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E-Ink, finally a revolutionary technology, sadly threatened by greed

// June 4th, 2008 // Technology

Its been a while since I was really impressed by a technology in the real sense. I must say the last time was when I first saw a graphical webpage in 1995 and started browsing for the very first time (IBM OS2 Warp / Mozilla).

Then few months ago I was walking down a mall in SF and entered a Sony store, when I saw their ebook reader for the very first time. I heard about the technology and read about it a lot, I read about Kindle etc. I must say I was very skeptical as I love to “feel” books, but having the reader in my hands changed all that. At first I literally taught there was a printed sticker on the screen and that i was holding a dummy, but then i pressed a button and the text changed… You have to see it with your own eyes to understand what I am talking about.

So the technology is awesome, but what about content ? First thing I did was to look for content availability and the best E-Ink device there was. I was disturbed by seeing that history didn’t prevent the same mistakes to be made:

Both Sony and Amazon (Kindle) decided to invent a new proprietary file type and therefore sell exclusive content to their exclusive devices. I do understand Sony’s inclination to do so as they come from a “console war” experience but Amazon deluded me plenty:

There are many examples on why content and hardware should not go hand in hand: Apple vs Microsoft, MP3 vs ATRAC, Blue-ray vs HDDVD… nothing good came out of trying to monopolize content.

Amazon of all people, leader in eshopping, content delivery, huge advantage on customer base, marketing skills, CRM, loyalty etc shouldn’t have been afraid to let people use whichever device best suited them.

Take me for example: I want to use the reader as replacement to books, therefor only to read, I don’t need anything else: no connectivity, no note taking, purely reading. Therefore my device should be light, should be able to read as most file types as possible and battery life should be great. None of these features are best with the Kindle. I do want to buy books from Amazon though, as I think they have the best shopping experience and yet I can’t… I am sure I am not the only one…

I wont be surprised to see Amazon and Sony take exclusivity on delivering ebooks of big writers, therefore try blocking the way of other hardware providers, blocking the best technology to emerge and blocking the way to cheap great ereaders… They won’t succeed, as Apple didn’t succeed with the PC, as Sony didn’t succeed with MiniDisc or ATRAC, history will repeat itself, but as always progress will be delayed, and many fights will have to be fought…

I chose to buy the Bookeen Cybook Gen3 reader: AMAZING! I am reading at least 4 times more what I used to read (and I did already read pretty much) it supports all the important ebook and document formats, and you can find tons of content on MobiPocket.com, BooksonBoard.com and many more…

This is the beginning of a new content delivery technology: still very expensive, still limited (no colors yet…) but a real breakthrough…

SK

UPDATE: Sony must have understood their mistake as they have included in their last firmware update support for the open ebook standards EPUB and DE PDF. This puts them at the top as device, well done!