Sub Ubi

Edit 20061027: The Sony Reader is based, in part, on the same freely available software as the iLiad. This means that some of what I say about the Sony Reader being a closed platform is completely false. My apologies. I have not updated the body of the article to reflect these inaccuracies, but you can read some of the linked pages in the comments to form your own perspectives.

You’re an avid reader. You’re digitally savvy—you have your digital camera, your iBook, and are comfortable with email, web forums, and the like. In short, you’re Connected.

And you love books.

Therefore, an electronic book reader makes sense. Electronic Ink technology has come a long way, and the promise of high-contrast, low-power screens for static text display is a reality. The prices are still high, and there are limitations to the devices on the market or coming to market. But what features should you really be looking for?

Extensibility

Your Mac is extensible. It has USB, Firewire, and you can download all kinds of software for it. You can’t actually imagine a computer where you’re not allowed to put more software on it of your own choosing. Likewise, your ebook reader should be extensible—you should be able to add new software to it without buying it from the manufacturer.

For example, there are many kinds of electronic content out there. Someone will certainly invent new ones over the next few years, and you want your ebook reader to be adaptable to these changing formats. Furthermore, you might want software on it that automatically retrieves newspaper, magazine, or weblog content for you… software that currently does not exist. When it does, though, you want to be able to download it (perhaps paying a small fee for the efforts of the individual who wrote it), and use it to make your reading experiences more enjoyable.

If your ebook reader is closed and proprietary, you cannot enjoy new software unless it is written by the ebook maker. Imagine if all of your software had to be purchased from Apple? This would mean you wouldn’t have Microsoft Word, Quickbooks Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Pagemaker, Quark Express… the list of software titles is practically endless.

The distinction here is that the Sony Reader is likely going to be a closed product; Sony has a horrible track record regarding their support for end-user modification. The iLiad, on the other hand, is based on the open-source operating system Linux. They are required by law to release much of the source code for the device, and they fully intend to. End-users will be able to write new software for the iLiad, and this is a Very Good Thing. The end result is that new and interesting software for the iLiad will be written for years to come, while the Sony Reader will only run software that Sony has written or deemed worthy to run on the device.

Connectivity

Imagine if your iBook only had one kind of connector, and it was designed by Apple and only used on Apple computers. Actually, this isn’t hard to imagine… only a few years ago, this was the way things were. Now, your iBook has USB and Firewire, which many companies use for mice, hard drives, and the like. In fact, there are no longer any “proprietary” connectors on your iBook—it is made up of commonly available, commodity components.

Your ebook reader should be the same way. The Sony Reader, for example, only has a Sony Memory Stick slot. The iRex iLiad has a Compact Flash slot, Secure Digital card slot, and a USB slot. This means you can have content on any of these types of card, slot them into the iLiad, and begin reading. Furthermore, the iLiad has an ethernet port (on the travel hub) and WiFi built in. This is the kind of connectivity you should expect from any device you buy today.

Open Formats

This is a biggie. We do not know, at this time, exactly what formats the Sony Reader will support. Certainly, it will support DRM-encumbered formats that guarantee the following:

1. You will not own the electronic content on the device; you will lease it.
2. You will not be allowed to resell electronic books you have purchased.
3. You will not be able to share or otherwise give away electronic books you have purchased.

The iLiad will likely support these kinds of “closed” formats as well. However, the iLiad already supports three formats that capture billions of pages of text already:

1. Plain text
2. HTML
3. PDF

Why is this significant? Everything in Project Gutenberg can be downloaded, right now, and viewed on the iLiad. Weblog content can be viewed on the iLiad, right now (see this post for some examples). In short, formats for which there is endless content already in existence can be viewed on the iRex iLiad today and forevermore.

If your ebook reader cannot read the most common digital formats in use today, and cannot easily be grown by you and the community to support them… then you need to justify why you are buying that reader in the first place. Does it have some killer feature? Or, does it have better marketing? Because really, in the end, you want the electronic book reader that is the most flexible and adaptable to changing market conditions, not the one with the tightest restrictions on it.

Conclusions

The iRex iLiad is the most open ebook reader on the market today. It can be purchased right now. However, it is not yet done. The iLiad team is in the process of bringing the iLiad’s software up to what we would call “Version 1.0″. Really critical things are missing at the time this was written; most importantly, the ability to scale and rotate PDFs. This means that (currently) a US Letter sized PDF is shrunk down to A5 paper size, and it immediately becomes unreadable. That said, WWW content and plain text work just great. So, given a little more time, and the iLiad will be a “no brainer”. If you have to choose between the iRex iLiad and the Sony Reader, there’s no good reason to buy the closed product.

Yes, they’re both expensive. But you have to decide whether the cost is worth the utility of the device in the long run.

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