TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for March, 2005

By David Rothman

So where is epaper–which includes E-Ink–headed? Check out Epaper: The Flexible Electronic Display of the Future, Geoff Daily’s article in EContent. Excerpt:

Despite repeated promises of a paperless office, paper continues to be the primary method of distributing and viewing textual content, and with good reason. “The paper that we read today is a fantastic display—lightweight, easy to read, and rugged—except for the fact that it’s completely static,” says Darren Bischoff, senior marketing manager at E-Ink, which manufactures electronic ink imaging film. The challenge, he continues, is “how do you make something that’s dynamic but also has some of these visual and physical characteristics of paper.”

On the road to this goal, “there’s a continuum of flexible display capabilities,” says Bischoff. “The first stop on that continuum is really something that is likely rigid, but thin, light, rugged, and shatterproof.” He goes on to give the example of a PDA that you could drop without breaking the display. “The next stop is going towards things that are curved or conformable,” he continues. “Then the third area is called ‘repeat flexible,’ which can take some amount of flex. The ultimate vision is the scrollable display.” A scrollable display would allow a cell phone to have a five-inch screen that could roll up into a much smaller form factor.

(Via MobileRead.)

By David Rothman

Jessamyn West and Jason Griffey have some good posts on DRM insanity.

Now consider a message from veteran e-booker Lee Fyock on the eBook Community list–adamantly insisting that certain live writers and estates are dead set against e-books without DRM; in fact, against e-books period.

Heavy stone tablets vs. Lite Protection

Let the marketplace settle this one. Of course my own thinking is that without DRM the e-book business would be at least ten times its present size, now a miserable $50 million or less in annual global sales. But forget about that. Let’s just carry the clueless authors’ paranoia to its logical conclusion. Maybe books should appear only on stone tablets. To guard against piracy, Famous Writers can specify that their precious masterpieces be chiseled only on tablets above a certain weight.

As for the libraries’ side, I have a more realistic proposal. Support OpenReader. Yes, we’ll provide the DRM option for publishers wanting it–but try to nudge publishers toward more user-friendly DRM or none at all. Non-DRM will be our default. OpenReader will build on existing industry standards, and we’ll welcome the participation of librarians. Don’t expect miracles from the Open eBook Forum–dominated by Microsoft, Adobe and eReader and OverDrive, the very outfits that have created their business models around Draconian DRM.

(Anti-DRM posts found via Rochelle.)

By David Rothman

I loved A Dying Craft, or a Dying Business? As part of his post, Dan Gillmor warns against letting media companies mooch off citizen journalists who are actually doing the work of traditional reporters.

Far from an enemy of the citizen journalism movement, Gillmor is one of its mainstays. But he writes: “I’ve heard through the grapevine about newspaper executives who think the answer may well be to encourage some form of citizen journalism–meaning, in their construct, getting people to do all the work pro journalists do today but for no compensation while the business collects the revenues. Now there’s a business model–not.”

So what are the solutions, especially for investigative stories? The case for citizen journalism is strong as a truth-spreader. In what follows, you’ll see how even the post-Watergate Washington Post could cover up a story about a powerful local businessman and Abraham Ribicoff, a senator dear to L Street. Still, citizen journalism must be sustainable, whether or not the local press is willing to pick up on a story. (more…)

By David Rothman

Mobipocket sucks for serious academic publishing and similar purposes–we still need OpenReader for that reasons and many others. Still, Mobipocket has its possibilities for recreational reading. I was not surprised, then, to read that Franklin had sold its Mobipocket shares to Amazon. What’s next? Will Amazon start encouraging publishers to use Mobipocket rather than Microsoft’s neglected Microsoft Reader and the cumbersome Adobe Reader?

By David Rothman

“Freelance writers have reached a settlement worth as much as $18 million with The New York Times Co. and other defendants in a copyright infringement case involving work posted online or in databases.” – Reuters

The TeleRead take: I’m happy to see the settlement, given how abused writers are. Of course, publishers are now forcing writers to sign contracts that make them give up syndication and database rights anyway. So while this is a legal victory, is it a practical one? The other issue is that writers don’t just create content, they also consume it, especialy in their research. What will be the ultimate effect of this case on database costs? The true issue is something that goes beyond copyright law–the All-American Media Monopolies, including the database variety. Writers enjoy less and less bargaining power, especially in areas such as books.

By David Rothman

Nope, you’re not paranoid if you think that the Washington bureaucracy is reducing the amount of useful information released to the public. Oh, the ironies. At the same time Washington is as eager as ever to peddle press releases disguised as news. (Via ABC and On the Media.)

By David Rothman

“This past week I launched an open source social bookmarking competitor to delicio.us – de.lirio.us. After running it for a while open to the public, it appears to be running relatively bug free so this is the invitation to the Slashdot crowd. The code is entirely open and the content is cc licensed, so I’m sure it won’t take too long for folks to cook up some additional tools aside from the blogging feature.” – Slashdot contributor known as comforteagle.

Note: Comforteagle’s site is down right now–apparently from the Slashdot effect. Meanwhile here’s background on social bookmarking.

By David Rothman

Craig Swenson, provost of the University of Phoenix, the e-learning giant, will speak at an Open eBook Forum conference on April 14 in New York City. The topic: “How Professionals Learn Today — Intentional Learning and the Irrelevance of Textbooks.” Other conf details:

During the one-day conference, attendees will hear from leading educators, publishers and technology vendors on advances in the access and delivery of digital academic content. In addition to Dr. Swenson, presentations will be made by executives and representatives from WebCT, Connections Academy, Virtual High School, Blackboard, OverDrive, Thomson Learning Labs, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Microsoft and others.

