Beyond The PC New Devices For Our Users

Beyond The PC: New Devices For Our Users Brian Kelly UK Web Focus UKOLN University of Bath Email B. Kelly@ukoln. ac. uk URL http: //www. ukoln. ac. uk/ UKOLN is supported by: Acknowledgments This talk is informed by the work of Sarah Ormes, UKOLN’s Public Library Networking Focus from 1995 - March 2001

Contents • Historical Perspective • The E-Book – What Is It? • Publishing For The E-Book • Conclusions 2

Devices A history of computer devices Old Current Emerging Paper tape Punch card Terminal VDUs Graphics terminal Micro (e. g. BBC, Sinclair) PC Macintosh Unix / Linux workstations WAP E-Book Digital TV PDAs Kiosks Laptop (for students) {Wireless LANs / Bluetooth} Failures? X Terminals NCs (Network Computers) Thin Clients 3 Futures Watches Wearables Electronic ink (eink. com) …

Lessons Marketplace • Need to be aware of marketplace developments: q PC as winner / NC as failure / Mac as niche market • New products and apps are appearing rapidly – and are disappearing too! (dot. com collapses) Avoidance of proprietary lock-in • Avoid being locked into a device (cf BBC Micro CBL applications; dongles for PC software; etc. ) • Free readers aren’t enough (cf browser plugins) • Royalty-free licences aren’t enough (cf GIF) Standards 4 • Support for standards essential to: q Minimise locking dangers q Allow resources to be reused

Current We’ve been here before. So what is so different today? • Information hungry society (multiple TV channels, email lists, SMS messages, voice mail, …) • Pervasive networking … coming in UK (e. g. free network access from PCs in shopping malls in Hong Kong) • Demand from a computer literate student intake (Nintendo generation) 5 “Where can I read my email? ” - typical question for the academic at a conference. The answer is now not just the conference’s PC facility’s but laptop / PDA + mobile phone / landline / wireless LAN

Benefits Thin Clients • Pass on capital and supports costs to students! • Tried and failed at Warwick (laptop policy)- but students are buying mobile phones and PDAs anyway Mobile Access • Providing access from home /from anywhere will: q Minimise transport costs, ease congestion, etc. q Minimise demand on institutional facilities q Offline reading should be a good thing, and it’s desirable to facilitate this 6 “I'm a real fan of e. Books - particularly Specialist Requirements because they are easier to hold than a • People with disabilities book! I have a spinal injury and I have read more books in the last 6 months that the previous 6 yers”

New Devices What devices may students be interested in? PDA E-Book Note: The Mobile Palm VX Hybrid Franklin £ 329 at PC World Siemens Ebookman from e. Bookman € 359 € 644 Argos costs £ 169 Hybrid e-book, Hybrid phone, MP 3 player & PDA MP 3 player and PDA Images from <http: //www. primeuser. com/> 7

What Else Is An E-Book? An e-book is: • A trendy name for any old resource on the Web • A resource (often large and book-like if printed) which is encrypted • A resource stored in an e-book format, which is designed for reading on small devices • Name of device used to read files in e-book format 8 Confusion over terminology can make it possible to make incorrect decisions

Exploiting The New Devices Issues: • Procurement and management of the devices: q IT services do hardware procurement and manage PC clusters, but who will lend out the devices? q Do IT services negotiate preferred deals, and leave users to buy? • Procurement and management of the content: q Clearly a task for the library? • Publishing your own content: q Let’s not forget this q cf. the Web – initial interest in finding content, now in publishing 9

Exploiting The New Devices Researcher • Plugs mobile device into desktop machine and downloads W 3 C Web site for reading on train / at home over weekend • Uses intelligent agent to find relevant resources from e-print archives and downloads to mobile device for reading on train journey (with unpredictable journey time) Student • On Friday evening in student bar, a friend mentions some useful reading resources. She takes out her mobile device and, using the Student Union’s wireless network, she downloads the resources 10

E-Book Format Wars 11 PDF Derivative • Based on Adobe’s PDF format • Well-established, well-used • Proprietary, and based on appearance rather than structure XML Derivative • Based on XML • XML is now well-established • Open standards, ands , being based on document structure, supports re-purposing “My Proprietary Format” • Other companies muscling in, and making an attractive offer to convert your documents to their locked format

Proprietary Formats Warnings: • Dangers of proprietary formats • Difficulties in reuse of resources • Difficulties in managing browser plugins How does Davtel's proposed e-book solution work? The publisher sends the book in any electronic format to a 3 rd party storage company, where it will be translated to our format free of charge. http: //www. tboook. com/faq 3. shtml 12

Peace In Our Time There has been: <http: //www. openebook. org/> • Recognition of the dangers of format wars • Agreement between the two main camps • Adoption of XML : -) • See Oe. B (Open e. Book Forum) Web site But there will still be issues about the development and deployment of the standards – and, no doubt, battles still to be fought (cf WML developments for WAP) 13 Note also AAP ‘standards’ work in rights management, metadata and numbering – see <http: //www. publishers. org/home/ebookstudy. htm>

Creating An E-Book 14

Viewing Here is what the HTML resource looks like using an e-book emulator E-ditorial This file was created using the E-ditorial software. What is an e-book? “A simple explanation would be to say that an e-book is a self-running computer program - an executable file. ” i. e. this is a proprietary format! 15 See <http: //www. e-ditorial. com/>.

Another Creation Tool Drag and drop a Web resource 16

A Better Way Is this ease of creation desirable: • It’s easy to create a HTML page • It’s easy to update Web pages to HTML 4/XHTML • It’s easy to create a PDF version • It’s easy to create a WAP site • It’s easy to make use of Flash • … Is this true? If you have a large Web site to maintain and wish to support multiple devices (some which may not take off) you will have to use an automated approach to content management 17

Resource Reuse You should store your resources in a neutral, richly-structured format (ideally XML) XHTML XML Database Local script / CMS / XSLT Transformation WML E-book format Can you think of any good reasons for storing your resources in a Are: proprietary format, • with provide encryption & security To limited scope for reuse? outsource the digitisation • To 18 • To get fancy bells and whistles good enough reasons? PDF Print

Conclusions To conclude: • There are lots of new devices arriving which appear to have great potential for use in education • Inevitably some devices and formats will fail to gain acceptance (remember Beta. Max!) • Avoid proprietary lockin: q Dangerous if you choose a failure (Betamax) q Dangerous if you choose a winner (Microsoft) • Management of e-book resources is important, and likely to involve IT services and Librarians • Creation of e-book resources also important, and should form part of an institution’s IT strategy 19