textbooks in backpack

eBooks vs Web Apps for Interactive Content (Good e-Reader)

New Update to iOS Kindle App Suggests Amazon Values Apps Over Hardware (The Digital Reader)

Why Plain Text Books Are Here to Stay (Tidbits)

High Stakes if Apple eBooks Antotrust Case Goes to Trial (Reuters)

Kindle Daily Deals: Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon (and 3 others)

NO COMMENTS

  1. Having just read a similar piece pitting HTML 5 against native apps (http://mashable.com/2012/09/12/web-vs-native-apps/), I was interested to see if the eBook world saw things the same way. I found Kleinfeld’s position surprising because O’Reilly acquired Threepress Consulting and, with that, Ibis Reader. Ibis Reader is an eReader written in HTML 5 and a living example of how very close a web app can approximate a native app. The big problems with native apps is cost and scalability, problems that don’t obtain with HTML 5 or ePub for that matter. Write once, read everywhere.

  2. I think that Adam Engst (TidBits) sets up a straw man when he asserts that there is a movement afoot to gratuitously replace text with linear and interactive media, a movement that will inevitably fail. As he points out toward the end, we already have movies and television replacing text.
    What I think is actually happening is that authors are just beginning to grapple with the integration of media and text and the early results are less than stellar. This will improve just as desktop publishing got better once we got over our fascination with and abuse of fonts.
    That transition won’t be eve either. For example, fiction may not benefit from new media as non-fiction might.

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