And now, hold your breath: IBM just has been awarded a patent for an e-book device.
Patent 7107533 describes an "electronic book with multimode I/O." Specifically:
An electronic book device runs at least two output mode threads—one graphics, and one audio—such that the device can both graphically display book content, and play the content over a speaker in the device. Annotations can be made audibly or graphically, and user commands can likewise be made audibly or graphically.
You can probably read a lot into this; but seriously, this sounds like another wacky patent filing to me -- since what's oh so new and special about an e-book device that supports more than just written content and provides more than just one means of navigation?
It's perhaps noteworthy that the patent refers to the Open eBook format (as shown in the figure). I don't know what this means, but it could imply that IBM is working together with the IDPF crew on the new e-book standard.