A Short History of EBooks Part 12

The Rocket eBook was launched by NuvoMedia, in Palo Alto, California, as the first dedicated reading device. Founded in 1997, NuvoMedia wanted to become "the electronic book distribution solution, by providing a networking infrastructure for publishers, retailers and end users to publish, distribute, purchase and read electronic content securely and efficiently on the internet." Investors of NuvoMedia were Barnes & n.o.ble and Bertelsmann. The connection between the Rocket eBook and the computer (PC or Macintosh) was made through the Rocket eBook Cradle, which provided power through a wall transformer, and connected to the computer with a serial cable.

EveryBook (EB) was "a living library in a single book". The EveryBook's electronic storage could hold 100 textbooks or 500 novels. The EveryBook used a "hidden" modem to dial into the EveryBook Store, for people to browse, purchase and receive full text books, magazines and sheet music.

SoftBook Press created the SoftBook along with the SoftBook Network, an internet-based content delivery service. With the SoftBook, "people could easily, quickly and securely download a wide selection of books and periodicals using its built-in internet connection", with a machine that, "unlike a computer, was ergonomically designed for the reading of long doc.u.ments and books." The investors of Softbook Press were Random House and Simon & Schuster.

Librius was a "full-service ecommerce company" that launched a small "low-cost" reading device called the Millennium eBook.

The website offered a World Bookstore that delivered digital copies of thousands of books via the internet.

The Gemstar eBook was launched in October 2000 by Gemstar-TV Guide International, a company providing digital products and services for the media. Gemstar first bought Nuvomedia (Rocket eBook) and SoftBook Press (SoftBook) in January 2000, as well as the French 00h00.com, a producer of digital books, in September 2000. Two Gemstar eBook were available for sale in the U.S. in November 2000, with a later attempt in Germany to test the European market. The REB 1100 had a black and white screen, like the Rocket eBook. The REB 1200 had a color screen, like the SoftBook Reader. Both were produced by RCA (Thomson Multimedia). New and cheaper models were then launched as GEB 1150 and 2150, produced by Gemstar instead of RCA. But the sales were still far below expectations. The company stopped selling reading devices in June 2003, and digital books the following month.

= What people thought of them

In 2000 and 2001, I was interviewing some book professionals about these new reading devices they were so curious about, while wondering how a reading device could ever replace a print book. (As shown in the answers below, people often used the word "ebook" for an ebook reading device.)

Peter Raggett is the head of the Central Library at the OECD (Organization for Economic and Cooperation Development). He wrote in July 2000: "It is interesting to see that the electronic book mimics the traditional book as much as possible except that the paper page is replaced by a screen. I can see that the electronic book will replace some of the present paper products but not all of them. I also hope that electronic books will be waterproof so that I can continue reading in the bath."

Henk Slettenhaar is a professor in communication technologies at Webster University in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote in August 2000: "I have a hard time believing people would want to read from a screen. I much prefer myself to read and touch a real book."

Randy Hobler is a consultant in internet marketing living in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He wrote in September 2000: "eBooks continue to grow as the display technology improves, and as the hardware becomes more physically flexible and lighter. Plus, among the early adapters will be colleges because of the many advantages for students (ability to download all their reading for the entire semester, inexpensiveness, linking into exams, a.s.signments, need for portability, eliminating need to lug books all over)."

Eduard Hovy is the head of the Natural Language Group at USC/ISI (University of Southern California / Information Sciences Inst.i.tute). He wrote in September 2000: "eBooks, to me, are a non-starter. More even that seeing a concert live or a film at a cinema, I like the physical experience holding a book in my lap and enjoying its smell and feel and heft.

Concerts on TV, films on TV, and ebooks lose some of the experience; and with books particularly it is a loss I do not want to accept. After all, it is much easier and cheaper to get a book in my own purview than a concert or cinema. So I wish the ebook makers well, but I am happy with paper. And I don't think I will end up in the minority anytime soon - I am much less afraid of books vanis.h.i.+ng than I once was of cinemas vanis.h.i.+ng."

Tim McKenna is an author who thinks and writes about the complexity of truth in a world of flux. He wrote in October 2000: "I don't think that they have the right appeal for lovers of books. The internet is great for information. Books are not information. People who love books have a relations.h.i.+p with their books. They re-read them, write in them, confer with them. Just as cybers.e.x will never replace the love of a woman, ebooks will never be a vehicle for beautiful prose."

Steven Krauwer is the coordinator of ELSNET (European Network of Excellence in Human Language Technologies). He wrote in June 2001 that "ebooks still had a long way to go before reading from a screen feels as comfortable as reading a book."

Guy Antoine is the founder of Windows on Haiti, a reference website about Haitian culture. He wrote in June 2001: "Sorry, I haven't tried them yet. Perhaps because of this, it still appears to me like a very odd concept, something that the technology made possible, but for which there will not be any wide usage, except perhaps for cla.s.sic reference texts. High school and college textbooks could be a useful application of the technology, in that there would be much lighter backpacks to carry. But for the sheer pleasure of reading, I can hardly imagine getting cozy with a good ebook."

