Devices
CrunchPad Tablet Prototype Coming Together
Mac Slocum
June 4, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen 
The low-cost tablet project ("CrunchPad") from TechCrunch is nearing the working-prototype stage:
This launch prototype is another significant step forward from the last prototype. The screen is now flush with the case and we've decreased the overall thickness to about 18 mm. The case will be aluminum, which is more expensive than plastic but is sturdier and lets us shave a little more off the overall thickness of the device ...
The next time we talk about the CrunchPad publicly will be at a special press and user event in July in Silicon Valley.
The post's associated pictures and video are worth viewing. CrunchPad looks like something Apple would cook up.
Google's Browser-Based Plan for Ebook Sales
Mac Slocum
June 1, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen
BEA '09 may be remembered as the moment when Google formally entered the ebook market. From the New York Times:
Mr. [Tom] Turvey [director of strategic partnerships at Google] said Google's program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. "We don't believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go," he said.
He said that Google would allow publishers to set retail prices. Amazon lets publishers set wholesale prices and then sets its own prices for consumers. In selling e-books at $9.99, Amazon takes a loss on each sale because publishers generally charge booksellers about half the list price of a hardcover -- typically around $13 or $14.
In addition -- and this is pure conjecture on my part -- Google's push into HTML 5 is a potential shot across the bow of e-reader manufacturers. Assuming it's widely implemented, HTML 5 will further blur the line between standalone software and Web browsers/cloud-based content. Toss in Google's Chrome browser and the Gears plugin and you can see how the dots (might) connect.
According to the Times, Google intends to launch its ebook project in 2009. This effort is separate from the pending Book Search agreement.
Amazon Demos Large Screen Kindle DX
Mac Slocum
May 6, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (3)
|
Listen
Amazon released the large-form Kindle DX this morning. Notable specs include:
- The $489 DX ($130 more than Kindle 2) will be shipped this summer. It's currently available for pre-order through Amazon.com
- The DX screen measures 9.7 inches diagonally; 3.7 inches larger than the Kindle 2. Including the frame and keyboard, the DX is 10.4 inches high x 7.2 inches wide x 0.38 inches deep.
- The DX holds 3,500 books. Kindle 2 holds 1,500.
- The DX has built-in PDF support. The Kindle 2 requires conversion through the Personal Document Service, which was recently switched to a $0.15 per megabyte variable fee.
- Auto-rotation switches between portrait and landscape modes.
During this morning's demonstration, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos addressed the DX's two target markets: textbooks and newspapers. Bezos announced an agreement with Pearson, Cengage and Wiley to bring textbooks to the device.
In its live-blog coverage, Engadget offered this quote from Jeff Bezos in regard to newspapers:
"We're pleased to announce that three papers have signed on with us, the NYT, Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. They will offer reduced prices for long term commitments on subscriptions."
Adam Ostrow from Mashable says the "reduced prices" pertain to the cost of the Kindle DX, but I'm looking for clarification. Technically, those price reductions could apply to subscription fees. The Kindle-based New York Times subscription currently costs $13.99 per month, and the Times may knock that monthly fee down in return for a multi-year commitment. More to come ....
(Update, 5/6/09, 2pm) -- Ars Technica says a lower-cost DX will be available with newspaper subscriptions. Further details have not been announced.
Report: Large-Form Kindle to Target Textbooks and Newspapers
Mac Slocum
May 5, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen
The Wall Street Journal says a large-form Kindle -- rumored to make its debut tomorrow -- will be partially targeted at the textbook market:
Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school's chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences of students who get the Kindles and those who use traditional textbooks, he said.
There's also considerable discussion about the impact a large-form Kindle could have on newspapers and magazines. Large-form e-readers from Plastic Logic (due in 2010) and iRex (currently avaialble) are aimed at the same business/media-consumer market.
We'll know full details after tomorrow's Amazon press conference.
Amazon Acquires Lexcycle
Mac Slocum
April 27, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen
Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza, has just announced it's been acquired by Amazon:
We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.
The New York Times says terms of the deal have not been released. It's not yet known how Stanza will fit amidst Amazon's Kindle and recently-released Kindle iPhone app.
Karen Templer from the Readerville Weblog poses a number of key questions:
Will the Stanza/Fictionwise store be replaced with a Stanza/Amazon store? (Presumably.) And/or will Stanza be merged with the Kindle app? Will it continue to read ePub and other formats or will it conform strictly to Kindle? (Conversely, will Kindle begin reading ePub?) And, most of all, where does this leave IndieBound and their ebook plans?
