Part 10
# The Kindle (Amazon)
Amazon launched Kindle, its own ebook reader, in November 2007, with a 6-inch E Ink display, and page-turning buttons. Books could be downloaded via the device's 3G wireless connection, with no need for a computer, unlike the Sony Reader. A thinner Kindle 2 was launched in February 2009, with a storage capacity of 1,500 ebooks and a new text- to-speech feature. The Kindle DX was launched in May 2009 with a larger 9.7-inch screen for newspapers and magazines.
# The Nook (Barnes & Noble)
Barnes & Noble launched Nook, its own ebook reader, in November 2009. Based on the Android platform, the original device included a 6-inch E Ink display, with WiFi and 3G connectivity. A new WiFi-only device was launched in June 2010. The Nook Color was launched in October 2010, with a larger 7-inch LCD display, for the viewing of magazines and picture books. The website of Barnes & Noble offered 2 million ebooks in November 2010. A lighter Nook with a 6-inch E Ink tactile display was released in May 2011.
# The iPad (Apple)
Apple launched the iPad, its multifunctional tablet, in the U.S. in April 2010, with an iBookstore of 60,000 ebooks. The iPad was available in a few European countries in June 2010. After the iPod (launched in October 2001) and the iPhone (launched in January 2007), two cult devices for a whole generation, Apple has also become a key player for digital books. The iPad 2 was launched in March 2011 in the U.S. and two weeks later internationally.
There are many other ebook readers and tablets, but I will stop there. Some of my friends now wait to read multimedia / hypermedia content and stories in 3D on flexible devices.
2011 > THE EBOOK IN TEN POINTS
[Summary] Here is a conclusion in the form of quotes. The dates indicated here are the dates when these texts - excerpts from email interviews - were written and first published. Their authors are Michael Hart (August 1998), John Mark Ockerbloom (September 1998), Robert Beard (October 1998), Jean-Paul (June 2000), Nicolas Pewny (February 2003), Marc Autret (December 2006), Pierre Schweitzer (January 2007), Denis Zwirn (August 2007), Catherine Domain (April 2010) and Henk Slettenhaar (June 2011).
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Here is a conclusion in the form of quotes. The dates indicated here are the dates when these texts - excerpts from email interviews - were written and first published.
# August 1998
"We consider etext to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper, other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way to etexts, especially in schools." (Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg in 1971)
# September 1998
"I've gotten very interested in the great potential the net has had for making literature available to a wide audience. (...) I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a mass communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer." (John Mark Ockerbloom, founder of The Online Books Page in 1993)
# October 1998
"The web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and institutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind." (Robert Beard, founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries in 1995)
# June 2000
"Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. (...) I have finally found in online publishing the mobility and fluidity I was seeking." (Jean-Paul, founder of the hypermedia website cotres.net in 1998)
# February 2003
"I see the digital book of the future as a 'full work' putting together text, sound, images, video and interactivity: a new way to design, and write, and read, perhaps on a single book, constantly renewed, which would contain everything we have read, a single and multiple companion. Utopian? Improbable? Maybe not that much!" (Nicolas Pewny, founder of Editions du Choucas in 1992)
# December 2006
"There are at least two emerging trends [in the digital book]: (a) an increasingly attractive and functional interface for reading/consultation (navigation, searching, restructuring on the fly, annotations of the user, interactive quiz); (b) a multimedia integration (video, sound, animated graphics, database) now strongly coupled to the web. No physical book offers such features. So I imagine the ebook of the future as a kind of wiki crystallized and packaged in a given format. How valuable will it be? Its value will be the one of a book: the unity and quality of editorial work!" (Marc Autret, graphic designer and founder of the website Indiscripts in 2009)
# January 2007
"The luck we all have is to live this fantastic change here and now. When I was born in 1963, a computer memory could only hold a few pages of characters. Today, my music player could hold billions of pages, a true local library. Tomorrow, by the combined effect of the Moore Law and the ubiquity of networks, we will have instant access to works and knowledge. We won't be much interested any more on which device to store information. We will be interested in handy functions and beautiful objects." (Pierre Schweitzer, designer of the @folio project in 1996)
# August 2007
"The digital book is not any more a topic for symposiums, conceptual definitions, or divination by some 'experts'. It is a commercial product and a tool for reading. (...) We need to offer books that can be easily read on any electronic device used by customers, sooner or later with an electronic ink display. And to offer them as an industry. The digital book is not, and will never be, a niche product (dictionaries, travel guides, books for the blind). It is becoming a mass market product, with multiple forms, like the traditional book." (Denis Zwirn, founder of the digital bookstore Numilog in 2000)
# April 2010
"The internet has taken more and more space in my life! On 1st April 2010, I became a publisher after some painful training in Photoshop, InDesign, and other software. (...) In the end, there will always be unexpected developments to new inventions, among other things. When I started using the internet [in 1999], I really didn't expect to become a publisher." (Catherine Domain, founder of Librairie Ulysse in 1971)
# June 2011
"I never liked reading a book on a computer or PDA. Now, with tablets like the Kindle of the iPad, I am finally reading ebooks. I see a huge expansion of digital reading with tablets that are easy to use and with a very large choice of ebooks thanks to electronic commerce and companies like Amazon. (...) I also use online books to learn the art of innovation!" (Henk Slettenhaar, founder of the Swiss Silicon Valley Association in 1992)
Copyright (C) 2011 Marie Lebert
End of Project Gutenberg's The eBook is 40 (1971-2011), by Marie Lebert