Lets regard grey scale ebook readers as a temporary state of technology - Model-T Fords, if you like. before the Model-T a car was an expensive toy. If you wanted to go any distance or to deliver coal, you got the horse out. Then something genuinely functional, reliable and affordable came along.
So the Kindle et al are model-T Fords. Real people buy them and read full-length books on them.
But what's the future? There was money in Model-Ts, for sure, but now we have Mac trucks and Ferraris and Minis. Some manufacturers tried to keep selling old technology (British Leyland?) and went bust.
The web site at http://vimeo.com/24954073 shows some of what whatever comes next can do using the epub3 standard.
Wednesday 29 June 2011
Thursday 16 June 2011
Ebook Readers: Sony Daily Edition vs Kindle
Sony Daily Edition (PRS-950) and the Kindle
I have owned and used both the Sony Daily Edition PRS950 and the Kindle for about two months – since April 2011. When I was trying to decode which to buy there didn't seem much of any help on the web. I decided on the Sony and didn't tell my partner I'd ordered it. She bought me a Kindle. So:
The answer is if you just want to buy books from Amazon and read them, then the Kindle. If you just want to read journals and newspapers, the Sony. If you want to read PDF files, again the Sony.
If you want to download free ebooks (from project Gutenberg, for example) or are happy to buy from any of the many other bookshops, then they are pretty evenly matched.
PDF files. Most are pretty much unreadable on the Kindle. PDF now officially stands for "Portable Document Format" but originally, and more accurately, it stood for something like Page Display Format, and the contents of a PDF can be regarded more like photographs of individual pages. Unfortunately the page they are thinking of is A4 or letter size, not ereader sized. The Kindle displays a page, shrunken to its tiny screen size. You probably can't read it. You can zoom in, but only to half or a quarter (and so on) of the page. Imagine you could see just the top left-hand quarter of this page – cover the rest with your hands – and try reading. When you get as far as you can read on the first line you have to press the Kindle's right button to move to display the top right-hand part of the page. read to the end of that first line and then press the Left button to go back to the top left-hand part of the page. Each press has a half-second or so delay, too. That's no way to read.
The Sony is better – it doesn't try to keep the formatting of the page, but reflows the text. This often means the lines end part-way across the screen, but it is readable. I've read quite a lot of downloaded journal articles that way, since you can't usually get any other format. (I hate PDF.)
Clarity. The Kindle has a clearer screen. They are very close, and I am sure a photograph would who no qualitative difference, but the Kindle seems brighter, in the sense of better contrast, and clearer than the Sony. The contrast difference is apparent as soon as you see them side by side but its only after an extended period of reading just the Sony – around a week – and then going back to the Kindle that I realised its superiority. I felt my eyes were happier, if that doesn't seem ridiculous.
Navigation. Here the Sony wins. For such devices touch screens are better. This is especially so if you read periodicals. I download, via Calibre, the Guardian, Le Monde and other newspapers as well as occasional journals. Most start with a page or so of table of contents, each item a hypertext link. In the Kindle you have to use the down button to move to the correct place and then press the centre button. That's not difficult, but a little tedious if there are lots of items to move through. What becomes much more difficult, perhaps impossible, is when there is more than one column of links, or more than one link on a line. I certainly didn't find a way to do it at all on some newspapers.
On the Sony, though, you just touch (lightly) the item wherever it is on the page. Immeasurably better.
Reading Apart from screen clarity and navigation there is a difference in page turning. This wasn't apparent at first but became important as I read. The Kindle has forward and back buttons on each side (vertical edge). A single swipe of the finger turns the page on the Sony and it also has a forward and back button just below the screen. In use, and I mean reading a novel, not just flipping through a few pages, I found the quite intuitive Sony screen swipe became tedious and tended to use the buttons below the screen. They are not so well placed there, though, not in a "natural" position. The Kindle is much better, as whichever way you hold it there is a forward and back button in just the right place, whether you are left or right-handed.