Sony-Google Deal Adds 500k Public Domain Books to E-Reader
Mac Slocum
March 19, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen
Sony is adding 500,000 public domain EPUB-based titles to its Reader catalog through a partnership with Google. Paul Biba at Teleread examines Sony's rationale:
Sony's apparent intent, meanwhile, beyond adding value to the Reader, will be to use public domain books in ePub to entice people to install its software and in time buy its reader devices.
In the exclusive TeleRead interview, Steve [Haber, President of Sony's Digital Reading Division] emphasized that this program is part of Sony's commitment to an open platform, as opposed to the closed platform of its major competitor (hint, hint, the name starts with an A). The ePub conversion is being done by Google itself, as noted; and Sony and Google are exploring ways to make copyrighted ePub material available.
Catalog expansion and mobile devices are propelling recent ebook/e-reader announcements. Google Book Search opened mobile access to its archive of public domain books in February, and Amazon recently made its Kindle titles available to iPhone and iPod Touch users through a free iPhone app.
Coming to Grips with the "Unthinkable" in Publishing
Andrew Savikas
March 18, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (11)
|
Listen
While much of the Twitter chatter this past weekend was about the annual South by Southwest festival and conference, there was quite a bit of "retweeting" of links to a post by Clay Shirky:
During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller octavo volume along with italic type. What seemed like a minor change -- take a book and shrink it -- was in retrospect a key innovation in the democratization of the printed word. As books became cheaper, more portable, and therefore more desirable, they expanded the market for all publishers, heightening the value of literacy still further.
That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn't apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can't predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify.
And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won't break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren't in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
I'll second Tim O'Reilly's reaction to the piece:
This is a piece that anyone concerned with the future of publishing simply MUST read.
It's a long post, but well worth a close read (and re-read). Though Clay's talking about newspapers, much of what he has to say applies to book publishing in particular, as well as media in general.
More on Shirky's post from Mark Bertils (@mdash) over at indexmb.com:
Journalism is the act. Newspapers are the artifact. The infrastructure around the artifact is imploding, never to be replaced.
Jakob Nielsen: Kindle Content Must be Kindle-Specific
Mac Slocum
March 16, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (1)
|
Listen
Jakob Nielsen offers an in-depth look at Kindle formatting best practices:
For Kindle, it's certainly unacceptable to simply repurpose print content. But you can't repurpose website content, either. For good Kindle usability, you have to design for the Kindle. Write Kindle-specific headlines and create Kindle-specific article structures. [Link included in original post.]
Kindle Comes to the iPhone
Mac Slocum
March 4, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (6)
|
Listen
Users of the iPhone and iPod Touch can now tap into Amazon's Kindle store with the free Kindle for iPhone application. From The New York Times:
The move comes a week after Amazon started shipping the updated version of its Kindle reading device. It signals that the company may be more interested in becoming the pre-eminent retailer of e-books than in being the top manufacturer of reading devices.
Amazon is positioning the iPhone app as a gap filler: nibble on book content while waiting at the airport, in line, at a restaurant, etc., but settle in for deep reading with the original Kindle (or, presumably, the printed edition). Toward that end, the Times says Amazon is using a bookmark feature that keeps a reader's spot as they switch devices.
Reaction to the Kindle iPhone App
I'll be adding to this list over the next few days as more coverage appears (I highly recommend following the real-time Kindle trend on Twitter). Please share additional links and your own Kindle/iPhone analysis through the comments area.
Hands on: Kindle for iPhone a great Kindle companion
(Chris Foresman, Ars Technica)
Clicking on the "Get Books" button on the Home screen instructs users to got to Amazon's Kindle Store via a computer for "the best shopping experience." And they aren't kidding; while there is a link that will open the Kindle Store in MobileSafari, browsing and buying books this way is just plain frustrating. The Kindle's own integrated buying is far simpler in comparison. Apple presumably has this restriction in place so that developers don't abuse the App Store system, giving away free apps on Apple's dime and then selling content elsewhere. Perhaps Amazon can build an iPhone-browsable version of the Kindle Store and display it via an embedded browser, or better yet, perhaps Amazon and Apple can come to some sort of agreement to allow in-app purchasing.
