Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Yes, the market for the mid-90's coffee table CD-ROMs didn't go very far for the same reasons these rich content "ebooks" aren't going very far any time soon. Lack of standards, device specificity, low volume/high prices vicious circle, and aiming at the consumer market instead of the educational/academic market.
There is great potential there but until somebody comes out with a multiplatform standard that publishers can target (conceivable could be Blio but I'm not holding my breath) we'll see dabbling and startups and nothing that sticks.
The first thing is that any viable rich-content standard has to be a data format, not a runtime with embedded data. Apps are by definition platform-specific. Second, it needs a flaship device tailored to the academic market. The OLPC folks could help here if they weren't so focused on computing functions first with education second. And third, the standard needs to run on legacy PCs (not just new ones) as well as portable devices.
It'll still be a while.
|
Yup. Still lots of shaking out of standards and lots of misfires ahead. As a reader / content user, I will vote with my money.