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Microsoft Times Reader looks slick—but should news-reading be linked with operating systems?
September 1, 2006 | 8:10 am
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By David Rothman
Read/Write Web is carrying screen shots of Microsoft’s Times Reader software for reading newspapers. Perhaps along the way, it also offers a preview of technology that Gates and friends could use with e-books.
The look is slick. But do we really want Microsoft to play such an important role in the newspaper industry? The idea should be to reduce, not increase, reliance on proprietary standards.
More from jkOnTheRun and MobileRead. Yes, you can sign up for a soon-to-be-released beta.
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Comments:
I support anything open-source, as compared to “proprietary”. I must however say that one can hardly blame Microsoft or any of the leading proprietary-solution companies if the open-source community does not come out on time with such innovations.
Open-source software developers need to be more creative and not be only satisfied with innovation that is based on the work of giants like Microsoft and Adobe.
Hi, David. I agree on the need for creativity. If you’d like to use Skype and have a broadband connection, I can arrange for a demonstration of dotReader, which is open source and which will be available for downloading in the next month or so. BTW, I’d love to see variants that ran on mobile phones! – David
I have Skype, but not always on broadband. Can only use broadband in an Internet cafe. My main connection (GPRS) is comparable to dial-up and is over a cellular network.
Thanks, David. Mention your time windows next week—here or via e-mail (drNOSPAMteleread.com)—and let’s see if we can’t set something up when you’re in a Net cafe. Can you Skype out from there?
Meanwhile thanks for your just-posted article on e-books on cellphones in Africa!
David
Open source largely develops according to the needs and resources of the programmers who make the software. I’d say it’s not lack of innovation that hasn’t seen the OSS community to come up with something like this (essentially a web browser with some bells and whistles attached), it’s the lack of need and someone paying the bills. From the looks of the article, NYT has paid MS to come up with this; I’d bet the OSS community would easily come up with something better, or at least something not tied to a single platform, if someone paid for it.