November 23, 2007
"both bug-crusher and discretionary hat"
Steven Poole on that new e-book reader, called the "Kindle
....I here propose a minimal list of features that any really successful ebook device must eventually have. Feature parity with physical books, after all, is surely a reasonable baseline demand. So here is what the electronic book of the future will be like.
1 It will have an inexhaustible source of energy and never need recharging.
2 It will have resolution as good as print. (No, Amazon, really as good as print.)
3 It will be able to survive coffee and wine spills, days of intense sunlight, dropping in the ocean, light charring, and falling completely into two or more pieces, while still remaining perfectly readable afterwards....
He's got more. Including:
...13 The ebook will function, morever, as both bug-crusher and discretionary hat. Placed on my face, it will make a soft roof against the sun on the beach.....Posted by John Weidner at November 23, 2007 04:47 PM
I actually really think this would be fantastic to have...I love books, certainly, but I hate having to wait for them - this thing will download your title in a minute or two - how cool is that?
Posted by: Ethan Hahn at November 23, 2007 05:22 PMI suspect it is pretty cool. And I something like it is the future. I often carry a book around, in case I'm stuck in a line or a waiting room. How fine it would be to carry one "book" filled with many books and articles...
Downsides of this particular gadget... I think you are locked-in to Amazon downloads. You can't buy e-books elsewhere and put them on your Kindle. And a keyboard? Why? And it looks too big to put in a pocket.
I suspect that what I really want is an iPhone with e-books. (And a good camera.) What bliss to have just one thing to carry...
Posted by: John Weidner at November 23, 2007 05:38 PMLocked in to Amazon downloads does suck...and their library, while extensive, is far from complete. I looked back through the last dozen books I've read, and only half of them were available. That's the biggest downside to me - but still, the library will only ever expand, and Amazon probably isn't going anywhere...
I'm planning to be doing some travel/moving around next year, and this would be just fantastic...
But I'm with you about carrying one device...though there is that problem - you want an iPhone to be small, but want a book to be larger. I love my Treo, and do read blogs on it, but what a pain in the butt...
I actually own an ebook reader! It's old. It's called a Gem or Rocketbook. Works well, but the features aren't great, especially compatability. No PDF reader. Everything that I export to it has to go through a DRM maze -- even books in the public domain that are in plain text.
I will not buy another ebook until I can connect to it from Linux or XP, open it as a folder, and simply drag and drop a plaintext or PDF file into its folder.
It seems obvious that you should be able to do that. I think much of the high-tech world has been bewitched by the idea that Microsoft is the success story to emulate. That is, lock everybody into your technology and then charge them rent forever.
A reader should be like an iPod--You can buy music from the iTunes Store, but you don't have to, and Apple is making money selling the hardware, not in having a captive market for content.
Posted by: John Weidner at November 23, 2007 10:33 PM