= PDAs

In the 1990s, Jacques Gauchey was a journalist and writer covering information technology in Silicon Valley. He was also a "facilitator" between the U.S. and Europe. Jacques was among the first to buy a Palm Pilot in March 1996, and wrote about it in his free online newsletter. As a side remark, he remembered in July 1999: "In 1996 I published a few issues of a free English newsletter on the internet. It had about ten readers per issue until the day when the electronic version of Wired Magazine created a link to it. In one week I got about 100 emails, some from French readers of my book "La vallee du risque - Silicon Valley" [The Valley of Risk - Silicon Valley, published by Plon, Paris, in 1990], who were happy to find me again." He added: "All my clients now are internet companies.

All my working tools (my mobile phone, my PDA and my PC) are or will soon be linked to the internet."

Palm stayed the leader, despite fierce compet.i.tion, with 23 million Palm Pilots sold between 1996 and 2002. In 2002, 36.8% of all PDAs available on the market were Palm Pilots. Its main compet.i.tor was Microsoft's Pocket PC. The main platforms were Palm OS (for 55% of PDAs) and Pocket PC (for 25,7%). In 2004, prices began to drop. The leaders were the PDAs of Palm, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard, followed by Handspring, Tos.h.i.+ba, and Casio.

= Phones and reading devices

The first smartphone was Nokia 9210, launched as early as 2001.

It was followed by Nokia Series 60, Sony Ericsson P800, and the smartphones of Motorola and Siemens. Smartphones took off quickly. In February 2005, Sony stopped selling PDAs.

Smartphones represented 3,7% of all cellphones sold in 2004, and 9% of all cellphones sold in 2006, with 90 million smartphones sold for one billion cellphones.

Many people read ebooks on their PDAs, cellphones and smartphones. The favorite readers (software) were Mobipocket Reader (available in March 2000), Microsoft Reader (available in April 2000), Palm Reader (available in March 2001), Acrobat Reader (available in May 2001 for Palm Pilot, and in December 2001 for Pocket PC), and Adobe Reader (available in May 2003 to replace Acrobat Reader).

For cellphones, smartphones and dedicated reading devices, LCD screens have been replaced by screens using the technology developed by E Ink. As explained on the company's website: "Electronic ink is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays. Although revolutionary in concept, electronic ink is a straightforward fusion of chemistry, physics and electronics to create this new material. The princ.i.p.al components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot. To form an E Ink electronic display, the ink is printed onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver. These microcapsules are suspended in a liquid 'carrier medium' allowing them to be printed using existing screen printing processes onto virtually any surface, including gla.s.s, plastic, fabric and even paper. Ultimately electronic ink will permit most any surface to become a display, bringing information out of the confines of traditional devices and into the world around us."

Sony launched its first reading device, Librie 1000-EP, in j.a.pan in April 2004, in partners.h.i.+p with Philips and E Ink.

Librie was the first reading device to use the E Ink technology, with a 6-inch screen, a 10 M memory, and a 500- ebook capacity. eBooks were downloaded from a computer through a USB port. The Sony Reader was launched in October 2006 in the U.S. for US $350, followed by cheaper and revamped models.

Amazon.com launched its own reading device, the Kindle, in November 2007. Before launching the Kindle, Amazon.com bought in April 2005 Mobipocket, a French company specializing in ebooks for PDAs, cellphones and smartphones, with a catalog of several thousands of books in several languages to be read on the Mobipocket Reader.

The Kindle was launched with a catalog of 80,000 ebooks - and new releases for US $9,99 each. The built-in memory and 2G SD card gave plenty of book storage (1.4 G), with a screen using the E Ink technology, and page-turning b.u.t.tons. Books were directly bought and downloaded via the device's 3G wireless connection, with no need for a computer, unlike the Sony Reader. 580.000 Kindles were sold in 2008. A thinner and revamped Kindle 2 was launched in February 2009, with a storage capacity of 1,500 ebooks, a new text-to-speech feature, and a catalog of 230,000 ebooks on Amazon.com's website.

Can reading devices like Sony Reader and Kindle really compete with cellphones and smartphones? Will people prefer reading on mobile handsets like the iPhone 3G (with its Stanza Reader) or the T-Mobile G1 (with Google's platform Android and its reader), or will they prefer using reading devices to get a larger screen? Or is there a market for both smartphones and reading devices? These are some fascinating questions for the next years. I personally dream about a big flat screen on one of my walls, where I could display my friends' interactive PDFs and hypermedia stories, when I won't be on a budget anymore. In the meantime, I enjoy my netbook, including to read ebooks.