First Impressions of Kindle on iPhone
(Walt Mossberg, AllThingsD)
... it is a solid basic app for reading books, and is especially valuable if you already own a hardware Kindle, as I do. In my brief tests, the iPhone app synchronized rapidly and perfectly with my purchased library of Kindle books on Amazon's servers, and allowed me to retrieve a previously purchased e-book, without paying again, just as my hardware Kindle does. It also synchronized to the furthest page I had read in that book on my Kindle. After reading for awhile on the iPhone, I performed that process in reverse, and my Kindle took me to the same spot where I had quit reading on the iPhone.
Kindle for iPhone Review
(Perrin Stewart, 148Apps)
Read more…... it's worth having the app on your device for the access to Amazon's virtual library alone. In many cases, the pricing on Kindle versions of books are much cheaper than other ebook stores (compare the Kindle version of "The Graveyard Book" for $9.99 to the Fictionwise version which is $17.99 and the stand-alone iTunes store app which is $17.99, for instance), and they often have books that other stores do not.
Hearst Gets Into the E-Reader Game
Mac Slocum
February 27, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Hearst Corp. is developing its own wireless e-reader that may debut this year. From Fortune:
According to industry insiders, Hearst, which publishes magazines ranging from Cosmopolitan to Esquire and newspapers including the financially imperiled San Francisco Chronicle, has developed a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines. The device and underlying technology, which other publishers will be allowed to adapt, is likely to debut this year.
The larger screen size will put the Hearst reader in the same class as devices from Plastic Logic and iRex.
Fortune says Hearst isn't discussing product specs, but the company has a longtime association with E Ink. Last September, Esquire published the first E Ink magazine cover.
Video: Android meets Eink
Andrew Savikas
February 13, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Keeping with the "labs" theme for recent posts, via a tweet from George Walkley:
Lots of talk about devices at TOC - now just saw this, Android + e-ink http://vimeo.com/3162590 #toc
The guys at MOTO labs have hacked together a prototype showing Google's Android operating system running on an e-ink display:
Android Meets E Ink from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.
At TOC: Video from Yesterday's Kindle Announcement
Andrew Savikas
February 10, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Courtesy of Phil Torrone at makezine.com, here's video from yesterday's Kindle announcement:
At TOC: A Different Way of Doing Booth Books
Andrew Savikas
February 9, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (4)
|
Listen
At most of our conferences, we sell books from our booth, and last year's TOC Conference was no exception. This year we're trying something a bit different -- including a way to browse those books virtually:
- Test drive the Espresso Book Machine. Near the O'Reilly booth we've arranged a very special debut of the 2nd-generation EBM, and pre-loaded it with about 10 O'Reilly titles (including keynoter Jeff Jarvis' new book, What Would Google Do?, and a special "Best of TOC" compilation of some of the best writing from the past year about the future of publishing from our blog and around the Web.) You can buy any of the available titles, and have it printed on the spot. We did our best to pick titles that were well-suited to the Espresso.
- Try all the books on Safari. You'll hear a lot about digital books and reading at TOC, and while standalone ebooks and devices are a hot topic, Safari Books Online has been delivering subscription-based access to digital books for nearly a decade. We've set up something special for TOC attendees, and started off your virtual "bookshelf" with 10 of the titles on display at the O'Reilly booth. It's a chance to experience a successful digital delivery model (now on your mobile phone too) while exploring thousands of books, videos, and articles.
The EBM is brand new, so thanks in advance for your patience when checking it out -- it'll be on display next to the O'Reilly booth in the exhibitor room next to the main ballroom. The exhibit space is open from 10 am - 4 pm on Tuesday (plus the exhibitor reception from 6-7:30 pm), and then 10am - 5pm on Wednesday.
At TOC: Drawing for Pre-loaded Sony Reader Signed by Tim O'Reilly
Andrew Savikas
February 9, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Though much of the ebook buzz today has been around Kindle and Plastic Logic, the Sony Reader has a real following, and the company's new touch-screen version is by far the most elegant-looking reader I've come across (check out this session on Wednesday for a look at the device landscape). Because Sony (wisely) supports EPUB natively, it's a great fit with our ebook bundles.
Sony has kindly donated a PRS-700 for the TOC Conference, and to celebrate crossing the 400-title milestone for titles available as ebook bundles today, we're giving it away, pre-loaded with as many of them as I can fit on an 8GB SD card in EPUB format, and signed by Tim O'Reilly. Here's a photo of the reader:
That's more than $12,000 in ebooks! All paid TOC attendees (sorry speakers, press, and staff) are eligible, and we'll announce the winner on Wednesday (you must be present to win).
Amazon Announces Kindle 2
Mac Slocum
February 9, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
I've got just enough time between TOC tutorial sessions for a quick Kindle 2 post.
