Codejunkie

About
Codejunkie
Monologues of a mobile retro coder.
skeezix[at]codejedi.com
www.codejedi.com

Subscribe
Subscribe to a syndicated RSS feed. I've also made a Livejournal version and Ben whipped up an auto-RSS Livejournal

Blogs
DadHacker; epic rants.
ASCII@textfiles
Michael Mace
JoelOnSoftware
Bruce Schneier
Wil Wheaton
I, Cringely
WritingOnYourPalm
Dan Gillmor
GrandTextAuto
Freedom to Tinker
Mark's SysInternals Blog
A List Apart
Tam's Palm
Bytecellar retro goodness
Lost Garden

Bill Ing
Ben Combee
PocketGoddess
PocketFactory

Random Links
PalmInfoCenter
Zodiac Gamer
GP32x
Little Green Desktop
Atari Age
Penny Arcade
Hack-a-Day
Retro Remakes
SHMUPS!

Podcasts
1SRC
RetroGamingRadio

Recent Entries

January 2009
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Archives

• December 2008 (3)
• November 2008 (8)
• October 2008 (3)
• September 2008 (3)
• July 2008 (5)
• June 2008 (6)
• May 2008 (4)
• April 2008 (2)
• March 2008 (2)
• February 2008 (1)
• January 2008 (8)
• December 2007 (4)
• November 2007 (3)
• October 2007 (4)
• September 2007 (5)
• August 2007 (1)
• July 2007 (4)
• June 2007 (3)
• May 2007 (5)
• April 2007 (5)
• March 2007 (7)
• February 2007 (2)
• January 2007 (4)
• December 2006 (7)
• November 2006 (14)
• October 2006 (11)
• September 2006 (7)
• August 2006 (3)
• July 2006 (4)
• June 2006 (6)
• May 2006 (4)
• April 2006 (3)
• March 2006 (8)
• February 2006 (13)
• January 2006 (22)
• December 2005 (14)
• November 2005 (22)
• October 2005 (14)
• September 2005 (12)
• August 2005 (17)
• July 2005 (22)
• June 2005 (19)
• May 2005 (23)

Tech: Whats the case for ebooks?
Tue, 05 Jul 2005

People ask me about ebooks a lot since I've been so close to mobile technology over the last decade, so I thought I'd post with some of the pros and cons and then confuse the issue some more. For now, lets just refer to ebooks as electronic-books regardless of medium -- a PDF on a PC is an ebook, just like an iSilo or Plucker file is. Perhaps the web is an ebook that isn't always available quickly -- you can't argue with the value of wikipedia.

---

I think I can summarize quick before we get our hands dirty -- I've always believed the right tool for the right job:

• A PDF or web-page/rip technical reference volume can be seriously handy; I'm not sure a real-paper reference book can be superior. When looking up the QT API I'm not going to reach for a book on my shelf when I can do a search or look up through a PDF or HTML version. I've got the QT SDK right hear on the hard drive and its up in instants, so I can stay in the deep-code zone (sit on my rear :)
• On the road, a Plucker rip of an RSS feed or website is great, because you don't have the book or site handy or don't want to pay outragous GPRS data rates
• Otherwise, you can't beat the feel and ease of use of paper. Not yet.

Oooh, everyone knows I'm a tech-nerd and gadget-head, so how can I get away with that? Ahright, fine, I'll run down the things that pop into my head. Below I'm mostly going to talk about reading and not just looking up -- I'm pretty much fully pro-electronic media when it comes to reference material.

