This week's course readings were a series of articles related to the emergence of eBooks and readers.
One of the articles e-Book News http://www.e-book.com.au/news.htm contained news clips of multiple types of e-reader technologies. Given the prices for some of them, buyers should be careful to pick one that has a potentially long life from a technological platform standpoint. Sony Reader Daily Edition, Eco Reader, Samsung SNE-50K, Merlin, iRex, Astak Pocket Pro..... The list of available options is pretty long. Which is best, which will survive, which technological platform will survive?
E-readers seem to offer a lot of PC-based technical features allowing users to manipulate, annotate, store, search. I see these features much the way I see music libraries, playlists on an MP3 player or iPod. Lots of potential, but I still see a gap in usability regarding reading as you would with a paper book. Screen size, contrast still aren't equivalent to reading a book. But these technical gaps will likely be overcome. In class chat this week, Dr. Bonk mentioned user interface designs that might fold out. We also talked about designing e-Books so they were adapted to a user interface instead of converting paper-based books to digital formats. Interesting thoughts.
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