Dictionaries A little more tedious to use the Kindle dictionary - see navigation above - but the Sony responds to a double click (double-tap should I say) on a word which is easier. The bilinguals are a great addition, though its not quick to move between dictionaries.
Physical Attributes The Kindle is plastic, the Sony metal, apparently, but the Kindle looks and feels a bit better. Subjective judgement. The Sony body may well be solid aluminium (I don't know) but it had the same feel of a supposedly shockproof camera I had which, once dropped, was revealed to have a plastic body with a thin skin of metal half way between paint and cooking foil. But its reassuringly heavy. Neither seemed particularly nice to hold so I bought a "skin" for each and they are much better, tactilely, that way.
Size The Sony has a 7" screen, so is an inch deeper than the Kindle, but they have the same width screen. Overall dimensions are very close – almost the same width and the Sony perhaps 5mm longer and 2 or 3mm thicker. Its heavier too.
The screen size, surprisingly, doesn't matter at all when you read a novel – you simply don't notice. For newspapers and journals though the extra length seems better.
Neither fits in a jacket pocket.
Connectivity Both work easily by USB cable – see below. The Kindle I have is the WiFi model (no 3G phone connection) and the Sony has both WiFi and phone, but as I live in the UK and the cell connection works only in the USA I haven't tried it.. I've bought books for the Kindle from Amazon and am impressed how they arrive seamlessly and quickly over the air without my doing anything. Too easily, in fact – you have to switch on One-Click Purchasing for the kindle and the second book I bought was by accident. I have a Macbook and sometimes you guide the cursor over a button (like Buy Now, for example) and click without meaning too. I would have bought it anyway, almost certainly, but I thought I was still considering it.
I tried buying from te Sony store but they require you to have a US credit card and address, so I haven't been able to see how well purchases arrive via WiFi. I have though bought one book from Barnes & Noble, from whom I bought the Sony, and had it delivered to my computer and from there I transferred it to the Sony over the USB cable which came with it. Its very easy.
The best software for me is Calibre. It will convert between formats, recognize either the Sony or the Kindle when they are plugged in, and best of all has a built in "download a newspaper now" button which lists publications from all over the world and allows you to schedule automatic downloads – the Guardian is ready on my PC when I get to work.
Conclusion? The ideal ereader would have the Sony touch screen and controls PLUS the side-mounted forward and back buttons of the Kindle, and would have the Kindle screen without its keyboard, and so be much more compact.
I know there are a lot of other manufacturers making similar things, and I haven't had much chance to try them.
Let me know if you have.
I have owned and used both the Sony Daily Edition PRS950 and the Kindle for about two months – since April 2011. When I was trying to decode which to buy there didn't seem much of any help on the web. I decided on the Sony and didn't tell my partner I'd ordered it. She bought me a Kindle. So:
The answer is if you just want to buy books from Amazon and read them, then the Kindle. If you just want to read journals and newspapers, the Sony. If you want to read PDF files, again the Sony.
If you want to download free ebooks (from project Gutenberg, for example) or are happy to buy from any of the many other bookshops, then they are pretty evenly matched.
PDF files. Most are pretty much unreadable on the Kindle. PDF now officially stands for "Portable Document Format" but originally, and more accurately, it stood for something like Page Display Format, and the contents of a PDF can be regarded more like photographs of individual pages. Unfortunately the page they are thinking of is A4 or letter size, not ereader sized. The Kindle displays a page, shrunken to its tiny screen size. You probably can't read it. You can zoom in, but only to half or a quarter (and so on) of the page. Imagine you could see just the top left-hand quarter of this page – cover the rest with your hands – and try reading. When you get as far as you can read on the first line you have to press the Kindle's right button to move to display the top right-hand part of the page. read to the end of that first line and then press the Left button to go back to the top left-hand part of the page. Each press has a half-second or so delay, too. That's no way to read.
