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Google Working To Make 'iPod/iTunes for Books'
nettamere writes to mention an initiative by Google to take the library online. The end result of the Google Book Search, the company hopes to see a future where they are not merely referring customers to Amazon, but instead offering them the ability to download books directly. According to the Times Online, Google hopes to 'do for books what the iPod did for music.' From the article: "One of Google's partners, Evan Schnittman of Oxford University Press, said he foresaw a number of categories becoming popular downloads: 'Do you really want to go on holiday carrying four novels and a guide book?' The book initiative would be part of Google's Book Search service and its partnership with publishers, which will make books searchable online with publishers' approval. At present, only a sample of each book is available online."
I would prefer neither. I don't like guide books and I don't really like listening to audiobooks. I just got an audiobook as a present and I really can't stand it at all. For some reason I cannot get into the book while it's playing in the car (or anywhere for that matter) -- too many distractions. There is something about reading that really draws me into the novel that I can't seem to replicate with an audiobook.
As far as guidebooks go, I'm better doing some prior research and using Google Maps to waypoint places in my GPS to autoroute to when we go somewhere else. There is nothing better than doing it that way.
I really have to disagree with you there and I am sure I am not the only one. Personally the only books I prefer in print is either reference books or those that use a lot of pictures. Any novels that I buy I first look for the ebook version. There are a few reasons why:
1. I don't need to disturb my wife's sleep with a lamp.
2. I can adjust the type size to suit me.
3. I can read a lot faster on the devices.
4. I predominately read during the evening and the backlight makes things far easier to read and a lot more comfortable since I am not constantly adjusting to book for the best lighting as I change pages.
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
A friend of mine got an Irex iLiad recently and it is awesome. The "electronic ink" is really slick. The text is crisp, the page transitions are smooth & the battery life is pretty good.
There are cheaper eBook readers... but with 1st gen technologies, you're getting what you pay for.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I dunno, maybe if they display it with electronic paper, which doesn't use energy except to change the screen. Could even attach some photovoltaic cells and get power from your reading lamp.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
Fair Dealing is a non-US name for Fair Use, so yes, it is a legitimate term and the author was correct to use it. As for Google's use of the books being Fair Use, this is for the courts to decide. There is nothing clear cut about determining Fair Use. Google is not commenting on, critiquing, or parodying the works, they are simply offering a snippet of the work without adding value to the work (no, exposure to the world at large is not an exemption covered by Fair Use).
anon because i modded before reading your post.
other than the ones you list, i also like having the following advantages
i have formed a habit of reading till i fall asleep since i got my p910i two years ago
- i don't have to get up or even turn to turn off the light/reading lamp
- the book remembers where i stopped reading. i can carry on reading whenever i get 2,5,10 minutes (good for the climactic parts when reading fiction)
- i can even set it to scroll automatically so i dont have to do anything to keep reading, but i will have to turn it off manuall or lose the other two benefits
- i can carry as many books as i like and they will always take up the same amount of space/weigh the same
- i can annotate, markup, and do anything i like with the content, without damaging the original 'print'
- with mobipocket format i am not bound to a single medium for purchased books. i can read it on my phone, my computer, and any other media that mobipocket may support tomorrow
There are some quite capable eBook readers on the market, lead by the Sony Reader and the iRex iLiad. Both feature an e-ink screen which uses a matrix of charged dark and light particles at a resolution of around 160 dpi to represent a paper page.
There is no backlight and power is only consumed when the black/white charges are flipped to rebuild the page. The Sony Reader is rated at about 7000 page turns before a battery recharge is necessary. It can be happily left on without worrying about the battery going flat, and owners report in excess of months between charges.
Without a fluorescent backlight, the screen is far easier on the eyes than reading on a LCD screen, provided the ambient light in the room is good. The screen readability is roughly equivalent to a pulp paperback novel. (The texture is smoother but the white is not pure white, rather a very light gray.)
The main limitations are getting the content onto them. The Sony Reader accepts text, RTF, PDF and Sony's own proprietary eBook format, which is what books bought from the Sony Connect store are supplied in (DRM protected).
RTF is generally accepted as the best form to obtain and create books in, as PDF has to be specifically make to the 600x800 screen resolution (larger PDFs scale poorly) and is slower for the device to render.
Buying books from the Sony Connect store is acceptable in theory, but in practice the range is somewhat limited to recent bestsellers and popular classics, and the price is only discounted around 20% from a pulped tree equivalent (for something that is less tangible and less shareable).
