BPN 1413 The unwrap party of my Bebook Mini

This week it was the last week to order an ereader for the company. I had a perfect working iLiad of the first series, but during one of my presentations on ebooks and ereaders, I handed it around and received it back broken. The screen was gone. I had had such a failure before and had to pay a hefty 250 euro (I had paid 650 euro for it to buy) to get the screen repaired. To pay another 250 euro was too much asked from the company’s budget, so I decided to look around.

Taking the position that I had to spend 250 euro to get my iLiad repaired, I decided to look for an ereader of less than 250 euro in The Netherlands. And I found the BeBook Mini, a 5 inch e-ink screen device. I paid 199 euro, including VAT for it, to ebook.nl. Today I saw it advertised with a physical bookshop for 189 euro. The only difference with my order was that the cheaper one did not have an ebook voucher of 30 euro with it. But the 30 euro voucher is not the greatest gift as you have to spend it before the end of this year. Not even five full working days to go!

The Bebook Mini arrived in time for Xmas unwrapping. In fact it arrived on the same day as the black cover, which I also ordered, did. Together the ereader and the cover make a nice delicate ensemble. For me as an ex-theology student, it looked like the missal under the printed books.

But then the frenzy work to get the Mini going started. The first thing was to have the Mini 12 hours on a USB cable linked to a PC. It looked a lot to me, but so said the quickstart guide to the BeBook Mini ereader. But looking closely to the guide and the material delivered I deducted that this was most likely, if you had to put the battery in the ereader yourself (you even got a small screw driver delivered in the package). In my case the battery was installed and the user guide could be even read on the screen (a feat the iLiad could not do with its first edition).

So after the 12 hours of loading, I started to link up the ereader through a USB cable to one of my PCs. And I did not get it to link, even not after following meticulously the user guide. Then I linked the ereader to another PC. No result. After trying several times it dawned on me that the cable might be defective. So I looked in my cable collection for a similar USB cable. I found one and started the whole procedure from the start. First on my Vaio. No result. But when I linked on to my recently acquired Acer netbook, it worked. Both computers take USB 2.0 cable connections. My conclusion: BeBook had delivered a faulty USB cable.

So I sent an email to the help desk. And another day was lost on just a simple installation. When I received the iLiad, the unwrapping party was turned into a search party for the on/off knob. The BeBook Mini does not have a real obvious on/off knob either, but it is on top of the device and on the right side and cannot be confused with any other knob.

Looking at the ereader there are two thoughts hitting my mind. The ereader presents the text straight up. There is no facility in order to read the text landscape, which could be interesting in case of some novels and essays with short sentences of a discussion. This facility brought me to the second point. Apple would have undoubtedly put in such a facility as is shown in the iPhone. But the screen of the Mini is larger than the screen of the iPhone. The iTablet or iSlate of Apple, supposed to be out on the market by March or April next year, is said to have a 10 inch screen.

My conclusion on the state of ereaders is that the unwrapping party is still not a joy.

Blog Posting Number 1413

Tags: ebook, ereader

BNP 1353 A changing e-Book world (2)

It is not only e-readers, where you see changes. Also in the distribution of e-books things are moving. Google will soon offer a program for publishers to offer the digital versions of their books. But also the e-book veteran, the Project Gutenberg, will increase its offer.

Google has a long standing tradition with publishers. In 2004 it launched its book search service, in which copyrighted books could be read online. Google was heavily attacked by authors and publishers. Yet it made 1,5 copyright free books available in the public domain through its site. Google is launching a download service in which publishers can set their own price on the book; this in contrast to Amazon, which offers books in Mobipocket format and optionally on its own e-reader Kindle.
Details about the service still have to be published. No word on the format, except for the guarantee that a book must be readable on an e-reader, on PC or a mobile phone. It is rumoured that the e-books will be transformed to HTML. There is also no word on whether Google will have its own e-reader produced (with android software).
Also the veteran of the electronic book, the Project Gutenberg, is shifting gear and making eyes to mobile phones. The first goal of Project Gutenberg was simply to reach totals of estimated audiences of 1.5% of the world population, or the total of 100 million people. With the advent of mobile phone access the project management is now setting its goal at 15 percent of the world population or 1 billion. Given that there are approximately 4.5 billion mobile phones now in service around the world that means that the project with its offer could reach just over one-fifth of all mobile phone users to accomplish this goal.

Given the estimated 4.5 billion mobile phones for which eBooks could be made, presuming they can all display plain eBooks, and the extremely slow rise in Kindle sales as compared to the iPod, iPhone, Blackberry Curve, and all the others, Project Gutenberg could reach more readers than Kindle and Sony combined. This attempt to reach these mobile phones has to include books in many more languages than English.