As anticipated, Amazon unveiled Kindle 2 this morning. The $359 update is thinner (0.36 inches) and lighter (10 ounces) than the original Kindle. It also includes updated navigation, more storage (2GB; approximately 1,500 titles) and a screen capable of handling 16 shades of gray. Kindle 2 will be released on Feb. 24.
The one feature that really caught my eye is the Kindle's new text-to-speech function:
You can switch back and forth between reading and listening, and your spot is automatically saved. Pages automatically turn while the content is being read, so you can listen hands-free.
Safari Books Online Goes Mobile
Allen Noren
February 9, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (7)
|
Listen
Like much of the publishing world, I'm eager to hear about Amazon's latest version of the Kindle. But that's not the only news today. I'm sitting here at TOC and talking to John Chodacki from Safari Books Online and, with a smile on his face, he's showing me beta version of m.safaribooksonline.com. (In full disclosure, Safari is a joint venture between O'Reilly and Pearson.)
The smile is well deserved. It looks great, it's fast, and I love the stripped-down navigation and lack of clutter. It's got a couple of bugs, and I don't like that I can't read our highly designed Head First books, but it's a Beta.
The mobile version will be released on 23 February, and if you're a Safari subscriber and have feedback, send it to safarimobile AT safaribooksonline DOT com. If you're not already a subscriber, you can get a free trial.
Computerworld: The Coming Ebook Revolution
Andrew Savikas
February 7, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen
Last week I linked to a phenomenal piece over on ArsTechnica on the future of digital books (and in the process neglected to thank Peter Brantley for the link). Today Mike Shatzkin (a co-author on the StartWithXML Report) passed along a pointer to another great article, this one from Computerworld's Mike Elgan listing six reasons that ebooks are about to explode . His reason #5 mirrors the theme of this year's TOC Conference, which starts on Monday:
5. A rise in books written for electronic reading. The shift from print to electronic will change the nature of the book itself. Many books will be shorter. They'll be more timely and culturally relevant. They'll be more colorfully and engagingly written. And they'll go after young readers like nothing before.
Elgan left off what I believe is the most important aspect of writing for electronic reading, which is hyperlinking, but the thrust here is that all publishing is becoming digital publishing, and existing publishers ignore or delay dealing with this at their peril. Or as Elgan puts it:
Like the move from silent pictures to "talkies," the transition to electronic publishing will prove fatal to laggards. Those aggressively pursuing and developing e-books will rise to take control of the publishing industry.
I agree completely, and am reminded of a line from Michael Porter's seminal article, Industry Transformation:
Because early experiments can be highly influential, companies that hope to be eventual industry leaders must think carefully about the precedents they set during this period.
Google Opens Mobile Access to Public-Domain Books
Andrew Savikas
February 5, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen
Via a Google press release, word that visiting books.google.com/m provides mobile access to 1.5 million public-domain books from within Google Book Search:
Today, we're making it possible for anyone with an Android or an iPhone to find and read more than 1.5 million public domain books in the US (more than half a million outside the US) in the Google Book Search index for free on their mobile phone, from anywhere with Internet access. It's possible for a commuter on a passenger train to read classics like Pride and Prejudice right along with lesser known works like Novels and Letters of Jane Austen, or for a student in India to read Shakespeare's "Hamlet" on her iPhone, all via a simple website accessible from your mobile phone.
So far, the mobile edition only offers browser-based access (Web-style scrolling, no offline access, no remember-my-place), but an interesting addition to the emerging and important mobile reading space. Screenshot below (or click here if you can't see the screenshot).
Google will be at next week's TOC Conference talking about the past, present and future of GBS.
Popping the Hood on the iPhone Missing Manual App
Andrew Savikas
February 4, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen
Over on Teleread, Chris Meadows has a nice review of our iPhone Missing Manual app, which echoes several other reviewers (and my own personal experience with the app):
How helpful is the book? I have already found a lot of remarkably useful information just in the space of a few chapters. It would be no exaggeration to say I learned things over the course of a couple of hours of reading that I never learned in months of iPod Touch ownership.
But the neatest part of the review is the tutorial Chris provides for popping the app open and getting at the EPUB content inside:
Once you've unzipped it, it can be read in ePub-reading software such as Adobe Digital Editions (looks flawless) or FBReader (formatting a bit messed up), or even synced into the iPhone version of Stanza by sharing from Stanza Desktop. (Though as the book is almost 9 megabytes in size thanks to all the illustrations, the Stanza app may choke and require a reboot the first time you load it, but after that it opens fine. I suspect the wrapper version of Stanza is optimized for the book's large size.)
