Transformation: making a ruckus
I have been harping on that streaming books “might” be one future for digital books. Seems the folks at Oyster actually did something about it though.
Oyster, a new startup that wants to be the Spotify of books, announced it has raised $3 million led by Founders Fund. The money will help Oyster build a library that allows members to access an unlimited number of books for a monthly fee.
Academics (paid by the taxpayer or students) provide free content, and then the same academics provide free services (editorship and peer-review) and then hand over rights and ownership to a commercial company, who provide a separate set of services, and then sell back the content to the same group of academics.
Fresh back from Copenhagen, I declare that my nexus 7 tablet makes an excellent travel companion.
The tablet made the flight bearable as I watched some funny Louis C.K comedy to take my mind off the fact I was off the ground. Like nearly all hostels, the Danhostel Copenhagen Downtown has wifi in the main lounge area. But instead of the common desktop PC, they let guests make free use of several laptops and an iPad in exchange for I.D. On top of this they had a charging station behind the counter so that anybody could safely charge mobile phones and USB devices like my tablet (it really needs a name: Frank Mobile, FM for short ok?).
I found out about the charging station as my lack of foresight had me bring a generic charger that failed to breath any life into FM. Luckily Copenhagen was so much fun that I didn’t actually ever flatline.
Me and the brothers (an aside: we got called “semi-black” in a bar cue #awkward moment lost in translation) mostly used the music in our hostel room with a dash of twitter/facebook stalking thrown in for good measure.
The size of FM is perfect for my backpack, a North face “Big shot” and sat easily in the front zip. I fashioned a case from a used Amazon parcel cardboard box with rubber band which did the trick. I have yet to stumble across an affordable case so this will do for now.
At this point it is worth highlighting the cost. At £199, I felt totally happy to use the device everywhere and not cringe whenever I handed it over or rammed my bag into a carry compartment. The price point is pretty compelling and my fellow travelers will be investigating devices at this price point (amazon fire and maybe the rumoured Apple iPad mini). The only disappointment for my brothers was that most UFC sites still use flash for video, can’t win every time.
The apps we used in no particular order were Flipboard, google reader, youtube, Google chrome, Google email.
I forget that I am a nerd and have a need to code, but that for most of the world, email, facebook, youtube and web browsing is plenty enough internets. I did sit in the bar over the 6 days looking at travelers from all reaches of the planet. I observed that none of them had a laptop, it was either the Apple iPad or various flavours of mobile phone. Anybody who says that a mobile phone isn’t heavily used for reading is a mug.
An interesting discovery was that one USA traveler was using the 2nd Gen Kindle purely for the 3g connectivity, for email and twitter no less. 20 bucks well spent was the simple answer.
So next time I travel I will be bringing my new travel friend along.
I have just finished up a consultancy project building an ebook that i’ll talk about soon. The photo above shows the kit that I used to test the ebook at various stages. I produced two files in the process: EPUB for most devices including the iPad and a Mobi file for the Kindle hardware and app version.
For each device, the ebook displays and behaves differently so it is essential to test on the devices that you think will be used. Mr Andy Clarke said it best:
Designers need use only a subset of devices, because what matters most is that we develop an affinity for how our designs work on any type of device when we hold it our hands. To be clear, how a menu feels when used on a smartphone is a very different issue from whether it technically works on a particular make or model of smartphone. That’s why designers don’t necessarily need to buy a myriad of smartphones and tablets, just those they need to develop an affinity for.
Andy Clarke, Encouraging Better Client Participation In Responsive Design Projects
Sound simple right?! I got the list partly from what I have been using anyway and then from The mobile read wiki which has popular community input.
I will write more about ebook building, testing and frustrations in future posts.
By the way, my favourite reader is the now in limbo ibis reader which I read on my mobile phone or nexus7.
When I produce ebooks I will always knock out versions in EPUB, PDF and Kindle file formats. Testing on the hardware device is straightforward but I suspect the Kindle App is very popular and thus a priority to test thoroughly. Yet it isn’t obvious how one goes about getting the ebook into the app.
Below I describe the method that enables me to quickly load a mobi file format book into the Kindle app on my phone.
For this test I use the Apple iPhone 4 with the dropbox and Kindle apps installed then:
I recently chopped it up with James Clay about digital books and it is now live, enjoy!
What is the current landscape of ebooks in education? What is the future of ebooks? Where are we going?
This is the 87th e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Are you a glue sniffing, magic mushroom addict?
Using digital media in teaching and learning is a new guide that I wrote aimed at people who are curious about how images, video and audio might be applied.
I hope that this guide can act as the first port of call for learning technologists and teachers who aren’t quite yet ready to read about the “how-to” kind of stuff that we are great at.
We explore what digital media is, where it can be used to support teaching and learning and what the key opportunities and challenges are.
Earlier today I joined Craig Taylor to talk about ebooks (digital books) TODAY, in the first of several episodes about our current and emerging thoughts on ebooks.
I think an interesting point from the conversation was about the ‘uniquely digital uses for digital books’ and the fact we haven’t yet scratched the surface of the potential for digital features.
Enjoy