Open Letter to Steve Jobs: In Support of an iPod reader

>"Book publishers have been waiting for a mass-market ebook reader for
>years, the newspaper companies are dying for a new online business
>model, and normal people just want to read on the train to work."
>
>But they aren't waiting any more, because the Kindle ebook reader
>gives them all those things, with the massive marketing power of
>Amazon behind it. Ugly? Sure, but it works, and the last time I
>checked, Kindle units were selling faster than Amazon could build
>them. Yet TidBITS books aren't being read on Kindles. Since you're so
>enthusiastic about ebooks, the obvious question is "Why not?"

The Kindle is "out of stock," but Amazon hasn't released any sales
numbers that I've seen. They may have made 5000 units and stopped
there, for all anyone can tell. If they were serious about producing
it in quantity, one would think four months would have been enough to
ramp up production to meet orders in a timely fashion. Ours is still
on back order, and I still haven't seen one in the wild.

The other reason I'm not that enthusiastic about the Kindle is that
our readers aren't using them or wanting to use them in significant
numbers. In our reader survey, fewer people are interested in our
ebooks in Kindle format than in a form that's better for the
sight-impaired. The most desired alternate format is as a Web page on
a computer, with the iPhone/iPod touch close behind.

>"And of course, I'll be happy to upload to the iTunes Store an entire
>library of Take Control ebooks that are already popular with tens of
>thousands of Mac users."
>
>Once you convert them all from the present unsuitable-for-ebook-
>readers PDF format, that is. Authors and editors love PDF, because it
>gives them totalitarian control over the way pages look.

Yes, and that's because readers prefer books that are well-designed
for reading and for, in our case, conveying complex information. The
trends in book design include color and high-quality graphics because
those are no longer economically unfeasible. Current ebook readers
are like taking the Web back to HTML 2.0 on a black-and-white screen.

>Unfortunately, that same control locks in line and page breaks,
>making PDFs like TidBITS books unreadable on screens smaller than the
>page size they were designed for. I know, because I've tried to read
>the PDF version of Sharon's and my "Take Control: Mac OS X Lexicon"
>on an ebook reader. Even on a 170 DPI screen, it's impossible.

Indeed, most ebook readers do a horrible job with PDF, when they
support it at all. However, that's not necessarily an indictment of
PDF so much as a design issue. If a PDF were designed for that little
screen, it would probably look pretty good (within the slow redraw
constraints and limited grayscale capabilities of the E-Ink screens).

We're investigating PDF options that might help, such as tagging to
make the text reflowable, but it's hard going.

>PDF is looking more and more like a dead end. I think it's time to
>seriously consider abandoning it, before you find yourself completely
>locked into a format that can't be repurposed. Well, actually, that's
>exactly where you are now, isn't it? OK, let's say instead "Before
>you find the market passing you by." Given the runaway success of
>Kindle, that event looks to be imminent.

If the Kindle were a runaway success, I'd expect Amazon to be
trumpeting sales figures to the high heavens. And although I heard it
mentioned a few times at the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing
conference in February, Amazon had no presence there, which seems
like a strange step if they wanted to evangelize publishers into
supporting it.

The advantage of PDF, and the reason we chose it 4 years ago, is that
it provides a graphically rich file format that is well-supported on
the most common reading platforms that existed at the time: the
Macintosh and Windows-based PCs. That still remains true - most
screen reading is done on computers. And most ebook sales across the
industry, as far as I'm aware, are happening in PDF format because
it's something that publishing tools can create well, and in an
automated fashion.

Also, you're avoiding the fact that PDF is merely an output format
for us. Our ebooks are written and edited in Microsoft Word format,
so authors and editors can work with the text directly within the
layout, so we have change tracking and commenting during editing, so
authors can work in a familiar environment they already own (as
opposed to, say, InCopy), and so we don't have to wait for or pay for
an additional production step to lay out each ebook in InDesign.

