Here comes the e-book revolution

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Mobile+and+Wireless&articleId=9127538&taxonomyId=15&pageNumber=1

by cubix • 17 years ago

23 40 17 years ago

computerworld.com

mapleoin• 17 years ago

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

timf• 17 years ago

Nice thing about the Iliad:

"Developers and users wishing to create or run third party applications can request shell access from the manufacturer."

Thanks for the pointer.

Zev4• 17 years ago

You could grab the kindle source and hack on it directly if you wanted; http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&...

sdfx2• 17 years ago

It is pretty much the iPod effect - a nice product with a great integration of the marketplace. I guess this makes it appealing to a broad audience who are looking for simple products with name recognition.

Maybe other reader are better, faster, more feature-rich, but it seems to be the ease of use that people are looking for.

njharman3• 17 years ago

Being a product of/advertised by one of if not the worlds biggest book retailer had more than a little to do with it. In fact "integration of the marketplace", "broad audience", and "name recognition" are all symptoms of being Amazon.

unalone10• 17 years ago

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: the form is one of the best I've come across for any device.

The iLiad looks ugly. It looks clunky and generic and the interface looks just as bad. If you want good press make something that's a joy to use.

procrastitron4• 17 years ago

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's 8 inch screen would serve you better at those times than the Kindle's 6 inch screen.

For me, the ideal form factor for an e-book reader would look like one of two things:

1) A larger iPod touch with something close to an 8 inch screen.

2) An EeePC with a swivel screen so you could use it in e-book mode, similar to the OLPC XO.

Right now I'm using an OLPC XO as an e-book reader, and although it doesn't have as nice a form factor as the Iliad or the Sony Reader, I do consider it significantly nicer than the Kindle. Of course, the low price doesn't hurt either.

albertcardona• 17 years ago

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.

halo• 17 years ago

I think it's clear that none of the currently released products are anywhere near ideal and are all lacking basic features and poor design trade-offs. One company needs to come in from left-field and shake up the market with an overwhelmingly better product.

tontoa42• 17 years ago

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.

njharman3• 17 years ago

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.

unalone10• 17 years ago

Also: Amazon lets you publish books directly from them using createspace.com, and you can sell a Kindle book for no charge (I think).

tontoa42• 17 years ago

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.

wyclif• 17 years ago

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

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

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.

BvS• 17 years ago

Will file sharing etc. become as big a problem for the book industry as it became for the music industry?

Howo are writers going to earn their income in the future?

njharman3• 17 years ago

It's been a non-problem for the book industry long before it became a non-problem for the music industry.

Books were first because they are small enough to schlep around the internet back in the days of modems. Few noticed because few read books relative to # that listen to music. And music industry lobbyists are legion.

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

99cts books, sell a million and you're done.

As long as they try to sell ebooks for $20 or $50 they will fail miserably.

iTunes is about the right spot between price and convenience.

Make it expensive and I'll pirate it.

Make it affordable and put it at my fingertips and I'll pay for it to avoid the hassle of viruses or bad copies wasting my time.

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

Everyone knows the value of $1, however I don't think we see a song on iTunes as having a cost because it's less than a dollar.

unalone10• 17 years ago

I download a lot of books for free. It doesn't compare to the feeling of physically owning a book. I couldn't ever trade a physical book for an electronic version. A lot of people agree. I still see sales of my book going through, despite the fact that it's available for free on Scribd and for download as a PDF.

jballanc• 17 years ago

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 ever has." --Margaret Mead

unalone10• 17 years ago

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.

Zev4• 17 years ago

I cant stand Stanza. Unless the file is too big to email to Amazon to be converted, I do everything possible to avoid opening it up.

nickd2• 17 years ago

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.

omouse• 17 years ago

No more ebooks please. Can we have something a little more interactive that makes use of the wonderful hardware we have now?

creativeembassy• 17 years ago

If anyone is looking to get an e-book reader for CHEAP (to see if you'll even enjoy reading a book without paper), I bought my wife an eBookwise at Christmas. Her (and I, haha!) have been enjoying it since. It's old-school (still uses smartmedia cards!) but gets the job done, and I didn't pay with an arm and/or leg.

jaxn• 17 years ago

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.)

Here comes the e-book revolution

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