This means that Project Gutenberg will have to be more multi-lingual, if Project Gutenberg is to reach anyone beyond the number of people comfortable enough with English to read the eBooks on the mobile phones. There are already well over a thousand book titles in French, followed by lesser numbers in German and the other more popular languages, but not nearly enough to really offer a library in these languages.

Project Gutenberg especially aims at the smart phones and iPhones in particular. With iTunes as a shop it has a software and content distributor in one. Various iPhone applications for eBooks have appeared in the iTunes appl shop such as Plucker, the defacto mobile eBook reader format for Project Gutenberg, houses over 20,000 free eBooks. Another eText reader for the iPhone is Eucalyptus.

Blog Posting Number: 1353

tags: e-books, content

BPN 1334 2009 WSA Grand Jury- Talking to Rudi

The iPhone is immense popular. I see people walking around with the device and using it for normal things like the weather, maps and of course for telephoning. I see them also use it for crazy applications like filling the screen with an image and sound of beer. It is a useless application, but something to talk about, when sitting at a bar. But for there are also applications which looked complicated in using all kind of devices.

One of those applications is the song finder. You keep your iPhone to a radio and let it listen to a song. In a short while it will recognise the tune and tell you, what song it is and who is the singer. Of course you are one tick away from ordering the song for storing in your iPhone.

While talking to my Mexican eminent expert, Rudi Laddaga Lopez, he told me that he with his company was developing an application on hieroglyphics. He told that the Maya temples contain hieroglyphics. I told him that I had never realised that. But the application already in the test phase takes a picture of a set of hieroglyphics and processes them into the Spanish language. Interesting, isn’t it. I will be in Mexico later this year, so Rudi should demonstrate the application to me at a Maya site. I immediately saw new applications. In fact as we were with an international group of eminent experts, I told the story to my dear Egyptian colleague Effat El Shooky (the lady next to Rudi), as they have hieroglyphics in the Egyptian temples, pyramids and monuments. It would be really a time shifter or century breaker. Click a photograph and a few seconds later you can read the text in English or Arabic. Of course, the application can also be used for handwritten manuscripts for example in Old Dutch. I guess that the application needs some more calibration. But text can be read by you or even read for you and translated to the current language.

Playing with the idea of the song finder, another idea came up. There is a great group of bird watchers. They observe birds in flight, but often stand still when they hear the sound of a bird. You need a good memory for bird sounds. But recording it on the iPhone and processing it against a sample bank of bird sounds, should deliver the name of the bird, a picture and extra information. Of course you can after validation send the place of observation to a central point for recording and mapping. And all this with an iPhone.

Blog Posting Number: 1334

Tags: song finder, hieroglyphics

BPN 1167 iPhone and iPod as e-readers

Several times writing about e-Books, I have posed the question why Apple would not get into the fray. With so many iPods around and more recently the iPhones, the Apple products have a perfect point of departure of becoming text iPods. Well it is happening now. Fictionwise and e-Reader.com, both e-Book web shops, have announced the availability of its free eReader application for eBooks on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. The users of these Apple devices get immediately access to almost 50.000 eBooks, including bestsellers of Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Crichton, Ann Rice, James Patterson, and Harlequin Romance.




The eReader application is immediately downloadable on the Apple iPhone 3G. The older iPhomes and the iPod Toch need to upgrade to the 2.0 operating system through iTunes 7.7. The eReader application is available as a free download. The Apple devices have three advantages as e-reader. Uploading of e-Books can be done wirelessly. They have large screens compared to most PDAs besides the screens are sharp and clear. And last, but not least they have 6 to 8 solid hours of battery life.

The eReader application is not just limited to the Apple devices. Multiformat versions are also available for more than 300 different handheld devices, ranging from special e-Reader devices to mobile phones and PDAs. The eReader program can read encrypted or unencrypted eBooks from Fictionwise and e-Reader.com.

The eReader is a first version for the Apple devices. It means that it will not be possible to transfer eReader content downloaded from other websites onto eReader for iPhone and iPod touch. Version 1.1 will have the ability to browse other sites and directly download from them, as well as ways of moving eReader format eBooks from your personal computer to the iPhone and iPod touch. This includes both encrypted and unencrypted eReader files. Version 1.1 will contain features like reverse video, the ability to lock the page orientation, the option to tap rather than swipe to turn pages, options to sort your on-device Bookshelf by author or title or most recently purchased, the ability to browse the web right from the application and download eReader PDB files from any website, and several other improvements.

Looking at the attempts of these web site e-book shops, it is very laudable what they are doing for the distribtion of e-books. But promotion by Apple would help the promotion of e-book. Of course integrating the e-reader software and offering access to the iTunes e-Bookshop would defeat the Kindle in one strike.

