reading technical manuals and PDF's - right now I have three monitors, and at any one time, one of them has a specification sheet for a semiconductor open on it.
As far as an ipod for books goes, maybe that's the ticket, if the next ipod has a large screen. It still is a hell of a lot smaller than a copy of wired.. and a lot more expensive.
..don't panic
I used to travel internationally about 30% of the year. When going to a non-English speaking country, 10+ hour flight each way plus a one week stay, that would be 3 or more books for me. If you ran out of reading material, you were screwed (unless you were in a major city where you could buy an english book for a mere 2-3x US retail price).
Once you start travelling heavily, you start seriously looking at ways to lighten your load. 3 books weigh a lot (and if you are a heavy reader, chances are you're reading more hardcover than paperback, further increasing weight).
I moved to my PDA. It took about 2 books worth of reading to get used to it. Now, I won't buy a book unless it's in ebook format. Fall asleep reading? It remembers where you left off. Want to read in bed but you SO wants the lights out? It has it's own built-in light. Sitting in a boring PTA meeting? You can be very discreet.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
>>CHM books open immediately, compared to slow pathetic PDF and allow lines and paragraphs to REFLOW based on the size and shape of your viewing window.
/.), I would suggest trying Foxit Reader. It is free, small to install (single file, the executable, fast to start). I recovered 80Mb that Adobe Acrobat reader needed and used 2.5Mb for Foxit. When comparing to Adobe's reader and loading a large (~100Mb) file, it was noticably fast loading and faster changing pages.
Perhaps the problem is your PDF reader. If Win32 is your choice of OS (yeah, I know... this is
If you are on another OS, there are other choices...
I think that's only the introductory price. You know, kinda like the early adopter thing. Once Sony has probed whether or not there is a demand for it, it will invest more into this technology and make it mass-market-compatible.
Personally, I would be glad to replace my two bookshelf with something more compact. And while you're at it: would someone please take on marketing holographic storage? I'm tired of having so many disks flying about my room.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
I wonder how long I would have to wait until Apple comes out with a nicely done iPod/eBook-reader/wifi-web-browser combo? (One could probably throw "cell-phone" in too, but maybe that's asking too much)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The gist of the article points to an industry smugly patting itself on the back (and possibly massaging other body parts) in glee now that they've "solved" the problem with previous e-book introductions and their failings. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), they're wrong.
I've sampled the e-book offerings, both hardware and software since the day they were first introduced. I was so excited to finally merge my appetite for reading (about 20 novels/year) with the convenience and power of technology. Yes, I was disappointed with the first e-book hardware, but it wasn't the only reason I returned the merchandise.
First and foremost, the problem with e-books is not the presentation (though it can be better), it's the frigging business model! Did I mention the problem with e-books is the business model?
Though I haven't done complete research for this latest round of e-books I suspect the landscape is similar to before. What I'd found was yet another money grab. Consider that:
You'd think with all of these super advantages, at most you'd pay 50% what a hard copy book would cost. Guess again. Especially early on, when I did go "shopping" it wasn't unusual at all to find electronic books selling for more than the hard copy of the same book!
No, the problem isn't only hardware, and the problem isn't mostly hardware, it's the frigging business model!
Admittedly, the E-ink excerpt makes it seem like the article is a dupe, but it's not exactly so.
Apart from talking about E-ink, it does lay out a few possible reasons for why electronic books have not been adopted as quickly as MP3 players and Treo-Crackberries. The article, had you read it, also points out that the content problem (that is, there's so much more available in dead-tree form) is being chipped away at as new publishing models go mainstream at joints like Amazon. If Tim O'Reilly says that content has now reached a critical mass, I'm inclined to see the article more in the light of a broad update on progress in the electronic publishing part of consumer electronics.
Before I suffer the inevitable stinging, indignant and defensive retort by TMM (which I will wear as a badge of honor, as if I were kicked by the pope), I'd like to point out that the Businessweek reader is not cut from the same cloth as the slashdot crowd. Yup, we've been attuned to the technical developments for a long time, so it's not "News for nerds", really. What I think we can take from it is that the over-hype of e-books 3-5 years ago (that which exposed just how feeble a publishing medium it was with the technology of the time) faded away and out of consumer consciousness only to now reappear with more strength. The conditions are different, now, and the casual Businessweek reader is hearing about it.
The first e-book I read was Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown", and I picked it up because it was free and I could get the reader very easily for my now-antiquated Palm IIIe. The issue that #1) didn't get covered in TFA and #2) I believe to be the unspoken greater barrier to adoption than the electronic device/technology that displays the text, is the issue of file formats. Sony, as TFA tells us, is leaping into e-books now that there is e-ink, and you can bet that Sony's e-books will come in their own proprietary e-format, and will be only e-readable by their devices. I would e-hope that e-book device and e-content distributors can e-agree that they'll support multiple e-file formats and e-reading software.
While I have e-hope, I'm pretty sure I'm e-smoking e-crack on that one.
