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By Chris Meadows

It would seem that the e-book form factor isn’t just good for text. There is also room for a “digital picture frame”-like approach. That’s the design philosophy inherent in the MiBook (pronounced “my book”), a 7″ LCD-screen device that reviews are—possibly erroneously—calling an “e-book.”

According to the Associated Press, CNet, and the Chicago Tribune, the $130 standard retail (but available for as low as $75 on-line) MiBook is a “video cookbook.”

Its “books” are SD cards containing collections of video clips. The clips that the articles talk about feature Food Network stars, and walk their users through recipes as do cooking shows, pausing automatically after a description of each step until the users are ready to continue with a tap on a kitchen-safe remote control. (However, the different downloadable photos on the site suggest that there are also home-improvement and lawn-care books, parenting, travel—clearly any task that can be performed in a series of discrete steps is fair game.)

Using ordinary SD cards, the device can also display photos, or play music or other video files—or, according to the AP article, even display text. However, the screen apparently is not quite up to displaying text readably: “Nothing looks really sharp, and it flickers.”

The MiBook is an interesting idea, though I am not sure whether it really deserves to be called an “e-book” device when it is mostly a specialized audiovisual player with text display clearly an afterthought. It also lacks WiFi access, which would allow direct loading from the Internet or other devices.

Still, if looked at as a specialized device for people who enjoy cooking shows (or other instructible do-it-yourself projects), it seems to meet its design goals pretty well.

Related: We also covered the MiBook back in June, here and here.

 
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