A new generation of ereaders are about to hit the market.

Kindle changed the ebook game and eInk was supposed to respond to people’s complaints about the difficulty of prolonged reading on screen. But as we quickly found, we want more than the ability to carry around hundred of books at a time. We want color. We want video. We want hyperlinks.  We want our ereaders to take advantage of all types of technology, not just the ability to replicate a book on a digital device.

Not that we don’t also want traditional books, with their unique smell, and the ability to read them in the bath without fear of electrocution, but maybe digital devices can one day inspire our affection too . . .

For months now, we’ve heard rumors about the Apple iTablet and how it’s going to revolutionize the computing and printing industries. Speculation claims the iTablet is going to resemble a 10″ iPhone/iPod Touch with an operating system. We could see color, music, video, hyperlinks — possibly even a phone.

However, an iTablet won’t address one of the major pluses of the Kindle – for many people, reading on a screen is too difficult for it to be worth buying a tablet versus sticking to their computer.

Athena by Barnes and Noble

Enter the Athena Nook and the Alex. Both Athena Nook, developed by Barnes and Noble, and Alex, from Spring Design, offer dual screens — one LCD and one eInk. I believe the designers are hoping that by offering both screen formats on one device, they will be allowing people to eat their cake and have it too. One interesting feature to note about the Alex is that it is built entirely on Android, Google’s open source mobile operating system.

As for when these products will be hitting the market…we are still waiting for an official announcement from Apple. Spring Design only announced the Alex today, and again, rumor has it that Barnes and Noble will officially announce the Athena Nook tomorrow. So, no launch dates yet. But none of these products are going to be great without great content. And that’s where Vook enters the picture: We have the platform and the ability to craft stories for all of these players that can really let them shine. We have to keep reminding people that we’re not here to kill the book. We’re here to make new books into products that people really enjoy — and maybe even treasure.

And while we all sit around the camp fire discussing ereaders, what about econtent? Other than vooks, what content has been invented to fully take advantage of new technologies?

UPDATE: According to Engadget who’s source is the WSJ, the Barnes and Noble ereader is going to be called the Nook and cost $259.

Related posts:

1. B&N Steps Up
2. Google Moves the OS up in the Clouds
3. The future sound of books

Every year, on one specific day, bloggers all around the world post about a particular topic. That day is today. October 15, 2009. It is Blog Action Day. This year, we were asked to blog about climate change. So I want to take a moment to ask the question: Are digital books “green”?

They save paper, sure. But do the chemicals, electricity and plastics needed to create the reader, or iPhone or computer cancel this out? Here are some interesting articles that may shed some light on the subject:

Gizmodo joined the debate with the article Kindle is More Environmentally Friendly Than Old-School Books where Cleantech Group did an in depth study on CO2 emmissions:

According to an analysis by the Cleantech Group, the Kindle is more environmentally friendly than plain ol’ paper books, assuming you’re not a freak who reads less than five books a year.

Details of this study came from CNET.

OK. But some people argue it isn’t just the paper, or the gas to transport the books, that cause a problem. That we have to consider the electricity consumption too; because as we know, electricity consumption while on the grid (meaning not from an alternative energy source) is one of the leading causes of climate change. Pablo Paster, a sustainability engineer who writes a column over at Salon.com, analyzed his energy consumption for the time it would take to read a book on his computer versus energy consumption needed to produce that same book in paper form:

[It took] one-tenth of a pound of greenhouse gas emissions from reading the document on the computer, versus almost one-quarter of a pound of greenhouse gas emissions for printing it out. [...] Of course, there is always an exception. If you are going to read the document more than seven times, the greenhouse gas emissions for printing would be less than using the computer each time.

I guess the moral of the story is: if you read more than 5 books per year, get an ebook reader. Unless you want to read a particular title more than 7 times in your lifetime, in which case, buy the paper version. And since you clearly already have a computer, be even greener and buy a vook since they don’t require a reader!

[UPDATE: This post has been edited since it was first posted.]

Related posts:

1. New York Times Best Seller List For Ebooks
2. The Ever Expanding Ebook Landscape

I recently came across a post on TechFlash about the ebook universe. The author, Eric Engleman, created a graphic (shown to the right) to begin to explore the “big boom” of the ebook universe. As Engleman wrote in his post:

The buzz around Amazon’s Kindle electronic reader has sparked growing interest in digital books, and the universe of players in this space is growing rapidly. New reading devices and content partnerships are announced on an almost weekly basis.

