Bill McCloy works at Adobe and writes in his blog about this headline and first paragraph of a Wall Street Journal article:
Gadget Makers Offer Features to Improve ‘Readability’;
‘The Da Vinci Code’ on a Treo
Chris Kwak, a 31-year-old financial analyst, spends hours a day glued to the tiny screen of his Palm Treo hand-held computer. He fires off emails, check stock prices — and recently plowed through the novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’.
So here we have reading an eBook matter-of-factly included, along with emailing and information retrieval, as a basic user behavior (!). While this surely doesn’t track to typical current usage, it’s yet another signal that eReading is, directionally, becoming a mainstream activity.
So this is more evidence accruing that e-reading is mainstream. Shouldn’t Nokia consider e-books as central an activity on the Nokia 770 as, say, Mahjong? The next release should include FBReader as part of the base system, I think.
The previous post in this blog, Let’s re-evaluate the 770’s chances in the market, was written and posted to the itT forums by cobalt and promoted later to the users blog to give it wider exposure. I wanted to make note of that, because Planet Maemo didn’t pick up the line about the different author.
Hopefully many other it Forum contributors will make posts that are also posted to the blog.
We know now that the 2006 OS will come with at least one new application pre-installed — Google Talk, with its instant messaging and VoIP phone capabilities.
Since Nokia has been promising IM and VoIP by mid-2006 for 51 weeks (hey! one more week till the announcement anniversary!), we knew this was coming.
I wonder if there will be any other pre-installed applications? Maybe FBReader, the world-class e-reader, for instance. We know that the 770 is an ideal e-book reader and that e-books are becoming more significant.
Or maybe there will be some additional games — Nako, Battlegweled and IceBreaker seem obvious candidates. Maybe a sturdy text editor to supplement Notes. Or built-in XTerm and CPU/MEM load graph. I would add PIM apps to this list, if there were any such available. I’m not envisioning the Nokia developers creating new apps with so much already on their plate.
I’ve definitely made my opinion known that FBReader is a natural application for the Nokia 770. But maybe not everyone agrees. RemoteUser (aka Gene Mosher) believes in the 770 as a remote control device. A whole crowd is making it a mapping/GPS displaying device. Not to mention others developing its audio and video playing side.
If Nokia isn’t going to pre-install all of these apps, and is wary of picking only one or another of them, I hope Ari Jaaksi and his crew provide a good clean automatic way to install and update them that even a rank beginner will be able to follow, as they’ve hinted will happen. If there are “click to install” links to add some of these apps, that will be the next thing to “pre-installed.”
NewsForge has a review of the Nokia 770 by Rob Reilly. Short, clued-in to the real nature of the 770 and to the steady stream of software, but somehow overlooking the world-class e-reading app, FBReader. (OK, my bias towards using the 770 for e-books.) He cites 103 “mature” software packages over and above those from Nokia, and another 73 in development, as listed at the maemo wiki.
Given his look at software, I’m surprised he didn’t mention the Python tools available. Here’s how he introduces the 770:
Most organizations aren’t ready to migrate to a wireless, network-centric, thin hardware, server/client model, which makes the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet a bit ahead of its time. This handheld device has a basic browser, email client, and multimedia player, but the real beauty of this Linux-based system is its ability to expand its functionality by installing a limited but growing list of applications.
Nokia has financed a platform known as Maemo that users can modify and configure easily to suit their needs. With the 770 hardware and the Maemo development environment, we have a promising setup that fits right in with the open source way of life.
A Google group has been established to discuss FBReader — the world-class e-book reader that runs on the Nokia 770, Linux desktop, Sharp Zaurus and other devices.
The FBReader forum at mobileread.com will continue, but the Google group permits posting in Russian (although the primary language is English).
And I will continue to post matters of interest here, with comments and discussion in our forums also encouraged.
Btw, I understand a new format and a new platform are in the works for FBReader, but I’ll wait till their announcement — or mention in one of these forums — before writing about them here.
In one of the first posts at Google groups, Geometer (aka Nikolay Pultsin, FBReader’s developer) writes:
About platforms: currently I am working [on a] port for GPE
(http://gpe.handhelds.org). In fact, the version for OpenZaurus/GPE is
almost ready, I hope to release it next week. Another device planned to
support in near future is Archos PMA430. (This device runs Qtopia and
is very like to Sharp Zaurus.)
About formats: I plan to add support for OEB and CHM files. And maybe
for OpenReader format.
