What We Can Do With A Reader

I recently had reserves about calling our new E-Ink babies ˝E-Book reader˝. I had fears that calling them this way would limit their usage and marketing depth only to novels or books, which is only 30% of what I plan to do with mine. I would really like to see it come to market as the powerful working tool it really is. As suggested by NatCh, we should call It ˝Reader˝. It's simple and to the point, even if it's name is generic of any decoding device. Now to help it's case we should delve into it's capacities and imagine what else this newborn baby can do. It can display text , show grayscale pictures and play music . That's all for now. The first things I would like to see for it is writing software and the use of a foldable keyboard.(note that this might not be possible because of the "manual" refresh rateor other reason)

OK. I'll start a list of kinds of texts it can read, and when you find something else it can do, copy the whole list, paste it in a reply and add your newly thought task. We shall build this list, reply after reply, until we find every kind of work text worthy of this baby's capacities. When this list is ready and as complete as possible, I would like to see it posted on the MR Wiki so it can help stimulate developers into creating more functions for this wonderful tool...
I've got tons of ideas but I left them out yet so everybody can participate.

Books and novels (obviously)
Shop manuals
School books
Shematics
News
Music sheets
Dictionnaries
Listen to audiobooks


Who's next?

I am going to be laptop-less when I travel from now on. I'm working on a novel, and I have a copy of the manuscript on my T-Mobile MDA that I use with a bluetooth keyboard to write with on the run. Nice part about the Reader is I can pop that mini-SD card into an adapter and into the Reader, and read my manuscript like a novel. It's a lot easier to catch glaring errors when reading on my Reader than it is to catch on my tiny MDA screen.

What about editors, publishers, agents -- I would think since the Reader supports RTF, it'd be a dream to be able to put partials, manuscripts, and other submissions onto the Reader and catch up on the train by using one device rather than having a briefcase loaded down with twelve four-hundred page manuscripts!

Books and novels (obviously)
Shop manuals
School books
Shematics
News
Music sheets
Dictionnaries
Listen to audiobooks
Consult encyclopaedia

Who's next?

Remember this is a game. Hop in !

I want to second tekchic's "put partials, manuscripts, and other submissions onto the Reader and catch up on the train".

I am doing some research to prepare for tomorrow, and found myself creating an rtf in MS Word with all the background material I scooped up off the web. Just cut and paste as I find stuff. Didn't even worry about the URLs. I put page breaks between articles, and changed the font to Times New Roman 20, and loaded it up on the Reader. It's a thousand times more convenient to read through than paper printouts or a laptop. Of course, I didn't need to jump back and forth, but the point is that for reviewing text material, it's convenient, easy and nice. I'll be doing this a lot more now that I realized how well it works. It's definitely a great use for an e-ink reader, even though I can't think of what to call it. Maybe "review text materials on the go"?

You and your Times New Roman font, Bob -- Arial for me, thanks! :grin:

Maps and directions are on my list of other stuff. Both driving and hiking maps.

Maps and directions are on my list of other stuff. Both driving and hiking maps.

Combined with GPS and made more rugged this would be great, especially for battery life when you don't need constant GPS connection.


Another area idea - An aid to people with visual impairment by using RTF with a large font.

Actually I really don't see why PIM apps cannot become part of this? 8)
PIM apps normally display pretty static data via static pages/dialogs/windows. eInk would make it a joy to use PIM apps, since battery life is wonderful! 8)

Just don't display a running clock and everything should be fine.

Some means to do simple notes taking would be excellent, making the PIM app complete. ok ok, this becomes more like a PDA ... but hey, while we are at it ... :p

Besides, I think PIM + eReader is a better match than PIM + PMP! ;) Current PDAs is more PIM + PMP which to me is not a very good match of features.

Export from note-taking apps like Evernote into a nicely formatted PDF would be great.

Bus schedules! Would be great not to fumble around in my backpack to dig out a bus schedule (I use public transit a lot, but only a few different lines). I like the Reader-as-PIM idea a lot - my PDA screen was just too tiny (and unclear) for me to use for stuff like this on the fly.

I'd like to have a tool to download, to read, to markup Project Gutenberg etexts in xhtml/TIE/Docbook (whatever makes sense) and to share again after marking up.

And of course a port of Metro - the international subway plans:
http://www.nanika.net/Metro/index-en.html

Snappy, a running digital clock, just hour:min, no seconds should still work

Mark

*Travel guides* - Ok, this probably counts as "books" but since I travel lightly, it really torks me to carry heavy ol' paper travel guides around. How cool to now be able to carry aboard one teeny reader containing maps, travel books,histories of the countries,museum guides, phrasebooks, dictionaries and maybe even a few related novels. And with the amazing battery life, 10+ hr flights certainly seem far less daunting now! :happy2:

How about "Favourite Recipes"

I have hundreds when I get round to organising them. :greedy:

How about solving sudokus (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8089)? Ok, your ereader needs a stylus. iLiad has one. :happy2:

How about solving sudokus (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8089)? Ok, your ereader needs a stylus. iLiad has one. :happy2:Nah, we can use the jogstick to move around the grid, and the number keys to enter the numbers -- it's "only single digits" right? :wink:

All we need is for someone to write a sudoku app that we can hack onto the Reader and we're in business! Then I'll have to figure out how to do this sudoku stuff....

Of all the things in my life to loose time, sudoku is the last and MR is the first I enjoy

Of all the things in my life to loose time, sudoku is the last and MR is the first I enjoyMe too! ;)
But Soduku is sort of like crossword puzzles to me... for some reason I feel like I "ought" to enjoy them!

I think I spend enough time solving problems with my job that doing it for fun palls kinda quickly. :(