The Sentient Search Engine

A great article from the Chronicle of Higher Education popped up in Google Reader today (thanks LISNews). The Author read the same Dickens book 4 ways: paperback, audiobook, iPhone, and Kindle.

This article is delightfully written and thoughtful. What’s more, she agrees with me about Kindle (agreeing with me is always a direct path to my good opinion, I’m only human).

Read and Enjoy!

Prior posts might leave you with the impression that I’m a bit of a pessimist when it comes to ebooks and eBook Readers, especially Amazon’s Kindle. I’m still a pessimist about Kindle and dedicated readers, but I have to tell you I’m coming around on eBooks.

I never doubted that eBooks would “take over” someday, as there are too many plusses to the technology. What I really objected to was the speed with which everyone though it would happen. The Kindle app has changed my mind.

I’ve had it on my iPod Touch for several months now, but I didn’t have anything to read on it, or any desire to acquire anything. Recently I left work without a book I wanted to finish. I had a largely unscheduled evening ahead of me and nothing to read! Being the type of guy I am, I decided to turn a problem into an opportunity. I went on Amazon’s site and bought a Kindle copy and started reading.

Let me start with the purchasing process. Its too easy, and I’m only partially kidding. I found the book, and clicked “buy with one click” and it was mine. Wow! All I had to do then was fire up the Kindle App and synch it with my Kindle account! My book came to me over my wifi connection almost instantly, no pluging in required. Wow again.

The recent 1.1 upgrade to the Kindle App is extraordinary. It uses the motion sensing capabilities of the iPhone\iPod touch to allow a landscape presentation and lets you lock in in your prefered orientation. This is huge for those among the uninitiated, for it lets you keep the print big enough to read without having to have only 3 words per line. One can therefore actually follow the book you’re reading as you can string coherent thoughts together! You advance the pages with a tap on the right side of the screen, and flip back with a tap on the left. It seems Amazon learned a few tricks from LexCycle when they bought them.

This app is whats going to sell eBooks for Amazon long term, not their overpriced one trick pony. When I think of what will be possible when the rumored large-form iPod/iPhone/Apple Tablet comes out…

This does leave me with a rather galling question for librarians. Why don’t we have a method of distributing digital material that is this easy to use? My library offers a collection of Overdrive eBooks, eFlicks, eAudiobooks, etc. Why can’t overdrive create an app(s) for the numerous portable devices out there to seamlessly deliver our material to where people want it? There are no technological limitations to this. Apple wouldn’t be stupid enough to deny such an app admittance to the App Store (I don’t think).

This would certianly allieveate some of the clunkiness assoicated with using Overdrive materials on iPods. One could browse ones “checked out” items and start it up immediately! This might also help with compatibility issues, who really knows what’s possible until someone does it! I might actually use my library’s digital collection if it was as easy as my Amazon experience!

Here’s hoping someone gets it togather and gets this done!

PS. Owners of the iPod Touch and iPhone need not spend money to try out their Kindle Apps. Amazon has several (good) titles available for FREE. I’m enjoying Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson at the moment. Also available (and highly recommended) is His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik (Anne McCaffery meets Patrick O’Brien, what could be better?).

At the same time it launches Kindle 2, Amazon is also coming out with a Kindle App for iPhone/iPod Touch. Perhaps this can be chalked up to them trying to reach the growing “installed base” of iPhone/Touch users and convert them to Kindle fans with the some of the nice connective features (the “page your on” in a given book is synchronized between your iPod/Phone and the Kindle, creepy…). 

I think they’re hedging their bets…

The original Kindle, while generally well thought of, had its share of problems. The new Kindle 2 solves many of those but some of them remain:

• The display is still color-free
• The DRM is still insanely restrictive (as DRM tends to be)
• It still costs $359.00.

I know that the iPod/iPhone is not exactly an ideal reading tool. The introduction of the App won’t stop anyone inclined to buy a Kindle from buying one.

I can’t help but feel that Amazon wants to ensure that if the Kindle hardware doesn’t fly, that they will still have their foot in the door with the App. If rumors of a “big iPod Touch” are true, I can’t help but feel that Amazon will be happy they took this particular step.

I hope I don’t come off as a Kindle hater. I think the Kindle is actually good for reading and I wish it well. I just have trouble understanding the business sense here. Why market a product for $360 that does only one thing exceptionally well in a day and age when the multiuse device is King? It might make sense for the “big readers” out there, but certainly not for everyone…

According to Gutenberg.com 2009 is going to be the year of the e-book(where have we heard that before). I really don’t want to come off as a jerk, but if you believe that I’ve got some swamp land in Freedonia to sell you.

We have been told since e-books dawned that print is dead and that e-books would rule the world. Well, I just looked out at the Public Area in my library and I still pretty much see scads of books (my library has access to e-books, nobody uses them).

