Comments on: The iTablet: Let a Thousand Content Apps Bloom

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[...] The iTablet: Let a Thousand Content Apps Bloom [...]

By: cookbooker

cookbooker — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:34:48 +0000

@davesmall : interesting thoughts about cookbooks. I'm trying to tackle part of the cookbook issue through my website (connecting paper cookbooks and recipes online), but you can see how recipes are crying out for digitization. I wonder if the industry is even a tiny bit ready for it though? Looking through our user's bookshelves I see a huge number of older and obscure cookbooks; current titles are only the tip of the iceberg. I can imagine the nightmare dealing with the rights for all of those. So many are out of print but not out of copyright.

I think we could have some really interesting cookbook/app combinations, and ways of connecting the books digitally, but I wonder if the industry and copyright law will be able to handle it...

Andrew Gray Cookbooker.com

By: davesmall

davesmall — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:26:25 +0000

Let's just think about one category: cooking. I have a large collection of great cookbooks written by great chefs and award winning cookbook authors. I've got a huge stack of old Gourmet, Cook's Illustrated, and Bon Apetit magazines. Our local market had some really fresh Monkfish today. I bought some. Now begins the hunt through my cookbooks and magazines for that great Monkfish recipe that I can vaguely remember from several years ago.

Most of my cookbooks have just a few color photos. The publisher wanted to hold down the cost of printing. None of them have any video clips demonstrating a procedure. None of them have any hyperlinks to other recipes, books, sources or authors.

There is also the worldwide web. Sites like Epicurious. TheFoodChannel, and BigOven.com offer thousands of searchable recipes. But the quality isn't so tightly controlled as those recipes by prize winning authors. The web sources are a bit of a crap shoot. I don't want to gamble. I want to cook a great meal.

Now I've found my Monkfish recipe. The measurements are for four people. I'm going to have 13 guests for dinner. Let's see now, the recipe is calling for 1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce, how much do I need for thirteen servings rather than four?

I'm running out of space for my books and magazines. We're downsizing to a smaller house. What to do, what to do??

I think an iTablet could address all of these issues. I'm sure that's only part of what they have in mind.

If you think about categories other than cooking, you will see that each category has it's own issues. Textbooks for college students have different issues than textbooks for grammar school children. A biography of Napoleon Bonaparte could have a searchable map of Europe in the Napoleonic era and links to Wikipedia entries for characters mentioned in the book. How about a video tour of the battlefield at Waterloo? A tablet like this has a lot of potential.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:52:51 +0000

That is exactly the point of these concepts — to eliminate digging through an eBook! That is just plain silly. Since I am targeting kids, the content needs to be controlled and fed appropriately to keep the kids on task.

When I designed textbooks, there was a large effort to consider calendars as a basis for teacher edition texts. I am not showing those yet... I believe that smaller chunks of information analogous to readers, or even magazine articles, are the future of media. This calls into question the very idea of books and magazines as artifacts. Not novels! Textbooks are simply an aggregated set of materials.

By: Erin

Erin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:33:52 +0000

Good luck with your service. When I was in college, a large portion of our material was distributed via webpages or pdfs. While I appreciated the cost savings, it was terrible to spend hours a day at my (desktop) computer reading through pdfs and then typing up or handwriting notes and discussions. Eventually we progressed to using wikis and email discussions for some material, and I can certainly see how an interactive experience will be valuable.

By: arasmus

arasmus — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:17:21 +0000

I agree with Andy's point that the vision of a distribution system that allows authors to distribute directly to readers for just a 30% cost is in practice just a utopia. Cory Doctorow said it rather well in the context of piracy that the biggest threat to an author is not piracy but obscurity. Anyone who is familiar with the role played by a large publisher knows that the primary service they provide is marketing. The publisher gets your books reviewed by the taste-makers and ensures that its right inside the door at the big booksellers. The search costs inherent in any large collection of data ensure that this marketing role will continue to be necessary. All that is changing for authors is the point-of-sale.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:12:23 +0000

What my effort will do is provide a platform for textbooks in the K-8 market. It is centered around a Google Wave-like communication platform and the teacher feeds content such as text components and worksheets to students.

It would allow publishers — trade an educational — to submit content and be compensated for it. Texts as eBooks are really not that engaging or interesting pedagogically.

By: Erin

Erin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:44:39 +0000

I'm encouraged by the tablet because I think it will provide the force needed to innovate the digital media and ebook industry, but I definitely agree that it will need to come down in price.

A tablet ereader and collaborative learning tool could be a great thing for university students, but so far textbook publishers haven't done enough to make content easily accessible to students. Some schools have gone through trial periods with digital content, but frankly right now there just aren't enough of the appropriate texts with the appropriate features to make it work on a large scale.

I hope that publishers, app makers, and content creators will begin to realize this and job at the opportunity to innovate the distribution and features of their material.