This is great news — the tools to disassemble encrypted but non-DRMed[*] (or “personalized”) e-books in the Microsoft Reader .lit format are not hard to locate, their result being an OEB package file and the content files. Plunk ’em all into a zip file and add the OPF to FBReader’s library and you’ve got a direct pipeline for thousands of e-books in this very popular format.
And isn’t CHM the most popular format for documentation of Windows-based programs? The universe of content readable in FBReader is about to get very bigger.
[*] I can’t say what they do with DRMed content, because I’ve never owned any such in .lit format.
FBReader continues to release incremental updates with bugfixes and new features as it marches towards its official release. Version 0.7.3 appeared today. I’ll write more next week, after I’ve had a chance to look it over and can report the news.
Update: You can now get Version 0.7.3b-1 for the Nokia 770, which fixes a few problems, including crashes during config saving, font problems (so you can save settings with ‘Sans’ and ‘Serif’ fonts) and a problem with the Table of Contents in fb2 books. Nikolay Pultsin, FBReader’s developer, advises that another format is imminent, which I will post about once it’s available.
Are e-books mainstream? Seems that Microsoft thinks so. Its competitor to the Nokia 770 looks like it will have an e-book variation.
In the New York Times yesterday, details about the Microsoft/Intel Origami/ultra-mobile carryaround computer indicate that multiple versions will be offered, each oriented toward a different audience. One would seem to be the Nokia 770 crowd, interested in web-browsing and accessing e-mail as the significant function. Another target being aimed at would be gamers, with the browsing/e-mail aspects definitely secondary in their interests.
From information coming out at Teleread, it seems an e-book reader is also being planned. Microsoft has a fabulous e-reader (Microsoft Reader) in place, with DRM that enables it to deal with commercial, encrypted book titles. They also have long-standing arrangements with major publishers and the online booksellers. Sony’s Reader might be cheaper, but the Origami/UMPC will run XP, and will include WiFi access, not to mention color (both absent in Sony’s device).
The Times quoted an Intel marketing director as saying, “We don’t want to create a Swiss Army knife, because that’s not what users want,” thus the variations on a theme. This single-focus easy use built atop a device that retains full capability bears more than a passing resemblance to Nokia’s thinking. Ari Jaaksi referred to the box this puts them in — they can’t add features/programs without becoming that unfocused Swiss Army knife. But if Nokia isn’t going to emulate Microsoft’s approach and market multiple devices to different audiences, will it lose the first comer advantage?
Myself, I’d like to see Nokia acknowledge the application of the 770 as an e-reading device. Maybe it’s as I’ve proposed, by including the e-reader as one of its central apps. Or maybe it’s Nokia creating multiple firmware images, one for each of those different audiences Microsoft and Intel have identified. And the first specialized one could be for e-reading enthusiasts and students.
Microsoft and Sony are committing to the commercial e-book market, but Nokia doesn’t have to go there. There are millions of e-books being downloaded every month that are free, as well as e-books created for offline reading of websites, using programs like Plucker and Sunrise. With a six- to ten-month headstart over Origami, Nokia can position itself as the leader in the e-reader field.
FBReader 0.72 is something lefthanded readers will really love — now the text will rotate 90, 180 or 270 degrees, allowing the user to hold the 770 in the right hand and easily page through a book. While the Preferences dialog is blocking most of the screen, you should be able to see that the text in the screen capture above is rotated 180 degrees.
The Enter key (in the center of the scroll wheel) still switches between normal and rotated text; the Rotation tab lets the user select which rotation.
Today’s new release fixes a few minor bugs and adds a few other new features, such as support for bzip2 archives and another file format, TCR.
You can download the latest installer-ready version from the FBReader home page:
While lefthanders have been asking for this on all programs to make the 770 more usable, I can only recall seeing one game — Frozen Bubble — that also rotated, but it’s never come out. I wonder how long it will be till this is a feature built into the OS? According to Lemody’s blog, Ramblings of a Madman, it’s technically feasible “without speed or memory loss.” See his photo from December in an earlier item, “The Nokia 770 and the Pong clock.”
When I had a RocketeBook, one of the first devices for reading e-books, I used to read for a while holding it in my left hand, then rotate the text 180 degrees — then physically rotate the device so the paging keys were on the right — and then hold it for a while in my right hand.
