 So what I'm here to talk about today, I'm going to start this out to take about a half an hour and kind of give you a history so you know I can all get on the same page of this. We did not print out these slides, they are available if you want them after the fact. But it's interesting, I've given this talk several times and at different points during this history that I'm going to talk about is when people start remembering these things happening. So we got about halfway through it two weeks ago before anybody like any of this was familiar to them so we'll see how it goes today. So this is kind of the timeline that I'm going to go over, don't worry you don't need to be able to read that, each one of these is its own slide. So actually I'm going to take you all the way back to 1971, I will not tell you how old I was. Project Gutenberg, how many of you have heard of Project Gutenberg, okay, hopefully just about all of you, good. It's still around, in fact the founder of Project Gutenberg just passed away like a month ago or something, but he started in 1971, he typed the U.S. Constitution into a mainframe computer and now there are over 30,000 e-books, e-texts available in many different formats, at the end of this we'll talk about the file formats issues available. And all in DRM-free or digital rights management, the thing that makes overdrive work so that the books return themselves, all that, we'll get into that a little bit too. But it's been around, it's still around, if people are looking for free content of mostly public domain out of copyright content, you can still send them to Project Gutenberg and any of these texts will work in one format or another on any device you could possibly think of. So if they want to read Ivan Ho, send them here, you don't need to buy it, it is available. So I'm taking e-books all the way back to 1971, then as far as I can tell nothing really happened until 1989, okay, and this novel was published and I throw this in here because I actually read this novel in 1989, I was working in a Walden books in a wall, I read science fiction and this book called Cyber Books came out by Ben Vova, I've since got an autographed copy of this and there was a TV show I was just watching where somebody signed an e-book and I'm still trying to figure out how that's going to work. He kind of was predicting e-books and there are these boxy devices where you put a cartridge in, but it was also the end of publishing as we know it, there's a murder mystery in the story, but if you can find a copy of this book it's really interesting to read today when we have our tablets and our e-readers to kind of see what this guy was predicting e-book wise back in 1989 and it's not that far off actually some of these issues that we're dealing with now when you really get into the nitty gritty of ownership and rights and all these other things, he kind of talked about in this book and I re-read it about a year ago and thought it was really fun. Jumping up to 1993, the next computer, Steve Jobs, this is when he wasn't at Apple, he had the next computer, about six people bought these, actually the first web server was run on one of these actually, but and I just added this slide a couple weeks ago because I read the Steve Jobs biography, I did not realize this, this was the first computer release that actually came with e-books on it. It came with the Oxford English Dictionary and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, this was the first computer you could buy that came with e-text. So just kind of, it's now kind of a historical footnote, but books on computers other than Project Gutenberg and kind of the mainframe days and then later on on the internet this was your first kind of home or business computer that came with e-content. So okay we can go back to 71 but really maybe 1993 is where we might want to start looking at e-books in general. Also in 1993 from Apple was the Newton, how many of you remember the Newton? Okay, it's about as big as this and it had this monochrome screen as stylus, it was kind of the first PDA, failed miserably, you know again maybe 12 people bought these, but it did have Newton books, the idea that it was a program on it that would allow you to read electronic texts or books as we call them today. Again did really sell very well, it wasn't really designed as a book reader but it was now kind of your first handheld device that had what we would consider e-book content on it. 1999 would be our first real e-book reader, and again I left it, I have one of these in my office, it's the commissions, it's been decommissioned, I don't think it even boots up anymore, but the thing weighs 22 ounces, it wasn't bad, it ran off of batteries, and it was about the size of a paperback but a pretty darn thick one, your monochrome screen here, there was a text-to-speech feature to it, and sorry not batteries, this one you did charge, built in battery lasted about 17 to 33 hours per charge, this was really your first e-reader as we think of them today, it wasn't just a kind of an add-on feature, stored about 4,000 pages, you know you think about your devices today, and it's like store 300 novels, and I'm like I don't need 300 novels with me on them, thank you, but anyway, you know the Amber Dexterous Design, did anybody, any of your libraries buy one of these? No, some libraries did, there wasn't a lot of content, but you know it existed, so around here now the Consumpty e-books is really trying to kick in, and in 2000 Microsoft released their Microsoft Reader software, now this is for your PC, and so it's our first PC based e-book reading software, they introduced what they call their clear type technology, which was trying to make the type a lot clearer on an LCD screen or a CRT, supported features that we're used to now with e-books such as annotations, pan and zoom highlighting, dictionary, and your battery life at this point is completely dependent on the platform you're using, so it's a desktop computer, battery life isn't an issue, if it's your laptop it's how much battery life do you get out of your laptop, and they did actually sell content, I still have one or two books in this format way back when, because it was the only way that particular title was released, and so then you get into how do I convert it so I can actually read it on something today, but they have officially, I think, suspended the software, they don't distribute it anymore, but if you search the Microsoft website you can find it, it is out there because people still have content in one way, should report. DRM was also built into this, so you would buy content, it would be licensed to your device or your piece of software, you'd log in to account that sort of thing. Then in 2002 the cell phone started to get into the fray here, and we have the Palm Trio, anybody have one of these? I have one of these, I have one of the later models, this is the very first one, and this came with software, what we would now call an app for it called the Moby Pocket Reader, which still exists, still out there for several platforms, you could download your content wirelessly over the air, it synced with your desktop, which some of our devices still do, so it kind of had a hybrid here, it was not designed as an e-reader per se, it was a cell phone, but it had reader software on it, you could buy content for it, you could get Moby Formatted Books, it still can from Project Gutenberg, it had annotation highlighting the dictionary, and the Moby Pocket Software was actually available for, say, PC and for Mac and for the Trio, so we have kind of our first multi-platform based software that also co-worked with the mobile device, so that's kind of the stage with this one, then it gets kind of really weird, we have what we call tablets today, here's our iPad, the Motorola Zoom, somebody mentioned here, an Android-based device, this is what we think of as a tablet, how many of you remember these? I still own something like this, and you flip it up, you swivel the screen, you fold it back down, you have a stylus so you can touch on it, and this is your tablet computer. The reason I kind of throw this in here, because they actually did promote these things as e-readers, mostly in combination with the Microsoft reader software I already mentioned, because what you could do is you have your typical laptop like this, while these things rotated, so you can do it like this in portrait mode. Now, I've literally done this and I know you're going to laugh at this, but imagine laying in bed with a six-pound laptop popped up on your chest, didn't really work. At this dent still in my chest, I got through maybe one whole book that way, because these were not the lightest things in the world, we're back in 2002, so laptops are still pretty heavy, we don't have those ultra thin ones that we have today. Now here's the breakthrough. 2004, no, the Kindle was not first. Sony was first. It's because I just got to make that clear. The Sony Libre, this was not released in the US, this was only released in Japan, hence all of the kanji on the screen that you see here. But it was your first device based on the e-ink technology. And this is what really changed the game when it came to e-readers and e-books. So here's the hyper technical slide. Now let me explain this slide to you. The key here is on an LCD screen. So your iPads, your Kindle fires, your Nook tablets, your Motorola Zoom, anything with an LCD screen uses power constantly to keep the screen going because it's emitting light all the time. The reason this was a breakthrough was you only use power when you change the screen. So right now, here's our Kindle 3, this is an e-ink based device. And you can see that on the screen is Shola Bronte. This right now is using no power. Now if I turn it on and change the screen, or if I'm reading a book and I change to the next page, it uses power to do that. But the moment the page is done changing, it stops using power. So you kind of had this, it's a combination of this technology and better battery technology, which is why now a lot of devices are LCD, the battery technology is kind of caught up. But the idea with these devices is that it only uses power when it changes the screen, therefore you can get an ultra light, ultra thin device with a small battery that lasts for days. Okay, let me finish this thought and then happy to take your question. The way it works, this is where you basically what you have is you have little bubbles of ink. And I'm seriously oversimplifying here, folks, okay, I barely understand the technology myself, but think about a little ball of ink, where there's ink on half the ball and no ink on the other half of the ball. And when that pixel needs to be black, it flips the charge and flips the ball over to make the ink side up or the ink side down, the positive or the negative. So when it redraws the screen, it flips all of the pictures, all of the bubbles that need to be flipped and flips the other ones back the other way. And then you get the new screen. And then it just sits there, the bubbles just sit there and don't need any power anymore. Because they've been charged or not charged as needed already. And where it gets really interesting is because now you're getting into multiple levels of gray. And so and you now color ink does actually exist. And so how they get all the little colors and little bubbles, I completely and then flexible displays and these things exist. They're just super expensive. So nobody has them. So that's kind of the ink technology. Originally 170 pixels per inch, they've gotten better than that. So they made even smaller. It was about newspaper quality. And again, the key here was that you only need power to change the screen. Question. Does it burn into the screen like old computers? No. Okay, because I've seen somebody spindle, it was flashing different, you know, authors and things on the cover when it was just sitting around. Oh, that sounds like there's a problem with that device. At least it's not, you're not supposed to get burned in that I've ever read about. Okay. Now, what you can get sometimes with the older devices was what was called kind of ghosting, where when you refresh the screen, if you looked really close, it kind of maybe didn't recharge or recharge all of them and whatever. And in that case, it was to speed up the refresh rate. And that can will eventually clear itself out, depending on how much of the screen you change, like a complete shutdown would would fix that and boot back up. But the actual burn in problem you shouldn't shouldn't be happening. Any questions about this? This was this was really the game changer. Okay. Then and now I'm going to get into months here because things start happening really fast. The Sony reader PRS 500 or personal reader service, I think is what the PRS stood for. This was the first device released in the United States from Sony. So this is your first ink based e reader in the U.S. The ink 800 by 600 resolution four levels of grayscale three tech sizes 64 megabytes of built in storage. So forget that 4000 pages thing. You're talking a couple hundred copies of movie take at this point. Also had slots for memory cards. So you can expand that storage transferred content onto and off of it via USB. And now instead of measuring battery life in hours, you start measuring better with life in page turns. So it was about 7500 page turns per full charge. And wait only about nine ounces. I actually have one of these. Didn't bring it. I keep forgetting to hit it in a drawer. So then they started the marketing campaign. So you had your wonderful sexy little librarian. Thank you all for laughing, but some librarians did not appreciate this ad campaign and did actually complain to Sony. So they did update their ad campaign. I've seen this ad in a two station in DC. So yeah. Okay, June 2007, the iPod Touch and the iPhone are released. So now again, here we go. Not an explicit ebook device. So you don't read Yeah, right. Exactly. But the idea here is now we're starting to work in an app-based environment. So your Kindle or your Kindle fire, your iPad, your Android tablets, the Sony or excuse me the nook color, the nook color tablet that just came out. These are app-based environments. They do lots of things. Some of the applications you can install is eReader software. So in this case, we had Stanza, which is kind of a third-party generic eReader Kindle, Barnes & Noble, other eBook apps available to you, not eInk. We're back to LCDs at this point. If you're in an app-based environment, you're not talking eInk. With one possible sort of exception, we'll get to kind of at the end because we're not sure about that one yet. December of that year, Sony responded with the next version, the 505. In this case, really the big difference here is that now you're getting the eight levels of grayscale instead of four. They're improving the eInk technology. The current version of eInk technology is called eInk Pearls, and I think it's like 16 levels of grayscale. eInk is still not color, at least not commercially. Then in December of 2007, that Kindle happened. What some people would argue was the single worst industrial design device ever because of where the buttons were located in the keyboard, whatever. But now we've got an eBook device, six-inch screen, QWERTY keyboard, which none of the devices had previously, necessarily, at least eInk-wise, but then what they called WhisperNet, which was basically using the cell phone network to get content onto the device. The original Kindles didn't even support Wi-Fi. It was just this WhisperNet service that they use. EVDO is a type of cellular connection for that. These days, instead of EVDO, you hear 3G or 4G. Again, it's the type of cellular connection. In February 2009, so really nothing happened in 2008. It all just kind of sat there and everybody started becoming familiar with it. The Kindle 2 came out. They redesigned the controls. They up the storage to 1,500 titles. The Kindle does not allow for external cards. It's just the built-in storage. They added Wi-Fi. So if you're actually in a region that didn't have AT&T cell phone service, the Kindle wasn't much good. We did hear a story from one library that had like some eight-year-old guy who would drive 40 or 50 miles to be able to download books to his Kindle and then drive back home again because that was the closest he could be. Yeah, he's out in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone service for AT&T. Sixteen levels of I keep not fixing this grayscape. This should be grayscale. Faster page, refresh, text-to-speech options, 9.1 millimeters thick. So we're talking super thin devices at this point. Again, because you don't need to put a giant battery in it. That's that real benefit of the year. June of 2009, the Kindle DX. Has anybody ever seen one of these things? They're big. I've seen like one guy in the Starbucks at Lincoln. I've only ever seen one in the wild. But a little thinner, but a 9.7 inch screen. Really, the market was for textbooks. It hasn't really caught on. You can still buy this, but they don't really market it anymore. It's just kind of sitting there. Cost a little more, held 3,500 titles approximately. But it just feels big even though it's still pretty darn thin. August 2009, Sony updated their platform. This is the one we have here, the Sony Reader Touch. The pocket was a little smaller. The daily edition was a little more rectangular. They were really kind of pushing newspaper-based content on that sort of thing. So really, this is just kind of like technically generation 3, but in the US generation 2.5 or so of that we'll be playing with this one. In the metal, in fact, it's even the same color. Then November 2009, this is, I think, the single, as much as I picked out the Kindle 1. This is the single weirdest e-book design I have ever seen. Because of prices, last Christmas we got my niece one of these because we weren't ready for the whole tablet experience or yet. But the Nook 1, this part up at the top here is e-ink. This part down here is LCD. The LCD part is touchscreen. The e-ink part is not. So to make things happen up here, you touch down here. And then you do have a page turn button on the side also. Yeah. The reason though, it's important to mention is a couple of things. One, this is the first e-reader platform to run the Android operating system, which the Nook runs, the Kindle Fire runs, and any of your Android tablets is obviously the Android device. First one with a reusable user replaceable battery, although I've never known anybody actually to do it. And then all of this interesting thing, they said, hey, we're going to allow you to share one book at a time with one other Nook user at a time for two weeks. And while they have it, you can't read it. It was like loading a physical book. This is, you know, kind of falling off. They're trying to make the print world fit in the electronic world, when in the electronic world, it's not the same thing. But first one with kind of a lending service built into it. Oh, and this, guess what comes next. All right. April of 2010, the iPad is released. It comes with the iBooks app. You can also add the parts of Noble app and the Kindle app and the Overdrive eventually app came out. Text-to-voice, when the publisher allows it, so it can read the content to you, weighs a pound and a half, is a backlit glossy screen. This is a consideration when you talk about e-ink versus LCD. E-ink, you're going to need a lamp. Can't read in the dark. Okay. But try reading an LCD screen in bright sunlight. These are issues. All right. Automatic screen rotation, Wi-Fi and or 3G and now we've got the first, one of the first devices of kind of a large, larger size where battery technology has significantly improved and you can get a good nine or more hours on a charge. So pretty much designed to last kind of the day, depending on also what you're doing with it, it will affect the battery life. The color came out in November, just now, a year ago. A little hardware device, 15.8 ounces, 7 inch screen, Wi-Fi only, built-in storage with a micro SD slot. I don't know if you've ever seen a micro SD card, but there are things about the size of this fingernail and it can hold like 16 gigabytes of data. I'd pull mine out, but I'm afraid I'd drop it and lose it in the carpet. It's how small these things are. Also running a new version of Android, but the reason I throw this one in here, because I have one of these, this one's mine, and it's rootable. Now, have you ever like jailbreaking an iPhone? In the Android world, it's called Rooted. And the idea is that they've locked down the operating system so that you can only do what, in this case, birds of noble has said you can do with the device. Well, without too much trouble, I've gotten it to work. You didn't get it to work. I don't know why. We were following these same instructions, but I've actually taken my nook color and installed a whole different operating system on it, so this is now an Android tablet. It does all the nook stuff, plus anything else I could possibly do on, say, my phone, except my phone calls. So you're getting these newer devices where, yes, it comes with built-in software, but if you know what you're doing, you can kind of break that and do anything you want with it. So really handy. I can read Kindle books on my nook now. Okay, and then November of this year, the Kindle Fire happened. Does anybody have a Kindle Fire yet? No. We're really pasting this spot. No, they bought Simple Touch. They bought the Kindle Touch. Kindles actually come out with a couple of new ones. Kindle Fire, the Kindle Touch reader. I can't keep track of all the names. Anyways, this is the significant one because now, basically, Amazon has done what the marginal nook was already doing. It's an Android-based tablet device, little lighter, 7-inch screen, Wi-Fi, 8 gigabytes of storage, microSD slot. One of the things they've done that's a little different is they've added what's called the