One way the handheld maturation differs from that of the PC

[Ed Hansberry]

There are countless similarities in how the handheld device has evolved over the last decade, when compared to the PC. From DOS on the HP 200LX, to the basic GUI of the Newton, to the skinnable Pocket PC of today. From one-time powerhouses of the 16MHz Dragonball in the Palm to forthcoming 400-600MHz XScale processors making their way to the market today. Screens, battery life, weight, etc. As I said, countless.<br /><br />One way (one of many) though that the handheld is evolving differently than the PC is how the devices are used for access to content. All manner of content. Obviously portability is the key, but today we are in the midst of a digital revolution. Music was the beginning. MP3's began making their way to PC's in the late 1990's, but unless you were one of those with an expensive CD-ROM burner, you were tied to your PC in order to listen to the music, and then you still had to tote around a CD player and a CD for every hour of music you wanted to listen to.<br /><br />Well, you know the rest. Pocket PCs, Sony Clies and dedicated MP3 players are plentiful today. 128MB of memory and about 4 hrs of music, is common-place with 5GB drives readily accessible. High bandwidth connections will allow full length DVD movies to be viewed on demand in the coming years. PC's will always be a massive repository for our music, books, movies, pictures, etc. But rarely are they going to be used to enjoy that content. That is the difference I was referring to in the title. PC's store it. Handhelds will use it.<br /><br />But here is the rub. Napster. Like it or not, Napster has made a mess of digital content. Think I'm kidding? Try getting the eBook of your choice on your device. Tolkien, Jordan, Clancy, etc. The list goes on and on. There is at least a chance PeanutPress.com has it. Barnes & Nobel or Amazon <i>might</i> have it, but if you took the collective library of these three and other eBook sites it would only be a drop in the bucket compared to what you can get at Amazon.com in paper format alone.<br /><br />Napster has struck fear and paranoia into all content providers - music, books and video. So, to combat this, publishers have given us proprietary devices like Rocket eBooks or very restrictive digital rights management like DRM5, although that is far better today than it was as recently as mid-2001. Multiple formats, content that expires, and something that is amazing to me, publishers think we want to read this stuff on our PC. Adobe eBook Reader? What are they thinking? There is a place for eBooks on a PC, but not novels. Textbooks, research material, technical manuals, yes. Clancy's latest? I don't think so. One brief aside: I am afraid the Tablet PC, as cool as it is, will slow the transformation to non-PC based content since the Tablet PC is portable. But it still isn't the carry-anywhere device your iPAQ is.<br /><br />And what about <i>our</i> content. I can redownload my ebooks I buy from Amazon.com today, but what about tomorrow? What if the .LIT format changes? Will Amazon recompile my ebook for the new format? I use .LIT as an example. The same could be said for content in the Palm Reader, iSolo, MobiPocket, etc. Will these various companies or formats be around in 2 years? 5? 10? What happens to my content then? How do I activate it for my Pocket PC 2010 device - you know, the one with an 8GHz processor, 200 hrs of battery life, full voice recognition and a speck of dust under the screen? ;-)<br /><br />So, help me out. What is going on in the minds of publishers and content providers? I know that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has some ideas of what is going on, and none of them pleasant for consumers. I would hope there is an eBok format in the works that will work on all handheld devices with screens, be it powered by Microsoft, Linux, Palm, EPOC, or BrandX. I know the Microsoft mantra for .NET devices is basically "any device, anywhere, anytime." Sounds great, and we may see proof if this in the next 18-24 months. Whatever the solution, we are a few years from it benefiting consumers, and that is the bottom line. Until the digital rights management benefits consumers, eBooks will be a niche market, and to a large extent, will affect how the handheld market matures. Something the PC never had to contend with.<br /><br />I am curious to hear your thoughts on this. Hmmmm.... I think I just broke a record for the longest Pocket PC Thoughts.com post. :-)

[Timothy Rapson]

I have to agree that this is one of the most crucial if not the most crucial question of the digital revolution. What about intellectual property rights and how do people pay for the media they use?

What I see is a Star Trek pad in your hand or a communicator chip on your shoulder that projects what you want to see, read, hear. But how do you pay for it. There are so many models currently availaible. TV, Theaters, Public Libraries, Video Cassettes.

With Wireless everywhere and probably broadband wireless everywhere in the near future you might pay for everything through there just like you currently do for cable TV and Pay per view. Record what you want for future listening or archiving, but why keep a copy on your space when you can see, hear, read, or reference it anytime you want for a few cents?

It is a fascinating question. When we can watch movies anytime, anywhere on our PPCs it will make the world a different place. I could watch a movie with my twin brother who lives 500 miles away!

I could send copies of my Sunday School lesson to all the class members as I prepare the lesson.

What about zoom and replay on your PPC while you are at the game in person?

