New Devices And The Web The Mobile E-Book

New Devices And The Web: The Mobile E-Book Reader 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: Part 1 Abstract This talk gives an historical context to the portable e-Book reader, tries to clarify terminology and highlights the importance of standards and a approaches to publishing. It will be followed by a talk from Helen Petrie, City University on Accessibility and Usability of Mobile Devices

Devices A history of mainstream computer devices Old Emerging Paper tape Punch card Terminal VDUs Graphics terminal Micro (e. g. BBC, Commodore, Sinclair) PC Macintosh Unix / Linux workstations and servers E-Book WAP, GPRS, 3 G Digital TV PDAs Kiosks Laptop (for students) Networking technologies: Wireless LANs / Bluetooth Failures? 2 Current Futures X Terminals NCs (Network Computers) Thin Clients 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 3 • Support for standards essential to: q Minimise locking dangers q Allow resources to be reused

Current Position We’ve been here before. What is 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) • Demand for universal access for all 4

Benefits Of Mobile Devices Access Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere 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 Devices Purchased By Users • Pass on capital and supports costs to students! • Laptop policy for students attempted at Warwick - but students are buying mobile phones and PDAs anyway Universal Accessibility • Potential to provide access to resources for people with a range of disabilities 5

An Unsolicited Quote “I'm a real fan of e. Books - particularly because they are easier to hold than a book! I have a spinal injury and I have read more books in the last 6 months that the previous 6 years” Unsolicited email message received by a colleague following a presentation she gave on e-Books 6

What Is An E-Book? View of 96% in survey by Lynch (Electronic Library Vol. 19 No. 6) An e-book can be: • A trendy name for any resource on the Web • A multimedia CD-ROM book accessible via desktop PC • A resource (often large and book-like) to which access is managed (and resource often encrypted) • A format which describes book-like structures and corresponding functions • A resource designed for reading on small devices • Name of device used to read files in e-book format 7 This talk focuses on the small device (and corresponding formats)

Mobile Devices A range of different types of mobile devices are available E-Book Reader PDA Hybrid Palms PDAs e. Bookman Traditional E-Book are available reader such as from £ 100 -£ 400 hybrid e-book Rocket cost about Pocket PCs are reader, MP 3 player and PDA $249 also available (was at Argos for (Note company has £ 169) changed hands) 8 Mobile Phone Siemens hybrid phone, MP 3 player and PDA

Exploiting The New Devices The Researcher • Plugs mobile device into desktop machine and downloads W 3 C Web site for reading over weekend • Uses intelligent agent to find relevant resources from e-print archives and downloads to mobile device for reading on (long) train journey The 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 The Social Animal 9 • I plan my TV and radio viewing and visits to cinema using personalised Avant. Go settings

Managing The New Devices 10 Procurement and Management of the Devices: q IT services responsible for 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 Who defines strategy for publishing? q cf. the Web – initial interest in finding content, now in publishing

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, and, 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 13 Note also AAP ‘standards’ work in rights management, metadata and numbering – see <http: //www. publishers. org/home/ebookstudy. htm>

Unresolved Issues Standards issues still be resolved include: • Digital Rights Management (DRM) The book publishing world is aware of the difficulties that music publishers found themselves in with applications such as Napster EBX is a proposed DRM standard • Cataloguing Information ONIX (ONline Information e. Xchange) is a proposed standard for sharing catalogue information between publishers and libraries • … 14

Creating An E-Book 15

Viewing Here is what the resource looks like using their viewing software 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! 16 See <http: //www. e-ditorial. com/>.

Another Creation Tool Drag and drop a Web resource 17

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 18

Resource Reuse You should store your resources in a neutral, richly-structured format (ideally XML) B 2 B formats XML Database Specialist formats Local script / CMS / XSLT transformation Can you think of any valid reasons for storing resources in a proprietary format, with limited scope for reuse? Are: • To provide encryption & security • To outsource the digitisation • To get fancy bells and whistles good enough reasons? 19 XHTML WML E-book format PDF Print

Beyond The E-Book PDAs are becoming more advanced e. g. consider the Franklin E-bookman: • Advertisement: “Listen to a song, Schedule a Meeting, Listen to a Book, Take a Note” • It provides audio facilities • Subscription options ($13 / month in US) for Audible books (see <http: //www. audible. com/>): “over 12, 000 audiobooks from that ranges from bestsellers to radio programs to The Wall Street Journal” • Cost $150 (at Amazon. com) • See <http: //www. franklin. com/e. Book. Man/> Note: before buying one read the reviews! 20

E-Books and Talking Books We are seeing convergence with other devices. For example consider the Rio consumer device: • “The Rio 800 comes with 64 MB of memory, enough for about an hour of MP 3 music. It can also accommodate Windows Media Audio (WMA) files, which can stretch the playing time out to nearly two hours. . . It plays Audible formats 2, 3, and 4 and it holds up to 20. 5 hours of programming. ” • Cost $225 (at Amazon. com) • Subscription options for Audible books (via Amazon. com – but not Amazon. co. uk) 21

Digital Talking Books New Digital Talking Book devices: • Digital devices aimed at visually impaired • Use an XML DTD • Standards work coordinated by the Daisy Consortium • See <http: //www. daisy. org/> • The proposed national standard for the Digital Talking Book (Z 39. 86 -200 x) is out for ballot – see <http: //www. niso. org/> 22

An Example An example of a digital talking book application can be seen by installing an application such as Lp. Player. Although this runs on a PC, Microsoft (for example) have stated their Pocket. PC device will support the standard. 23 Lp. Player from <http: //www. labyrinten. se/ english/lpplayer. html>

Conclusions To conclude: • There are many new consumer devices arriving which appear to have potential for general use • Will also have benefits for people with disabilities • Inevitably some devices and formats will fail to gain acceptance (remember Beta. Max!) • Avoid proprietary lock-in: q Dangerous if you choose a failure (Betamax) q Dangerous if you choose a winner (Microsoft) • Management of access to e-books is important • Creation of e-book resources also important • Let’s not forget the usability and accessibility of these devices 24