The Next Exclusive Feature

[Cootey]

When the Aura One was released, Kobo introduced integrated OverDrive support. This was a killer feature for me and won me over from upgrading my old Kindle at the time. When the Forma was released, Kobo introduced Dropbox support. I didn’t buy a Forma (I was still in love with my Aura One LE), but I’ve coveted that Dropbox support for two years now. What killer feature would you like to see in Kobo’s next flagship model?

Maybe you’ve heard something, or maybe you’ve got a killer feature you’re dying to see implemented—think KINDLE KILLER. Personally, I’d like to see (in order of importance), but I’m not sure they’re all Kindle killers:

3. Cloud backup even for side-loaded books
2. Family sharing
1. Color eInk

Kindle offers cloud backup of side-loaded books through their clunky documents feature. It works, but often book covers aren’t used.

Other ereaders offer color eInk now, but Kobo could put a dent in Kindle’s caché if it beat Amazon to market with a color model. Current Kindles are getting long in the tooth.

Family sharing could be said to have already been done on the Nook, but those were very restricted, one-time, time limited shares. I’d like for my daughter, who has her own account and Kobo, to be able to access and download from her Mother’s home any book I purchase for myself without need of DRM stripping and side-loading.

What are your ideas? Like Kobo AR goggles with no need to hold an ereader anymore and all page turning done by eye glances? Or something more realistic?


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[NiMa]

Originally Posted by Cootey

When the Aura One was released, Kobo introduced integrated OverDrive support. This was a killer feature for me and won me over from upgrading my old Kindle at the time. When the Forma was released, Kobo introduced Dropbox support. I didn’t buy a Forma (I was still in love with my Aura One LE), but I’ve coveted that Dropbox support for two years now. What killer feature would you like to see in Kobo’s next flagship model?

Maybe you’ve heard something, or maybe you’ve got a killer feature you’re dying to see implemented—think KINDLE KILLER. Personally, I’d like to see (in order of importance), but I’m not sure they’re all Kindle killers:

3. Cloud backup even for side-loaded books
2. Family sharing
1. Color eInk

Kindle offers cloud backup of side-loaded books through their clunky documents feature. It works, but often book covers aren’t used.

Other ereaders offer color eInk now, but Kobo could put a dent in Kindle’s caché if it beat Amazon to market with a color model. Current Kindles are getting long in the tooth.

Family sharing could be said to have already been done on the Nook, but those were very restricted, one-time, time limited shares. I’d like for my daughter, who has her own account and Kobo, to be able to access and download from her Mother’s home any book I purchase for myself without need of DRM stripping and side-loading.

What are your ideas? Like Kobo AR goggles with no need to hold an ereader anymore and all page turning done by eye glances? Or something more realistic?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Not a killer feature for everyone, but for developers like me it is the holy graal.
I would be absolutely amazed if they put U-Boot in some new SPI flash device that'd be (mostly) untouchable and read-only, and if on top of that they put an initrd that could be used for recovery purposes. With that, an eMMC device could be bricked and it would be as easy to unbrick it, like the ones with internal microSDs.

Any others sharing my point of view?

[Sirtel]

The ability to zoom images in epubs. Also I wish that searching in epubs would be MUCH faster (it's painfully slow and fails altogether with some very long books).

To improve the typography/layout in kepubs.

Global search (the ability to search across your whole library, like you can on Kindles).

Color would be cool, but almost everything I read is text-based, so it's not really necessary.

I already use Dropbox for backing up my stuff and don't need the cloud support on my ereaders.

[Uncle Robin]

As I'm shunning the cloud wherever possible, OTG would be great, letting my USB sticks be my own unmonetised Dropbox/GoogleDrive. And that way, if my data gets burnt to a crisp OVH style, I'll have bigger problems to worry about than the fact that my cloud provider did not have its own offsite backup.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

As I'm shunning the cloud wherever possible, OTG would be great, letting my USB sticks be my own unmonetised Dropbox/GoogleDrive. And that way, if my data gets burnt to a crisp OVH style, I'll have bigger problems to worry about than the fact that my cloud provider did not have its own offsite backup.