The world of digital books is fairly young, and as Engleman noted, is changing daily. While this is a great beginning to a comprehensive visual representation of the space, as many of the people who commented on the post noted, this graphic only touches the tip of the iceberg. What I think a lot of commenters noted is that not only are there players missing but there are whole dimensions to this graph that need to be added, such as indie publishers, major publishing houses that are venturing into the digital world and other types of publishers such as magazines (to name just a few).

Perhaps one single graph is already not enough to encapsulate this growing industry.

One of the aspects of all this that I find the most fascinating is how we are having to create words to describe the landscape. A book is a book. We all know what one looks like. The size, color and paper might change, but books have a front cover, a back cover and paper in between with text and sometimes images on them. No matter the publisher, the same basic technology is used to produce them. Done. That is a book. Simple. We have the language to talk about it.

But with this new generation, not only is the format taking many forms, but we don’t even have words with which to talk about them that everyone agrees upon. Some say ebooks, some say digital books. Some use those two terms interchangeably, and some maintain there is a difference. An ebook on a Kindle is different from an ebook on an iPhone. The technology needed to produce a Kindle ebook is different than that for the Stanza iPhone app which is different from Shortcover’s ebooks for the BlackBerry. And these examples are all simple text! Add in video like we are doing, or audio like Enhanced Editions is doing, and you’ve got a whole new ball-game.

So, if we don’t even have the language to discuss this new universe, how can a single image represent it? Or perhaps, only an image can accurately represent what we cannot put into words.

If you were to create your own graph of the digital publishing/book/vook (and anything else you feel belongs in there) universe, what would it look like?

Related posts:

1. Blog Action Day 2009 – Climate Change: Are eBooks “Green”?
2. iPhone 3.0 changes up the eBook game
3. eReader market ready to explode

Back when Brad Inman was first dreaming up Vook, he wanted to test his theory that integrating text and video would create a truly enhanced experience. So he sat down and wrote a book. And then he created videos to go along with it. We wanted to share with you a little taste of that first vook:

Imagine you are in History class reading about the Netherlands in the 17th century. Of course, 17th century Holland can’t be talked about without mentioning the Tulip Craze — in the 1600s, the Dutch went nuts for tulips, resulting in many people’s financial ruin. And what better way to learn about this folly than with an illustrative video seamlessly blended into your digital text?

So, sit back. Relax. Pretend you are in 9th grade, and enjoy Tulip Bubbles: http://vook.tv/videos/tulip_bubble.mov (a little patience please, the video can take a moment or two to load).

Related posts:

1. A Potential Future for Vook – Educational Vooks part 2
2. Top 3 Vook Readers of the Future

To those who think the magazine industry just doesn’t get it — and I know who you are, all 20 million of you — I direct your attention to this cool little thing vook’s Joel Burshem turned me on to:     It’s a video ad stuck smack in the middle of an issue of good old fashioned Entertainment Weekly.  As Joel said, it might scare the pants off you if you didn’t know it was there, but if the goal of magazine editors and publishers is to get your attention — and live in the 21st century — it’s a great way to start.

Related posts:

1. The joke’s on whom?
2. The Ever Expanding Ebook Landscape

Big news this morning. Google announces a brand new operating system based on its Chrome Browser – Google Chrome OS. Details on what it’ll look like are bit sketchy, but there is no doubt. This is huge, huge move for the search giant to make.

Why, you ask?

The New York Times categorizes this as a first leap into the clouds where ultimately all applications are hosted online.

Google’s plans for the new operating system fit its Internet-centric vision of computing. Google believes that software delivered over the Web will play an increasingly central role, replacing software programs that run on the desktop. In that world, applications run directly inside an Internet browser, rather than atop an operating system, the standard software that controls most of the operations of a PC.

Put more succinctly, Michael Arrington, writing at Techcrunch, sums it up best. He says:

The Internet Is Everything. All the OS has to do is boot the damn computer, get me to a browser as fast as possible and then stay the hell out of the way.

Google expects to put this free (yes, free) operating system on millions of computers starting next year.

For us at Vook, this is especially exciting – the new Chrome Browser and Google’s vision for cloud-based computing dovetails exactly with our vision for taking digital books and bringing them to the Internet.

When we first started talking about this project we often referred to Vook as putting books in the cloud.  And today we are even one step closer to making that a reality.

Related posts:

1. Do you trust Google with our literary heritage?
2. WEEKEND ON THE GO
3. Vook’s holiday present to you

I sound a bit like a broken record these days. Speed and video. Speed and video.

Only last week it was the new iPhone touting these two words. Now it’s the turn of the Mozilla Foundation who today released a new version of its wildly popular Firefox browser.

