E-book hardware? I'm behind the curve.
Aerundel has brought to my attention that i'm late with my genius idea.
Apparently Sony has already come out with the wonderful Sony Reader that does pretty much what I described in my last blog. Engadget did a wonderful article on this device back in January, so i'm way behind on this revolution. Hopefully my readers are as dumb as I am, and appreciate the fact that I'm relaying this info to them.
My only complaint is that this device doesn't fully capture the scope of what I was talking about. Sure, it seems like a great device for reading books. Hell, I dare say that I'm going to pick one up. Physical books are hard to read on the subway. It's hard to keep a book in mint condition when it has to be shoved in a pocket or a backpack. The prices of the books are also 20-25% cheaper than their physical retail versions, something that I often very avid about for any product that has an online equivalent.
What the Sony Reader doesn't capture is the spirit of newspapers and magazines. Are there any plans for a screen twice the size, one that could be used to view newspaper articles or magazine articles in their full layout?
Imagine the possibility. Pay a nominal subscription fee to The Wall Street Journal, sync your newspaper reader in the morning. Get all the articles and blurbs and even advertisements, just like you would if you were reading a phsyical newspaper. The fee would be to pay for the service, while the advertisements would help this e-newspaper market grow the same way it does in regular physical newspapers and magazines.
And then we can expand to Atom/RSS feed syncing, and sync all of our favorite blogs in the morning, reading them on our way into work or throughout the day (if for some reason you can't get your blogs at work).
So there is still room for this market to grow. The Sony Reader might do for books what the i-pod did for music, but growth is possible. We need a device for blogs to match with podcasts and a device for newspapers and magazines.
In the spirit of competition though: come on Apple, where's the i-Reader?
Apparently Sony has already come out with the wonderful Sony Reader that does pretty much what I described in my last blog. Engadget did a wonderful article on this device back in January, so i'm way behind on this revolution. Hopefully my readers are as dumb as I am, and appreciate the fact that I'm relaying this info to them.
My only complaint is that this device doesn't fully capture the scope of what I was talking about. Sure, it seems like a great device for reading books. Hell, I dare say that I'm going to pick one up. Physical books are hard to read on the subway. It's hard to keep a book in mint condition when it has to be shoved in a pocket or a backpack. The prices of the books are also 20-25% cheaper than their physical retail versions, something that I often very avid about for any product that has an online equivalent.
What the Sony Reader doesn't capture is the spirit of newspapers and magazines. Are there any plans for a screen twice the size, one that could be used to view newspaper articles or magazine articles in their full layout?
Imagine the possibility. Pay a nominal subscription fee to The Wall Street Journal, sync your newspaper reader in the morning. Get all the articles and blurbs and even advertisements, just like you would if you were reading a phsyical newspaper. The fee would be to pay for the service, while the advertisements would help this e-newspaper market grow the same way it does in regular physical newspapers and magazines.
And then we can expand to Atom/RSS feed syncing, and sync all of our favorite blogs in the morning, reading them on our way into work or throughout the day (if for some reason you can't get your blogs at work).
So there is still room for this market to grow. The Sony Reader might do for books what the i-pod did for music, but growth is possible. We need a device for blogs to match with podcasts and a device for newspapers and magazines.
In the spirit of competition though: come on Apple, where's the i-Reader?
posted by Allen M @ 11/10/2006 01:26:00 AM
2 Comments:
At 7:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
I hear it does support RSS feeds and mp3s. Guess that should be expected for $350. Did you ever get one?
At 7:17 PM,
Allen M said…
Mike,
I just learned about this device yesterday. I'm going to learn more about it before I commit to anything.
We have these sony stores on the east coast (not sure if you have them) that are kind of rip-offs of the apple stores, and I'm hoping I can play with one in person. I'll let you know more when I learn more.
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