I got my first walkman just a decade back, and perhaps because of Mobile phones and the Ipod, a generation of Indians might never see the walkman in their lives. The point though is that while the Walkman became one of the greatest inventions ever it took a a decent amount of time before it went on to be a global standard accessory. I see the same case with E-book readers, and I see the same impact that a Walkman created with music happening with E-book readers and publishing.
So when Sony announced their version and now Asus planning one of their own, and to say nothing of Kindle, I am excited to see them share the vision to some extent (made myself the de facto visionary there).
Anyway, here are some features that I clearly would love to see in E-book readers:
1. Ability to Link and Email besides annotations:
While the Kindle ensures bookmarks and notes on books are excellent features, I feel the ability to add links to words and email snippets clipped from the book on the Go would be some serious value add.
2. Support all formats
What sets Sony’s reader apart is its truly open nature. It is a global product as well as open to all sorts of formats unlike Amazon’s product. I hope Asus and MSI if and when they enter the market don’t put any barrier to formats support. And of course I am not limiting myself to words here, multimedia is more than welcome, how about a camera to go with it?
3. Hold Unlimited Book Titles
Or at least give better options of data storage if not only so much can be squeezed in the storage. There is no point harping on being digital and electronic if I have to stack up 2 or 3 readers or carry around unhandy discs of books if I am a voracious reader.
4. Instant Translation of Texts
This would be a boon for travellers who could browse local bookstores online and pick and choose local books judging its translated content. And even existing books if they can be selected and translated immediately would open up a totally different era in reading as well as cultural understanding.
5. Enable group reading
I am not pretty clear on how I want this to work, but if it can be made possible for a set of reader to be able to connect through a single window while reading the same chapter or section is something I would like to see. This is because only E-Readers can do it, and add to it functionalitites such as sharing each others notes and thoughts to it and we take collaboration to the next level.
Though initially skeptical I am now really excited about E-reading. And while it doesn’t have the charm of traditional books and shelves filled with hardcovers, they can completely transform knowledge sharing. And I think they’re the a natural extension to web publishing as well, thus securing a very promising future for themselves.
Are you serious?
We are talking of digital ebooks with most of them in txt(in Sony BBeb format or other lightweight formats) Even with native memory, you can still stack up more books in the reader than you can finish reading anytime soon. I hold more than 40 e-books on my PRS and with more than 80% of space empty.
The case for more space holds if you are the type hat listens to audio along with books, in which case the space is the last thing to worry about anyway. Battery life is. We all know how bad it gets with MP3 files playing in the background.
As far as formats go, pdf rendering is terrible on all readers right now(i have both PRS and Kindle) and that’s precisely why Amazon came with Kindle DX(with a bloated price). PDF’s are one file format that can take a lot of space but if you are not on KindleDX, you won’t enjoy pdf reading much.
Sharing and translation on the fly are great ideas but will require a regular wi-fi connection. Again that will lead to battery life issues.
For me Key areas that Readers need to adddress:
1) Battery Life. More than running out of books on travel, i run out on battery.
2) PDF support. Enough said. Lets have some good pdf rendering on the reader. Please!
3) Colour – Ok Bezos himself has said that’s not going to happen till 2011.
Lets see what Apple comes up with. Apple is coming with its own ebook reader cum tablet and like everything else, i believe that will be a game changer. Else there are rapid developments taking place from many startup companies and we are seeing new readers coming out everyday.
its only going to get better.
Having recently bought a Sony PRS-505, I’m a total fan of e-ink readers. I recently tried to buy a book and to my horror, pretty much all editions (from different sellers) were crippled with DRM. As though this ignominy was not enough, the prices are 3-5x bookstore prices. Madness! And, of course, there’s no way to read DRM’ed files if you’re on linux.
The music industry has shown that DRM doesn’t work. The ebook readers will do everyone a favour if they push publishers to drop DRM.
Regarding translation – the big advantage of ebooks is that they are “update-able’ easily, as they easily connect to computers. So, integrating translators into the ereader software may be an easier thing to do and do fast.
Also, having used it for some time, it will be cool to have it attached live to wi-fi network to do things like lookup word definitions, etc. Given the way e-ink works, though, this is probably not easily do-able.
@ajay
Currently the Kindle can hold up to 200 titles I think.. I’d be damned if I ever reach a 100 titles, but I know people who have read a lot more, know a lady whose gone beyond 30,000 books in fact. So such a feature is for their kinds, I’d like e-readers to not have size impidement. More importantly it’s not like I want these features tomorrow, just want the developers to move in these directions. Thanks for the views though were very valuable and looking forward Apple people now as well
@Vijay
I like your way with words
DRM I am not sure how much of an issue it will be for books, but your points make me think otherwise.
Thanks guys for adding value to this post