The RocketeBook was considerably heavier than a 770, but I imagine I’ll end up doing the same with it. After all, when you’re getting sleepy, that six ounces becomes heavier and heavier, doesn’t it.
I note that a newer version of the FBReader deb file has been posted:
Unremarked in the earlier description is a fix to FBReader that prevented it from seeing e-books installed in the Documents folder. A post by geometer (aka Nikolay Pultsin, FBReader’s creator) in the Mobileread.com forums alerted us to that. That’s the best place to get FBReader information beyond our reports here at itT.
Are e-books mainstream? Despite a small commercial market I think so and so does consumer electronics giant Sony. According to today’s top story in BusinessWeek the company will announce an e-book reader at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. BW wonders, “Can Sony make the iPod of digital books?”
“With everyone from Google to Microsoft to HarperCollins digitizing books, plus the arrival of slick new display technology, Sony figures the time is right for a handheld e-reader in the U.S.,” BusinessWeek says. Since I’ve written about how a Nokia 770 can replace a dedicated e-book reader, this has repercussions for the 770 market I think.
BW compares Sony’s approach to Apple’s iPod/iTune combo because the company will also set up an online store to sell books from major publishers Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, who have committed to offer tens of thousands of current and backlist titles. (Having worked at Random House and for Simon & Schuster, I can report their efforts at electronifying the books they publish has been going on for six years or longer. There will be plenty of good books for sale.)
Sony’s E Ink-based device will sell for $300 to $500, a price BW compares to a full-size iPod and which I compare to the color-screen Nokia 770. The company’s reluctant nods to openness are to include a PDF reader and to accept standard SD memory cards in addition to its proprietary memory sticks.
The article notes some difficulties — the small commercial market currently, Sony’s “string of recent misses” in digital media, and customer discouragement with the high price and loutish antipiracy technology of Sony’s Japan-only Librie e-book reader. But the big worry according to BusinessWeek is the onslaught of competitors preparing to release their own devices with similar or superior capabilities. At least four additional devices will soon come on the market.
As the company’s rationale, BW quotes JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg, who says “e-books are an untapped market” that can be compared to the online music market four years, before Apple changed the music business.
Companies expert in this gadget-size space seem already to be keenly aware of Gartenberg’s point, I would say, pointing to the recent announcement by Nokia about e-books on smartphones as evidence. And also to posts inthis blog about the solid user interest in e-books and how well FBReader-on-the-Nokia 770 performs as an e-book reader.
To quote myself, the lassitude we see today in the e-book market is not for want of demand or desire. I think the fact that Sony and four other companies are introducing these specialized devices — they’re not made to surf the web, or play games, or run a word processor, or watch video, or play music, etc. — is confirmation of this unmet demand.
The books sold for Sony’s proprietary e-book reader won’t be able to be read on any other device. Sony will be chopping the price of the new device to half what its Librie is now, yet it will still cost as much or more than a 770 and won’t have any color. Nor can it be used for anything other than reading books. There’s a market for that, likely enough a huge one, but I bet a device that could surf the web AND read books would appeal to even more people. You know, like the 770. And did I mention the 770’s color screen?
The 770 can do more and has greater appeal. And that’s why I say Nokia should include FBReader in its next release and encourage other e-book readers — eReader, Mobipocket, Adobe Reader — to be ported to the 770, so when the e-book market rockets into the stratosphere, the 770 will go along for the ride.
Commercial e-books will be able to be read on Nokia smartphones, according to this information from FoneArena. Nokia has arranged with e-book vendor eBooks.com to enable the phones to find, buy, download and read books directly from their handsets.
eBooks.com calls itself “the digital bookstore” and has some “45,000 popular, professional and academic ebooks from the world’s leading publishers,” e.g., current titles as opposed to the aged set of public-domain titles available at no cost.
To buy the titles from commercial publishers, you have to have either the Microsoft, MobiPocket, or Adobe readers, none of which only the Adobe Reader is available in a Linux version. But MobiPocket and Adobe Reader have Symbian versions, and that is apparently how Nokia will enter the e-book era.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, Nokia’s interest in e-books dates back to at least 1999, when it was a participant in the creation of the original open e-book format. And as regular readers of this blog are aware, I’m interested in pushing Nokia to further its e-book participation by including FBReader on the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
Here’s what eBooks.com says about the benefits of reading e-books:
In most cases, eBooks are cheaper than paper books.
Instantly available worldwide — just download the e-book instead of waiting for “snail mail” or local release.
