What better way to read up on your Republic of Gilead lore (whether or not such country allows you to read in the first place) than on a digital screen via firmware that’s just a tinge futuristic. Amazon is offering an early preview of software update 3.0.2 for the latest generation of its Kindle reader. It’s as simple dragging-and-dropping a file onto your device, jumping through the right menus, and waiting patiently for several minutes. What does it offer? “Web browser and general performance improvements,” according to the site, and while the browser did seem a tad snappier, that could very well be a phantasmagoria of our optimism. Still, you do get to show all your friends you’ve got a newer version, and that’s what really matters, right?
With the success of the Kindle, Nook, Sony readers, and tablets like the iPad, it seems like electronic books have finally arrived. But I think we’re actually still stuck in between two developmental phases on the way to the future.
For a long time, work on interactive books was about building either theory or prototypes. People talked about what multimedia reading might or could or should look like, and they built what were mostly one-off or low-volume projects using CD-ROMs, software applications, or the web.
Now, though, the theory and the prototypes have blended: even when designers and programmers don’t have the resources to put their ideas into production, they have the visual tools (and we have the device literacy) to make concept videos that explain clearly what we think/hope the future of reading will look like.
Here are three examples. The first (which you may have already seen) is from Microsoft, demonstrating its aborted Courier tablet project:
The second, which I think is very smartly done, is from the design consultancy firm IDEO. It details three concepts: “Nelson,” a reading application that incorporates commentary on and context for the primary text; “Coupland,” a reader with a built-in social- and sharing-network; and “Alice,” an interactive/participatory reading/gaming app where readers can “unlock” elements of a story by manipulating the device or traveling to geotagged places.
This third concept video, from Canadian new-media-publishing firm PadWorx, is for an interactive electronic version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula scheduled to ship this fall:
The breadth of approaches reflects the difference in backgrounds. There are relatively few people currently working in this space with a long history of working on interactive fiction. E-books — even future-concept e-books — assembled by traditional publishers or booksellers tend to look like a traditional publisher’s or bookseller’s idea of what a book ought to look like. Microsoft casts a wide net, but it’s fundamentally a computer software company; IDEO has futurists who work in design and advertising; PadWorx’s e-book is assembled by makers with a background in film, animation, and video game design, and it shows.
I don’t think anyone knows exactly what the future of reading will look like. But I think we may finally have a handle on how we might try to see and explain it before it finally arrives.
I flew Virgin America for the first and only time in December 2008, from New York to San Francisco. When I used its interactive back-of-the-headrest food-and-media menu, the first button I pressed, naturally, was Books. “Coming soon,” it said. Two years later, when you use the menu, books are still “coming soon.”
There are a number of ways that it could work. Perhaps you could sign in to an existing Amazon or Barnes & Noble account and access your digital bookshelf directly. Or perhaps the airline could sell bestsellers or short stories directly. Think Atlantic Fiction’s monthly short stories in the Kindle store.
It could also be a great place for publishers to market their books and give away sample chapters. I like to catch up on new music videos on Virgin’s entertainment system, so why not read a couple of chapters from a few new bestsellers to decide which ones I might actually like to buy and read.
Some objections and counterarguments: Don’t people already bring their own books and magazines onto planes? Why would you want to buy one from Virgin? True: But airplanes and airports do a brisk business selling at a markup plenty of things you could consume more cheaply at home or on the ground. Books would be no different. You’re paying for convenience — or, looked at another way, as penance for your poor planning.
Don’t e-readers, tablets, laptops and online Wi-Fi make this moot? People won’t read from the back of a headrest — they’ll read on the devices they own already. Also true. But don’t discount the power of free, ad-subsidized, or exclusive reading materials. Some of the fun of using these screens is the entertainment/video-game aspect of it: Let me goof around with this and see if I can find anything good. And Virgin already lets their first-class and business-class (excuse me, “Main Cabin select”) customers enjoy all the entertainment they want. If Dilworth is right, publishers could use sample chapters or whole books like music labels use music videos — as promotional material targeted for an affluent, tech-savvy audience that literally can’t get out of their seats.
Obviously, in the future, this won’t be limited to Virgin, or even to airplanes: You could imagine similar screens being deployed on trains or intercity buses, performing the same multimedia functions. As these tiny screens become more ubiquitous and we become more accustomed to reading from them, the more likely it becomes that we’ll do more and more reading of all kinds on screens anywhere and everywhere. But as Dilworth says, there’s something about reading books on airplanes that just makes sense.
