TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for March, 2006

By David Rothman

Here, from jkOnTheRun. Toshiba’s mistake. Photo is from video interview with Otto Berkes, Origami’s chief architect. Related: Why e-book fans should root for the Origami to succeed–and what it will take, by our newest contributor, Snappy, based in Asia.

By David Rothman

[Poll=9]

Related: Pro-DRM blog and Screw DRM says Cambridge-MIT researcher, from MobileRead.

(Time stamp changed from 7:56 a.m. EST to move this higher in the blog.)

By David Rothman

Here, from Bloomberg News via Los Angeles Times. Court ruled that Matel didn’t infringe. Excerpt from Bloomberg: “LeapFrog had claimed that Fisher-Price copied the technology from LeapPad books that lets children press the letters of a word to hear how they sound. LeapFrog sought $58 million in damages. El Segundo-based Mattel said that its PowerTouch books used different technology and that the LeapFrog patent was invalid.” LeapPad shown.

By David Rothman

Chin up if you’re in the e-book biz and sales aren’t what they they should be. Almost nine billion people are supposed to by walking Planet Earth by the year 2300. By then maybe Vista will even be done for real.

Meanwhile, for helping to develop readers and countries, there’s a new machine out–beyond the “$100 laptop” from the MIT-based One Laptop Per Child project. It’s the Intel’s $400 Edu-Wise laptop written up in Engadget. As with the MIT machine, the price is a tad theoretical. Some are thinking this might be more like Intel’s $750-plus machine. Yes, the Intel laptop will run Windows, and inside it just could be a cousin of the Origami in many ways. More details here and here from an unveiling in Brazil, home to many a Linux lover, who might have a few words to say on the cost of the Edu-Wise’s OS.

Despite my skepticism about the prices of Third World-targetted laptops, I’m rooting for both the MIT and Intel machines and, yes, the Origami tablet as well. All this competition can only be for the good, especially if the vendors don’t cluelessly diss each other. That goes for you, too, Craig. If people want to knock the competition, at least be more creative than to compare $100-range computers with those at least four times their prices. Actually the competitors aren’t quite competitors after all.

Related: Intel shows pics of Community PC, from Engadget. This one is an overgrown desktop ugly enough to be theft-proof even in the worst Third World slum.

By Snappy!

I badly want the Origami/UMPC to succeed.

Why? I love e-books, and the Origami can run many fine programs such as uBook and thus read popular formats like HTML.

So what can Microsoft do to improve the odds for its new baby? Three items top my wish list:

• A price of $499 or less, which some say the Origami may achieve in the next six months.
• Battery life of at least four hours in real life. Some at Microsoft–not everyone–have acknowledged the problem, and a longer life may be on the way.
• Keyboard keyboard keyboard. I’d like to see Microsoft unveil a good one for the Origami.

In mapping out the future of the Origami-class machines, Microsoft should consider the plight of the ultra Personal Computer, which OQO is retooling for special markets such as healthcare to avoid confronting the Origamis in the consumer market. Besides, the ultra Personal machines were just too expensive for personal use. (more…)

By David Rothman

…people want to be buried with their favorite e-book-reading gizmos. So what triggered this? Go here and here.

By David Rothman

At least one iPod-related software guy at Apple reads the TeleBlog. But my ego will puff up only so much after hearing that Apple will help address the threat of the iPod to ears.

It’s a class-action lawsuit and heavy publicity in the aggregate–not TeleBlog items alone–which made the big different. Still, I’d like to think we helped in a small way. At any rate, no matter what the reason for the update, hats off to Apple for wising up. I’ll try the update later today.

The update will be for video iPods and Nanos. I own a Nano but would like all owners to be able to benefit. Of course, the issue isn’t just limiting volume levels for those who want this. I just hope that Apple will also make the setting of the sleep timer persist, even after the iPod is turned off. Not sure if this update will do the trick.

By David Rothman

Kudos to Creative Commons for holding monthly salons for artists and other creators in San Francisco and encouraging similar activities elsewhere. The idea isn’t to ballyhoo CC directly but rather share tips on how and why the artists are using CC-licensed content.

“You know, you guys were fantastic in demonstrating what you’ve done with your stuff,” CC founder Larry Lessig told Geek Entertainment Television, thereby inspiring GETV to caption the video: “No need to kiss ass, Larry, we already love you.”

I also enjoyed a typical Lessig poke at the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which, among many other outrages, has kept many a movie out of today’s public domain and hence out of the hands of archivists who otherwise would lovingly preserve them before the films disintegrated. Same idea applies to orphaned novels. Go too long, and future generations won’t even bother to find out what they missed. Even without Bono, literature is in enough trouble. (more…)

By David Rothman

“Of course, ebooks as currently envisioned by Google and Amazon, bolted into restrictive IP enclosures, won’t allow for this kind of exchange. That’s why we need to be thinking hard right now about an alternative electronic publishing system. It may seem premature to say this — now, when electronic books are a marginal form — but before we know it, these companies will be the main purveyors of all media, including books, and we’ll wonder what the hell happened.” – if:book

Related: TeleBlog post on E-Book Museums.

