Researchers Demo Flippable-Page E-book Reader

holy_calamity writes "E-readers are getting better but still limit users to keyboard-style interaction. Researchers at Berkeley and Maryland Universities have changed that with a reader that has two 'pages.' The two displays can be moved like a real book's pages to leaf through a document, or detached to compare and share virtual pages. If they are folded back to create a tablet with displays on each side, you can turn it over to flip pages. A video shows it in action." You may be reminded of the promised second-generation OLPC device, which looks somewhat similar.

Comments

Why?

[electricbern]

Mimicking real paper takes away focus that could be spent in developing novel ways of using the available technology.
There are so many more interesting things you can try to develop.

Re:Why?

[Sabz5150]

Mimicking real paper takes away focus that could be spent in developing novel ways of using the available technology. There are so many more interesting things you can try to develop. This IS a novel way of using the technology. You're making it into something we all know how to use... a good old fashioned book. This makes it much more appealing to a broader (read: older) audience who don't want to "learn something new".

Re:Why?

[electricbern]

This IS a novel way of using the technology. You're making it into something we all know how to use... a good old fashioned book. This makes it much more appealing to a broader (read: older) audience who don't want to "learn something new". Sure, but then again if someone really does not want to learn something new then probably he will stick with the book and the development is pointless anyway. It is a nice functionality but then again the resource could have been put into eye-tracking, voice-recognition...

Re:Why?

[AKAImBatman]

I disagree. One of the key reasons why I like reading eBooks is that I DON'T have to flip pages. I can use a scroll wheel or a button to flip, instead. I've found that it's many times more comfortable than holding a paperback in the center, then having to move my thumb and other arm to manage a page flip.

The reason why paper has defeated eBooks to date is because you don't have to invest in a $$$ reader ahead of time and the paper is of a much higher resolution than an eBook reader. (1200dpi prints put eBook readers to shame.) Not in a million years would I have thought that the lack of "page flipping" was a significant barrier to eBook adoption. In fact, adding page flipping would probably become an ADDITIONAL barrier to eBooks as users would be unfamiliar with how to operate the electronic device.

Re:Why?

[Joebert]

This makes it much more appealing to a broader (read: older) audience who don't want to "learn something new".

If they don't want to learn something new, my first piece of advice would have to be quit reading books.

Re:Why?

[shadwstalkr]

Research is not a commodity resource that can just be doled out to the most important projects. People initiate and work on projects that interest them and that match the skills in which they have the most expertise. Besides, this looks like a student project, maybe even for a class. There is probably nothing these people could have done in sixteen weeks to advance the state of user interfaces which have been active research topics for decades yet remain esoteric.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, physical interactions!
I really look forward to randomly jump through my book because the train accelerated too fast/the pilot got a hickup/the car hit a pothole.

Interesting but...

[SputnikPanic]

The video shows some interesting features but I think that attempts to create an electronic device that emulates a physical book is misguided. The "page-flipping" feature doesn't grab me at all. What I'm more interested in seeing in a next gen e-book reader is a nice balance between portability and adequate screen size, a screen resolution sufficient for displaying maps and other graphics, a variety of fonts, unicode support, and search capability that allows me to search either the current book, particular titles from my library, or my library in toto.

Re:Interesting but...

[nuzak]

Actually the best potential feature of a two-page reader is that the alternate screen could refresh while I'm reading the current one. eBook readers do a nasty all-black flicker before refresh.

Of course the whole point of an eBook reader is to have a nice form factor, which is really defeated by doubling the size and weight for a screen you'll only pay attention to half the time. I suspect the research will simply go into e-Ink displays with better refresh times.

Who cares about the revolution!

[Snaller]

When they show it on youtube and its crappy resolution!

Try http://vreel.net/ or something.

Re:hmmm.

[geekoid]

"
use a common API, common interface and I guarantee that lots of smart people will think of many amazing uses for them."

true, but will the do anything that sells?

Pornographers are not early adopters

[EmbeddedJanitor]

They adopt a technology when there is sufficient usage to spin a buck.

Gutenberg press: 1440, first mass printed porn 1950 or so.

The www started in 1990, but the porners only really got going in 2000+ when there were a lot of people with broadband to their homes.

Still, the major usage model for ebook readers seems to be to take a book on the subway. Until society gets a bit less uptight about public porn reading and public masturbation there will be very little call for pebook porn.

Re:Better to allow N readers to work together...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like size is the limiting factor, did you see the thickness of the 2 together? Imagine 4.

eh?

[bigdavex]

This is like a car that you can whip to make it go faster.

A big advantage of one page

[harlows_monkeys]

One thing I've noticed about my Kindle, compared to a book, is that having a one-page view, as opposed to a two-page view, makes it a lot easier to light. With a book at night with a book light, you've got the problem if needing to illuminate pages at two different positions. I've not been happy with any book light I've seen for that. A one-page approach does not suffer from this problem.

Not the only one

[DesScorp]

"Am I the only person who prefers to read pdfs on a screen rather than a printed sheet of paper, let alone an e-reader? "

You're not the only one, but I'd bet most book lovers are just that... book lovers. They don't just love stories and histories and information; they love the books themselves. I dearly love the tactile feel of a book, the binding, the pages, even the smell of older books. I'm a nut for old textbooks from the pre-50's era. I collect them, and actually read them (and you'd be surprised at how they can be both simpler and yet more informative than modern texts. I'm picky about things like how the paper "feels". Now I work in IT, so I read lots of documentation on screens myself... PDF's, web pages, Word documents... but the only electronic format I truly enjoy reading is Wikis... I can get lost in Wikipedia for days, jumping from one subject to another. But as for reading books for pleasure? I just don't see myself getting a Kindle or anything like it. It's just not the same as reading a cloth and paper physical book to me.