The real problem here is that to create a scenario where we can
easily output XML or HTML, we need to change our publishing system
entirely, probably to InDesign. That's highly non-trivial, and it's
not a step we can even start to consider unless there's an obvious
business case for why we need to do it. The Kindle has shown no
evidence of being that reason, nor has the Sony Ebook Reader. The
iPhone/iPod touch might be, but we'd certainly prefer to be able to
stick with our current system, which is extremely functional, even
still.

>I'm delighted to hear that you're at least considering putting
>TidBITS books on ebook readers. But while you're waiting for Apple to
>answer your prayers, why don't you upload that same Take Control
>library to Amazon in Kindle format? It's a safe bet that Amazon is
>already a much larger marketplace for ebooks than the iTunes Store
>will be in the foreseeable future. You could cash in on that *right
>now*... and then hit the ground running *if and when* Apple moves
>into ebook readers.

Well, there's a problem with that, and I have looked into it in some
detail. The problem is that the Kindle requires that ebooks be in a
specific subset of HTML that's astonishingly limited - barely past
HTML 2.0, if that.

It's not unthinkable that our source Word files could be converted to
HTML, since Word does export HTML that renders acceptably in modern
Web browsers, but the Kindle can't handle that HTML. And Word's HTML,
while OK for viewing in a browser, is mind-bogglingly complex, and
has resisted my grep-based efforts to convert to something the Kindle
can deal with in an automated fashion.

It turns out that most book conversions to XML (or to HTML, when that
happens) are actually being done largely by hand in India. The
technologist in me is offended at the concept of hand conversions
between formats, but I haven't been able to come up with anything
better yet.

>Put 'em in the Sony Connect ebook store too, while you're at it. The
>Sony PRS-505 Reader has all the "hardware design and user interface
>chops" that are missing from Kindle; in fact, it's a very Apple-like
>device: slim, elegant, easy to use. That's another existing ebook
>reader market you could be selling into right now, rather than
>waiting for Apple to get off the dime.

See, now there's a perfect example. The Sony Connect music store is
closing at the end of this month. The iTunes Store has sold 4 billion
tracks. Which would you want to be in?

(And if you know how one publishes a book in the Sony Connect ebook
store, do let me know; I couldn't find a thing on the Web about how
to get started with the process. At least Amazon made that relatively
obvious.)

>Adam, I get the strong impression that what you're saying in this
>open letter boils down to "We love the ebook reader idea... but we
>won't enter this market unless it's based on an Apple platform." Can
>TidBITS really afford to be that parochial?

Well, sticking with Apple has kept us going for nearly 18 years, and
the vast majority of our readers rely largely on Apple products, so
it doesn't seem like a mistake from where I'm sitting. If Apple were
to do this in the way that makes sense to me, supporting at least all
iPhones and iPod touches, plus any new devices they could, they'd
become the largest ebook reader manufacturer and ebook seller by far
overnight.

cheers... -Adam

--
Look into my head; follow me on Twitter. http://twitter.com/adamengst
_____________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst: I publish TidBITS and Take Control, write books,
acetidbits.com and make useful introductions in the Mac industry.
My work: http://www.tidbits.com/ and http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/

Take control eBooks are readable in Preview or Acrobat in either
Continuous; Single or Double Page spreads.

Searchable for the problem on the spot; rocket & speed readable
through the Scrollbar or clicking Next Page. Solutions can be Copy /
Pasted into Chat or Mail by good samaritans. Should be readable via
text to voice if the latest natural voices live up to their promise ?

A variety of solutions suit different situations: so formats that
can be read from or adapted to iTouch / iPhone; iBook to Cinema
Display should be one winner.

On 6-Mar-08, at 12:18 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

>> "Book publishers have been waiting for a mass-market ebook reader for
>> years, the newspaper companies are dying for a new online business
>> model, and normal people just want to read on the train to work."

The newspapers don't have to do much more than become reliable and
positive in outlook: a massive task from their present positioning.
Do you consult the NY Times when you want to figure out which MacBook
or iPod to buy to read anything online ?

Two criteria intertwined in real life...

