Cyberarted: e-Publishing Content Serenade

Cyberarted: e-Publishing Content Serenade

It occurs to me that the evolution of eBooks could be accelerated if they were turned into an advertising vehicle with embedded ads. Then they could be distributed freely without the DRM debacle and paranoia of the music industry. Text with graphics is a a natural for the eBook platform.

Tim Hillebrand

Will Kindle light a fire under eBooks?

No doubt you've heard about another, ho hum, eBook reader called Kindle offered by Amazon.com. Once all the hype dies down, I predict it is doomed to failure for many reasons that are all too familiar from past false starts. First of all, it is a proprietary, unifunctional device. It just costs too much and it does only one thing, and it only reads one format from a single source. It's also too big and clumsy. While I applaud Amazon's attempts at eBook promotion, I think it would be better advised to promote MobiPocket, which is a company Amazon recently acquired, but are not doing much with. Too bad. I'd much rather read a MobiPocket eBook on my multi-functional PDA, which I can also use as a phone, TV, satellite radio, send and receive email, do word processing, cruise the Internet and more for the same price or less.

Anyway, here's a fairly positive review for you to read and learn more about what I believe will be an ill-fated device.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/11/27/why-kindle-will-change-the-world.aspx

Tim Hillebrand

Expresso Book Machine for Libraries

Check out this article about a print-on-demand book machine that will print a novel in three minutes for three bucks. Would this be of interest to our libraries and to our patrons?



http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/11/03/expresso-book-machine-is-a-time-magazine-invention-of-the-year/



Of course, my major objection is that it promotes treebooks for troglodytes instead of eBooks for the eLiterate.



Cheers,

Tim Hillebrand

Hi everybody--

We were talking about auctions at our meeting today. I ran across this site while trying to track down more information on Sid's idea. Thought these guys had some interesting suggestions:

http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/progs/pc-cp/pubs/e/Specev4.htm

Anne