The Professor's Notes

With all the discussion about the Kindle, the Sony eReader, and other “digital book” devices, it is sometimes hard to remember we are at the beginning of what could be a significant transformation of how we read.  Amazon has given us the best glimpse into the future with wireless delivery of content, synchronizing your reading between devices, and offering larger (and therefore, smaller) reading platforms.

This can make for a very interesting future.  I can imagine a very fluid world with digital books, using much of the technology already existing.  Let’s discuss briefly the existing tech (in the Kindle) and the look at how we can imagine a new reading world. Read the rest of this entry »

In my last post, I put forward my argument for how digital textbooks can result in a win-win for publishers, students and authors. (Okay, so I didn’t mention the authors. I hope it doesn’t take much to realize that more copies sold by the publisher will result in more royalties paid to the authors. )

Part of my argument hinged on the elimination of the resale market in large part due to the robust DRM (copy protection) afforded by the digital books.  Unfortunately, when I presented this argument a few weeks ago, someone pointed me to a site that shared the (convoluted) steps necessary to break the DRM on the Kindle.  So much for secure. ¹

This forced me to think a bit further.

In this post, I hope to make a case for reasonably priced digital textbooks in an era of “cracked DRM” that can still result in a win-win. Read the rest of this entry »

Those who know me personally know I have a strong desire to see digital textbooks succeed.  I think it has the potential to deliver a Win-Win for most of the major stakeholders, including the authors, the publishers, the environment (potentially) and the students.¹ Perhaps the biggest challenge facing everyone in this is how to achieve that “win-win”and this involves a mix of pricing, availability, and convenience.  I hope to address that in this post. Read the rest of this entry »

As my readers may know, I like the notes and highlights feature of the Kindle, and I like the latest utility they provide, letting us view a consolidated listing of notes and highlights on a webpage.  I also like that if you have multiple “kindle-enabled” readers (Kindles, iPhones, etc) the whispernet will autosync you to the latest place you have read in your book.  The convenience is remarkable, being read a book in one device, read for a while, and then when you decide to switch to the other device, it asks if you want to go to the latest point read.  No more hunting and guessing.  Great!

At least, I thought it was.  Now I am not one to go all crazy over conspiracy theories and the like.  Personally, I like my aluminum foil wrapping leftovers, not as a hat.  But it occurred to me that Amazon is not only gathering information about our buying patterns (our actual buying patterns, and not simply what sites we look at or ads we see), but they are  now getting something more.  Amazon now is learning what we read, and how fast we read it. (Or perhaps whether we actually read them, or finish them?) But Amazon is essentially capable of gathering information on what we think is important by what we highlight, and what we think and believe by any notes we may write.

In my mind this actually puts them a step ahead of Google.

Will Amazon do anything with this?  Probably not.  But think about it–what does it say about you?  This is creating a “virtual you” that can be analyzed.  Tie this with the Google information, and what a picture it becomes.

Recently a guest on TWIT said that not only is this a virtual you, but it is a virtual you that knows more about you than you do.  It’s memory of what you read, highlight, and type is “perfect.”  Can you say that about yourself?

Would you want to learn about yourself?  Or would you (almost) be afraid to know?