DISQUS

wmartin46 · 2 weeks ago

The current generation (Kindle/Sony) are little more than a "proof of concept" in terms of the possibilities for the coming generation of e-books/readers. This generation best serves the needs of people reading text only (or text with limited graphics)--such as novels, science fiction, and similar kinds of printed material.

When in an academic/research environment, it doesn't take long to see that the current generation of readers is woefully short in the library management area. By that, I mean that once you have more than 20-30 books/papers/files, you need to keep backup copies, and you might like to have some inventory capability so that you can manage the material you have with a little help from your computer. You can do all of that by hand, but the ebook vendors need to be aware of this and start providing for these needs.

There is also matter of repair. These devices are still very fragile, compared to a book. Right now, it takes at least two weeks to get one repaired via Sony Customer Support. Students can't afford to wait two weeks to get one repaired. Perhaps schools can buy some extras to keep for these situations, but the repair chain needs to be much more "user friendly" than it is now. Additionally, these devices need to be "ruggedized" and "water proofed."

The e-Ink devices have been on the market now for a little over two years. It's time for the vendors to fix these problems and let's get on with seeing ebooks/readers begin to replace the printed book.

(Note .. I've been using a Sony 505 for about two years now, and love it. I will probably upgrade to a Plastic Logic Que in the spring, in order to get access to a full screen reading device. I've downloaded about 1100 books onto my Sony, and use it every day while researching a book.

Here's a very short video I made about E-book Readers:

http://www.youtube.com/wmartin46#p/u/15/eWRpkIQ...

Pony99CA · 2 weeks ago

Personally, I think handwriting on the screen is the wrong way to go. Typing will be much more readable (have you ever looked at your signature on those credit card screens vs. your real signature), but the typing experience has to be good (although people seem to be able to text on a phone keyboard without many complaints).

You also need a way to organize documents, but the lowly PC has had that for years -- folders. Just keep your books in folders. Plus, if the items in the folders are just links to the books, you can easily keep links to the books in multiple folders for more complex classification schemes. You could even have some "automatic" folders, like "recently opened books" and "favorite (most opened) books".

Finally, one thing that I haven't seen mentioned (maybe I just invented it?) is citations/footnotes/linking. Imagine highlighting a passage in one book and linking it to a note in another book so that viewing the note allowed you instant access to the highlighted passage. That would be great for research.

I looked at a Sony reader a week or two ago and was shocked how slow it seemed. Paging down caused the screen to go black and then the text to paint in. I don't know if that was some programmed transition, but I found it obtrusive and annoying.

Steve

P.S. Anybody is free to use these ideas, but not to patent them. If nobody has already patented these concepts, consider this prior art in the public domain. :D