By Roger Sperberg

The BBC reports “the latest chapter of the e-book.” TeleRead earlier linked to a video version of the BBC report. Via MobileRead.

By David Rothman

Hoaxes past, from the Christian Science Monitor. Now that you’re tipped off, I won’t bother doing the April Fool’s act, but you never know about our sly contributors.

Meanwhile here’s last year’s act, ‘More than Human’ version of Bill Gates is on the way.

Related: Comment on Gates item.

By Snappy!

Six or seven years ago, this would be totally untrue, as the HP Jornada 720 HandheldPC retailed for around US$999 back in the Fall of 1999. Today, the J720, as I call it in short, goes for below $200, averaging $140.

This is a depreciation of $859 over seven years or $122+ per year, ignoring inflation and all the economics and stuff. At this price, it became a good candidate as a poor man’s e-reader–in other words, an e-reader for me.

So how did the J720 become my e-reader? (more…)

By David Rothman

I perp the TeleBlog from a brick building on a grassy hillside in the state of Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

But as with Branko Collin, a native Netherlander based in Amsterdam, not that far from iRex headquarters, our regulars are everywhere. And today we welcome Snappy from Asia, a Chinese-speaking geek who wrote the informative Jornada 720 post above. Here’s Snappy’s self-bio:

I’m a tech geek who has been programming since the mid 80s. Upon graduating from college with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, I worked as a R&D software engineer in a multimedia tech firm before moving on to join a software firm as a consultant.

I am currently self-employed and doing cranial-programming as a hobby–no surgery involved. Someday maybe I’ll give the details. In my free time, I like to read books, e-books in particular, as they don’t take up any physical space and I cannot afford big bookshelves made of wood.

Materials I enjoy come from such sites as Access to Insight: Readings in Theravada Buddhism, TeleRead (Career Limiting Move if I don’t include this?), Engadget and HPC Factor.

Want to contribute to the main part of the TeleBlog? Get in touch, pass on writing samples or point to URLs, and we’ll see if it would be a good match. And no problem if you’ve never published anywhere. Among the best samples are well-done comments to the TeleBlog, which anyone can make.

By David Rothman

Put yourself in the place of a large publisher. Should you discount your e-books for cash-strapped students in developing countries? This concept, which make sense right now, will not be practical in the long run as e-books catch on. Even with DRM as an attempted enforcer, nothing is certain.

If the MIT-originated $100 laptop project succeeds, which I fervently hope, the challenges will be still greater.

Volume and XML-based tech as helpers

The solution, as I now see it, should be universal global pricing–with the volume of business more than compensating to publishers for the lower prices. XML-based technology could help simplify the insertion of locally based content in otherwise global books.

The idea of global prices could apply not just to textbooks but also to books of all kinds. As technology evolves, publishers haven’t any choice, and in fact they could fare very well if they adapted. Even in our still mainly-paper-book era, challenges abound in trying to impose geographically based price discrimination.

‘Getting textbooks from India’

Today’s New York Times carries the following passage in an article headlined Getting Textbooks Cheaper From India: (more…)

By David Rothman

Simon & Schuster’s S&S Online division is to be S&S Digital. Here are details, from the Book Standard:

The division will be headed by Kate Tentler, as senior vice president of digital media, formerly vice president and publisher of S&S Online.

“We’re excited about all the opportunities that the digital world will open for us,” Tentler told The Book Standard. “Search-and sell-technologies, the newest generation of electronic books, the unknown developments around the corner, all should be very positive developments for publishing.”

Tentler will work with the same staff to develop a digital archive and rights management system, as well as continue to run and update the website and online store, work with online search technology and stay on top of new electronic publishing technologies, the company announced.

Best of luck, Kate. Sounds as if you want to give readers a variety of options–A Good Thing.

By David Rothman

Posts tagged E-books per day for about the last year.

Get your own chart!

Expanded chart here. Tag minus the hypen here (ebooks, not e-books). So how to explain the peaks and valleys?

By David Rothman

Among other topics, a BBC video tells of the boom in short cellphone-based novels in Japan.

Just in one summer, a high school student is said to read 1,000 titles, and some novelists are training other authors to write for tiny screens. Hello, Sadi? Almost surely the Japanese agree with your advice on sentence and paragraph lengths. Of interest to the Association of American Publishers, the popularity of e-books for cellphones in Japan is said to be increasing interest in reading to the point where even paper books are benefitting.

In the video I noticed a quick mention of a subscription model of $10-$15 monthly charges. This could be a good example for U.S. publishers–along with the Japanese focus on adapting content for the medium. Also, there’s a lesson for hardware makers: the increasing size of screens on mobile phones in Japan. Now that traditional PDAs are on the way out, that should make sense in the States as well. (more…)