Chris is right that the electronic version available from oreilly.com is $24.99, compared with the $9.99 app (on sale right now for $4.99 in conjunction with the TOC Conference), though our "ebook bundle" includes EPUB, PDF, and Mobipocket formats, along with free updates. That said, we're tracking sales and price data across formats and platforms, because it's clearly a critical issue. The App Store has provided an easy way to measure price elasticity of demand, and that's just with one app!
The Coming Readers' Economy and Data Portability
Mac Slocum
January 23, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (3)
|
Listen
This is a guest post by Mark Bertils.
At the end of last year one event signaled a huge shift in how the book publishing industry will do business. It's not what you think. It was December's launch of Facebook Connect. A land grab for user identities followed. The Web's people economy is coming of age.
Facebook's Squid Tries to Eat the Internet's Whale
The Connect program wasn't new in December. It was announced in May 2008. It isn't even original. But it marks the coming-out party for Facebook's social graph. Users are now free to come and go from Facebook's walled garden. They can bring their Facebook-endorsed identity (and relationships) with them as they travel the Internet. It is a major development for the social Web. It is a further claim on the permanence and importance of these platforms. And it is the clearest marker yet that the social networking boom of the last five years has beget a new Internet-wide folks-economy.
Seemingly overnight online user identity (here I mean the entire Web -- every site, every service) became a battleground between Web giants. Google and MySpace are parrying. The OpenID foundation is the Red Cross. Everyone else is taking sides. Identity politics has never been so interesting.
But this is not simply about portable identities and the single-sign-on Web. It is a fundamental shift in the Web economy. It is a bold stride toward relationship monetization -- where user data exchange becomes the most important transactional unit on the Internet.
Readers Are The Most Important Asset
This is pivotal for book publishers and other creators of digital goods.
It is no secret that infinitely copyable products aren't worth very much, so naturally, value is moving up the food chain. As Softskull's Richard Nash recently wrote at the Harvard Business Publishing blog, in the future, monetizing and organizing relationships -- not products -- will pay publishers' rents.
To some degree this is happening already. O'Reilly Media have made conferences a large part of what they do. Harlequin's on-line role is largely to connect like-minded readers. And the reader economy is alive and well at the myriad of social networks for book lovers. But what of the other houses? How best to make this mindshift? How to redeploy the resources spent managing a supply chain of products to manage a supply chain of peoples' information?
BookDrop facilitates passing product info from one business to another. An analogue is needed for passing reader info between businesses. How is that going to happen? Who is going to do it?
Open Standards. Reader First.
The volunteers at Dataportability.org are already asking these questions. The group champions the unimpeded movement of user data around the Web. That includes user identities but it also extends beyond OpenID to include open address book standards, open calendar standards, and open standards for opinions, ratings and reviews. It is entirely grassroots and focuses on user-controlled, privacy-respecting data portability.
On their wiki, information specific to publishers and media organizations is thin but a need has been identified to standardize and provide guidance to publishers. The call is out for task-force volunteers to identify and report on the unique requirements within the generalized publishing domain.
To get the conversation started I have volunteered to be the interim chairman of the media publishers' dataportability task-force. I am hoping interested parties will step forward to fill the ranks of this group. The end goal is to publish a report that encourages the distribution and adoption of reader-friendly standards. If you, or someone you know, would interested in participating contact me at org.mark atgmail[.]com.
Mark Bertils is a grad student, reluctant technical writer, an aspiring technologist, and a book industry orphan. He maintains a blog at indexmb.com
- Stay Connected
-
TOC RSS Feeds
News Posts
Commentary Posts
Combined Feed
New to RSS?
Subscribe to the TOC newsletter. 
Follow TOC on Twitter. 
Join the TOC Facebook group. 
Join the TOC LinkedIn group. 
Get the TOC Headline Widget.
- Search
-
- Events
-
Tools of Change for Publishing Conference
Thanks for making TOC 2009 a success! Visit the TOC conference site for session videos, presentation slides and show coverage.
- TOC In-Depth
-
Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales This report tests assumptions about free digital book distribution and P2P impact on sales. Learn more.
The StartWithXML report offers a pragmatic look at XML tools and publishing workflows. Learn more.
Dive into the skills and tools critical to the future of publishing. Learn more.
- TOC Community Topics
-