George

Adam,

I find it interesting that in all the discussion about the Kibble, er, Kindle, no one has mentioned that we’ve been reading books for years on Palm devices; there’s a very larger store with lots of variety of titles available for download and the user experience is quite comfortable. Amazon has taken the approach of ignoring this obvious reading history (they certainly have made vast leaps in the purchasing part of the deal) an pretend that we’ve never had an opportunity to have digital pocket books with us.

I certainly agree with your assessment of the design aspect of the Kindle, it has a Ronco (the guy that hustles stuff on tv) feel to it: cheap, quick to manufacture with little investment and little loss when they dump it.

Best regards,

Jon.Hersh
Graphics Manager
(206) 394-3547
www.RedDotCorp.com

On Mar 6, 2008, at 3:18 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote
>
>
> It's not unthinkable that our source Word files could be converted to
> HTML, since Word does export HTML that renders acceptably in modern
> Web browsers, but the Kindle can't handle that HTML. And Word's HTML,
> while OK for viewing in a browser, is mind-bogglingly complex, and
> has resisted my grep-based efforts to convert to something the Kindle
> can deal with in an automated fashion.
>
> It turns out that most book conversions to XML (or to HTML, when that
> happens) are actually being done largely by hand in India. The
> technologist in me is offended at the concept of hand conversions
> between formats, but I haven't been able to come up with anything
> better yet.

Adam, I agree completely that the iPhone reader would be a great
addition. For now, however, are you familiar with Baen Book's
electronic library <www.baen.com>? They publish quite a few books
(science fiction and fantasy - not much with complex diagrams) in
several formats, including HTML which works acceptably (not great) on
an iPhone. I don't know how they process their documents, but they
have been around and functioning well for several years (click on a
book to order and you'll get a list of formats).

Adam Engst wrote:

 
> It turns out that most book conversions to XML (or to HTML, when that
> happens) are actually being done largely by hand in India. The
> technologist in me is offended at the concept of hand conversions
> between formats, but I haven't been able to come up with anything
> better yet.

The company I work for has been converting books to HTML for 10 years
now. India only enters the picture for books that aren't available in
electronic form, we've found that having Indians re-type the book
manually is sometimes more accurate than scanning and OCR'ing.
Otherwise, every publishing process we use (with source documents in
FrameMaker, Word or AuthorIT) has options for conversion to HTML. From
FrameMaker and Word we can publish in just about every flavor of HTML in
use today. With a few days of coding, custom publishing formats can be
added.
Now, I'll have to admit that most of the conversion processes are
Windows-only. But I'd consider that to be a lot better than manual
conversion in India.

Harro de Jong

At 5:30 AM -0800 3/7/08, Jim Bunnell wrote:
>Adam, I agree completely that the iPhone reader would be a great
>addition. For now, however, are you familiar with Baen Book's
>electronic library <www.baen.com>? They publish quite a few books
>(science fiction and fantasy - not much with complex diagrams) in
>several formats, including HTML which works acceptably (not great) on
>an iPhone. I don't know how they process their documents, but they
>have been around and functioning well for several years (click on a
>book to order and you'll get a list of formats).

Yes, I'm basically familiar with Baen's stuff, but as you say,
they're publishing straight text for the most part (if not entirely).
Needless to say, that's easy to convert to HTML.

I'm talking primarily about the technical book world, where
screenshots are the bare minimum, and layouts are increasingly
complex because it makes for a better reading and learning experience.

cheers... -Adam

At 5:30 AM -0800 3/7/08, jonhersh wrote:
>I find it interesting that in all the discussion about the Kibble,
>er, Kindle, no one has mentioned that we've been reading books for
>years on Palm devices; there's a very larger store with lots of
>variety of titles available for download and the user experience is
>quite comfortable. Amazon has taken the approach of ignoring this
>obvious reading history (they certainly have made vast leaps in the
>purchasing part of the deal) an pretend that we've never had an
>opportunity to have digital pocket books with us.

Yes, you've got a good point, Jon. I think the problem that Palm
faces is that they've essentially made themselves irrelevant through
utter mismanagement. The market for Palm handhelds other than than
the Treo has basically disappeared, and the iPhone is eating the Treo
for lunch. So while there may be a decent sized market there now,
it's shrinking fast (people replace these devices more quickly than
computers) and I see no signs of reversal.