10 years from now, this (how to share such content over handhelds and protect the profit from it the creators deserve) will be looked back upon as the crucial question we had to solve to get it all together.

[Steven Cedrone]

"So, help me out. What is going on in the minds of publishers and content providers?"

Profit, profit, profit.......

I think that of all of the schemes out there, Peanut Press, errrr, Palm, has the right idea, use a credit card number for activation.

I just re-activated my PC version of Reader (new version, I have been behind with updates), and now I can't read any of my e-books(on my PC). When activating, the site states that if you don't use the same passport account, you won't be able to read your DRM5 books, but none of my books are accessable now (most are public domain). This all came about because I finally got my broadband access and wanted to download my latest copy of Pocket PC Magazine (By the way, nice little pic of Jason and Ashley at their wedding!). I wound up unistalling the PC version of Reader so I had a choice of saving the content to a file (If you have Reader, it will automatically try to add it to your library, in my case you would end up with an error and no ebook would be downloaded).....

I guess what I am trying to say is there has to be a better way to "prove" you have purchased a book then what Microsoft has available today....

Steve

[TypeMRT]

Some good points were made. However, I would like to address the current and future format issue. At the heart of all of these different formats, lit, pdb, etc., lies plain old text. it may be a pain in the ass to convert them as new formats emerge, but someone WILL write an app to do it for you and someone WILL sell that app to some big company with tetrabytes of info in outdated formats. Hopefully the 8 GHz Xscale PPC's will be able to handle the conversion on-the-fly if you don't have it stored on your home PC or whatever we're using by then.

[jrappold]

For almost a year I've been working on a video Civil War documentary. One of the things that has been a pain was the research. You know, retyping notes or scanning pages into the computer.

Today I was on Amazon and just happened to find an eBook that would be invaluable. It was more then I wanted to pay for an eBook, but, I thought, at least I can just copy and paste from MS reader for note taking purposes.

WRONG.

Now, I'm all for protecting the rights of publishers and authors, but can anyone tell me what the hell kind of sense does this make? It's just carryying DRM to pure idiocy levels. There are precious few recent historical eBooks on the market, and then they screw it up by not allowing me to copy passages. I thought I had my own RIGHT under copyright law to copy passages for research purposes.

First, the publishers overprice eBooks, then they stick it to the honest buyer who purchases the product. I will NEVER purchase a DRM book again until this restriction is lifted.

I just had a "Lethal Weapon" DVD marathon this weekend. I wonder what Leo Getz would say about this?

Later,
John

[eNurse]

I think that the fact that Microsoft Press has released but one book in Microsoft Reader format is somewhat telling. Wouldn't you want the type of information that is in Microsoft Press books to be available to mobile IT professionals? Just a thought....

[Pony99CA]

Today I was on Amazon and just happened to find an eBook that would be invaluable. It was more then I wanted to pay for an eBook, but, I thought, at least I can just copy and paste from MS reader for note taking purposes.

WRONG.


I don't believe this is anything new. Adobe Acrobat documents seem to be able to turn off copying.


Now, I'm all for protecting the rights of publishers and authors, but can anyone tell me what the hell kind of sense does this make? It's just carryying DRM to pure idiocy levels. There are precious few recent historical eBooks on the market, and then they screw it up by not allowing me to copy passages. I thought I had my own RIGHT under copyright law to copy passages for research purposes.


Oh, you do have the right under Fair Use. However, that doesn't mean the publisher has to make it easy. You can retype the text into any place you like, of course.

Think how you would do this with a real book. You'd photocopy the pages with the passages you want, then highlight them. If you wanted it on your PC, you'd have to scan the pages in or retype them yourself.

While I would certainly love the ability to copy-and-paste at will, why do you think the publisher has to give you that ability?

Steve

[Venturello]

"So, help me out. What is going on in the minds of publishers and content providers?"

Profit, profit, profit....... and FEAR. The tides are changing and content providers no longer have the control they used to have. As Jason said, they dont want to loose written copyright material which is so easy to copy.

Anyway, we are getting near the day we... eh, people, can pirate full movies on decent quality as they did music on napster. Now we can do, get any movie, after a few hours, with any decent broadband connection.

The tides are changing, and the huge companies, the mamooths, are being left behind, defended only by armies of lawyers... yes, law is on their side, but they begin twisting things and influending lawmakers, and limiting the rights of the consumer. That is not ok, and I hope it turns on then sooner than later.

&lt;/rant> for me :)

[Marc Zimmermann]

I'm all for protecting intellectual property. After all, I like being paid for my work as well.

However, it annoys me terribly that the copy protection schemes put in place are so restrictive that the reduce the value of the original media that I buy. For example, I can't copy music off a copy protected audio CD to my Pocket PC, even with DRM enabled, because that friggin CD won't work in my PC.

In the future, I'll try to avoid protected media as long as possible but I am afraid that this will become even more widely used than it is today.