Full-text search available — search our entire database of eBooks for a specific phrase or keyword.
Convenient — imagine loading several novels and a few magazines onto a portable reading device before you go on holiday.
Quick to download — the average novel takes only 3-4 minutes.
You can build a whole library of digital books.
Users can do research and create or organize content.
e-book reading software is free and easy to download from the internet.
Actually I suppose you can build a library and do research and create or organize content with paper books too, but hey!, why shouldn’t we include that? After all, e-books have all the benefits of p-books, plus the instant availability and full-text search. I think they forgot to say “hundreds of titles can be stored in your handheld device to be carried around with you and available wherever you are.” That’s always a good one.
So maybe there’ll be new software in future Nokia 770 images. Are there sufficient justifications to include the FBReader in the base 770?
There are legitimate issues that need to be considered. Is it ready and open-source, and the best reader around? Yes, IMO (some might want to wait for bookmarks and highlighting).
Are there other apps that should come first? Well, that’s a big question. We should definitely get the most useful, wonderful, and necessary apps first. And VoIP and Instant Messaging obviously take precedence over FBReader.
As for the rest . . . various people have suggested other apps. I can see an alarm clock/calendar as being useful — except I use my phone to set alarms and, well, it keeps better time But is one really ready? And should we pick one PIM app to put on the 770 and ignore all the others?
A second browser? Please . . . one (Opera) or another (GPE-mini-browser or MANaOS), but not two (or three). Same for Evince and XPDF.
Business apps? I guess by that I mean AbiWord and Gnumeric. Me, I say leave those to individuals who need them. I don’t, yet. They’re not something my wife is going to use (when she gets the 770 as her Christmas/birthday present).
More games? Well, a few. Crazy Parking, BattleGweled. A great solitaire, if there is one. These fit the kids, who’ve demanded their own 770 screen time, and a tiny bit more variety might be good. Some people swear by MineSweeper. Me, I’m waiting for a two-person version of Battleship. Playing that with my son on two 770 — now that will be cool. (Operative word: waiting. Not in line for consideration here.)
But you know what? This list is straying fairly far from Nokia’s vision of this device and their vision of themselves as a “communications” company. As I noted before, Nokia wants to provide access to the “other” type of communication — voice being first. if you want to take the data that’s on the web and access it, you have a pretty good picture of the 770’s defining role — websites, blogs, rss feeds, email, VoIP and IM coming, internet radio, music and video, images. Even PDFs.
About the only thing missing from this list that you might encounter on a webpage or in a Google search is a slideshow viewer that accepts Powerpoint presentations. That I think is more mainstream than Word compatability for someone consuming information. Not in line yet (is it on the horizon even?).
And, then, of course, there are e-books.
We have huge repositories of essential data we need so much that we aggregate the different pieces into warehouses and let anyone access the whole thing for free — it’s so critical we started doing this even before the web. Libraries we call these data repositories. They house books and people are trained to use them, from their first day in school.
And, really, people like to access information in book form. The depth of information, the amount in a single package, these are levels that have been set over hundreds of years. They’re the depth and length people feel comfortable with. Websites, blogs and such, are pretty confusing because you never know how much is there. Start reading a labyrinth like Paul Ford’s Ftrain, and you may never know how much of it you’ve seen. And how far back do you read in a blog? There’s no beginning in a blog.
And, of course, people like entertainment in book form. Sure we go to the movies, but when how many books do you give as Christmas/Hanukkah presents and how many movie tickets? If books didn’t do the job, people would be giving lots more ties and board games to adults, don’t you think?
Oh, you say, they’re not giving e-books as presents, are they. Rhetorical question, since we all know the answer to that. No, they’re not.
I think I’ll go into all the reasons for that in a succeeding post. There’s a whole set of issues that have stalled the e-book market — publishers’ concerns, DRM (digital restrictions management), multiple formats, expensive or awful e-book reading devices — that deserves exploration at length (hey, my specialty).
For now, let’s say it’s not for want of demand or desire. That’s what I think, and I’ll provide the justifications for my opinion then. But a critical aspect to consider is how we will use the 770 when we are forced offline. And an e-book reader is made for that.
Look for Part II later in the week.
If you like the idea of FBReader being included with other software on the Nokia 770, please add a comment to this blog post. If you have really well-grounded ideas for competing software, do add your comment as well.
But is one really ready? And should we pick one PIM app to put on the 770 and ignore all the others?