Hey, guys, anyone wanna discuss nonproprietary e-pub standards to drive down the costs for Phoenix and other institutions–and the students themselves?

By David Rothman

Seventy-five hundred people joined OurMedia in just eight days, according to J.D. Lasica, a cofounder. Read the transcript of a chat session with him, via mediacasting. Oh, and it looks as if the early predictions are panning out. Big-time media are approaching J.D., he says, to “tap into this network of freely shareable content.”

By David Rothman

When I proposed a well-stocked national digital library system in the 1990s in Computerworld, I suggested a mix of TV-set taxes, general revenue and subscription fees determined by income.

A distributed network of librarians in many cities, I said, could develop and manage the TeleRead collection, and authors could be paid based on download counts. In my book NetWorld I advocated the use of trusted third parties to preserve the privacy of library patrons. Other private companies could do audits–anything to reduce the Big Brotherish threat from Washington while maintaining the integrity of the system.

Since I made the orignal TeleRead proposal, many others have taken a whack at the issue of fair compensation, such as Harvard’s William Fisher III; and among the latest to do so is Philip Dorrell in New Zealand, author of a self-published paper called Published Digital Information is a Public Good: The Case for Voted Compensation. I don’t agree with all that Philip says there, but his paper is well worth a look. (more…)

By David Rothman

If you love e-books, there’s a good chance you’re younger than the average p-book reader here in the States. Chance are you’re also open to technologies such as file-sharing, which could drive down the cost of book distribution, especially with more imaginative buisness models in use. An important P2P case is before the Supreme Court today.

With interest, then, I just heard lawyer Theodore Olson, a lobbyist for the RIAA and MPAA, say on C-SPAN that his 16-year-old granddaughter had to explain to him what peer-to-peer file sharing was all about. (more…)

By David Rothman

When will Sony listen? Exceptions exist, but generally the world hates propretary standards–whether for the PlayStation Portable or e-book devices such as the Librie. In the current BusinessWeek, tech columnist Stephen Wildstrom goes after Sony’s PSP. Urging an “attitude adjustment,” he writes:

Sony has made much of the PSP’s music-player abilities. But three years into the iPod era, it’s amazing the company got it so wrong. There’s no concept of automatic sync, standard on other players for loading songs. Instead, you must find the music files on your computer. Then you copy them onto the PSP’s Memory Stick memory card, either by inserting the card in a PC adapter or by connecting a USB cable between the PSP and the computer and manually putting the PSP into USB mode.

The PSP supports only MP3 and Sony’s own ATRAC formats, so the only purchased music you can play is songs from Sony’s Connect music service. (more…)

By David Rothman

“…the library’s budget for buying new materials is limited–this year, it’s $201,000–so buying digital audio books and eBooks will mean less money will be available for buying other library materials.” – Patrons can download library books, in the Press and Sun-Bulletin in Binghampton, New York.

The TeleRead take: The Broome County Public Library reportedly “is paying a Cincinnati, Ohio, firm about $20,000 a year to maintain the service.” Huh? That’s a tenth of the library’s entire acquisitions budget just for maintenance of the e-collection, and at this point the library makes available only 37 digital audio books and 787 e-books.

Yes, the library will be adding many more digital items later on. But one still wonders: Just how much of the $20,000 reflects the expense of proprietary formats and DRM? (more…)

By David Rothman

Since e-bookers tend to be more peripatetic than average, I thought that a link from TeleRead reader Margo Milne in France would be of interest. Not only might RFID-tagged passports increase threats to U.S. travellers’ lives, they could also be snoops’ delights. I’m no RFID expert and am willing to consider that there might be a good way to do this. Still, possible negatives abound–not just here but in other applications–including library- and school-related ones.

By David Rothman

A Time magazine guy once expressed surprise at receiving so few letters when he expected a flood of them–in reply to his articles read by millions. He didn’t worry that much. And I felt the same yesterday and earlier today. If people hated this TeleBlog’s new look, at least they were politely silent. Otherwise why hadn’t anyone commented? As for those who loved the reborn blog, based closely on the green “Almost Spring” theme for WordPress, maybe they felt I was insufferable enough even without praise.

Well, it turns out that some helpful TeleBlog readers were indeed trying to reach me. My Nazi spam filter–”Nazi” as in the sense of Jerry Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi–kindly blacklisted none other than dr@teleread.org. Thus did WordPress’s moderation requests fail to reach me until I looked at the discard list. (more…)

By David Rothman

A L’Express article is open to the idea of e-books for libraries–while carrying of course the legally required disclaimers in the vein of, “But paper books will always be with us.”

Well, the old collections in archives will not and should not vanish; but what happens when technology renders e-books virtually indistinguishable from the paper variety? What a silly debate! Sooner or later e-books will have flippable pages with better-than-E-Ink-style technology. With that in mind, libraries should be looking ahead now and take an e-book future for granted.

(Found via Librarian.net.)

By David Rothman

A Game Fries post tells how to read Gutenberg classics and other books on a Sony PlayStation Portable.

Chris Smith, who, via the eBook Community list, pointed to this item, isn’t thrilled by the how-to’s reliance on a virtual printer. All kinds of issues arise such as file size and searchability of text. Here’s Games Fries’ take:

–The virtual printer you installed can be used for any document. This includes websites, text files, word files, essentially anything that can be printed.

–The text is small, but relatively high contrast. I can read it fine, but my vision is also good. Anybody with bad vision may not have much success with this method.

–The files generated are huge without any encryption. DaVinci’s notebook rang in at an astounding 150 mb. Lowering the quality will lower the file size significantly.

Despite the technical challenges, Chris Smith is excited by the idea of e-book devices for the entertainment-minded masses as a whittle down the costs. So am I. (more…)