Episode 38 – E-Book Redux
17 February, 20094 comments
In a very special timetraveling episode, the Digital Campus crew journey back to 2007 to hear from their old selves–specifically, what they said about e-books when Amazon’s Kindle was released–and whether their present selves agree with their ghosts from the past in light of the release of the Kindle 2 and the mobile version of Google Books. Also covered on the podcast are the demise of rumor site Juicy Campus and music site Ruckus, the impact of Creative Commons and downloads on YouTube, and the addition of history to Google Earth. Picks for the episode include a programming interface for New York Times articles, a blog on the futures of learning, a search engine for open journals, and a site for medieval manuscripts.
Links mentioned on the podcast:
Kindle 2
Google Book Search Mobile
New York Times Article Search API
Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts
Futures of Learning blog
Google Earth 5’s Historical Imagery
JURN search engine
Running time: 49:18
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Mills Kelly
“Digital Campus” podcast talks about JURN « Jurn blog : 18th February, 2009
[…] February 2009 in Uncategorized JURN mentioned on the latest 50-minute “Digital Campus” podcast. […]
Ruel J. Eskelsen : 20th February, 2009
I have been fascinated to follow the ebook discussion on Digital Campus over the past year or so. I have been experimenting with ebooks from early 2000 when I started using the Palm Pilot handheld as a PDA personal organizer and found that there were books that one could load and read on the handheld device.
I am now an avid user of the eReader for the Palm/PC after having experimented with the early Glassbook Reader, Rocket Ebook, Microsoft Reader, and have purchased titles for Adobe Digital Editions, Mobipocket Reader as well as the majority of my ebook content from eReader.com (now run by Fictionwise.com)
I have not tried the Kindle device yet as I have resisted proprietary readers that don’t easily allow multiple device reading and have found the eReader format the most flexible and portable of all the ebook platforms. The most problematic issue has been the digital rights management systems, which frequently make the cross-platform reading difficult.
eReader has produced a version for the PocketPC platform and the newest version for the iPhone, but they did not bother to replicate the eReader for Palm features such as easy hyperlink lookup in multiple reference material titles (dictionaries, encyclopedias), which is probably my favorite feature.
I believe on a past Digital Campus podcast there was a consensus that content for the handheld device was really the wave of the future and I agree. The most recent problem I have encountered is that Amazon’s Kindle is quickly cornering the market on titles that I would consider purchasing (mostly History and Non-Fiction titles). Amazon appears to be mounting a Microsoft-type marketing coup and I am afraid that at some point, if I want a certain title in ebook format I will have to purchase the Kindle version.
In summary the ebook technology has so many great features (e.g. full-text search, hyperlink lookup in reference works, electronic annotation with backup and export, consolidated small-space storage, etc.) I hope that the technology stabilizes to the point where, using the International Digital Publishing Forum’s (IDPF) Open Publication Structure, we might have the ability to obtain any desired title in the individual’s preferred format.
Liz MCS : 2nd March, 2009
You’ve talked about the place of blogging in scholarship for tenured/tenure track academics. Someone is studying the topic, but asking specifically for tenured/tenure track librarians.
http://www.web2learning.net/archives/2674
Jurn : 4th December, 2010
Thanks for mentioning JURN. JURN is coming up to its two year anniversary in Feb 2011, and has been hugely expanded and refined since its initial beta launch. You might perhaps want to ‘pencil in’ a revisiting of JURN, sometime in the New Year?