Future e-book: ‘Possible… ou Probable?’ video
Imagine elegant, booklike devices that fold out like books and change the images when you tap in the right places.
That’s long been the vision of the developers of E Ink-style technologies, and now a French video dramatizes the possibilities, not just for books but for other applications such as maps. “Possible … ou Probable” is the intriguing title.
So how long until the dreams—coming to us courtesy of the publishing consultants at Editis —become realities? Or are you shaking your head and just thinking, “When will the e-paper guys deliver on their promises?”
Hello, Bill J? Your territory.
Related: Jon Noring’s commentary on the above, via the eBook Community list. Jon notes that the interactivity shown here goes far beyond the old paradigms for e-books. Notice how the people in the video can vary the presentation? That’s in the spirit of the new IDPF specs, which let text flow gracefully even if you change the size of the type. Going beyond the specs, however, the video show the capability to deal gracefully with nonlinear content such as Web sites.
July 29th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I’m not sure there’s much to say here. Take away the pretty French scenery, and you’ve got an oversized iPhone UI. Nice, but the ideas have all been sketched already by Apple.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Several things went through my mind as I watched this video. One was that I wished I understood French.
Bill is right in that they’re not showing anything revolutionary, although I wouldn’t attribute the ideas to Apple. TeleRead visitors have all watched the multitouch display videos, so we know what’s possible in that regard. As much as I geeked out seeing it in action, even the data transfer is something possible using current technology. I think one day in the not-so-distant future (well before my flying jet car arrives), we’ll be experiencing some variation on what was shown in the video.
Display hardware, battery life, and yes data standards still have a way to go before we’re living the “Minority Report” sci-fi future, but these are just a matter of incremental improvements.
June 13th, 2010 at 6:59 am
If you want to play around with epub and geo-aware books, Threepress has put out some epub that you can modify under the MIT license: http://blog.threepress.org/2010/06/08/geo-aware-ebook-demo/