Ah, but USB sticks are notoriously unreliable and often fail without warning. As a back-up method they're very poor.

Of course it would be stupid to rely solely on any cloud. I do keep my backups on external drives as well. But I'm not lugging those drives around with me, so Dropbox is my main offsite backup.

[Nightflyer]

1. Cloud backup by your own selected cloud backup service.
2. Easy access/offload for annotations in some type of document file.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Ah, but USB sticks are notoriously unreliable and often fail without warning. As a back-up method they're very poor.

That's why I have several, and nice compact external SSDs too, any/all of which it would be great to be able to plug into my Kobo in the event that the 600 or so books I carry on it all fail to excite me.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The ability to zoom images in epubs. Also I wish that searching in epubs would be MUCH faster (it's painfully slow and fails altogether with some very long books).

To improve the typography/layout in kepubs.

Global search (the ability to search across your whole library, like you can on Kindles).

Color would be cool, but almost everything I read is text-based, so it's not really necessary.

I already use Dropbox for backing up my stuff and don't need the cloud support on my ereaders.

If Kobo used the latest RMSDK, there might not be any need for KePub.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Nightflyer

1. Cloud backup by your own selected cloud backup service.
2. Easy access/offload for annotations in some type of document file.

I like those. I like the convenience of cloud backups, but I also like the option for a hard copy on a drive somewhere.

I’d love to see more robust annotation management as well.


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[Cootey]

Originally Posted by NiMa

Not a killer feature for everyone, but for developers like me it is the holy graal.

I would be absolutely amazed if they put U-Boot in some new SPI flash device that'd be (mostly) untouchable and read-only, and if on top of that they put an initrd that could be used for recovery purposes. With that, an eMMC device could be bricked and it would be as easy to unbrick it, like the ones with internal microSDs.



Any others sharing my point of view?

You and @Uncle Robin have given me quite a few new terms to familiarize myself with tonight.


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[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If Kobo used the latest RMSDK, there might not be any need for KePub.

So, if Kobo uses the latest RMSDK, you would be able to zoom in on images in the books? Where is your evidence for this? Which device has a later version of RMSDK than Kobo is using? And exactly what version is Kobo using?

Sorry Jon, but frequently your statements come off as absurd. Or at least a non sequitur.

And the reason that Kobo has Kepub is because they have control of the DRM in it. They cannot do things via the RMSDK that they can directly. And, for every person you could introduce me to that thinks the typography in kepubs is worse than using the RMSDK, I can probably show you 100 that would just go, "What?"

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If Kobo used the latest RMSDK, there might not be any need for KePub.

If you look at an epub3 file using ADE 4.5.11, Kobo still needs their Webkit renderer. Yes, I know many people are not using that many of the epub3 features but ADE 4.5.11 is too hit and miss on what is implemented. Nor does it have image zoom and perhaps more importantly, Kobo doesn't need to pay Adobe for their DRM.

Originally Posted by davidfor

And the reason that Kobo has Kepub is because they have control of the DRM in it. They cannot do things via the RMSDK that they can directly. And, for every person you could introduce me to that thinks the typography in kepubs is worse than using the RMSDK, I can probably show you 100 that would just go, "What?"

Only a 100?

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by davidfor

for every person you could introduce me to that thinks the typography in kepubs is worse than using the RMSDK, I can probably show you 100 that would just go, "What?"

Now you only need to find 99.

[Owl_]

I'd like to see in Beta features:
Get KOreader
Then the user will connect the ereader to the pc and KOreader is automatically downloaded and installed

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Owl_

I'd like to see in Beta features:
Get KOreader
Then the user will connect the ereader to the pc and KOreader is automatically downloaded and installed

Yeah, I doubt that is likely to happen. Kinda like opening a McDonalds app on your phone and being offered the option to buy KFC instead. From Kobo's perspective, KOReader is competition, of sorts. As a happy Kobo owner/KOReader user, I'm content that Kobo still makes it possible to install alternatives, rather than locking it down completely.