We just got a status update from one of Pixel Qi’s earliest customers, Notion Ink, last week, and we’ve now finally gotten a pretty significant update on the state of things from the company itself. In addition to announcing that it’s completed the first tranche of its Series B funding, Pixel Qi has also revealed for the first time that it currently has a 7-inch screen for tablets and e-reader in development, and that it’s set to go into mass production in the first half of next year — it notes that samples could be available by the end of the year, though. Pixel Qi’s Mary Lou Jespen also explained that tight supply and maxed out factory usage combined with the “disruptive” iPad accounted for a number of tablet delays over the spring and summer, but she says that manufacturers have used the downtime to refine their designs into products that are “highly differentiated from the iPad,” and adds that Pixel Qi will be announcing additional products using its displays sometime in the future.
What’s this — the slim, Verizon-bound successor to the Entourage Edge, out in plain sight? Just so, because Marvell wanted to look its best when the Governator came by. When California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger toured Marvell headquarters as part of a trade mission to Asia, a Forbes camera crew tagged along, and got us this first glimpse of the “Verizon Pocket Edge” shown immediately above. Though it’s hard to tell what’s changed from this angle — save a lack of front-facing camera on the right — a second photo taken by the Associated Press (after the break) shows the e-reader is significantly smaller in size, so perhaps it’s the 7-inch device we were originally told about. Hats off to The Digital Reader for spotting the device, weeks after the newswires had packed up and moved on.
Say, did the air just get a little richer in vapor? Sony has titillated its home nation with a demonstration of a new flexible e-paper display, which looks set to compete with LG’s, HP’s, Toshiba’s, and hell even Sony’s own, flexi-display ventures. Employing a plastic substrate, the above prototype is apparently capable of being rolled up like a regular old newspaper — presumably fly-swatting is not a problem either — but we have our usual reservations about yet another flexible display teaser. Oh, they’re all gorgeous and revolutionary, it’s just that we’re not seeing too many of them in our local Walmarts, you know?
Amazon’s new commercial puts the Kindle in the best possible light: poolside, in the hands of a beautiful, bikini-clad woman. It even works in a dig at the iPad and other LCD tablets; the dweeby guy next to the Kindle reader can only see his own ugly reflection.
This video has been percolating around the tech blogosphere for a couple of days, but I don’t think anyone has gotten it quite right. (I was off yesterday. Sorry.) I honestly don’t think it’s about competing with the iPad, or touting the benefits of non-reflective screens, as much as it’s about re-positioning the Kindle in the popular imagination.
Think back three years to when the Kindle was first announced. Yes, there was a splashy cover story about the future of reading. But everyone agreed: the device itself was ugly, it was expensive, and its market was limited to rich bookwormy dorks who needed something to read on airplanes. There, the physical world could vanish, leaving behind the virtual mindspace of a not-quite-real book.
Now, the Kindle is stylish; it’s relatively inexpensive; and the world in which you read from it doesn’t look like a place you’d want to escape from at all. That is, apart from your nosy neighbors and their self-involved not-quite-pickup lines.
The fact that Blio was preloaded on our Toshiba Libretto W105 was a good hint that the company was getting ready to release its software to the digital reading masses, and sure enough in just a few weeks that’s exactly what’s going to happen. The full-color program, which was designed to mimic the look of a book with fancy 3D page turns, will be available for download starting on September 28 directly from Blio’s website. Sure, Blio’s no Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but they’re promising a million free titles at launch and they’ve partnered with Baker & Taylor to provide another 10,000. We’re also intrigued by the software’s advanced text-to-speech capabilities — hey, don’t forget Ray Kurzweil is the founder! Not too far after the launch of the PC software, Blio will be releasing Android, iPhone and iPad apps. It’s also promising that there will be numerous partnerships with device (i.e. tablet, laptop) manufacturers, retailers, and carriers, so it looks like we’ll be hearing quite a bit about the company in the weeks to come. We’ll hit you back with our impressions of the apps sometime soon, but in the meantime you can peruse the screenshots and press release after the break.
Last week, Amazon decided to expand the B&M presence of its famed e-reader by throwing Best Buy the same bone already thrown to Staples and Target, and it looks as if “this fall” is about to get going. We’ve received word that demo units are already popping up in Best Buy locations (for running advertorial loops to entice you and yours, we’re surmising), and mere mortals should be able to procure them starting next week. We suspect the $139 Wi-Fi and $189 3G model will both be making their yellow-tag debut, and we fully expect this ad right here to be looped ad naseum in whatever aisle BB decides to slot these in.
This morning as we were brewing our coffee, we saw what appeared to be a new Kindle ad that mocked the readability factor of an iPad-like slate in the sun. The video turned a little weird, however, when, at the end we were greeted with a maniacal monsterish cackle. Unsurprisingly, we thought, “this is fake” and moved on with our day. Turns out, however, the ad is in fact real, sans the laugh track, of course, which was someone’s idea of a great goof. The full ad is below.
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