Books from the Gutenberg project and other sources can be freely downloaded and transferred as text (plain) or RTF (moderately formatted) although these of course are classic, out of copyright works. More modern books, for which a legitimate or illicit PDF or CHM has been obtained (eg, O'Reilly manuals) can be converted from their original form into RTF, but the process is somewhat tedious and more work than the drag-and-drop method of say transferring a downloaded MP3.
(This is also not helped by poor Sony Connect software (intended to be iTunes for eBooks, and clearly UI inspired by it), which is slow and poorly designed.)
Still, with the Sony Reader and similar devices accepting up to 4GB SD cards, able to store a library of many thousands of books in a quite readable format which is slimmer than a potboiler novel, the hardware certainly shows promise. This is a first generation line of products, so inevitably it will improve for the next rev.
Filling them is the hard part, which is where Google could help.
I have been using gutenberg.org for about 2 months now and I love it. Reading analog books is not pleasurable for me due to my poor sight and being to resize text on my downloaded .HTML books through Firefox is quite nice. Gutenberg has a decent selection but it is only a small fraction of the books in real life so having somebody like Google working on an E-Book system is great news for people like me.
Besides, literature is expensive; only about 1/3 of the price goes to actual profit for publisher/author. The rest of the price goes to materials (20% of total cost), storage for unsold copies, printing staff, etc, etc.
Digital distribution could significantly drop prices...now that $60 dollar hard cover could cost 25$
Accessibility is very important. I'm visually impaired and use a device (www.bookcourier.com) to read text files. Of course, most ebooks aren't distributed in ASCII, but in some kind of DRM'd format. I've spend a lot of time coming up with ways to break the DRM on ebooks, just so that I can use them. The only format which I know can be reliably broken is Microsoft's .lit. I'm not stupid enough to hope that google will release books in plain text (although I wish they would), and I'm sure almost no publishers would allow them to, but I hope whatever portable reader they produce has good text to speech.
Having said the above, google might as well release them in plain text, I'm sure the slashdot crowd appreciate the uselessness of DRM. In fact, it's generally easier for me to attain an illegal copy of a book (which I can format shift) than it is for me to buy one and try to break the DRM.
This world is really screwed up!
That's because it sucks. The text is dim and low-contrast, hard to read except in bright light, and it has the exceedingly annoying habit of flickering the entire screen every time you "turn" a page. Add the proprietary DRM and the limited selection plus the full-boat retail prices of Sony's online store, and you've got the makings of yet another Sony disaster.
If you've got a list, make sure it stays at the bottom of it.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Sure, paper has it's alure. I used to be strictly oposed to non paper. However reading off PDA has won me over. The major benefit of carrying 100 books around in your pocket, with portable book light and automatic bookmarks is a strong sell. It means no matter where I am, if I'm bored or waiting I can simply pop out my PDA for an instant, temporary escape. I'm glad there are people in both camps because as long as there is a strong demand I can continue to enjoy both.
I've been reading off a Tungsten E2 palmos device using Palmfiction ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/palmfiction ) (handles txt and rtf better than the built in e-reader) for a while now and I'm pretty happy with it. These e-ink screens are fine but they need a light source so it's not an automatically better choice. The only freaky thing is reading off a PDA with autoscroll on for an hour and then when you stop the text still seems to keep moving.
I think this is a great start for an application to help musicians. Any classical musician knows that the amount of sheet music you own quickly spirals out of control. Not only that, but the books are heavy and cumbersome for a student to drag around. And they can be very annoying when they don't lay flat or the binding breaks. Oh yeah, and these books are very expensive, especially when you need a specific edition imported from Germany.
I was impressed that some of the books on books.google.com were sheet music books, although I was only to find partial previews for the ones I care about. Still, it is a good step and hopefully publishers will move towards downloadable sheet music in the future.
Some day, I hope there will be a good, cheap, portable sheet music tablet display with enough memory to hold a library of music scores. It could have some basic musician's tools like a metronome, digital tuner and audio record/playback. It could also have a wireless connection so that a conductor could just transmit the entire orchestra's music in one button press instead of passing out and keeping track of a hundred different scores.
Being a paper-sniffer I just can't see a future for this. Every book has its own unique sweet smell of wood pulp made laminate - unless you can reproduce that via an olfactory plugin to the digital device, I would rather lug the tomes around thanks very much.
What? stop looking at me like that!
Nothing witty