The Slates they are a coming

Well folks you’ve got to hand it to them, the creators, thinkers, inventors and of course those insatiable marketers do seem to have a knack for knowing what makes us tick don’t they ?

2010: Books are out, slates are in ! The eBook, eMag will soon take our store shelves by storm. By jove old boy, store shelves dare you say ? Why they’re out the door too – it’s all brick and mortarless shopping these days, haven’t you heard ?

I don’t personally hunger for the latest and greatest gadgets – I usually prefer to let others endure the beta testing, bug hunting, and the inevitable frustration that accompanies this initial phase. I join their ranks once the second or third generation versions of a product are out.

I do however, once in hand, like to exploit my toys to their fullest potential. That’s what I’m currently doing with my new Iphone 3GS : calendar, dictionary, translator, yellow pages, Wikipedia, weather reports, Toodledo GTD, Facebook, Tomtom turn by turn GPS, multiconverter, national newspapers, favourite radio stations, calculator, camera and when in jailbroken mode, even Wifi Netstumbler monitor.

It’s like a dream come true, and it all fits into this wee device that fits perfectly into your trouser pocket. What more could one ask for ?
It’s definitely a far cry from its ancestor the Apple Newton.

Regardless of this coming trend, I had already begun thinking about using my Iphone to read stuff such as books, manuals, PDFs, etc. instead of relying on traditional paper formats. The benefits would be two-fold : avoid printing page loads of text, and avoid lumbering large volumes of paper around with me hoping that I would soon find time to digest them all.

After some digging around, aka googling, I came across a free app called Stanza that can handle a multitude of ebook formats, as well as a number of free online book banks, notably the Project Guthenberg’s impressive online catalog. I then proceeded to download a few classics that I wanted to revisit, notably : To kill a Mockingbird, War & Peace, The importance of being earnest, …

Luckily for me my daughters’ hackintoshed Dell Mini 9 facilitated the transfer these ebooks to my Iphone. A week has passed since and I’m happily reading TKaM propped up in my bed at night, while travelling by train, and while idling away in one of many waiting rooms.

How convenient it is to read off this small device tucked into the palm of ones hand, leafing through page after page with the simple swish of a finger. Turned onto its side, in horizontal fashion, one can read it as well if not better than that of a traditional book. A greater reading surface doesn’t seem all that necessary; after all most of us can only read one line at a time.

Since your phone is always on your person, you can basically catch up on you reading wherever you are. Imaging by contrast lugging a five hundred page book around with you; quite cumbersome to say the least. What’s more there’s no discreet manner by which to smuggle such an opus into the office loo unnoticed, is there ?

Purist will place emphasis on the feel of a book, its bindings, the scent of the pages, etc, etc…

As far as I’m concerned a book has always been about its contents, the story, the intrigue, the suspense, the need to know what will happen next…