e-reading

22.09.08

backstory

At the turn of the century I stumbled upon E Ink, an intriguing type of ink that can be reoriented to refresh a page with new information. “Minority Report” exemplified this in a future where cereal boxes play short animations.

It wasn’t until 08.05.08 that I saw E Ink in person. The Sony Reader (PRS-505) had come to Canada. I walked away impressed.

By that time, I was aware of the Bookeen’s Cybook 3, with better Mac support and the iLiad, with WiFi, a Wacom stylus, and an SDK. The iLiad is a geek’s dream. A very expensive dream.

library

The majority of my reading is on computer programming, web development, and design. Lately, I have been trying to buy PDF e-books more often, though I still have many paper books.

Naturally I refuse to purchase DRM infested books. Publishers that I approve of include The Pragmatic Programmers, O’Reilly, Manning, No Starch Press, SitePoint. Password protected PDFs annoy, but I still buy books from Apress (including friends of ED) and Packt Publishing. The InformIT imprints use DRM, but their books can usually be read on O’Reilly Safari instead.

Don’t ask me how many of the 50-some e-books I’ve actually finished! Some of that is due to swaying interests, but eye strain certainly contributes.

e-pdf

On 22.09.08, iRex announced a new Digital Reader series targeted at the business sector. The device features a 10.2″ E Ink display suitable for viewing PDF documents. Perfect!

Unfortunately some reviews indicate the software being rough around the edges, and being geared towards business, it’s predictably quite expensive (the iLiad remains equally expensive).

So far I haven’t heard much about the SDK, except that there will be one. While I may never learn enough Linux and GTK to become a developer, at least it opens the door to third-party software. For the iLiad, Adam B. has already ported a PIM and is working on a web browser he calls Midori. Hopefully the Digital Reader will receive similar treatment.

epub

On 02.10.08 Sony announced the PRS-700 Digital Reader. Besides side lighting, it’s outfitted with a touch screen for navigation, searching and annotation. Those features make it quite suitable for reference material, the only problem is that PDFs don’t fit so well onto the 6″ display.

O’Reilly has begun making books available in reflowable .epub format. That doesn’t really help with all my existing e-books, though perhaps Calibre can help?

The PRS-700 is coming to Canada in mid-November, at half the asking price of the iRex Digital Reader.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Update: This article was originally written on 29.08.07. I have condensed it significantly, and updated it to reflect the release of the new iRex Digital Reader and Sony PRS-700.