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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'."
Article is a dupe...articles covering E-Ink's advances can be found here, here, here, and here.
I'm as excited about electronic paper as the next geek, but this story has no information we haven't already covered in the last four electronic paper stories. 'News for nerds', indeed.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
How many freakin articles about this do we have to read before it's actually in production? Wake me up when it's ready.
And the bad:
Having to spend $400 before getting any actual content is pretty harsh. The readability and low power consumption are a step in the right direction, but until the price drops considerably this won't be mainstream thats for sure.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is the format of choice I hear... for the Duke Nukem Forever Manual... mu ha ha ha!
Hmm, maybe I have been working too hard.... mu ha ha ha!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
From all indications, the vast majority of people have never read 20 books (not counting comic books, of course.)
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I only care about e-books if the following conditions are met:
1 - The image has to be inert - no glow effect of any kind. Ideally it should look just like paper.
2 - The "book" has to be waterproof. I read in the tub.
3 - The technology has to be sturdy. ANY portable technology should be sturdy.
4 - It has to be affordable.
5 - In the event of a crash I need to be able to replace the books in it without charge.
If I'm going to read, oh, say 100 books over the life of the product, it better cost me less for the unit plus the e-copies of the books than it would to buy the books outright. Otherwise there is no point.
Oh -- they hate DRM and only distribute standard unencumbered formats. They have this quaint notion that if they treat their customers well, their customers will respect their copyrights.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
There isn't any "burn-in" - at least not in the traditional sense. Over time, the pigment capsules degrade which leads to a reduced contrast ratio. Initial specs have contrast at 8:1 going down to 5:1 at the end of its life (after ~40,000 hours of "normal" use).
As far as residual image, yes this is an issue - although not a show-stopper. E-Ink currently has 6 waveforms for updating the image, each with a clearer image being presented at the cost of time and "flicker" during the transition. If you update a page of text to a blank (white) screen, you can still read the previous text as a faint residual remains. When covered with new text, however, this ghosting is not that significant of a issue.
I must say, having recently viewed the technology, it has a very promising future. We'll just have to wait and see how close that future is depending on how well the new Sony reader does...
In theory, theory always works in practice. In practice, theory rarely works. <><
"Every other form of media has gone digital -- music, newspapers, movies,"
True. Music has gone digital, mostly because people take their un-copy-restricted CDs and rip them into MP3s. Then they can use the MP3 on as many computers and devices as they want, give it to friends, and have backups. Newspapers exist as un-copy-restricted HTML pages, which may be printed, sent to friends, and stored digitally without restriction.
What the publishing industry is peddling right now is copy-restricted garbage. It will be locked to a particular computer or device. I can't have backups of the text or lend it to a friend. Often I can't even print it. If the Microsoft operating system that stores the text wipes it out, oh well, go buy another one. Meanwhile the publishing industry salivates at the thought of copy-restricted electronic textbooks that expire after a single semester!
This copy-restricted garbage will not take off. If I want digital content, I'll go for something that does not have these ridiculous restrictions. Such unrestricted media can and will take off, because it has advantages--i.e. it's searchable, and cheap to distribute. For example, Wikipedia is far superior to its dead-tree equivalents for these two reasons alone. Also, the Amazon Shorts model looks promising. But I'll take a dead tree over copy-restricted garbage anyday.
Penny - plain text accounting
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.
I first found the Baen free library poking around the 'net looking for free books to read on my Palm Treo (gotta do something while the wife is shopping) and I was amazed--authors I'd actually heard of, books in series I'd actually started reading in paper, and for free... sweet!
I've read through all the free offerings (and bought some paper books based on things that interested me) and recently purchased a Webscription. It's a pretty good deal--five books for $15, in plain-vanilla HTML (so I can back them up and read them on any device I want), and three of the five were books I would have probably been tempted to buy as paperbacks. Baen passes a portion of the savings from not having to produce paper books along to the authors, saves on printing an distribution, and everybody wins.
I'm not sure about the digital ink stuff--my biggest concern would be display lifespan. I read at least a hundred books a year either as paper or eBooks (yes, seriously) and the reason my Palm works is that it's my phone so I take it everywhere and charge it up each night, and I'll replace it in a couple of years.
Overall, I'd love to see more publishers doing what Baen is doing. I definitely look for Baen books when browsing brick and mortar bookstores, and would patronize other publishers who would 1) provide compelling content 2) at a reasonable price, 3) in an open format
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I like paying $2-5 for used paperbacks on the street, or $0-0.25 for newspapers. When those are lost or damaged, I can forget about it. When my mobile "phone" can spring into a 9x16cm reflective display (with backlight) for long reading sessions, I'll be willing to replace paper books with nondisposable digital ones. Because then I won't be carrying around an extra thing to worry about. If I can still buy "books" for $0-5, and lend them to friends whose minds I'd like to colonize without paying a franchise fee.
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make install -not war
Let's see - with my current library, I can -
1) Skim through the pages at high speed without wearing down the battery
2) Keep reading through an EMP
3) Knock my library off a high bookshelf onto concrete multiple times without damaging it
4) Lend books to friends and family
5) Read any book hundreds of times without having to recharge it
6) Hurl a book across the room without damaging it
7) Toss a book into a crate and ship it UPS without packaging, and be reasonably certain it will be readable if it ever arrives at its destination
8) Have ten people reading books from my library at the same time
9) In less than two seconds, take a book from the library and hand it to a 90-year-old who's never used an electronic device in their life, and have them start reading it without any problems
10) Sell my books to other people
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!
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
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.