Hasta La Gadget!

Jun 04

Dual-Screen Tablet Maker Hopes to Reinvent the Textbook

Posted in: Apple, education, ipad, tablets, Today's Chili

A new dual-screen tablet from California startup Kno aims to make electronic textbooks into a viable business.

It’ll need some luck: Tech giants like Amazon and Apple haven’t yet cracked the e-textbook market, despite multiple attempts.

“If you look at why e-textbooks have failed in the last ten years, the biggest problem is the size of the screen,” says Osman Rashid, co-founder and CEO of Kno. “Textbooks won’t fit into a 10-inch or 12-inch screen so you have to scroll up and down and right and left.”

“It makes for a poor learning experience,” he says.

Kno founders say they can fix that. The device has two 14-inch LCD touchscreens that fold in like a book. The idea is to make textbook pages fit perfectly across the screen and flow from one digital page to another. Kno made its public debut at the D8 technology conference Wednesday

The tablet will be powered by an Nvidia Tegra processor. It will include a stylus for handwriting recognition, have a full browser, support Flash and offer six to eight hours of battery life. The Kno will offer 16 GB or 32 GB of storage–enough to store 10 semesters’ worth of files, documents and books, says Rashid.

But it you are thinking a lightweight, cheap, easy-to-tote machine, Kno won’t be that.

The device, scheduled for release in December, will weigh about 5.5 lbs, or as much as a full-size notebook. And while the price hasn’t been fixed, it is expected to be “under $1,000,” says the company. Compare that to a $500 iPad that weighs 1.6 lbs, or a $260 Kindle at 0.6 lbs.

Kno is still a good deal, insists Rashid.

“If you are a parent, you know your child is carrying 20 lbs to 25 lbs of textbook in their backpack. Now you can replace the entire backpack with a 5.5-pound device,” he says.

Apple’s iPad has led to renewed interest in tablets, a category that few consumers had shown much interest in. Since Apple launched the iPad in April, it has sold more than 2 million devices. The demand for tablets has spurred other companies makers including Asus, MSI, Dell and HP to create would-be iPad killers.

But tablet-like devices from startups have been disappointing so far. Despite its 12-inch screen, the JooJoo has been widely panned for not delivering the kind of zippy, delightful experience that’s made the iPad so appealing.

Kno’s closest rival, the Entourage Edge, is also disappointing. The Edge is a dual-screen device with an E-Ink screen on the left and a 10-inch LCD display on the right. But this Frankenstein-ish monster is hobbled by a slow processor and by its weight.

Kno isn’t like these other tablets, says Rashid.

“You have to put yourself in a student’s shoes and not a technologist’s shoes,” he says. “The iPad or all these other devices aren’t created from the ground up with students in mind.”

Unlike the e-books marketed for fiction and nonfiction best sellers, electronics textbooks haven’t really taken off, because students have some unique requirements.

Textbooks are better in color, since they often have illustrations and graphics to help students understand the concepts. That’s why black-and-white displays like the E Ink are extremely limiting. Most digital textbooks are distributed as PDF files, but they are not formatted perfectly, says Rashid, who also co-founded the online textbook-rental site Chegg.

“So if a professor in a class says ‘Turn to page 74 in your book,’ you don’t know if the page 74 on your PDF corresponds to the one in the physical book,” he says.

And there’s the problem of scrolling when pages don’t fit into the screen. Kno’s tests showed that about 47 percent of textbooks fit on a 12.1-inch screen. Most freshman and sophomore books didn’t fit that screen size. On a 10-inch screen, similar to what an iPad has, only 11 percent of textbooks fit.

Kno, which was started in September last year and now has about 90 employees, says it has written its own software that will “normalize” books in the PDF format. It will also add interactive elements to the books and allow students to make notes and annotate the margins of an electronic textbooks.

Similar to Amazon’s Kindle, Kno hopes to have its own bookstore.

The company has inked deals with four major textbook publishers, including McGraw Hill, Pearson and Wiley.

Kno won’t have 3G connectivity but it will be Wi-Fi capable, so users can wirelessly download textbooks on to the device. Eventually, Rashid and his team hope to add other educational services such as the ability to buy accessories like a scientific calculator or even request tutoring from a tutor.

Rashid says students are unlikely to feel any pain from the lack of 3G access in the tablet. “Students are pretty wired on campus and at home, so Wi-Fi should work well,” he says.

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Photo: Kno