Will Amazon.com's Kindle rekindle the failed ebook reader craze of 2000?
Amazon.com has just released Kindle--a new ebook reading device. Back in 2000, there was an eBook reader called the Rocket eBook reader. One of the reasons that I believe this reader never got much traction was the limited selection of books.
Glen Sanders and Alex Pigeon had a huge eBook community site that ran for a while. Then, Gemstar purchased their site along with the Rocket eBook reader, and, well, in my opinion, killed the whole thing.
During that transition, I met with Alex in Columbia, SC. He was visiting home for a while on vacation from his job in Japan. He was interviewing with experITy and considering possibly coming to work with in a marketing capacity. In his interview, we discussed his work with the eBook reader. I immediately saw an opportunity to convert the Project Gutenberg collection over to it.
At the time, Project Gutenberg was only storing their books as plain, vanilla text and was not amenable in the least to providing their books in any other format. Worse yet, the text had hard line breaks in it. So, if you tried reading the text on a device whose screen narrower than the width of their breaks, it was very difficult to read.
Also, the site's index was not the best in the world. Downloading based upon the index was tedious as well. So, knowing there was a better way, I set out to solve the problem.
I created an application named the Gutenberg Explorer and created a website called Gutenberg Station that cataloged places on the net where you could find eBooks. It wasn't long before the two got noticed and I had many positive reviews written up on it. This review (a verbatim reprint of my press release) explains some more about the product.
Initially, I had tried to contact Michael Hart in order to collaborate with him on what I was doing. Disappointingly though, he never answered my emails. So, I proceeded on my own with the Gutenberg Explorer.
One day, while reading the Project Gutenberg forum messages, someone asked if there were any plans to convert to wrapped text or HTML etc. because they were having problems with the format of the files. Seeing this post, I knew the Explorer was what he needed so I left him a response telling him about the Gutenberg Explorer.
Apparently, this was not well received by the PG volunteers at the time. My message was immediately removed and I was locked out of the list. Then, I received "the email" which stated that my use of "Gutenberg" on the website and in the product was a copyright infringement. The phrase, "and that's the thanks I get" was the first thing that popped into my mind. Ultimately, I spent a the next few weeks corresponding with Micheal Hart directly. He's a really good guy and we worked things out. I ended up replacing "Gutenberg" with "eText" and ran the site for many years afterwards.
The eText Explorer was a rave. I constantly received many, many accolades on how useful it was. I had blind people using the programs because the reformatting of the files made them easier for the talking readers to consume.
eText Explorer was the first application ever to create Open eBook files.
Eventually, as interest waned in eBook readers and the site traffic died down, I pulled the site and didn't renew the domain name (http://www.etextstation.com/).
Seeing this new reader has rekindled my memories of the journey into ebooks. Now, you can get PG books in all sorts of formats with pictures and all. These new books can be directly sent to the Kindle reader and the need for utilities like the eText Explorer is no more.
The dream is finally here . . . thanks Amazon . . .
1 comments:
I dream is here, but the device is expensive and ugly in my opinion.
I think in general the idea is great and the ink-based technology will make a big difference, have to really give amazon credit for being the first to mass market such an awesome technology.
I hope by the second generation my issues with these devices are worked out as i would love to drop paper-books all together.
Unfortunately i know that many people love how a "book feels" and perhaps this will slow adoption no matter how nice the device looks. Heck maybe its best to make the device look like a real book with a paper case and cover to open ;).
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