[MGP-Forum Announce] Sony starts selling the Soney eBook reader: $349.00

[Lisa Williams]

I too have experimented with various mobile devices -- and have a new 
phone with a little set of bookmarks, including Dave's rivers. 

I like it.  But the fact that I've been hearing about the e-book for so 
long makes me wonder if it's like the flying car, or the pill that 
provides complete nutrition for 24 hours: the reason they're not here is 
because we don't really want them. 

Sometimes it's hard to discern between things that need many refinements 
over time to work and things that we like to think about but don't 
really want.




Bob Stepno wrote:
> Great discussion... especially on a relaxed Saturday. I hope another 
> thousand words (fair warning) aren't enough to kill the conversation, 
> but I've been trying to sort out my own ideas on some of these issues 
> and the stream of consciousness here will help.
>
> Getting to journalism from the eBook reader topic -- Electronic books 
> and electronic newspapers aren't the same thing. The book is linear (or 
> has been, mostly), while newspapers have always been hypertextual -- 
> linking chunks of information by putting them side by side on a page or 
> adding a "see page 13" now and then, or using multi-deck heads and 
> summary leads for folks in even more of a hurry.
>
> My 50+year-old eyes have read a dozen books from a Palm Treo  or Palm 
> TX screen without a problem. But I don't read much *news* that way. I 
> appreciate Dave Winer's clean "river of news" (nytimesriver.com) 
> approach to putting headlines and summaries on itty bitty screens, but 
> the mechanics of scanning headlines and clicking links to stories, 
> waiting for them, then viewing them in small chunks on a Palm or phone 
> isn't for me. I'd rather have stories in context, with sidebars, 
> datelines, photos other cues.
>   
ml.org/thisislisa/