The Sony is better – it doesn't try to keep the formatting of the page, but reflows the text. This often means the lines end part-way across the screen, but it is readable. I've read quite a lot of downloaded journal articles that way, since you can't usually get any other format. (I hate PDF.)
Clarity. The Kindle has a clearer screen. They are very close, and I am sure a photograph would who no qualitative difference, but the Kindle seems brighter, in the sense of better contrast, and clearer than the Sony. The contrast difference is apparent as soon as you see them side by side but its only after an extended period of reading just the Sony – around a week – and then going back to the Kindle that I realised its superiority. I felt my eyes were happier, if that doesn't seem ridiculous.
Navigation. Here the Sony wins. For such devices touch screens are better. This is especially so if you read periodicals. I download, via Calibre, the Guardian, Le Monde and other newspapers as well as occasional journals. Most start with a page or so of table of contents, each item a hypertext link. In the Kindle you have to use the down button to move to the correct place and then press the centre button. That's not difficult, but a little tedious if there are lots of items to move through. What becomes much more difficult, perhaps impossible, is when there is more than one column of links, or more than one link on a line. I certainly didn't find a way to do it at all on some newspapers.
On the Sony, though, you just touch (lightly) the item wherever it is on the page. Immeasurably better.
Reading Apart from screen clarity and navigation there is a difference in page turning. This wasn't apparent at first but became important as I read. The Kindle has forward and back buttons on each side (vertical edge). A single swipe of the finger turns the page on the Sony and it also has a forward and back button just below the screen. In use, and I mean reading a novel, not just flipping through a few pages, I found the quite intuitive Sony screen swipe became tedious and tended to use the buttons below the screen. They are not so well placed there, though, not in a "natural" position. The Kindle is much better, as whichever way you hold it there is a forward and back button in just the right place, whether you are left or right-handed.
Dictionaries A little more tedious to use the Kindle dictionary - see navigation above - but the Sony responds to a double click (double-tap should I say) on a word which is easier. The bilinguals are a great addition, though its not quick to move between dictionaries.
Physical Attributes The Kindle is plastic, the Sony metal, apparently, but the Kindle looks and feels a bit better. Subjective judgement. The Sony body may well be solid aluminium (I don't know) but it had the same feel of a supposedly shockproof camera I had which, once dropped, was revealed to have a plastic body with a thin skin of metal half way between paint and cooking foil. But its reassuringly heavy. Neither seemed particularly nice to hold so I bought a "skin" for each and they are much better, tactilely, that way.
Size The Sony has a 7" screen, so is an inch deeper than the Kindle, but they have the same width screen. Overall dimensions are very close – almost the same width and the Sony perhaps 5mm longer and 2 or 3mm thicker. Its heavier too.
The screen size, surprisingly, doesn't matter at all when you read a novel – you simply don't notice. For newspapers and journals though the extra length seems better.
Neither fits in a jacket pocket.
Connectivity Both work easily by USB cable – see below. The Kindle I have is the WiFi model (no 3G phone connection) and the Sony has both WiFi and phone, but as I live in the UK and the cell connection works only in the USA I haven't tried it.. I've bought books for the Kindle from Amazon and am impressed how they arrive seamlessly and quickly over the air without my doing anything. Too easily, in fact – you have to switch on One-Click Purchasing for the kindle and the second book I bought was by accident. I have a Macbook and sometimes you guide the cursor over a button (like Buy Now, for example) and click without meaning too. I would have bought it anyway, almost certainly, but I thought I was still considering it.
I tried buying from te Sony store but they require you to have a US credit card and address, so I haven't been able to see how well purchases arrive via WiFi. I have though bought one book from Barnes & Noble, from whom I bought the Sony, and had it delivered to my computer and from there I transferred it to the Sony over the USB cable which came with it. Its very easy.
The best software for me is Calibre. It will convert between formats, recognize either the Sony or the Kindle when they are plugged in, and best of all has a built in "download a newspaper now" button which lists publications from all over the world and allows you to schedule automatic downloads – the Guardian is ready on my PC when I get to work.