>I certainly agree with your assessment of the design aspect of the
>Kindle, it has a Ronco (the guy that hustles stuff on tv) feel to
>it: cheap, quick to manufacture with little investment and little
>loss when they dump it.

Now that's an interesting point - I wonder if the Kindle could be a
product that's merely designed to generate interest that Amazon could
then use to get a real electronics manufacturer to pick up. I can't
see Amazon wanting to be in the hardware design business for real.

cheers... -Adam

At 5:30 AM -0800 3/7/08, Harro de Jong wrote:
>The company I work for has been converting books to HTML for 10 years
>now. India only enters the picture for books that aren't available in
>electronic form, we've found that having Indians re-type the book
>manually is sometimes more accurate than scanning and OCR'ing.

Yeah, I've heard that too - retyping several times and comparing is
better than OCR. Nuts, but true.

>Otherwise, every publishing process we use (with source documents in
>FrameMaker, Word or AuthorIT) has options for conversion to HTML. From
>FrameMaker and Word we can publish in just about every flavor of HTML in
>use today. With a few days of coding, custom publishing formats can be
>added.

I won't name names, but suffice it to say that technical publishers
we're all familiar with are outsourcing to India for conversion. The
books aren't being retyped, but the process does require a person to
tweak stuff.

>Now, I'll have to admit that most of the conversion processes are
>Windows-only. But I'd consider that to be a lot better than manual
>conversion in India.

I'm curious what tools you're using in Windows with Word, and if
you've used them to create books for the Kindle or the Sony eReader.
Also, are your books straight text or graphically rich?

cheers... -Adam

Adam Engst wrote:

> At 5:30 AM -0800 3/7/08, Harro de Jong wrote:

>> Now, I'll have to admit that most of the conversion processes are
>> Windows-only. But I'd consider that to be a lot better than manual
>> conversion in India.
>
> I'm curious what tools you're using in Windows with Word, and if
> you've used them to create books for the Kindle or the Sony eReader.
> Also, are your books straight text or graphically rich?

The books we create are technical manuals, with a fair amount of
graphics. The layout is straightforward, graphics for HTML manuals are
usually screenshots, plus a limited number of vector drawings.

The tool we've been using is WebWorks ePublisher:
<http://www.webworks.com/>
Most of our conversions with this tool have been from FrameMaker, but
there's a Word version as well.
We haven't published for the Kindle or the Sony eReader yet.

Harro de Jong

On Mar 7, 2008, at 6:54 AM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> Yeah, I've heard that too - retyping several times and comparing is
> better than OCR. Nuts, but true.

Retyping is OCR. The engine is carbon-based rather than silicon-based.

   --John

On Mar 7, 2008, at 9:54 AM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> The market for Palm handhelds other than than
> the Treo has basically disappeared, and the iPhone is eating the Treo
> for lunch. So while there may be a decent sized market there now,
> it's shrinking fast (people replace these devices more quickly than
> computers) and I see no signs of reversal.

I can only speak anecdotally as I don't know what the market numbers
are, but I can see two areas where Palms are doing quite well
technologically:

1) the Palm TX is a fairly nifty device; tack on a folding keyboard
and it's pretty much the best UMPC for Mac integration, IMHO.

2) I'm a recent Palm Centro user, since Sprint will sell me EVDO with
tethering to use it as a MacBook connection. It's been an extremely
useful Internet utility gadget.

iPhone + unlimited dial-up networking + fast EDGE or 3G will blow the
doors off of point 2, but I'm not exactly holding my breath that this
will happen soon.

Best,
Jeff

On 3/7/08 at 7:30 AM, jonhershreddotcorp.com (jonhersh) wrote:

>Adam,
>
>I find it interesting that in all the discussion about the
>Kibble, er, Kindle, no one has mentioned that we've been
>reading books for years on Palm devices; there's a very larger
>store with lots of variety of titles available for download and
>the user experience is quite comfortable. Amazon has taken the
>approach of ignoring this obvious reading history (they
>certainly have made vast leaps in the purchasing part of the
>deal) an pretend that we've never had an opportunity to have
>digital pocket books with us.