Blog Posting Number: 1167

Tags: e-book, e-reader

BPN 1127 A public broadcast mobile TV platform

The Dutch public broadcast company NOS has launched a series of mobile products, offering news on a mobile, but on various platforms, from mobile telephones to Blackberries and iPhones. All the information available for the broadcast station will be available from traffic jam information, weather report, live video from the Olympic Games and regular news. The information can be called up anywhere: in the train, and in the car. And it is free, except for the data transport of the mobile operator.

Heart of the mobile platform is a specially developed NOS Mobile application, which can be installed on the mobile telephones. Through this application a user gets access to Teletekst, the latest NOS Journal, sports news, weather reports and live television from NOS Journal 24 as well as theme channel Politics 24. For the sports events to which the NOS has the rights, live images can be broadcasted on the mobile platform. During the Olympic Games a user can select one of the six channels and follow live the progress of the games on the mobile. In the mobile platform the broadcast company unites teletext, live television and on-demand video content. Soon programs of other public broadcasting companies become available.

The application has been developed by the broadcasting company in cooperation with weComm and Triple IT. The NOS Mobile application is available for most modern devices and supports the following device platforms: Symbian, Windows Mobile, UIQ, J2ME (Java) and Blackberry. In the future the iPhone and Android will be supported. In total more than 200 devices will be able to receive the Mobile Platform. The usage of the mobile application is for free. However the data line usage has to be paid by a flat fee subscription. The platform can also be used though wifi.

Besides the application there is also a NOS Mobile website available, produced by the Dutch company Momac. The website can serve as an alternative for storing the application on the mobile; however live television channels and teletext services are not included. Especially for people with only a GPRS subscription, a light service without photographs and video has been prepared.

Blog Posting Number: 1127

Tags: mobile television

BPN 1126 Will the Apple magic work in Europe with iPhone 3G?

On July 11, 2008 the Apple magic will have to work in Europe. On that date Apple introduces the iPhone 3G in Europe. AS sales strategy it has selected two European telecom operators, T-Telecom and Orange, to take care of the introduction. Question is: will the iPhone 3G become a runaway success. Can this version of iPhone seduce the European user? Where can they get them? Is the price okay? Or will the sales people of T-Mobile and Orange have to go to the beach to push their phoneware/wear?

Apple has divided Europe into two parts: the T-Mobile sphere and the Orange sphere. T-Mobile start distributing the iPhone in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands on July 11th and later on this year in Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Orange will launch the iPhone on July 11 Austria, Portugal and Switzerland, in France on July 17 and in the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Luxembourg, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Orange's African markets later this year.

The geographical division in Europe is interesting. Mid-Europe and the Mediterranean are have been covered, but it looks like the UK and Ireland will have a separate deal as well as the Scandinavian countries. Although it looks like there is sales exclusivity for the telecom operators in large countries, for countries like Austria, Poland and Slovakia both operators can sport the iPhone. In The Netherlands T-Mobile will sell the iPhone, while incumbent telco KPN also wanted to sell the iPhone, despite the dislike of its boss, Ad Scheepbouwer.

The iPhone has been readied for the European mobile market, which differs drastically from the US market. Orange will use its network which is a combination of widespread EDGE, Wi-Fi, 3G and HSDPA networks. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast* as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.

As a price 199 US dollar has been set. In present European currency this roughly would mean 120,00 euro. Question is of course, what kind of exchange rate the companies will choose. In some countries also the subsidising principle, driving down the costs of the device might work. The price, being so cheap, might work.

The roll-out will start from July 11 onwards. In Europe this will mean holiday season with Dutch and Germans are going to Spain, the Mediterranean coast of France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Greece in great numbers. Was this day picked purposely, so that the warehouses would not be empty in a day or two?

Will people buy it in Europe. The sale of the first version of the iPhone was not exactly a bomb, to put it mildly. So why should the Europeans fall for it now? Of course the iPhone 3G has been adapted to the European networks. The price has gone down dramatically. But will Apple be able to remove the impression that the first generation was not really super. The telecom operators T-Mobile and Orange will know soon after the roll-out. In the sale is not impressive after a few days, the telecom operators should keep an army of students, clad in telephone wear, at hand to scour and canvas the beaches.

Will I buy it? Not for the time being. I recently bought an HTC. Am I happy with it. No, but I am sick and tired of discovering all the procedures and the ways you have to work around features. Of course Apple will tell me that it has an intuitive interface. For the time being I am not ready for another device, regardless whether I can watch TV on it, listen to radio and music and read newspapers, magazines and movels. By the end of July I will phone up my friends on my HTC and do a survey on whether they have bought an iPhone or are going to buy one.

