New York is a pretty glum place these days, and I applaud Mike Cane‘s Chronicle’s of Depression, straight from the Big Apple in his inimitable WTF tone.
Mike’s writings just might jibe with my own thinking. Humans have gotten worse, at least in recent, Gecko-ish decades, while the gadgets keep getting better and better.
Cheerier than Planet E as a whole
Despite all hassles of DRM and eBabel, however, the e-book world is a much cheerier place than Planet Earth as a whole. I rejoice in the rise of ePub, the growing resistance to DRM, and the little personal triumphs of people such as Ficbot, the latest convert to the iPod Touch. And to think we’ll see color E Ink in a year or so, for real!
That’s not the same as an end to Wall Street crime, war or poverty, or mixes thereof; and I’d highly recommend that e-bookers follow Mike’s example and care about those issues, too, rather than just retreating into gizmo-dom. The economy will leave many of us with no choice. Looking ahead, I could think of few better investments for the U.S. or many other countries than a national digital library system well-integrated with local schools and libraries (I mean appropriate pedagogy, too, not just content and technology).
For now, Mike is centering own his gadget-related fantasies around the red Sony Reader, shown in the photo above. He did the best job he could with the tool at hand, a cheapie "crapcam," then ran this headline: FIRST PHOTOS! Red Sony Reader!! In the era of doom in caps on the front pages of the tabloids, I’ll go for that.
Why I sold my Sony…
Not as pessimist but as an optimist, I sold my own Sony yesterday on eBay, in anticipation of a wireless model coming in the next few months—if not in October, then in very late ’08 early ’09. My needs were and are not your needs. I’m a special case in that I try to keep up with technology that’s relevant. I buy so you may not have to. Yesterday’s sale for $215 helped raised cash toward a wireless reader or one of the rugged large-screen models that will soon be appearing.
How I wish I could have hung on to the Sony without worrying about the resale value! Were it not for the TeleBlog, that’s exactly what I’d have done. Furthermore, like Chris Meadows and Ficbot, I got a refurb iPod Touch because I’d concluded that the new ones didn’t offer a enough extras. I could just as easily test Stanza and the rest on the old one. Case by case, huh?
Your own buy-and-sell policies?
So what are your own retention policies toward e-reading gear? What are you planning to keep over the next few months and what are you shedding, in an anticipation of the early arrival of something markedly better? And how do you feel about DRM and eBabel in this context? Do they make you less likely to buy new hardware?
Meanwhile I’ll keep my fingers crossed about the Sony Reader. As reported in Forbes: "Cheaper, book-focused e-readers are also likely to be revamped soon. Sony has all but confirmed that it will announce a new version of its Reader in early October, though it won’t share any details." True? I don’t know—just that sooner or later Mike will have much more than a red Reader to do an all-cap routine about. Meanwhile we’ll see if those Kindle rumors pan out.
Your comments: Yes, feel free not only to discuss your buy-and-sell policies for your e-book gizmos but also what you own now and what you have in mind to replace it.
Human bug update: The upper-res infection is still there, and I still feel lousy, but I think the antibiotics are finally kicking in. Thanks to TeleBloggers who asked about me.
I haven’t done any reselling. Partly, this is because I tend to keep my devices past the point where they have any resale value (anyone looking for a used Palm IIIxi?), and partly because the devices I have and use do the job. I’d love to have the latest and greatest, but I can’t justify $365 for a Kindle or $300 for a Sony when my $139 eBookWise lets me read submissions, bought books, and freebies from ManyBooks and Gutenberg.
Of course, if I got a lemon, I’d be more interested in dumping it–but there I have some morality issues–is dumping my problem on someone else really right?
$200+ for a used Sony is good news–sounds like the resale value is holding up well–or not many people are giving theirs up.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
I’m anxiously awaiting the Sony announcement. If it is for a new Reader and if it has the features I would like, then my current Reader will be given to my wife and I’ll purchase the new version. But if the big deal is wireless and rally nothing else, then I’ll just sit tight with my 505; wireless isn’t a reason for me to move on from my 505.
