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A GUI For Books
NASA's Goddard Flight Center has just issued a contract to use Touch User Interface technology from a company called Somatic Digital. Their "TouchBooks" let printed material connect to digital devices via sensors in the covers. (C'mon, don't tell me you've never pressed on a URL on a printed page and expected something to happen.) This page on the vendor's site has videos of a 7-year-old using a TouchBook. Works with XP and OS X.
(C'mon, don't tell me you've never pressed on a URL on a printed page and expected something to happen.)
Ok, I won't tell you that I've never done it.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Back slowly away from the psychoactive drugs, these nice men want to have a little talk with you.
... and then they built the supercollider.
This page on the vendor's site has videos of a 7-year-old using a TouchBook.
OK, but little kids pick up on things pretty well. Like grandma asking little Timmy to open her child-proof medecine bottle for her.
Show me a video of my grandma using this thing and I'll be impressed.
tried clicking a link in a book...
one time in college after several days of no sleep and too much coding, I tried to click on a post-it note that was stuck to the top corner of my monitor.
And another time at work -- again after too little sleep -- I ctrl-c'd something on one computer, then walked into another room and tried to paste it onto that computer. Twice. Then I actually stopped to think about what I was doing.
I can tell you I've never tried "pressing" a URL on anywhere other than an electronic screen (not even physical hyperlinks (Semacodes).
What I miss more in hard copies of books though, is an easy search/grep functionality. Yeah, Indexes and Table of Contents try to achieve this to a certain extent, but that's nothing compared to the search capability in Electronic documents.
On countless occasions, after a long day of poring over text in vi, and searching for text as easily as "/[search-pattern]", I miss the same capability when I sit down to read a printed book.
And no, I don't want to go to http://books.google.com/ when I want to find the last page I read that I read a Character's name on in my mystery novel.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
C'mon, don't tell me you've never pressed on a URL on a printed page and expected something to happen.
No, but I do lick my fingertips before I click the "Next" button.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Recently, I did glance up at the top-right corner of a book to see what time it was. And was disappointed to see a page number instead.
I think you're a little out of touch with modern kids. My son would was perfectly comfortable using a mouse, keyboard, and joystick to launch and play his favorite games. At 3. My wife does simple spreadsheets with her grade 1 class.
No, but I have looked for an "UNDO" button when filling out paper forms...
Grammar -- F
Design -- D
Technical understanding -- F
Orthography -- D-
Yeah, that's gonna be a huge success.
Will you get electrocuted?
...does anyone else has the taskbar at the bottom of their dreams from time to time?
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
Isn't this pretty much the same thing as the Leapfrog products? Leapfrog uses a magnetic stylist to monitor where the child is pressing on the page but this is certainly nothing new. And definitely nothing exciting or well done.
(C'mon, don't tell me you've never pressed on a URL on a printed page and expected something to happen.)
Back in high school my chemistry teacher once started wiping the white board before everyone had finished taking notes. A girl in class said "No, wait", the teacher stopped halfway through and said "Oh, sorry". Then he drew an undo button (like the one in, for example, MS Word) on the board and pushed it with his hand and said "Well it didn't work, maybe you could just copy someone elses notes".
and it made this cool crunching sound. I still can't figure out where they hid the speaker but that guy sure writes slick Javascript!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The technology will be there soon. For instance, 600dpi ePaper with optional (but not necessary) backlighting. A display that looks as good as the output of a decent laser printer will be around in the next decade or so. The capacity to store any amount of reading material you would ever want on a device the size of a pocket paperback is there now.
The reason it will never take off is because for the same price as a paperback + $1.99, you will get a single eBook that's encrusted with DRM, can't be transferred to a different device and, if the capriciousness of content providers continues on the path it is now, will expire (and self-delete) in a month.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
While the "ooooh aaaaaah" factor is there, I don't see this technology as being particularly promising. It wouldn't be useful in schools because with the amount of wear and tear that school textbooks go through kids would constantly be going up to the teacher complaining that their textbook is broken. Also, having to carry a power brick around (did you see the size of that thing in the video??) for any textbook would seem to be contraindicated. And finally, if you look at the website you will see this paragraph: Tracking the usage of a book makes it a cash register to sell additional services, advertising, and products. Your book becomes a continuing point of sales to all the money-making possibilities of the digital world. Now every page can generate continuing after sales revenue. Great. Just what the world needs, another medium for spam.