New blog on book innovation

I've just opened a new blog called: Book Innovation.

Feel free to post your comments and even send me your posts if you want to publish them in it.

Sony eBook Reader PRS-505 (part 2)

After being with the Sony PRS-505 e-book reader for a couple of months and testing it with different contents (books, articles, blogs)., the final conclusions are:

• e-Ink tech is on his first steps;
• Color is a must have for our market (e-Ink is still B&W);
• Lack of interactivity is a big problem;
• Battery in the Sony reader is amazing (10 days in active mode)
• As a simple reader is very good, but don t ask for more. Very simple solutions could be created for this reader, but this is not our interest right now (iPhone solutions are).
• Music player integrated is awful (horrible sound quality)
• A technology to allow reformatting texts is needed (so you are allowed to increase text size).
• iREX should be my next Laboratory Toy.

Sony eBook Reader PRS-505 (part I)

First impression on this ebook reader when unboxing is ....."nice gadget" but let's see what's inside. And what we find there is a very good ebook reader but nothing else: no wifi connection, no color, no interactivity and little problems with PDF reading. Design could be also better....allow Apple do this for you!

It's a very good reader because it has no other ambitions and reading ebooks in the .lrf format is a nice experience. I've been reading some articles and parts of different books for the last two weeks (in very changing light ambiences) and no problems came up with this issue.

But connection or interactivity with the reader are a must-have for the next version. Sony must also allow PDF to be correctly displayed in his screen (zoom is not enough) and,

maybe, think about producing a bigger screen with touch capabilities (and eliminate lots of

useless buttons). IRex is doing quite well with its last product Iliad 2nd Edition but at a much higher price ($599 vs $299).

E-ink technology is in his first development steps so we will have to wait till improvements are available for this readers (faster changes between pages, better transitions, ink colors).

Reader is prepared for leisure but not for professionals: no medical or biology or painting books are possible without colour and other improvements.

On eBook devices

I've been recently looking at those new eBook readers coming from different companies: Amazon, iRex, Sony, Bookeen, Hanlin and others. I was asking myself which one could feed my actual needs.

All of them are based on e-ink technology and, depending on the price (from $200 to $650) they offer more functionalities. For me, two things are the most important: 1) battery life and, 2) the chance to easily upload and storage all content formats (Word, PDF, txt, html, epub, etc.).

After reading different reviews and opinions, I decided to give a try to Sony PRS-505. I will let you know my experience with it in a few weeks.

TECH - Where does information go ?

I use to read The Economist and Fast Company magazines when I'm waiting at the airport or flying. A few days ago I was reading some articles in those jornals and I realized that they are small pieces of text. Nothing compared to the traditional articles we could found, for example, in traditional legal journals. In fact, articles (in the broadest meaning of the word) are changing from full lenght studies of a reality, idea or thought, to a sort of fast and short commentaries compiling as much information as possible.

The same thing happens with articles published in the newspapers: we have an increasing number of texts and they become shorter and shorter.

Make a test: go to a library, read a newspaper from the 60's and count the total number of articles. Now do the same with a recent newspaper and you will obtain a much higher number of works. Where does the information go ?

Do you think we accumulate more thoughts and ideas and the small pieces of text we are receiveing from the publishers are just updates of those things? or, is information changing its structure and presentation to allow us understand a much more complex world?

I really don't know but the increasing number of communications/informations and the increasing number of sources (blogs, podcasts) are making us short-text-readers. What will be the consequences of this fact?