There has been some interesting activity in the ebook sector lately that I have been following with great interest. For the time being, I think that e-readers are best suited for reading journalism (e.g. I often read the New York Times and the Globe & Mail on my iPhone), but less suited for longer form works. Perhaps my views would change if I used the Kindle, but Amazon has yet to make it available outside the United States but I think it unlikely.
Cory Doctorow, noted for providing his books for free through his website (as well as writing great columns on technology and blogging at BoingBoing), observed in a recent interview that he doesn’t think novels work in e-readers. He argues that the sort of sustained reading necessary in the case of novels doesn’t work well with ebook readers. I would tend to agree, but somehow, I still want e-readers (with print on demand publishing existing to give them competition) to succeed for pragmatic reasons. Packing 5-10 books into luggage for a trip is difficult and heavy.
Likewise, students at Princeton University have not embraced the Kindle enthusiastically. As the Daily Princetonian reports, Kindles yet to woo University users, students are not pleased with the device. One student summarized his experience by saying: “It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.” One particularly interesting objection to use of the Kindle in the academic or research context is the lack of page numbers which makes it difficult to cite passages. I don’t know exactly which audience had in mind for developing the device, but research and academic users needs do not appear to be well served thus far. Despite the problems, I think Princeton is to be commended for its efforts to run a pilot test of the technology.
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