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Here comes the e-book revolution

computerworld.com

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Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#31

Post by albertcardona »

unalone wrote: post #14
mapleoin wrote: post #2

I hate it how everyone focuses on Amazon's Kindle. I think it's one of the weakest ebooks out there. And certainly the most proprietary. There are tons of ebooks out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebook_reader and I think the iLiad should get more headlines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILiad

You think? What about it makes it weak? It has access to an online Amazon store. It has free wireless Internet from anywhere. It's owned by the largest online book store on the planet and it integrates into their products. If you need to convert to a format that works for them, they give you a free email address that converts instantly, or for ten cents you can send it right to their book. Physically it's beautiful:…

I have owned an iLiad, the older model, for about a year and a half.

The iLiad has numerous design mistakes:

* It's very easy to push random buttons while reading, getting off page. There's no easy way to go back; the go back button, with an odd icon, works only for some aspects of the GUI.

* When disabling buttons, then the turn page button is also disabled. Very inconvenient.

* There are useless buttons on the frame. For example, a software update button! And if you happen to accidentally push it--which is easy--, one goes for a 10 or 20 second detour until safely returning to whatever one was reading.

* The battery lasts about 7 hours. Not bad, but for a book, one would want something like two days, or a week.

* The machine itself is slow. Dead slow. One gets bored and loses ideas in the few seconds that it takes to open a new scratch pad to write in some notes. Passing pages is also noticeably slow. Resizing and panning within a page is dog slow.

* Writing is not very nice. The trace has a different origin depending on whether one starts a trace or tries to continue one. Sometimes off by many pixels (10?).

* For what it is, it's VERY expensive: about $700. For that price one gets two Asus EEE, which have better reading abilities and just about as much battery (the 1000 models).

Despite all the above, the iLiad is still quite nice: reading on it is great. I only wish I could yell a few design concepts to their GUI engineers.

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#32

Post by nazgulnarsil »

wyclif wrote: post #5

Who is doing the interesting things in startup space to solve the publishing problem, particularly the college textbook problem?

any innovation in this area is going to face hard opposition from the textbook publishers. you could encourage professors who are writing the new textbooks to use a new distribution model, but you will face a lot of resistance.

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#33

Post by nickd »

unalone wrote: post #23
jballanc wrote: post #13

Funny how much I'm reading about this problem right after reading Siracusa's piece: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/the-once-and-fut... I, for one, can say that I was inspired to download "Stanza" after reading that, and have already finished H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" thanks to it! "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that…

Stanza is icky. I use it on my Mac to convert stuff for the Kindle, and it does the job but it does it poorly. It's especially bad on the iPod touch. Reading on something that small is possible, but it's a dread .

I disagree. I was pretty impressed at how readable it was on the iPhone. The biggest problem with copyright free e-books is that they are 100 years old, and mostly boring. Not all, but most.

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#34

Post by unalone »

nickd wrote: post #33
unalone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stanza is icky. I use it on my Mac to convert stuff for the Kindle, and it does the job but it does it poorly. It's especially bad on the iPod touch. Reading on something that small is possible, but it's a dread .

I disagree. I was pretty impressed at how readable it was on the iPhone. The biggest problem with copyright free e-books is that they are 100 years old, and mostly boring. Not all, but most.

Wow, you need to find the right 100-year-old books. Literature was if anything better then than it is now.

On the iPhone you get blurbs. I have the same problem with Classics on the iPhone. It makes reading feel cramped. Stanza is even worse: it has awful margins, and it has no support for making paragraphs feel good. It's functional but unpleasant.

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#35

Post by nickd »

unalone wrote: post #34
nickd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I was pretty impressed at how readable it was on the iPhone. The biggest problem with copyright free e-books is that they are 100 years old, and mostly boring. Not all, but most.