• Paperbacks need no power; ebooks do. Until we have displays that keep their state while the device is off and not eating power, we'll have to worry about keeping the screens lit up.. after the first hour or two you'll be worrying in the back of your mind if the device will suddenly shut down, instead of concentrating (or being pulled into) the material being read. My Axim X50v has a sexy VGA display (on a tiny screen, thats really high pixel density, smooth as silk) but the standard battery only holds up a few hours -- if its been playing mp3s or showing appointments at all during the day you can forget sitting down with a good book for a few hours. Aside from that, the screen is sexy and you can almost forget its not high res like paper..
• Paper doesn't project high contrast light into our eyes; many people claim to read off their PDA for four hours without a problem, but I just can't look at a small bright display in a dusky room for that long. Paper is readable in the dwindling candle light and the bright noon sun, while most PDA displays aren't so good in one of these extremes. The X50v has one of the best displays I've ever seen and somewhat negates this statement, but no electronic device compares to paper.. not yet.
• Paperbacks are easy to use. A 5-way d-pad isn't a great control for flipping pages -- actually flipping the page isn't any better but its easy and intuitive and always works the same for everyone. Furthermore, the printed page doesn't go into 'low light' mode after 1 minute of inactivity. Auto-scroll just doesn't cut it since you inevitably get ahead or behind, and tapping on the screen to page or scroll will be in the way until we have large high res screens ... and PDAs have been shrinking instead of growing (witness the Newton versus the Treo..) A counter example is the PC -- the scroll wheel on a mouse is pretty intuitive to those of us using computers so isn't a case of the UI getting in the way, but I've little interest in reading while sitting up in a chair. I admit I've not sat down and tried to read an ebook with a tablet-PC, which may solve a lot of these problems..
• Paperbacks are fast -- no garbage collection cycle introducing random periodic delays; no fetching from the cache, or disk, or across the net.
• Paperbacks are available everywhere in every language -- head to the store in any country and there you go, in your native language. Can you get your desired ebook in German, even with DRM?
• A toughy is availability -- paperbacks are limited to Amazon and Chapters selection which is pretty good for recent volumes; ebooks are spotty, but when you want it you get it real-time -- overnight delivery versus instant gratification... too bad the publishers aren't putting their entire catalogue out for ebook sale :( I can page through an ebook catalog and find hundreds of things I'd like, but when I want a specific book or new release.. I've never once found it available online except to order overnight in dead tree. The publishers just aren't really committed so far..
• Dead tree -- ebooks only hurt electrons, so thats a big win; you want comics or other disposible material, get it online and save a tree. But if you want to keep it forever, get the dead tree version (such as the Far Side collections..)
• Books are tough. They can survive children (especially the plastic coated ones. Plastic coated books. Books people :), sand on the beach, a bit of water, sunlight and heat or cold, being dropped or stuffed in a satchel while biking.... a PDA, tablet PC etc is playing catchup on the paperback. OKay, granted, people like me have one or more PDA's always so it may be moot, but if you're on a trip to the beach... leave the PDA at home :)
• You can gift a book; gifting an ebook is well.. for now, lame.
• Tactile feedback; the raised print on the page is sexy, the feel of nice soft paper, the freshly printed smell of a new book.... you can leaf through a paperback. I've picked up some obscure hard-core CS books from the MIT press printed on just the most beautiful paper.
• Pricing; on the one hand, sometimes ebooks are more or less expensive than their printed cousins, which seems a little odd. Some argue that printing costs are insignificant so they should cost the same, while others argue that printing costs (distribution, takeback after concessions, etc) are enormous so they should cost less. The fact is, ebooks are bloody expensive and I feel they should be a buck a pop. The rent-a-ebook idea is pretty neat, where you pay a subscription rate to access an entire library, for theres just no way I'm going to fork out $10CDN or more for an ebook. Why? Read on..
• DRM. Digital Rights Management is what the corporations call it, when really it often means 'what rights the corps which to permit you to have, despite what you expect or are legally entitled to.' I'll take a plain text file, or even a marked up HTML file. I'm not too interested in PDF's much of the time, since its hard to get the text out. I've zero interest in an ebook that comes in some locked up format where I can't copy or excerpt it or load it onto any device I please. I've no interest in these formats because theres no guarantee they'll work forever -- a Palm OS reader's format won't work on a Pocket PC or PC system, and god help you if/when Palm goes under, or you decide you don't want to use a Palm anymore. That $10 or more you spent.. gone. This is why I value the format less -- while a paperback isn't searchable or nearly as portable as a pile of textfiles, it'll work forever.
• DRM -- thats the big one. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
• Course, ebooks take up no space at all, and
• ebooks can be warrantied perhaps. Maybe you can buy an ebook, and if you lose it they'll give you another copy? Of course they won't right now, but in the case of rent-a-library its moot, and maybe someday they'll give you X-number of downloads..
• Search. Searching text in a computing device is a Big Win.
• Of course, I'm deliberately being one sided here :)
• To be fair, theres a whole slew of good things going for ebooks that are totally unrelated to paperbacks and so are easy to forget; lets talk about 'channels' -- AvantGo and HandStory (and of course RSS, blogs, etc) helped make these popular, but Plucker makes them work IMHO. Setting up a Plucker distiller (a collection agent) isn't too hard, and once you've subscribed to a few dozen channels its _slick_ to have all these things pulling down in background. Just a quick copy to SD, or a slow hotsync, and babooshka! Are blogs ebooks? Probably not, but I've signed up to a few good journals and have Plucker suck down the latest ones, and thats some handy stuff.
• Annotating an ebook isn't something I do, but if I did.. it'd rock.
• Beaming/sharing an ebook is something you can't necessarily do with a p-book -- lending a paperback is nice (above), but you can beam an ebook to 5 people. Go as far as bluetooth transmission to a class of kids and we're getting to the neato stage.. but mind the DRM!

A thought I had while hacking this post out -- are books going the way of radio? As Internet radio and mp3 popularity go up, radio goes down? As the net takes over, board games and casual book reading go away? I certainly hope not and that the art of literature is simply reborn in a newer way..

Oh ho, poking around a wonderful blog thats on topic for this post, I see our friend Jeff Kirvin has come up with a rebirth of the serial story, ebook style. Alright, now we've got some synergy..

[ Category: / technology / ebooks ] [link] [Comments]