It seems that Carnac’s annual declaration of the “year of the ebook” is just out of habit these days. I know of very few people who actually believe that print will ever be supplanted.

Now, I could go down Gutenberg.com’s list of 20 reasons and refute them individually, but I have neither the time or the energy. Instead, I will give you 5 reasons (I need fewer) why print’s death either will never come or will be so far in the future that it makes not sense to try to predict when it will come.

1. There are ergonomic reasons people prefer print.

There is both scientific and anecdotal evidence that people find e-books uncomfortable to use. Resolutions for the current generation of e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle is in the neghiborhood of 170 dpi. Computer moniters are 120+ dpi. You average printer renders at 1200 dpi. Anyone else see the problem here?

Yet the resolution issue is likely to go away some day. The real issue is ergonomic in nature. E-books are physically uncomfortable to read for most of us. In, The Elusive E-book, Stephen Sottong describes research that explains why this is. Basically, its because as he puts it “as a species, we are designed to scan the horizon and do fine tasks seated with our work on the ground or in our laps.” So the average computer screen is not a comfortable way to read long works. The dedicated machines fare somewhat better, but until resolution improves, they’re still not going to be as comfortable as a good ol’ book.

2. Multiple Formats are confusing and irritating.

E-books come in multiple formats. By multiple formats, I mean more than 20. If you think about it, this makes the HD-DVD v. Blu-Ray battle seem trivial. What publisher is going to want to have to work in 20+ formats. None of them! So some folks may get shut out of getting a particular item. Until a feature-rich standard (or two) is developed, ebooks are never going to find widespread popularity, let alone “take over”.

Even if this is less an issue than I think. Its still annoying! I shouldn’t need to think in terms of format when picking reading material. I JUST WANT TO READ THE BOOK!

3. Digital Rights Management kills some of the social interactivity of books.

Somewhere, someone got the idea that reading was a insular, isolated activity. I don’t know how this rumor got started, but its bogus. Sure, most adults read by temselves, but there’s a whole social world tied to reading. You read a good book. You tell your friends about it. You lend it to a friend…

Not so with ebooks. at least on the third count. If you buy an ebook on Kindle for instance, that book is yours forever, with emphasis on yours. If you want to loan it to a friend, you have to loan them your Kindle, because no power of God or man will let you loan it to them any other way. Since most of us read the average bestseller only once, one is left with a bunch of data with no future.

I fully support the idea of DRM and I understand why its necessary. After all, before digital copies, you could only share a work with one friend at a time, not so now. Nevertheless, I think this impulse to share is stronger than most Ebook boosters think and will keep print alive.

4. EBooks make no economic sense (to me).

On the surface, e-books look cheaper than regular books. After all, you can get a bestseller on your Kindle for only $10 (yes Amazon, we can round). However, one needs to factor in the cost of the Ebook reader (a Kindle will cost you $360). So if your average bestseller costs around $20, then one could by 18 books for the price of the Kindle, not counting the cost of the Ebooks. This doesn’t even account for planned obsolescence. (You did know that new Kindle of yours is going to break or otherwise become useless someday?)

Given that most Americans typically read a book a year if they’re lucky, this leads me to scratch my head just a bit.

5. Dedicated eBook readers have to be one of the stupidest products conceived by the mind of man.

I mean this from purely a technical standpoint. Consider:

1. All currently can only display in 2 colors: black and white. Therefore, if its a novel your fine, otherwise…
2. They allow you to store 200+ titles on your reader, yet the average person only reads 1 or two books at the same time. Accounting for the possibility that one might store a few references (dictionaries, etc.) this brings the number of titles needed on the device at any given time to maybe 5.
3. The market for electronics has for some time been moving towards multi-purpose devices. Sure Amazon will tell that you can (expiramentally) listen to music and search text-heavy web pages, but basically Kindle is “good” at one thing. Conversely, Apple and others have products tool that ares good at a few more things in addition to being book readers.
4. They are targeted at the adult market, when its children that really drive publishing.

I know I must come off as a hater or generally resistant to progress. This could not be further from the truth. In certain contexts e-books have been revolutionary. In the field of reference, I honestly don’t know why anyone bothers with print references anymore. Why would you when you can get the same content in a database or an e-book and have it be keyword searchable?

I suppose I just get tired of the “print is dead” and “the age of the e-book is upon us” garbage that gets spewed annually. The idea that one is going to somehow supplant the other is ridiculous to me, especially since there are still outfits making and selling new vinyl albums. I see a future with both coexisting peacefully, filling the niches they best suit. As Gutenberg.com points out, books and e-books are just formats, “no different than a CD, VHS, or DVD.”