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The Zune for e-book reading—plus a few words on Microsoft Reader as the wrong fashion statement
April 18, 2009 | 7:41 am
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By David Rothman
Some Zune owners have already tried out e-books on their little music players—using jpegbook to create images of the text in books. There’s even a Zune ebook Creator.
So will Microsoft soup up the forthcoming ZuneHD for e-reading in its favorite corporate format? That’s the possibility, sheer spec, nothing more, that Todd Ogasawara broached at MediaBistro’s MobileContent Today. For fun, he mentioned that Microsoft had tweaked the Pocket PC Reader page.
Could this mean that Microsoft will revive the no-longer-so-popular Reader format, aka LIT. Jeez, I hope not. Let this eBabeler stay in the coffin, or at least the sickbay. Instead I propose that the dead and undead haunt the IDPF to get ePub right. Howl, cry, bare your fangs, be relentless, but work toward the time when the ZuneHD, the iPod and iPhone, and, yes, the Kindle will all effortlessly display ePub, ideally the nonDRMed variety.
Use clothing, music, photography, movies, whatever, to make your fashion statement—not e-book formats.
About the image: It’s from wmpoweruser.com’s spec on the ZuneHD. The image itself may be speculative.
Related: Mike Cane’s musings on Microsoft Reader for e-books. Hey, Mike, you flatter Reader. It’s really not worth that much thought.
Technorati Tags: ZuneHD,Microsoft Reader
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Comments:
Whoa, horse!
I enjoy MS bashing as much as the next guy, but Reader is one of their better products. It was well-though-out, well-designed, and well-executed. The only problem with it was the “MS does not play well with others” meme. IIRC, they only licensed it to one other reader maker.
Reviving it is not a bad thing. One of the dirty little secrets about it is that it’s dead easy to strip out the DRM, so it’s a popular format for those who like to buy, mod, and read.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
David I’m taking this as a personal attack since it was my rhapsodizing over M$Reader that got Mike looking deeper.
On strict principal, I’d agree with you except M$Reader is beautiful and easy on the eyes.
Honestly, I’m beginning to think the only real solution to the eBabel problem is a multi-format e-reading device.
Besides, as you know, I’ve been gnashing my teeth over EPUB creation for the last month, so I’m not exactly in EPUB’S camp right now.
Jack says:
Or not so little secrets.
It’s a beautiful thing, LIT.
However, the Zune itself? Not so enamored of it. If 100% of teens would rather have an iPod than a Zune, it’s already dead.
Jack and Moriah:
Figured someone would mention the strippable DRM, lol. Just please don’t mention products or URLs, since we’re a high profile site and I don’t want DMCA zealots to get us in trouble.
Yep, LIT is beautiful, but so are some rattlesnakes. What’s more, standards are beautiful, too.
Meanwhile please keep bashing ePub. It’s a natural part of the Darwinian process. I WANT the IDPF to know it can’t be smug.
David the “Tough Love” guy
Well, apparently, the IDPF doesn’t care what I think, so…
::gallic shrug::
Thing is, I don’t have 20 (or 15 or 10 or 5) years to wait for a standard and a device so I can be techno-ecologically efficient. I have a reader. I have e-books. I’m a micropress. I need the solution NOW. Since I don’t have an mp3 one-format-fits-all (and can’t easily create the one that comes closes), I have to work around it. No worries, though. I’m the queen of the workaround solution.
Hey, MoJo, I’m the one with the quad bypass and I’m patient—except that I want you to keep bashing the IDPF to help encourage ‘em to shape up.
David
Feels more like whining to me. *grin* My impatience manifests in workaround solutions.
I actually wouldn’t care if MS revived LIT in the Zune… as long as users can convert to LIT from other common formats, like ePub. I think having a universal format, and devices that convert that format to their proprietary format on-demand, is a perfectly workable market. (Personally I don’t have a problem starting with ePub, though I accept that it is not yet perfect… and it needs more tools devoted to it.)