God, I hate those freakin' "e-" prefixes. I swore I'd never use them and Businessweek made me do it.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
I love my books. I have lots of paper ones and lots more electronic ones. But when I spend my money on books I always buy the paper even though I would prefer the ability to grep my recycled electrons. Why?
When I buy a paper book I can:
Read it anywhere, at home, in the office or on the road
Lend the book to a friend
Sell the book
Give the book away
Photocopy a page for my notes
Photocopy a page to pass to a friend
Read it in a year
Read it in a decade
Have my grandchildren read in 100 years from now
When I buy an electronic version of a book I can do none of these things. It all depends on the license and on the technology. For some reason the publishers have the impression that because it's electronic that consumers no longer expect the same rights.
I do.
Beyond the licensing issue is the technical issue. That book isn't going to be readable in a few years when the current reader and DRM technology is defunct. In ways far removed from the restrictions publishers may impose are the restrictions that the technology will impose. A portable reader will only last so long before it requires a new charge or a replacement. A portable reader will die if it gets wet, not require a few minutes with a blow dryer. A portable reader limits the number of places I can enjoy a book in a way that a paper book does not. And if the reader is not portable I will be restricted even further in where I can read. So an electronic version of a book is of less value to me than a paper edition.
And yet it almost goes without saying that the publishers will try to charge more for the electronic edition.
But I won't go entirely negative on electronic books. They have many benefits to me when they are implemented in a consumer friendly way. Here are the instances of electronic books being superior to me:
I like being able to search my books. This is especially important with technical volumes where I need specific information and I need it now.
I like viewing books efficiently and for novels that means using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to read quickly and with excellent comprehension.
I like being able to concentrate the knowledge bound in books a single location so I can find them when I need them. 1000 books on a disk weigh no more than 1.
So while I am the epitome of the book reader, large library appreciating geek who adopts new technology quickly I will be staying away from electronic books until publishers learn to play to the strengths of the electronic edition and not lock them away from their most interested adopters.
Imagine the flop Apple (Sony) would have (will) faced if the iPod (ebook reader) was released without the ability to play (read) plain old DRM-free mp3 (text). People already have a massive collection of music (books); they want a player (reader) that will play (read) that.
//text// messages (CLUE!), PDAs, phones, etc. Hell, even the iPod can read plain text files as it is - it's just not so pleasant as an e-ink screen. It will be ridiculous if an iPod could read more extant media than this ebook reader.
//industry//, but that's not saying much. media is not industry - it's information. Your prospective customers have better things to do with their time than pay you for things they can't use.
For every money grubbing pig of a media conglomerate, there are thousands of writers that people want to read who give away their writing. As such, they look at DRM and go, "what the hell is this for?" Any media display device that doesn't display DRM-Free content is pretty useless to consumers. No one will buy it.
"Every other form of media has gone digital -- music, newspapers, movies," says Joni Evans, a top literary agent who just left the William Morris Agency to start her own company that will focus on books and technology. "We're the only industry that hasn't lived up to the pace of technology. A revolution is around the corner."
I hate to tell you this, but text was the FIRST medium to go online, not the last. I realize that pretty pictures make nice eye candy, but the the web is essentially MADE of it. The reason is that text has a tremendous meaning/bit ratio - it's extremely heavily compressed. Images are next, followed by music, and now video. You are WAY, way behind if you think you're the last medium to get online.
Text is already everywhere - PCs, web pages, email,
Maybe you're the last
Baen has also put out a number of CD's bound in with hardcopies of books. Licensing: You can do whatever you want with it, EXCEPT sell it. I've been making copies and giving them to fellow readers. Which is the point - effective promotion via word of mouth and free goodies.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I am wondering how many of these ebooks are going to be readable in, let's say, 20 years? I own far more than one thousand books, some older than 20 years. And all of them are valuable to me. Although I am developing digital solutions since more than 20 years, I have no trust in the industry to produce something digital that lasts for 20 years or more. Good old paper books work just fine.
Take Adobe, for example. They keep changing PDF just to force people to "update" Adobe software. These constant changes and the dependance is troublesome. This is no way to archive documents.
I would also not trust the industry to grant me access to something I bought 20 years ago. With the given DRM schemes they would probably ask me to pay for the information over and over again. The industry has shown that they act no different than criminals by installing malicious software.
Literature is culture and an essential asset for every modern information society. We cannot surrender this value to an inconsiderate industry. Ebooks are not the only attempt of companies to monopolize information. Archives like Google are another kind. Recent examples clearly show how they censor information, and nothing will refrain them from doing the same in the future in the interest of profit.
The worst thing about the entire development is that governments worldwide do almost nothing to secure the basis of our information society. Politicians are apparently blissfully ignorant. How is it possible that lawmakers allow the distribution of media which cannot be traded, exchanged and read worldwide (e.g. DVD region codes), despite all the talk about free trade, WTO etc.? Why is it legal to lock out certain software (e.g. Linux), restrict the owners ability to access their computers (e.g. "trusted computing"), while it is illegal (e.g. EUCD, DMCA) to circumvent unfair barriers (e.g. CSS)?
I say let them eat their ebooks.