Wow, you need to find the right 100-year-old books. Literature was if anything better then than it is now. On the iPhone you get blurbs. I have the same problem with Classics on the iPhone. It makes reading feel cramped. Stanza is even worse: it has awful margins, and it has no support for making paragraphs feel good. It's functional but unpleasant.

I guess we can disagree on the quality of old books. There are a lot of great classics. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't argue that only new books are worth reading, but if there are 500,000 100+ year old books available, I would still argue that 499,100 wouldn't be interesting to almost anyone outside of maybe research purposes. But hey, that's 100 free interesting books, right?

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#36

Post by tontoa4 »

njharman wrote: post #10
tontoa4 wrote: post #4

Is there any place to publish and sell your own eBook online? I've had this idea but the PDF creator seems like it'd be difficult to code. The iTunes App Store type business model seems ideal for this.

http://www.lulu.com/ is one of many, many. There are books sold in iTunes App Store today. Many I've seen are just lame repackaging of public domain texts.

These places seem like they're more targeted toward producing physical products. I'd focus on digital. Still think it's a viable idea for sure.

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#37

Post by procrastitron »

Zev wrote: post #28
procrastitron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree with you regarding the Kindle's physical form; I think the Iliad (and every other e-book reader I've seen) is far ahead of it in terms of design. When I'm reading an e-book, all I want in front of me is a large screen. However, the Kindle sacrifices screen size to make up for a built-in keyboard. 99% of the time that you are using the device you won't have any need for a keyboard, and the Iliad'…

(and every other e-book reader I've seen) How many ebook readers have you actually used?

Well, unfortunately I have not been able to play with many in person, just the OLPC XO and the Sony Reader. I was basing my opinion on researching them online.

The ones I've looked into whose design I preferred to the Kindle were the Iliad, the Sony Reader, the Hanlin Reader, and the OLPC XO (in e-book mode).

It's not the same category, but there are also dev kits available from e-Ink that are supposed to be suitable for building a prototype e-book reader.

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#38

Post by unalone »

nickd wrote: post #35
unalone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you need to find the right 100-year-old books. Literature was if anything better then than it is now. On the iPhone you get blurbs. I have the same problem with Classics on the iPhone. It makes reading feel cramped. Stanza is even worse: it has awful margins, and it has no support for making paragraphs feel good. It's functional but unpleasant.

I guess we can disagree on the quality of old books. There are a lot of great classics. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't argue that only new books are worth reading, but if there are 500,000 100+ year old books available, I would still argue that 499,100 wouldn't be interesting to almost anyone outside of maybe research purposes. But hey, that's 100 free interesting books, right?

To be fair, if we publish 500,000 books a year now, less than 100 will be interesting. ;-)

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#39

Post by Zev »

procrastitron wrote: post #37
Zev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(and every other e-book reader I've seen) How many ebook readers have you actually used?

Well, unfortunately I have not been able to play with many in person, just the OLPC XO and the Sony Reader. I was basing my opinion on researching them online. The ones I've looked into whose design I preferred to the Kindle were the Iliad, the Sony Reader, the Hanlin Reader, and the OLPC XO (in e-book mode). It's not the same category, but there are also dev kits available from e-Ink that are supposed to be suitable…

Don't judge the kindle until you use it. Seriously. I don't know anyone (myself included) who has a kindle and doesn't like it. It might not be the best looking thing at first, but, goddamn does it grow on you.

Re: Here comes the e-book revolution

#40

Post by jaxn »

I am finding more and more technical books available as PDFs and that is pushing me towards getting an ebook reader. When I am using a book for reference I want to be able to see it and my screen at the same time (not the book on my screen).

Interestingly, I think that if I buy an ebook reader I will read more for leisure as well.

From where I sit, the EVDO on the Kindle is appealing (esp since I hear it has some RSS capabilities). However, the PDF support seems frustrating.

Hopefully the original Kindle will see a drastic price drop (even if only on ebay). That way I can see if I like it without spending so much money. (We must be in a recession if I am scrimping on new tech toys.)

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