There are still a lot of people that haven't yet tried listening to a book, instead of reading it. I was in pretty much that situation, up to a bit over a year ago. I had had very little contact with audio books, up until then. In fact, the only person I knew that was a regular consumer of audio books what a friend that has a slight vision impairment that makes it hard for him to read at night.
It was by chance that I actually "read" my first audio book. I had been reading several books in a collection and when I got to the last one, it wasn't available as an ebook and I really wasn't looking forward to waiting around for the book to be delivered from Amazon. I looked a bit around and found the audio book version for emmidiate download. That decided it for me. I could keep on reading my story without any delay.
I can't say that I prefer to listen to books then to read them, but I found new ways to be entertained by books, with the help of a few audio books and my iPod. I now listen to books when I go to work and come back home. When I go to the supermarket, when I'm travelling and whenever I have lunch by my self. I found that listening to a good book, makes me consider the time spent in all these activities as much more pleasant and productive.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Reading on the iPhone and iPod and the future of books
One of the first things I did after I got an iPod Touch was to install eReader on it. Actually, it might have been the first application I installed, though I can't be totally sure.
I have been reading books electronically for a long time as I have always been a big believer that this is the inevitable future of books. I've read a lot of books on my PocketPC and on notebooks and now that I've got some on the iPod I feel we are getting closer to what I used to envision for this technology back in 1997.
Back then I set out to create both an ebook reading and a creation software. I was certain that the future was all about buying books on the Internet and immediatelly downloading them to your reading device. As these devices were not immediatelly available I was writing a PC version of what I though the device should do. It was a lot of fun, even though it didn't really go anywhere as we were not able to raise capital to really startup the busines.
Still, this early experience, and the fact that I just "believed" that this was the future, made me follow advances in this area closely and made an early adopter out of me. Through these years I've always maintained that what was really needed was a device that was light and thin, but that still had a big enough screen to be confortable to hold and read.
The Kindle DX is a step in the right direction, as far as screen sizes go, but it is also a step in the wrong direction in respect to price and functionality. If I am going to carry a device of tha size around and pay that much for it, I expect it to do a lot more than allow me to read.
The iPhone and the iPod Touch are a step in the right direction in regards to the functionality of the device and even in regards to price, but still have a small screen. Now, if Apple only released a Kindle sized device with the capabilities of the iPod Touch we would be just about where we need to be get the masses to really take to reading electronic editions.
I have been reading books electronically for a long time as I have always been a big believer that this is the inevitable future of books. I've read a lot of books on my PocketPC and on notebooks and now that I've got some on the iPod I feel we are getting closer to what I used to envision for this technology back in 1997.
Back then I set out to create both an ebook reading and a creation software. I was certain that the future was all about buying books on the Internet and immediatelly downloading them to your reading device. As these devices were not immediatelly available I was writing a PC version of what I though the device should do. It was a lot of fun, even though it didn't really go anywhere as we were not able to raise capital to really startup the busines.
Still, this early experience, and the fact that I just "believed" that this was the future, made me follow advances in this area closely and made an early adopter out of me. Through these years I've always maintained that what was really needed was a device that was light and thin, but that still had a big enough screen to be confortable to hold and read.
The Kindle DX is a step in the right direction, as far as screen sizes go, but it is also a step in the wrong direction in respect to price and functionality. If I am going to carry a device of tha size around and pay that much for it, I expect it to do a lot more than allow me to read.
The iPhone and the iPod Touch are a step in the right direction in regards to the functionality of the device and even in regards to price, but still have a small screen. Now, if Apple only released a Kindle sized device with the capabilities of the iPod Touch we would be just about where we need to be get the masses to really take to reading electronic editions.
Amazon introduces a BIG Kindle
Amazon introduced this week the Kindle DX. The new product is essentially a much larger version of the Kindle 2 with the capability of displaying native PDF files. You can expect that without the need to make the document fit on the smaller screen of the Kindle and still be readable the reading experience will be much better.
Early pictures show great looking images of newspapers and we can expect that textbooks will be much more at home in this new device. In fact it seems that Amazon is specifically targetting newspapers and textbooks with this new device. This strategy makes a lot of sense to me, as these publications don't really fit well on a small screen.
The price of this new device, on the other hand, is a bit puzzling. At $489.00 the Kindle DX is too expensive to become a mass market phenomenon. I can only image that it is the e-ink display that makes the device so expensive as you can get great netbooks a lot cheaper.
Early pictures show great looking images of newspapers and we can expect that textbooks will be much more at home in this new device. In fact it seems that Amazon is specifically targetting newspapers and textbooks with this new device. This strategy makes a lot of sense to me, as these publications don't really fit well on a small screen.
The price of this new device, on the other hand, is a bit puzzling. At $489.00 the Kindle DX is too expensive to become a mass market phenomenon. I can only image that it is the e-ink display that makes the device so expensive as you can get great netbooks a lot cheaper.
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