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Originally Posted by JackTrade
Wow, there, Hitch! Please, don't hold back now, let us all know how you really feel about this
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Given that I had to hear about it for months, particularly from a client that thought she had a massive use for it (which, of course, wasn't), it's amazing I'm that mellow about it.
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Substantively, however:
I'm beginning to realize that. As I mentioned before, I'm working on this project as a hobby; in the classic entrepreneurial mode , I saw a need (mine, plus a few friends/family) and decided to meet it and, in the process, learn about CSS, HTML and EPUBs. But the more I tinker with it, the more convinced I am that, at least for this type of projects, EPUBs are not the proper platform. And, possibly, because of the heavy toll it takes on the hardware, Android tablets themselves are not the right platform either.
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Hmmm...see Red's post, below.
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As a side note here, re the commercial value of this type of project: one day, the hardware and software will catch up to the demands. Possibly more appropriate for university/academic/textbook type publishers - these things are excellent for music (or, when the hardware is really there, film) analysis, replacing today's abstract references to that snippet at the end of the second movement in Mahler's third symphony, or the mise-en-scene of the opening scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, or whatever. But, as I mentioned before, the show stopper for these will be the need to coordinate copyright clearances with multiple IP owners. And that's a pity, IMO.
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I still think you're talking app, not eBook. Yes, yes, we've all seen that both Apple and Amazon have their own fixed-layout "textbook" options, which enable embedding video and audio, and all that...but those are very limited in terms of WHERE they can be watched, device-wise.
There's always a tradeoff. Battery life being a crucial part of that. Nobody wants a portable tablet that effectively isn't, because the advent of some Immersedition-style thing sucks such battery life out of it that you have to watch/read it plugged-in.
Nobody wants that.
It will take, I think, some strides in long-life batteries that will fit in one of those, before you see the type of whiz-bang app/book you are envisioning. It's all well and good to make a Yellow Submarine, as a demo app, that looks fancy but isn't, in terms of multi-media (all the songs are linked--not embedded); it's another altogether to make it wth everything but the kitchen sink.
There may come some type of hybrid thing. An AppBook, or somesuch.
My personal feelings about the whole multimedia experience is that it plays into the whole loss of attention span problem. Millions of people somehow managed to struggle through and learn to read, write, debate, etc.,
sans multimedia. Do I see it as a possibly really good thing, for, say, "how to" books? How to cook, how to make a birdhouse, and so on? Sure. Do I think that there's some need for them? Possibly. I'm just not sure that all the dog-and-pony-show trash that we are accustomed to seeing really
needs to be used in a classroom.
And, lastly: what I do see are more Immersedition-type things--where the popups aren't informational. Where they're either "informational" in the sense of the story ("Irma really wasn't of Hungarian descent, as she claimed; her grandmother was a White Russian, escaped from her homeland during the 1918 uprising..."), OR, more likely, they're as were the ones in the Immersedition--ads, to sell things. Links to webstores for HE merchandise--Chanel, Dior, Guerlain, Louboutin, etc.--and selling the product placement to the highest bidder ("Irma pulled off her Louboutins, and tucked her heels beneath her.")
And that?
That I can damn sure live without. And honestly, I don't see how you could police it, once it starts.
Hitch