The next generation of reading devices - expected for 2010-11 - should display color and multimedia/hypermedia content with a revamped E Ink technology.

The company Plastic Logic has become a key player for new products. As explained on its website: "Technology for plastic electronics on thin and flexible plastic substrates was developed at Cambridge University's renowned Cavendish Laboratory in the 1990s. In 2000, Plastic Logic was spun out of Cavendish Laboratory to develop a broad range of products using the plastic electronics technology. (...) Plastic Logic has raised over $200M in financing from top-tier venture funding sources in Asia, Europe and the U.S. We are using the funds to complete product development in England and the USA, build a specialized, scalable production facility in Germany, and build our go-to-market teams." Plastic Logic intends to launch in 2010 a very thin and flexible 10.7' plastic screen, using proprietary plastic electronics and the E Ink technology.

Reading devices can count on some fierce compet.i.tion with smartphones. In February 2009, the 1.5 million public-domain books available in Google Books - and 500,000 more outside the U.S. because of variations of copyright law - were accessible via mobile handsets such as the T-Mobile G1, released in October 2008 with Google's platform Android and its reader.

Because of the small screens of mobile handsets, the ebooks are in text format, and not in image format. Android is an open source mobile device platform (built on Linux), that was announced in November 2007 along with the creation of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). Other leading companies - Motorola, Lenovo, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, etc. - are working on smartphones that will run Android in the near future.

= The @folio project

The @folio project is a reading device conceived in October 1996 by Pierre Schweitzer, an architect-designer living in Strasbourg, France. It is meant to download and read any text and/or ill.u.s.trations from the web or hard disk, in any format, with no proprietary format and no DRM. Unfortunately, to this day (in August 2009), @folio has stayed a prototype, because of lack of funding and because of the language barrier - one article in English for dozens of articles in French.

The technology of @folio is novel and simple, and very different from other reading devices, past or present. It is inspired from fax and tab file folders. The flash memory is "printed" like Gutenberg printed his books. The facsimile mode is readable as is for any content, from sheet music to mathematical or chemical formulas, with no conversion necessary, whether it is handwritten text, calligraphy, free hand drawing or non-alphabetical writing. All this is difficult if not impossible on a computer or any existing reading device.

The lightweight prototype is built with high-quality materials.

The screen takes 80% of the total surface and has low power consumption. It is surrounded by a translucent and flexible frame that folds to protect the screen when not in use. @folio could be sold for US $100 for the basic standard version, with various combinations of screen sizes and flash memory to fit the specific needs of architects, ill.u.s.trators, musicians, specialists in old languages, etc.

Intuitive navigation allows to "turn" pages as easily as in a print book, to cla.s.sify and search doc.u.ments as easily as with a tab file folder, and to choose preferences for margins, paragraphs, font selection and character size. No b.u.t.tons, only a round trackball adorned with the world map in black and white. The trackball can be replaced with a long and narrow tactile pad on either side of the frame.

The flash memory allows the downloading of thousands of hypertext pages, either previously linked before download or linked during the downloading process. @folio provides an instant automatic reformatting of doc.u.ments, for them to fit the size of the screen. For "text" files, no software is necessary. For "image" files, the reformatting software is called [email protected] - [email protected] in French - and could be used with any other device. This software received much attention from the French National Library (BnF: Bibliotheque nationale de France) for a potential use in Gallica, its digital library of 90,000 books, especially for old books (published before 1812) and ill.u.s.trated ma.n.u.scripts.

Since its inception, the @folio project has received a warm welcome during guest presentations in various book fairs and symposiums in France and Europe, and a warm welcome from the French-speaking media - press, radio, television and internet.

An international patent was filed in April 2001. The French startup iCodex was created in July 2002 to promote, develop and market @folio. A few years later, there is still a warm welcome, but yet no funding. In August 2007, the @folio team began seeking funding worldwide. Pierre's pa.s.sion for a cheap and beautiful reading device intended for everybody - and not just the few - has no boundaries, except some financial ones.

2008: "A COMMON INFORMATION s.p.a.cE IN WHICH WE COMMUNICATE"

= [Overview]

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web in 1989-90, wrote in May 1998: "The dream behind the web is of a common information s.p.a.ce in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us a.n.a.lyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together" (excerpt from: "The World Wide Web: A Very Short Personal History", available on the W3C website). Twenty years after the invention of the web, and ten years after the writing of this text, Tim Berners-Lee's dream and "second part of the dream" have begun to become reality with many partic.i.p.ative projects across borders and languages.

= From etexts to ebooks

Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg in 1971. He wrote in 1998: "We consider etext to be a new medium, with no real relations.h.i.+p to paper, other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way to etexts, especially in schools."

John Mark Ockerbloom created the Online Books Page in 1993. He wrote in 1998: "I've gotten very interested in the great potential the net has for making literature available to a wide audience. (...) I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a ma.s.s communication medium in the coming years.

I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer."