Design a Decent E-Book In Your Spare Time

i won;t enter the contest. But i like the scroll design. That would easily fit into a small purse or a glove compartment.

How about featuring some of the other eink devices that have been around a lot longer than the Kindle. They tend to do the job better.

Well the latest iPod's don't exactly hit 'elegant design' either. :P

Maybe something cool will come up.

I'd rather have eBook software on an ultra-portable tablet PC.

I have an HP iPAQ PDA. It can hold a Flash memory card of up to 2 Gb capacity, and has a good backlit color LDC screen.

I can use eReader for commercial eBooks. There is also some MicroSoft bookreader software. Both are free software. In addition, I can use AvantGo to receive a daily feed of selected news articles for free.

I regularly download and save the plain HTML "print-friendly format" pages of newspaper articles for convenient reading in Pocket Internet Explorer. This is a good way to pass the time when I am in a long checkout line at the store.

I love to read amateur fiction (anime-based fanfiction), and keep a library of short stories to novel-length works on my Flash card.

These books and articles hardly make a dent in the memory card. I have a choice of fonts and sizes to display, and can receive content from a wide variety of sources. The eBook readers all have some auto-scrolling feature, and also let me bookmark, highlight, copy/paste text selections to other documents and insert notes and comments associated with bookmarked text.

If I want to read really fast, I can use a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) application to display single words on screen in rapid succession. My eyes get tired and dry out when I use this.

All of this can be done in any PocketPC or Palm PDA for less than $100 from eBay. A new iPAQ can cost as much as $300, which still costs less than many proprietary bookreaders. A new-ish iPAQ also has integrated Bluetooth and WiFi, a suite of office-type software, audio capabilities (Audible.com audiobooks and MP3), video capability and a voice recorder.

I never understand why there is any buzz at all over the newest grayscale, non-backlit, proprietary, large-size, no-connectivity bookreader.

my blurb:

I'm very happy with my asus eee pc (512M/4G "surf" model, $349). I can use it to surf webs, track rss, trade email.

It comes with an ebook reader (FBReader) that works pretty well. I've actually read a book with it.

For me it a good portable device because I don't just want to read, I want to comment. The keyboard, just big enough for touch-typing, allows me to do that.

Oh, and after 5 days use I'm still under 0.5 kWh all told (as measured by my "Kill-A-Watt" monitor).

I've been reading eBooks on my Palm since 1999. I've bought most of my books at eReader (~300), some at MobiPocket (~3), and a few (~10) at Fictionwise... although now that Fictionwise bought eReader, it's all the same.

While Palm has drawn criticism for not moving fast enough to meet market demand, PeanutPress/ Palm eBooks/ eReader/ Fictionwise has worked hard to take advantage of the Long Tail marketing model to keep a wide selection of books available.

I carry about 10 to 15 books with me at any one time. The titles range from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy (all 5 books), Robert's Rules of Order, and some parenting reference books as well.

I'm not sure how else I can talk about how awesome eBooks on my Palm are. I can read at night with no night light; I can carry a LOT of books with me when I travel; I can take notes and store them; I'm not using paper resources; I can be that cool, bleeding edge guy...

Ultimately, then, I'm not looking for a separate geek gadget for reading eBooks. I always carry my eReader with me... on my Treo.