While I'm not that fond of the Kindle, or Amazon's DRM-locked
approach tying a book to *just* the Kindle, I can't particularly
blame them for more-or-less ignoring the Palm e-book market.
I've been doing it for years myself, certainly - since the Palm
III days. But they simply have not made any kind of impact in
the public-at-large; I only know a couple of other people who
read books on the Palm, and they're both geekier than I am. I've
certainly had people show interest when they've seen me reading
on the Palm (or later the Nokia IT's) in public, but it's all
been of the visitor-to-the-circus variety; marveling at the
dancing bear, but not showing any particular interest in doing
it themselves. And when I have seriously tried to get friends
and family interested in PDA-reading, reactions have been been
universally negative; the main issues seem to be the complexity
of the device and the size of the screen.

Amazon certainly has made strides in the purchasing experience,
but it's tied to DRM that - unlike Apple's iTunes music DRM - I
find *very* over-restrictive. If you buy an e-book, you should
be able to read it on any computer you own, or any handheld
device. The iTMS music experience comes close... and while I've
bumped into the limit on playable computers a time or two, in
general it's been seamless and worked without my noticing it.
Amazon limiting e-books to one Kindle, and one Kindle only,
doesn't fly for me. It is at least nice that Amazon holds a
record of your purchases and will let you re-download them to a
new Kindle if your original one is destroyed or lost, but that's
not far enough for me. (And it has privacy implications that are
at least somewhat worrying to me, more so than worrying about
anyone knowing what music I listen to.)


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

On 3/7/08 at 2:51 PM, civitanjeffporten.com (Jeff Porten) wrote:

>On Mar 7, 2008, at 9:54 AM, Adam C. Engst wrote:
>
>>The market for Palm handhelds other than than
>>the Treo has basically disappeared, and the iPhone is eating the Treo
>>for lunch. So while there may be a decent sized market there now,
>>it's shrinking fast (people replace these devices more quickly than
>>computers) and I see no signs of reversal.
>
>I can only speak anecdotally as I don't know what the market numbers
>are, but I can see two areas where Palms are doing quite well
>technologically:
>
>1) the Palm TX is a fairly nifty device; tack on a folding keyboard
>and it's pretty much the best UMPC for Mac integration, IMHO.

The TX is in my mind an inferior device to the T5, which in turn
is inferior in many ways to the old T/T2. The original T/T2 were
built better, had a more solid feel to them, and the controls
were better both in design (the circular 5-way control was more
natural for me than the square one) and in construction quality
(the controls on the T2 still feel responsive, the T5's square
5-way felt mushy even to begin with and feels worse now, to say
nothing of the power switch).

I had high hopes for WiFi on the TX, but in practice it's been
virtually useless; the software is the biggest problem. Blazer
is frankly Paleolithic in rendering, and I was so unimpressed
with the e-mail client that I can't even remember its name. You
can't download and install software over WiFi. The one thing I
found decent on the networking front was the VNC client, and
frankly the small screen works against it there; the Nokia IT's
do a significantly better job with their 800x480 screens.

And the TX is, what... two years old, now? With no significant
updates? Palm's PDA hardware has stagnated, which I think is
what Adam is referring to. About the only advantage I see left
for Palm is the fact that Palm OS is still seen as simpler than
Windows Mobile, and that it still has a fairly large legacy
software base.

>2) I'm a recent Palm Centro user, since Sprint will sell me EVDO with
>tethering to use it as a MacBook connection. It's been an extremely
>useful Internet utility gadget.

The Centro left me extremely impressed. An extremely *bad*
impression. I admittedly didn't do more than play around with it
for a few minutes at MicroCenter, but I found the keyboard so
tiny that it was nearly impossible to use; the iPhone's is
*much* better IMHO. Aside from that glaring flaw, I also thought
it felt cheap and somewhat flimsy, and the plastic case felt
more like a kids' toy than an adult gadget.

>iPhone + unlimited dial-up networking + fast EDGE or 3G will blow the
>doors off of point 2, but I'm not exactly holding my breath that this
>will happen soon.

