Quote:
Originally Posted by Little32
@agzg.
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You twitter don't you? LOL
Here is a portion of an article I was looking at last week:
Anyone who has even remotely followed the trends in textbook publishing will be intimately familiar with the cries of wolf that have periodically promised that the moment is here (or just around the corner) for the transformative shift from paper to pixels. "E-textbooks have been 'this year's breakthrough' for the last 10 years," said Richard F. Bellaver, associate director of Ball State University's Center for Information and Communications Sciences, who has studied e-book technology.
Some of Amazon's partners in the Kindle project, like Adrian Sannier, chief technology officer at Arizona State University and a self-professed "big Kindle fan," are extremely bullish that Amazon's gambit could be "one of the two or three major events that cause the digital textbook revolution to really happen," as he put it Wednesday. That is less because of the textbook-friendly improvements in Kindle technology, Sannier said (though he praised that, too), than because of what he described as Amazon's singular ability to create a supportive "ecosystem" for electronic publishing based on the company's unmatchable distribution model.
"What we've been looking for is the third party, the 'iTunes' in this crowd who can find a way to break the logjam" between textbook publishers and would-be buyers, Sannier said. "With the Kindle, from your bed, you can buy the book and 60 seconds later, you're reading it. With three major publishers joining with them, all the machinery exists to take their content and turn it into Amazon content very quickly. This could be the confluence, not only of a device but of an ecosystem for the device, along with the cooperation of leading publishers, that allows it all to come together."
The president of one of the other universities in the Kindle project seemed far less certain she was participating in a breakthrough moment. Speaking from a taxi on her way to LaGuardia airport after speaking at the Amazon event, Case Western Reserve University's Barbara Snyder said that she, like Sannier, is "personally a big Kindle fan," and that Case was excited that its faculty members and students, through their experimentation with and use of Kindle, would provide feedback to help improve it.
But Snyder also described herself as someone who "likes my old newspapers and books, too," and pointed out that even as digital books have emerged, "the fact that Kindle is out there doesn't mean nobody is buying books. ... It's great to have choice," she said, "and it will probably be about choice for a long time, and I think that's great."
Kindle in higher education
Also we aren't too far off from color devices and apps as they are already available in Asia (naturally!). I am also curious as to what will happen when more and more magazines become available fully to read online.
Like for instance, being able to download Time or SI or whatever you want to read. If this really starts catching on, I wonder how publishers will have to adjust to cutting back to everyone else down the line that gets paid like the printers, delivery people, newspapermen and so forth....I don't think this marks the absolute end of print media because not everyone will have one of these devices but once newer devices are introduced with better capabilties, those changes will be felt. Look how long the mobile phone was around before the near extinction of the phone booth (they still exist but are damn near hard to find!) it's been barely 20 years and now we are saturated but a landline is still needed.
@ Kevin (lol)
Kindle device
And what you just said about highlighting....heard that one too...LOL
Hybrid Mode