The content owner's hottest fantasy must be a pay-per-use scheme where the original content remains on their servers and the consumers can only stream a copy for single use and then it's gone - unless you pay another time.

That scheme will allow for tighter protection and higher profits.

[JohnnyFlash]

It reminds me of the adverts on telly for videos.... "Cinderella 5 - The Palace of Icy Jelly : OWN IT NOW ON VIDEO OR DVD"

Hehe! If I read the Ts&Cs, I find that I all but own it :wink:

I think that protection is the right of the author and the legal customer. When I fork out a couple of squid for a copy of Windows, I must admit to being a little peeved if I hear that someone else got a copy from a 'friend of a friend' for fifty pennies :cry:

[lar3ry]

I think that Pocket PCs and ebooks are two things that are made for each other.

I have even gone so far as to create .LIT files for books that I have personally written and edited (I write in my spare time), and the MobiPocket Publisher/Microsoft Reader combination is pretty nice. In fact, being able to add highlights in Reader allows me to read a text, and highlight incorrect word formations, awkward prose, etc. with little effort, allowing me to continue the process of reading! It's an editor's dream come true! I can take my iPAQ into a pub and read a story or two. It's actually addicting!

I think it will only be a matter of time before Project Gutenberg texts are made available in ebook format (if they aren't already) as well.

But there's a problem. And it is spelled "DRM."

DRM puts all the power into the publisher, and gives no power at all to the consumer. Books can be "time bombed" or rendered unusable as seen in the example above of a textbook that you cannot copy text from.

The answer? Well, in the PPC system, there is only one format that combines an open standard format for marking up data with an easy to read presentation without DRM. That would be HTML and Pocket Internet Explorer (I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that Microsoft Reader uses parts of PocketIE internally).

HTML isn't a perfect format for presentation, since it is a markup language, but it's a start. What we really need is a reader (preferably freeware) that we can load onto a PPC and get all the functionality (highlight, notes, bookmarks, copy/paste) of Microsoft Reader without the DRM, and supporting an open presentation standard (eg, DocBook). Add to this a compression scheme so the texts don't take up too much memory (gzip, bzip2, even Palm doc).

MobiPocket (a PPC program that reads Palm .PDB files) is a start, but it is lacking because it is slavish in its emulation of the Palm reader. I'd love to see this enhanced with anti-aliased text (or Microsoft's ClearType), highlight/notation functions, etc. Make it a (free, or very low cost) competitor to Microsoft Reader.

An obvious problem is that publishers won't like this format and won't support it. Fine. Their loss.

There are many people out there that cannot break into the publishing world because the publishers own the distribution mechanisms. "How can I make money writing a book if it costs me $500 to produce the first written copy?" The answer is you can't. Not in today's market. So, what is an aspiring writer to do?

The answer is right here. The web! Make your works available on the web. Create an ebook and give it to your friends. "But, how do I make MONEY?" There are many ways to make money on the web. MicroPayments, advertising (web advertising is a joke right now, but sooner or later somebody will figure it out), solicitation of donations (guilt-ware), and subscriptions could possibly be made to work.

And there is lots of material that could be had for free. Lecture notes from professors. Term papers. People that would like to be the next Steven King. The web and USENET is full of freely available written stuff. Peanut Press has quite a few free publications. Maybe somebody can start a clearinghouse for this sort of thing.

Then the fun begins!

Consumers can then look at the traditional publishers ("What? I can't even copy a single line from the book for a review??!") and the self-publishers ("Oooh. Looks nice! Convenient, too!") and decide what they want to purchase. With competition, the publishers may have to re-think how they want to distribute their wares. I might not mind spending $5 for a Steven King novel, especially if the dead tree version is selling for $8. But, I'm sorry, Steven... $1/chapter is too much, and you quit before you finished!

[Timothy Rapson]

HTML may be the way to go for open publishing. The guy who writes "Writing on Your Palm? (here: http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/ ) has a lot of ideas like Lar3ry's. It is interesting that the most powerful Palm OS word processor is HTML based and does duty as a WP, MemoPad, and Reader.

I don't know how this would work for marking last page read. The reason I bring this up is because I don't have the facility (nor the motivation) to create books for my PPC so I often just get text copies off the internet and read them in PocketWord. This leave me with a few features missing. I usually just write "LAST READ" in where I stop reading. Of course, this changes the original file, and does nothing for long books with several stopping places. OK, I suppose I could delete each and write another....etc. but it is just not as handy as a real reader.

Highlighting is also a key feature of Reader programs. Word is just not a reader. Nor is Pocket IE. Guess you can't have it all, especially if the publisher's are more interested in protecting their profits than serving the product so good that people would cheerfully pay for it....well honest people anyway.

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!" -- Arthur Carlson


"I don't like *little* gustos, Herb!" --Jennifer Marlow