I suspect that tethering will not be a serious option under the
current unlimited $20 access plan. How much is Sprint charging
for unlimited EVDO access? I may be way off the mark, but from
what little I've seen of other wireless data plans (mostly bad
experiences with my former boss's Treo last year, which IIRC was
either Verizon or T-Mobile), $20/month unlimited data was a very
good deal.

And to be honest, my interest in tethering has been fairly low.
I don't travel nearly as much as I used to at my old job, but
WiFi hotspots have been pretty common in spots where I'd
actually want to pull out the laptop and do serious 'net work;
I'd say somewhere around 60-70% of the time. The iPhone is not
perfect, but in a *lot* of the situations where I'd want quick
untethered 'net access, it really is faster and simpler to pull
it out of my pocket and do my browsing that way. Sitting in a
restaurant and waiting for a client, I'd rather catch up on my
news sites and mail on the iPhone instead of pulling out the
laptop, just to name one example.


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

On 3/7/08 at 2:51 PM, civitanjeffporten.com (Jeff Porten) wrote:

>1) the Palm TX is a fairly nifty device; tack on a folding keyboard
>and it's pretty much the best UMPC for Mac integration, IMHO.

Whups... forgot to respond to the 'UMPC for Mac integration' in
my first message. That was once true, especially when WinCE
devices started to hit the market without Mac support. I'd say
it is currently not true on at least two fronts. First, Palm
Desktop and Hotsync have become increasingly creaky as they've
gone at least two-three years without more than very very minor
updates. When the best recommendation for compatibility with the
latest Palm OS-based Treos is a third-party option with Missing
Sync, which works just as much with Windows Mobile devices, I
don't think you can say Palm has any significant advantage with
Mac integration left. Second, I would say the smoothness and
seamlessness of the iPhone/iPod Touch's Mac integration is
superior to Palm's Hotsync even at its best; the main limitation
there is the relatively simple and limited nature of the
equivalent iTouch applications. The iTouch Contacts and Calendar
options are good enough for my use, but not for those who need
things like multiple categories for Contacts and Date events; I
never really used ToDo on the Palm, but it's completely missing
on the iTouch; and I particularly miss truly sync'ing Notes,
which I found very useful as a way to make lots of little
information snippets available on the Palm.


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

It is way too early to judge the viability or success of the Kindle, Sony Readers, Cybooks or any other device. At the current price points, only a very small segment of readers are inclined to entertain eBook reading via these devices. Most eBook readers still view their eBooks on a combination of desktop computers, laptops and PDAs. eBook Readers are also not likely to impact the market in the same fashion as iPods. You can do many other things while listening to your iPod, but it's tricky to multi-task and read an eBook (or any book) at the same time. eBooks address less than 3 tenths of one percent of global book revenue. They should only be adopted en masse when they serve a need not as well served by traditional paper. Devices are not likely to drive that. Even if a $99 device appears, it may grow the market for eBook reading, but eBooks will remain a relatively small niche in their current form. Content is the key to the future of e-reading. And it needs to start with the end user. Our bookshop (www.BooksOnBoard.com) works round the clock with customers struggling with a world of competing and proprietary formats. Oftentimes, it feels like the monopolistic big guys are actively trying to make people miserable with their formats. As one BooksOnBoard customer stated very well: "All I want to do is read a book. I don't want to be a computer whiz." The formats are built to support quarterly earnings (though they fail miserably) and not serve the customer. Earnings are okay, but most deserved when they are derived from a true customer-centric mission supported by actions. When the giants like Amazon, Sony, Microsoft, Palm (now eReader) give up proprietary gamesmanship and recognize that all ships can rise in this tiny market, only then will the individual reader (and the society) begin to be served.

--On 3/8/08 3:58 AM -0800 Bob LiVolsi wrote:

> eBook Readers are also not likely to
> impact the market in the same fashion as iPods. You can do many other things
> while listening to your iPod, but it's tricky to multi-task and read an eBook
> (or any book) at the same time.

