The Fujitsu eReader Surfaces in a Restaurant

Back on 15th July last year we wrote about the Fujitsu Flepia ebook reader with colour screen. We reported that the devices were rumoured to be $941 and questioned whether the price was too high and also the lack of keyboard.

The recent spat of ebook announcements has certainly woken up the market and we now read that the price is still likely to be around the $900 mark but the screen is touch sensitive so our fears on the lack of a keyboard have been addressed. It has built in wi-fi, USB 2.0 and SD card connectivity, as well as stereo speakers and the whole thing runs for up to 50 hours on a single charge.

So where it and what is are it plans? Today it is apparent to be found in the Termina Kinshicho Fujiya restaurant in Tokyo and is under a test is being conducted as a joint venture between SoftBank Telecom and Mainichi Newspapers. Customers of the restaurant are able to browse newspapers and advertisements, train schedules and weather reports wirelessly sent to the terminals. Even the menu is on the reader!

Are eBooks Wise Dot Com?

Article written by Martyn Daniels and published in Bookseller Frankfurt Show Daily 16th October,2008

A Native American shaman friend, Duke Redbird, in the late 90s wanted to create a web site for debating new ideas. When confronted by a new idea he would simply ask the question ‘Is it wise?’

When the book-trade first started its digital journey, the internet was more of a dirt track than a super highway. It made sense to migrate to digital storage off line devices such as CDs. A few years later, we have the promised super highway and this offers the second digital opportunity for the ebook. We now have devices that are capable of holding hundreds of downloaded ebooks. You can access your library of hundreds of titles, anywhere and at anytime without even having to recharge the ereader for days. However we know that the current models will be upgraded and that the file you bought today is not guaranteed still to be readable, in say 10 years time. The business model was built on the existing physical ownership model, but unless one is a minimalist, a digital copy adds little to the décor! So why have we chosen to download, store and buy digital books via this model? Is it Wise? Is downloading the right approach and the logical business model?

The two platforms that are clearly dominating the digital market are the mobile and the laptop/notebook. What is interesting about these is that they are becoming permanently connected with WiFI broadband services. They both can do more today than any ereader and are becoming cheaper, faster and application rich. Who would have thought that the Blackberry would have many reaching for their pockets to scroll their emails? Who would have foreseen the dramatic take up of the laptop WiFi dongle or the uptake in WiFi deployment in schools, campus, business, leisure locations and even urban space? 3G services now can enable users to consume unlimited data and Smartphones are common.

We must now ask the obvious, how many devices do we need and when do we need them? Are you seriously going to work with a laptop in bag, mobile in pocket for personal use and a blackberry for corporate use and now an ereader under the arm? The acid test is the plane journey or holiday where you now have to often prioritise what you take, and don’t forget each comes with its own transformer and accessories!


An interesting opportunity from the current download ‘buy to own’ is ‘rent to read’. As libraries of works become permanently available why would you want to own digital books, which are hard to share and offer little other than convenience? Why not rent on demand? It doesn’t stop the consumer buying perpetual access, or a physical digital bundle; we merely question why you would buy a download that could be as obsolete as an 8 track in only a short time? The file could be read online with rich functionality, reference linking, multi media materials such as podcasts, videos and even games tied in. Imagine you want a quick read and log on via the mobile, you continue your read in a café via a laptop, then at a friends house via their PC and finally to bed with the physical book itself. The digital access control is not in the device but the centre making it friendlier.

If library can offer digital books for free, why buy them anyway? Now is that wise?

'Open' or 'Closed' Depends on Where You Stand

Today we read the trade press and of much noise about open formats. Some would argue that defining ‘open’ is often hard and they would question whether a format by itself can ever be open without an open Digital Rights management and an open reader platform. Of course we would all love just one way of doing business, one way to hold a file, one universal file we can play anywhere and that no matter what device the file is loaded onto it will be able to read it and render it for all to see.

Then we hit the reality check.

Manufactures develop their own way of doing things for obvious reason. Industry bodies may adopt and or adapt these or start again with their own standards. However, the nature of all standards are that they are a framework, a common way of describing things and actions, and that there will always be options that are always exercised.

There are three elements to consider when we talk about ebook downloads; the format, the DRM and the reader.

Today we have a number of downloadable formats; Adobe ebook, Microsoft Reader, Mobibook the emerging ePub and others. Software developer Adobe has thrown its weight behind the IDPF and the epub format with its ADEPT service. What differentiates these from say a PDF, HTML or a word document is that they are constructed to work as a book or large document and have an associated digital rights management that can encrypt and enable the files to be securely transferred between platforms. However some may argue that these formats are more restrictive than XML and similar formats such as HTML, Plucker, PDF and others.

This new epub format came from the IDPF industry body and the same stable that gave us the OEB format. The epub format differs in that although it is an ‘open’ format today it does not have an ‘open’ DRM. If the DRM was open then anyone could effectively bypass it and effectively defeat the whole objective but when DRM is through one route then surely it is no longer 'open'. epub may well be adopted by a number of major players who in turn will develop their own DRM wrap. Does that mean the format is not ‘open’ – no. It merely means that the native file is open but the route to market is not.

Next we have the readers; Kindle, Sony, iRex and many more. We have seen the rise and fall of many readers over a relatively short period and will probably see more of the same in the future as the market starts to develop. Each has its associated format capabilities; Kindle and iRex the Mobibook and Sony BBEB or now epub with Adobe being rendered on a wide range of devices. The issue is that a mobi file will not be playable on a Sony device and potentially a epub file bought for a Sony device will not be playable on a Kindle, or currently on a iRex or a Palm or any other device today. When we get down to ebooks on mobiles the debate currently gets much murkier. Here the capability to free the pages and reflow them is seen as essentail and fixed page formats will not succeed.

The real problem is that consumers are confronted by conflicting formats and what could be best described as a DRM land grab from publishing and technology companies. Dr Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg is reprted in an article in PC Pro last year stating, "Fundamentally, eBooks are files, and having the file locked to a particular device or software that only runs on a particular device, or some other sort of protection or encoding, is unfriendly to readers."

We can’t comment on some of the conclusions drawn by some commentators but we can understand the term ‘land grab’ but believe that the PC Pro article, even though its out of date now, is worth a read and speaks frankly and openly about some of the relationships that are dictating today's landscape.