Update 20080614T-Mobile in The Netherlands expects many iPhone buyers. It says that 40.000 people requested the newsletter about iPhone in one week. The iPhone 3G will not deliver a percentage of the data traffic to Apple but a fixed fee.

Blog Posting Number: 1126

Tags: mobile telephony

My museum of content related artefacts (22)

1980: Apple II

In 1980 I got acquainted with Apple. In the company we had CP/M machine like the Superbrain (see photograph from the VNU Koerier). But as we were a new media lab, we tried everything; also Apple. To me the Apple was the same as the CP/M machines, but in 1980 the Apple was fascinating to me in as far as it made music. Apple as well as CP/M computers were ready for programming in Basic, text processing in Wordstar and calculating with Visicalc.

But at Christmas 1980, I took the Apple machine home and discovered the music on it. At that time to me a computer was no more than an automated typewriter and an enlarged calculator. The Apple II had a computer version of Switch-on Bach (listen to a fragment of the analogue version), a bestseller of the MOOG synthesizer music. I had bought the vinyl version in 1968 and still have it. It still makes Christmas 1980 stand out.

The Apple IIe in my collection is not the first Apple I worked with. From an acquaintance I got an Apple IIe, a machine produced from 1983 onwards. The keyboard was fixed to the machine. On top of it there is a separate dual floppy disk drive. The monitor is still in one of my moving boxes.

Come to think of it, the first confrontation with an Apple did not convert me to the Apple section. Despite the fact that I was impressed by the interface, I never bought an Apple for the company. When I worked for the newspaper company Wegener for one year in 1995, I was issued a portable Apple as the company was into graphics. I enjoyed the use of it, but once the year was over I did not feel unhappy going back to my Windows PC.

Yet I have always been impressed by the inventiveness of the company. Besides the many computers as Apple II, Lisa and Apple Book, it created the personal digital assistant Newton with handwriting recognition software; the iPOD; iTunes, the iPhone. Apple brought and still brings sound and vision to computing.

Next - Previous

Blog Posting Number: 831

Tag: digital heritage

Mobile entertainment (2)

Last Monday I visited the symposium on mobile entertainment: now and in the future, organized by students of INHolland College in Haarlem. The audience mainly consisted of students and instructors as well as a few outsiders, a scriptwriter, a blogger of Mobile Dutchcowboys and me.

The program had been built up in two tracks of presentations which were held once. So choices had to be made and by definition four presentations had to be missed. After the introduction, the first selection moment presented itself: a presentation on the network of KPN or a presentation of Microsoft the Netherlands. Both are public companies quoted at the stock exchange, so no real novelties will be told and presuming that the network presentation was going to be rather technical I went to the Microsoft presentation. Perhaps the guy was going to give a reaction on the iPhone.

The presentation was nicely built up with market research data, basically indicating that consumers are going to spend more money on data service and certainly on mobile gaming; $ 722 million in 2006 and $ 1.3 billion in 2010. Mobile will become more interesting for mobile services as everyone is used to a mobile and with the data speed becoming faster and more comparable to the fixed line speeds, mobile data services will become more prominent. But the acceptance will follow the model of business first and then consumers.

For Microsoft this means that it will have to address mobile data services. It means that Microsoft is confronted with multiple form factors of stand alone machines, networked PCs and PDAs. And even in mobile Microsoft has to address mobile multiple form factors with Windows. There are now some 140 devices around, which are moving from a media centric orientation (mediabox for TV) to a voice centric orientation and on to a data centric orientation; let alone the notebooks and tablets. Mobile telephones are moving from talking machines to data machines, from devices with small screens to larger screen.

Microsoft has now a range of mobile software with Windows Mobile, Windows CE (e.g. to be used for the infotainment system in Fiat cars), and Windows embedded. It is clear that Microsoft wants to couple smart mobiles to the net and have the users go through an experience. An example was shown in the presentation. A Silverlight plug-in for the webbrowser combined with Deepfish for the building up the page on a mobile was shown in the example of the major baseball league, including video and audio (see photograph).

In the Q&A session the inevitable question about the Jezus machine of Apple, the iPhone, popped up. Was Microsoft going to follow also that road. The Microsoft presenter offered compliments to Apple, but supposed that Microsoft would not follow the example. In his opinion Microsoft was a platform development company and not a service oriented company. I guess I do not agree with that. It is just that Microsoft is always late and imitates. Microsoft was late in internet browsers; Microsoft was late mobile software; the X-box came after PSP and the Zune followed the iPOD. So one day Microsoft will have a device comparable to the iPhone (famous last words!). I guess that it will be nicknamed the Gates machine.

Blog Posting Number: 803

Tags: mobile entertainment