Well, that is almost true: If the wireless would allow me to store books on my desktop and then add selected books remotely to my Reader from my desktop, I would be interested. If wireless means I can buy from an online store or have RSS feeds, but not download from my PC, then I’ll pass.
As for the iPod Touch, that doesn’t interest me in the least. But then I don’t find the iPhone or the iPod or iTunes or any of the i ware particularly compelling or interesting. Perhaps it is a condition of my age.
Color E-Ink? Well, it’s color right now! Two different shades of gray, right? E-Ink, according to their Web page, works by suspending tiny particles of toner in tiny bubbles of some viscous liquid; electric force pulls the toner to one side or another of the bubble, thus making that tiny area light gray or dark gray. I suppose one could use, say, green toner particles in orange fluid, thus making each tiny bubble either more green or more orange. That would be color, but it wouldn’t be more colors than you currently have. Or, you could pull the OLPC trick of putting the display together with a prismatic screen and adding hardware/software support for de-swizzling.
I’ll be interested to see what they come up with!
http://www.e-ink.com/press/images/image_release_86c.html
Speaking of screens, Pixel Qi will probably shake things up next year. They did the OLPC screen and have other tricks up their very clever sleeves.
Bill and Cerebus and Mike: Hey, folks, no cheatin’! I meant color for real—on sale! Remember, the post discusses buying and selling. Demo color E Ink is old news, obviously. Meanwhile kudos to Mike for beating even Bill with a reminder of Pixel Qi, mentioned here from time time, whose tech will probably show up in the next six months in products on sale—just a guess. Perhaps Bill can enlighten us further with his Pixel Qi thoughts. What do you think Mary Lou will do first? And how good will the results be? How much future in the current OLPC-style screen tech? Or what else might she have up her sleeves? A visit to her site suggests we won’t exactly be waiting 20 years. Thank! David
I’m not the hardware-sellers’ favourite son — I still use a Psion 3a I bought in 1996. It comes with a built-in suite of apps (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.) and the monochrome screen is amazingly legible. I run a freeware e-reader on it called eTxtReader, which is the mutt’s nuts: searchable, rotatable, and with adjustable fonts.
My Sony PRS-500 is already out of date, but so what? It does the job, and moreover has a fancy brown-suede cover. I even have a Casio PV, running TextViewer. (I like that machine because the processor’s so feeble I can always beat it at chess.)
I hope e-book displays don’t succumb to the hardware/software/hardware leapfrog which has afflicted Windows PCs.
P.S. David, hope this finds you better yet.
Rob, Rich and Richard…
Once again: If I weren’t doing the TeleBlog, my hardware expenditures would be much smaller. People read the TeleBlog for news, and to the extent I can afford it, I’d rather experience products first-hand—since we’re among the leading sources of tech information for e-book buyers. The responsibility is not the same as covering the White House, but I do what I can do keep us useful. Same for Chris M, Ficbot, Robert N. and others.
Meanwhile I think Rich gave us some interesting information on Sony’s possibilities and what they’d mean to him.
Richard, thanks for the second inquiry. Still progressing. I’m down to the point where it’s little more than a dry cough. The frustrating thing is how the bug weakens its victims. Let’s hope it isn’t trans-oceanic.
Thanks,
David
David Rothman – When you sold your Sony Reader what happened to the library of books associated with the machine may I ask? What happens to the e-books with Sony-type DRM? Are e-books inherited by the new Sony Reader owner or can they be transferred to another machine in the future?
That’s a great E-Ink demo image. I can think of a couple ways they could do that, using the microcapsule approach they say they are using. One is to pack different color microcapsules in a regular grid, just like pixels on a regular LCD. But they might be able to put multiple color toners in a single microcapsule, too.