Amazon Silk Browser, which is not to get too hyper-technical here, but when you use this for web surfing, it actually is supposed to speed things up because they have supercomputers that cash things, and I don't want to get too technical here with that. This one is also rootable. It was rooted in 24 hours after it was released. People have already started installing other operating systems on this thing. So, this is kind of in theory where we kind of end. We are now up to date. With one exception, because I haven't added this live for it yet, we joked that Sony doesn't even sell the one we have anymore, because Sony has to put out a new one called the Sony Reader Wi-Fi. It's an e-ink-based device. It is wi-fi only, not cellular, correct? To our knowledge. We have it, we're trying to get our hands on one of these, but it doesn't do apps per se, like the Kindle Flyer or the no color of the iPad, but they have built in downloading overdrive library content into it. So, when we talk about the Sony Reader today and the fact that you have to connect it to a computer to transfer your content from the library onto it, there is a new Sony Reader where you don't have to connect it to a computer. And kind of right now in my mind, if e-ink is the way you're going, that might be the device you really want to consider if you're going to be a heavy library user. But the Sony devices tend to cost a little more than the other e-ink devices, so yeah, we'll get back to all these options and considerations. And that also came out here in November, so there's some new devices out there. What I haven't talked about is the couple of dozen of other manufacturers that make reader devices and all of the other tablets that are out there that will do what the iPad does, but isn't from Apple. It was the Pan Digital Reader. They sell it in Bed Bath and Beyond. I mean, I, you know, but it's kind of an off-brand, but it's going to work like the Sony that we have today. You're going to have to connect it to the computer. It is an e-ink-based device. It will read library books and, you know, it costs $80 instead of $150 for the Sony brand one. It's kind of a platform issue. All right, so let me talk about one more thing here and that is our file formats. I have about two minutes on this one. There are lots of different file formats. There are text files. There are, you know, word documents, all these sorts of things. There are a couple of formats you want to keep in mind when dealing with e-readers. Although many e-readers will support many more file formats, these are the key ones. The first one is e-pub. Basically, for your best reading experience on any e-reader, except for e-readers from Amazon, which means Kindles, you want to choose e-pub. It is the most common e-book standard format out there. e-pub books may or may not have DRM on them and can be read by every device except Kindles. Overdrive books were all e-pub with maybe some PDFs. Most of them were e-pub, okay, and that's why they wouldn't work on the Kindle. Because Kindle uses a different format. Kindle does not read e-pub. Now, Moby Pocket is the other major one. Remember, way back with the poem trio, the Moby Pocket reader, that format is still around. It is still considered a standard. This would be kind of, I would say, choice number two. If e-pub is not available, try seeing if there's a Moby version available. I know overdrive. I used to sell Moby Pocket. Okay, and now they don't. Because it's just not commonly used. With a weird exception, and that weird exception, is the Kindle. Okay, now when you get a Kindle book, it's going to be called AZW. Okay, what that is, is that is a Moby Pocket file with the Kindle proprietary DRM on top of it. Okay, so these are Moby Pocket files that can only be read on a Kindle. Okay, and that's why Kindle books are not compatible with anything else, because they're not using kind of a generic DRM, the Adobe version, which Susan will be getting into very shortly. Okay, they are using a version of the digital rights management that only works on Amazon devices. That's why, and Susan will be showing you this, when you check out a book from the library, you want to say, do I want the Kindle version, or do I want the version that will work on everything else? If you've got anything but a Kindle, do not pick Kindle. If you've got a Kindle, don't pick EPUB. What's funny is, is I just thought of an exception to that rule, but I'm going to stop there. Because the Kindle flyer really starts to change some things, but because it's an app-based environment. Anyways, I have seen a Kindle flyer with the Barnes & Noble Nook app on it. I mean, it's because people have done weird things, so it starts to get a little crazy. It's not standard, right? No, it doesn't come with it, but people have gotten it on there, and it does work. But I mean, can they get it on there easily, or do they have to know what they're doing? There are about four step instructions, so you have to want to do it, and you know, but you don't have to root it. You can actually get... So it's not like you just go to the app store and... No, but you have to do one other thing, then you can go to a different app store. But anyways, I just Kindle, Kindle, E-Pub, everything else. All right, really, that's kind of your default position on that. So, any questions? We're going to get into more details, and you're going to get your hands on time. We're going to do our demos, but I just kind of want to give an overview to everybody on the same page.