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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.
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.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
Seems like the logical thing to do would be to simply allow multiple readers to cooperate in document display, so when you snap together (say) 4 readers, you get a 4-page view, split them apart you get 2 2-page views of different documents. You would use proximity sensors to define which pages were "together", and simple mechanical clips to hold them together when not laying flat. You could then hand one side of the page you were looking at to a co-worker, then pull a blank sheet out of your drawer to restore your own reading area, while he walks off with the other page.
This is becoming more like an extension of the Xerox PAD and TAB.
The documents mightn't be stored on the device, rather they would be accessed via the office wifi network.
whats up with the video? seemed more like a slide show to me.
Anyhow. I like the concept - I have long been advocating this kind of thing.
But why stop with a eReader? Make a standard tile module with a touch sensitive tactile screen and the skys the limit. four make a monitor, 64 make a tv, 128 make a wall screen. two make a laptop. one makes an eReader. 40 make a beowolf cluster for number crunching.
make options like a keyboard only to lower cost. or a processing one with extra ram and more grunt and no screen. maybe a half size one for a pda.
use a common API, common interface and I guarantee that lots of smart people will think of many amazing uses for them.
is a lack of foresight making people think small, or are people listening too much to busiess concerns?
Interesting concept... I don't think it looks very user friendly though. If the idea is to create a book like feel with an electronic device, the mark was missed by a long shot. IMHO the user needs to be able to flip pages just like a regular book. Now... when someone finally makes a book with e-paper... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeaT62OMi8M Then I'll be interested. Until that day comes... I'll stick with my laptop.
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.
I've been interested in eBooks for quite a while now, but the problems I have with all of them are not the small controls, or the lack of natural page flip options (though the idea here is rather cool).
My biggest problems with all current eBook readers is the very limited (and usually highly proprietary) formats that they support, and when they do support other formats the lack of efficiency in way they deal with it. For example the Sony eBook reader will read PDF's, but the further you go into a PDF the slower the page flips get. The same problem is not evident, of course!, when using the Sony default (and highly DRM'ed) format. Also the eInk technology is still rather slow in the page updates... Have not used a Kindle yet, so cannot comment on how it behaves or the efficiency of their alternate format supports.
So far the best reader I have found are the Fujitsu P1510/1610/1620 series of small form factor tablets. Using a standard OS on it, I can load any eBook reader software I want, and still be able to use it as a travelling computer when I need it. Of course the weight is much heavier then the "real" eBook readers, but at least I'm not restricted to their formats.
This guy can't stop talking about how people doing "research-like" work won't be please by a e-reader. They demonstrate that by showing this guy reading a double-column mini-letter size paper.
Pretty obvious, if you ask me. E-readers are handy, but not for reading tasks that very fast require navigation. Specially of double column pdf files (that would be the equivalent of what the guy was handling). For stuff like that a large LCD monitor on vertical stand does the job much better. Or simply print the dawn thing.
Their proposed solution is to have 2(!) small screens, which are even harder to flip pages than hitting a large round button like in most e-readers (mine is a el cheapo Hanlin v3)
You wanna a glimpse to the future of (affordable) e-books just look at these images: http://www.jinke.com.cn/Compagesql/embedpro/futurepro.asp
I like it when the model after real desktop work flows.
Just like this Proof-of-concept desktop environment (ok, might be a little offtopic)
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I've looked over the shoulders of a few people with Kindles on the subway and the screen is just too small for me. I'd rather take the pixels from a dual display and cram them all on a single, continuously-scrollable one.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Its called a library.
When they show it on youtube and its crappy resolution!
Try http://vreel.net/ or something.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Seriously, I'm not trying to troll. I've heard that one way to determine if a new technology will take off is to see if pornographers are early adopters. With that in mind, I predict that this will be an expensive flop.
a library. There might even be one in a city near you.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That is a myth, based on confirmation bias.
Pornographers try EVERY media. So naturally it's on all existing and successful media, but it is also on every form of failed media.
Assuming it failed after entering the market.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just read this on it.
Great science books!
But at least you'll be able to peruse the pages of Entertainment Weekly...
Amazing research! With two screens, you can display two facing pages, or two different documents, and you can even rotate pages.
What amazing innovations will they think of next?
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It seems like the most you'll accomplish is doubling the cost and size.
This is like a car that you can whip to make it go faster.
-Dave
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?
For me, it's all about the size of displayed text. The larger the better. I've got good eyesight, but it's simply easier on the eyes to have text in a large font that I can read from a distance. I also like to be able to zoom into images (think academic papers, with complex plots that are often printed way to small to save space).
Now, I can see the advantage of having a mobile device. But while I'm at my desk, I'll take the display over a printed sheet any time.
On my blog, I wrote about when HP thought they'd "solved" e-books the last time.
The only cool motion-based user interface I've found so far is MacSaber. But I do use two displays at the same time every day at work.
Gentoo Sucks
Sure, but clearing its memory is tedious and slow and leaves those little rubber goobers all over the place.
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.
"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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Sorry, but I cannot recognize anything on the video that even remotely resembles flipping pages of a real book. Perhaps that's because real books tend to have more than two pages.
No new technology here - move along.....
They have been doing this for a couple years now with "online catalogs". Heck Cabela's has them on their site.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Up until the early Christian era, most books were written on scrolls. They were a bit tedious to use. However these are easy to emulate in computers. Some classic books such as synagoge torahs still use this ancient interface.
I use my HTC to read sometimes, and although my reader software is proprietary, it does have some nice features. I can read one handed (stop it at the back !) and "turn" pages with my thumb on the touch screen. Sometimes a small screen is better, if it was any wider, my thumb wouldn't reach both sides.
More paperback reading than weighty tomes, but even those can be accomplished over time. Project Gutenburg already has some money from me and there will be more shortly. There is a VAST library of material there, not brand name stuff, but real authors from centuries of writing and experience. And it's all free.
I'm currently reading a Sci-Fi story written in the 1800's - it's good to get perspective.
I'm not going to reiterate all of the, I dunno, eight or nine UI innovations they accomplish by having this dual, separable, interrelated screen config. I'll just say that as somebody who spends a lot of time doing things like looking at a map of an area while reading a policy paper or event description that relates to that area, I would gain considerably from having such a device. My only question is, will actual commercial devices based on this be designed to let the user work with five or six of them at once? Because that's what I could really use. This would let me have a book open on one device, a couple of maps or charts on another, and thumbnails of other documents I'm working with concurrently off to the side. As somebody who spends a lot of time trying to determine the truth that lies between differing accounts of the same event, this would help me no end. And having bought a couple of them, if I could have them designed to work together, I would then end up periodically using them in meetings and training sessions, handing out one "page" to each participant, letting each of us review the same document together, with all of the displays slaved to one most of the time but with a note function that operates independently for each user.
I don't know about the rest of y'all but I want such a device a heck of a bunch of a lot.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.