Also--very important--iPods allow you a new level of access/portability to the
music library you already own. EBook readers start from zero, or almost
zero--you can buy new content but cannot access the paper books you have.

Dave Scocca

Jeff Porten wrote:
> On Mar 7, 2008, at 9:54 AM, Adam C. Engst wrote:
>
>> The market for Palm handhelds other than than
>> the Treo has basically disappeared, and the iPhone is eating the Treo
>> for lunch. So while there may be a decent sized market there now,
>> it's shrinking fast (people replace these devices more quickly than
>> computers) and I see no signs of reversal.
>
> I can only speak anecdotally as I don't know what the market numbers
> are, but I can see two areas where Palms are doing quite well
> technologically:
>
> 1) the Palm TX is a fairly nifty device; tack on a folding keyboard
> and it's pretty much the best UMPC for Mac integration, IMHO.
>
> 2) I'm a recent Palm Centro user, since Sprint will sell me EVDO with
> tethering to use it as a MacBook connection. It's been an extremely
> useful Internet utility gadget.
>
> iPhone + unlimited dial-up networking + fast EDGE or 3G will blow the
> doors off of point 2, but I'm not exactly holding my breath that this
> will happen soon.

After years of hassles with Palm syncing I have absolutely no interesting a waking down that road any father than I already have. And so do a lot of other people. 8 years ago the hassle seems worth it. Today it does not. And even if they fix it and make it totally seamless such that my 80 year old mother in law would understand and use it there's a bitter taste in a lot of mouths.

David Ross

Adam C. Engst wrote:
> At 5:30 AM -0800 3/7/08, Harro de Jong wrote:
>> The company I work for has been converting books to HTML for 10 years
>> now. India only enters the picture for books that aren't available in
>> electronic form, we've found that having Indians re-type the book
>> manually is sometimes more accurate than scanning and OCR'ing.
>
> Yeah, I've heard that too - retyping several times and comparing is
> better than OCR. Nuts, but true.

Actually not nuts at all. An OCR program has a logic to it. Feeding a book into it without corrections SHOULD produce the same result each time. Feeding one into 3 different OCR engines should give you 3 results which could be compared for differences. Which is what is happening when you have multiple people type in the same book.

As to this seeming to be "nuts" this type of thing is allowing amateur astronomers (and the big boys also but with issues) to create some very high resolution photos of objects. They literally take a 100 or so (maybe much more) digital photos and then merge them together algorithmically. Artifacts can be identified and dropped and the rest merged into a very high resolution photograph. The major large scopes are also doing this to some degree but I imagine that limited allocated time makes it hard for someone to take 100s of photos of one object very often.

David

> Adam wrote:
>
> Back in January, while talking with John Markoff and David Pogue of
> the New York Times after your Macworld Expo keynote, you expressed
> skepticism about the Amazon Kindle ebook reader. John Markoff
> quoted you as saying, "It doesn't matter how good or bad the
> product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore. Forty
> percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.
> The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read
> anymore....."

There are several reasons that Steve should be taken seriously: the
statistics may be close; other media may be more fascinating and
engaging, that is one of the things that Mac is about, isn't it ?
The CDC has admitted that 1 in 6 US children are born with some kind
of mental deficiency, besides all the fuss over autisms of various
kinds. Some of these kids start reading at two or three years old
and devour amazing books one after the other; however, the majority
find it difficult, but may learn to enjoy video and audio.

There are countries, however, where the population still does read.
There are some people who do still read in the advanced
civilizations. All of us know that texts available in no other way
may be on Google or in a specialised library and readable online. So
there are several sides to the argument; and as some of the posts
suggest: Steve probably has it covered.

Being able to make our own links from ebooks to other materials would
be great, for a start. That is easy enough from a Gutenberg text;
how is it from protected books and journal articles ?

George

--- begin forwarded text

From: Robert Maxwell Case

Adam, Just read your article ... wholly agree that Apple should be the
one to take advantage of the situation you accurately depict. If you
get a chance, please check this link to see a direction things might
go. --Robert / http://seeandbelieve.com/

--
Robert Maxwell Case

--- end forwarded text