Firefox 3.5 comes with a slew of new features but the ones that most interest here at Vook are its pronounced improvements in rendering Javascript (in layman’s terms, makes everything feel faster) and the addition of the new HTML 5.0 support for audio and video files (two words, embedded video).

The combination of both of these advances make our vision for rich, interactive vooks that live inside your browser that more exciting.

Now, if we can only convince everyone to upgrade!

To download the latest version of Firefox, visit the getfirefox.com web site.

Related posts:

1. E-Books Killed the Video Star?
2. Google Moves the OS up in the Clouds

I wasn’t going to upgrade. I swear. But my gadget lust got the better of me and I caved.

So I spent the weekend with a new toy; my brand new iPhone 3G S.

This is now the third generation iPhone I’ve owned after its launch weekend. Pretty pathetic I know. But I’ve kept my batting record at 1000.

In my defense, it’s all for research purposes. Yeah, that’s right… research purposes. (At least, that’s what I told my wife)

But it’s true. Vook is betting pretty heavily on the iPhone space and I had to see if our prototypes worked on the new hardware. (Good news, it does!)

So here are some thoughts on the new handset from Apple.

The S is for Speed. And well deserved. A bump in memory and processing power means this is the snappiest iPhone to date. I never really thought of my old phone as slow. But going back to it now and it feels like a slug in comparison. Streaming videos and reading pages is a breeze on the new S.

V is for Video. The new iPhone should really be called the iPhone 3G V. The integration of a video camera and software in the device stands poised to revolutionize the way we see our world. Imagine a scene where everyone has access to a video camera and access to the web to instantly upload and share what they are seeing. Well it’s now a reality and I predict we’re going to see an explosion of new uses of video — to share memories, report on current events and eventually, I suspect, tell stories. Exciting stuff – especially for a platform like Vook.

If you are interested in upgrading to the new phone, check your eligibility on Apple’s web site. I’d give it an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Related posts:

1. iPhone 3.0 changes up the eBook game
2. Appetite for iPhone: The Reckless Road App is Live on iTunes
3. Vook is Hiring an iPhone/iPad App Designer

Here at vook we always have one eye on what’s coming down the pike in terms of hardware. We love our iPhones and Kindles but are anxiously anticipating the day that technology catches up with our dream of integrated video and text. The good news is I think we’re almost there.

Here’s a handful of devices that are getting us excited right now.

1. Fujitsu’s FLEPia

Shown here as a prototype in 2007. FLEPia is color e-paper (which does not play video, yet). Launched commercially in March 2009 in Japan.

2. Techcrunch’s Crunchpad

Popular technology blog Techcrunch has been cheerleading a new device in this space and, frustrated by the lack of response by manufacturers, commissioned a product themselves.

3. Google Android based netbooks

One of the first Android based netbooks manufactured by GNB – demo’d here in June 2009.

BONUS! The long rumored Apple tablet

Much has been bantered about online about a forthcoming tablet device from Apple. Shown here in a rendering made by a fan.

Related posts:

1. The Next Generation of EReaders
2. A Date with the new iPhone 3G S
3. A Potential Future for Vook – Educational Vooks

If you are as big a geek as me, you spent yesterday glued to the Engadget or Gizmodo live blog of Apple’s WWDC keynote speech.

As expected, we got a look at the new iPhone (3G s) and some of the new apps that will be launched when iPhone 3.0 comes out in a few weeks time.

Personally, I’m really excited about the new iPhone – video alone is enough to get me to spring for a new device (though I’m less enthused about AT&T’s uncharitable upgrade options).

But what really got me excited about iPhone 3.0 is all the new options it presents to developers like Vook.

On stage in San Francisco, we saw ScrollMotion show off the latest version of their Iceberg reader which has long been one of my favorite eBook apps in the iTunes store.

The big change in 3.0 is that Apple now allows developers like ScrollMotion and Vook to deploy in-app commerce for their books. What does that mean? Simply that I can now buy additional books from inside the application and not have to go through iTunes anymore. Not only does this promise to clear up the clutter on our phones — don’t know about you, but I have a couple dozen apps on my phone at any given time — but it also kickstarts whole new marketplace for digital content.

I suspect this is going to only increase the adoption of eBooks (I’m already reading far more on my phone that I ever thought I would) and give consumers a whole new way to begin to access more of their favorite literary works. As has already been demonstrated by the Kindle, instant, on-demand access to content can be a powerful behavioral change. One that bodes well for this medium.

Now, if only we’d seen the oft-rumored Apple tablet… that would have really made my day!

Related posts:

1. A Date with the new iPhone 3G S
2. Vook is Hiring An iPhone/iPad App Developer
3. Appetite for iPhone: The Reckless Road App is Live on iTunes