TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

The iLiad: A Q & A with Karel Byloos, iRex Community Manager, who says direct Mobi downloading is on the way

By David Rothman

So what’s ahead for the iLiad—perhaps the best E Ink machine for heavy-duty business reading of PDFs because of the large screen? I caught up with iRex Technologies recently to find out.

Along with the Cybook, discussed elsewhere in the TeleBlog today, the iLiad was a big hit when I showed the eight-inch E Ink screen and the iLiad’s other glories to the geeks at the OLPC Learning Club earlier this month. Hardware connoisseurs remarked on the quality, not just size, of the display—including the glare-proofing. And in fact, iRex Technologies, spun off from Philips, E Ink’s developer, used a few other tricks to get the most out of the iLiad’s screen. This baby has 16 gray scales, a boon for manga fans and people viewing newspaper photos.

What’s more, iRex is commendably encouraging third-party developers like Feedbooks, which is working to make the iLiad more iPoddish with public domain books and other freebies, and on top of that, the iLiad 2 is now on sale through Dymocks, a large Australian book chain, and a Dutch store. I’m especially happy about iRex’s cooperation with third-party developers. The present software, often harder to use than equivalent apps on other major E Ink machines, is the big weakness. But oh what potential the hardware has! Imagine the possibilities if greater demand, or at least the right bundling arrangements with content providers, can bring the price down below the present US$700.

Significantly, AdamB has already ported FBReader, one of my favorite e-reading apps. I couldn’t get FBReader to read an industry-standard .epub file from Feedbooks in the current FBR iLiad version, but, assuming I wasn’t messing up here, I assume that such capabilities will be on the way. See FBReader/iLiad specs. .htm and .txt files worked fine, as did  .rtf and nonencrypted Mobi files (earlier I wasn’t sure about .htm and .txt). All  looked glorious with the FBReader/iRex combo since I could easily use FRReader itself to bold them for greater perceived contrast between text and background. A number of font options are available. Page-changing speed in FBReader was slower than with the included Mobipocket reader, but I would hope that AdamB can address such issues.

Karel Bylooks on Mobi, documentation, software, pricing and other topics

To find out more about the iLiad, which I reviewed along with the Cybook and Sony Reader for the Web site of Publishers Weekly, I sent iRex a bunch of questions; and, slightly edited, here are some answer from Karel Byloos, iRex’s helpful Community Manager/blogger, from whom I’ll welcome updates. So everything’s transparent, let me say I’ll be asking iRex for an extension of the loan period (which may or may not be possible–I’ll understand if it isn’t!) so I can follow the further efforts of Feedbooks and other developers.

1. When will a new version of Mobi appear with the ability to change type styles? Or am I missing something?

There will be no new features introduced in the current Mobipocket viewer.  The reason for this is because we are working on a viewer framework. This viewer framework will make it possible to easily add additional format support by both the community and iRex.

2. Are there any plans to allow purchase of Mobi books or others from within iLiad to simplify things for consumers?

Yes, there are plans to allow customers to directly download the Mobi books to their iLiad. So how will this work? When the customer buys a Mobi book online (using a PC or other device) he will be able to select the option that he wants it to deliver to his iLiad, and with the next connection to iDS [the distribution network for content] the Mobi book will be directly downloaded onto the iLiad.

3. Will iRex ever consider some printed documentation beyond the quick start quide? Are you sure that customers want to mess with printouts or screen-reading?

When a customer opens the box of a new device he wants to get started right away and in order to facilitate for that we have included a short quick start guide that will make the customer familiar with the basic operation of the device.  We do not believe that a printed manual of 100+ pages will improve this experience.

Another thing to keep in mind is the regular software updates, with each update the manual changes, therefore if we would include a printed manual it would quickly become outdated. Now we can just add a new manual to the software update and the user will always have the latest user manual on his device (and in his language of choice).

So we are not considering increasing the quantity of printed documents but rather the quality.

4. What’s the extent to which you’re now going after the consumer market? I was under the impression that iRex was going to be less B2B and somewhat more consumerish. Are any software upgrades on the way that will vastly simplify the setup process?

With software 2.11 we made a big step in simplifying the setup process of a network connection, this was a direct result of the feedback we received back from our customers. It is not unthinkable that we will do more improvements based on feedback from our customers in the future.

In the recent months we have indeed increased our activities on the European consumer market, but we target both the consumer market and the B2B market.

5. Beyond the above, what might iRex be doing to make the software simpler for ordinary retail consumers?

One thing to keep in mind with the interface is the concept for the interface design. The iLiad was designed as a paper device, not as an electronic device. The reason for this approach was to create an innovative device but with a familiar feel and operations. A good example of this is the flipbar. If you hold the iLiad in your right hand, you can easily flip a page with your right thumb going over the flipbar (left to right). This is a very natural handling and is an analogy to the turning of a page (thumb moving from right to left to turn over a page).

For book readers this might feel very natural and familiar, but more technical people who start using the iLiad, with the mindset of it being related to a PC or electronic device, might experience the interface as “unusual.”  

However, as mentioned above we do listen to the feedback of our customers and try to improve our products with this feedback.  You might also have noticed that we lately had some job opportunities for user interface designers.

By the way if you like to receive more information on the design and the concept of the iLiad, please let me know I am sure that Philip, our senior concept developer is more than welcome to provide more detailed information.

6. Is the machine still in a kind of beta?

No.

7. Will price cuts be on the way? How long in the future?

A price cut depends on a number of factors (e.g., price of components, volume of sales, etc.). That being said, you might not see any immediate price cuts but what you might see is more interesting deals when the iLiad is combined together with content. A good example here is the offer from Les Echos, which combines a newspaper subscription with the iLiad.

8. What about models that appear after it? Will they be a lot simpler to set up?

That is not known yet.

I welcome your looking at our forums—there are plenty of ordinary readers who speak about their experience with the iLiad, both good and bad.

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Additional thoughts from me, David:  What would TeleBlog readers think of iRex and Bookeen, the Cybook developer, working out some kind of relationship so the latter could benefit from the former’s software expertise? In the other direction, iRex might be able to share some hardware savvy and other resources. As far as I know, for example, the iRex has the best page-changer in e-bookdom, one of the weaknesses of the current Cybook. Karel is dead on about the virtues of the flipbar.

Detail: Photo is of the first version of the iLiad. The physical changes in the Second Edition are on the backside, not shown. Go here for more information on differences between versions, including improved battery life.