Conclusion? The ideal ereader would have the Sony touch screen and controls PLUS the side-mounted forward and back buttons of the Kindle, and would have the Kindle screen without its keyboard, and so be much more compact.
I know there are a lot of other manufacturers making similar things, and I haven't had much chance to try them.
Let me know if you have.
Friday 25 February 2011
University class sizes and modes of teaching
Because I want to try out some techniques for improving things in the classroom I would like to know how the class size forces a particular mode of teaching. I suspect its subject dependent, may be age dependent, a perhaps culturally too. I'd really like to hear your experiences if I may.
No matter what I had planned, if the class size is very different then I have to teach differently:
1) I have to use “tutorial” type methods for up to ~12 students. Discussion round a table, a lot of individual student involvement.
2) “teaching” : 12-40/50. More of an address from the teacher, but easily able to tailor speed, content, examples according to apparent student involvement. Easy to set up dialog, get student involvement, do small group work.
3) “lecturing”: 40/50-100/120. preferable to have a prepared talk. Too many students to do much tailoring of delivery or content. Some group work may be possible at lower end of scale. Its still possible for students to ask questions, have teacher-student and student-student dialogue.
4) “large group lecturing” above around 120. Needs a prepared talk, can’t assess apparent student involvement to tailor delivery or content at all. Can take questions, but lecturer will have to repeat them so whole body can hear. No dialogue between students possible. Group work impossible.
Or does this categorisation just reflect my limitations?
No matter what I had planned, if the class size is very different then I have to teach differently:
1) I have to use “tutorial” type methods for up to ~12 students. Discussion round a table, a lot of individual student involvement.
2) “teaching” : 12-40/50. More of an address from the teacher, but easily able to tailor speed, content, examples according to apparent student involvement. Easy to set up dialog, get student involvement, do small group work.
3) “lecturing”: 40/50-100/120. preferable to have a prepared talk. Too many students to do much tailoring of delivery or content. Some group work may be possible at lower end of scale. Its still possible for students to ask questions, have teacher-student and student-student dialogue.
4) “large group lecturing” above around 120. Needs a prepared talk, can’t assess apparent student involvement to tailor delivery or content at all. Can take questions, but lecturer will have to repeat them so whole body can hear. No dialogue between students possible. Group work impossible.
Or does this categorisation just reflect my limitations?
Wednesday 24 November 2010
Step Change?
Has any other teacher of "digital humanities" noticed a step-change in their students' facility with machines?
We have been glibly referring to digital natives for years, and its true that now students have grown up alongside the digital world. Maybe they haven't, until now, been IN it?
As in past several years the second year undergrads had a class exercise: sketch a simple expert system which directs the user how to get from here to a place in Edinburgh then implement it as a set of web pages. Start with "do you have a car?" and if the answer is no ask "do you prefer bus or train?" and take it from there.
They've been taught to write HTML in Notepad, and for the last 5 years they've each dutifully produced web pages each with a question and a pair of yes and no links to the appropriate pages.
Now. After 10 minutes a few had pencil and paper but one was using Google Docs diagram editor, one another few drawanywhere.com to make their sketches. I asked why. -no pen, they said.
Arts & Social Sciences students. No pen... But no problem, to them. One was using Dreamweaver, which they hadn't been shown. I asked if she knew the program. - no, but it seemed a good place to start learning. Another was linking Google Maps to pages and copying its walking times for the 'how to get to the bus stop' section. A row of students discussed who would go out and photograph the bus stop "with our building in the background"
This is a change. Is it just this cohort? My excellent teaching? An experience of this elsewhere in digital humanities or other fields?
We have been glibly referring to digital natives for years, and its true that now students have grown up alongside the digital world. Maybe they haven't, until now, been IN it?
As in past several years the second year undergrads had a class exercise: sketch a simple expert system which directs the user how to get from here to a place in Edinburgh then implement it as a set of web pages. Start with "do you have a car?" and if the answer is no ask "do you prefer bus or train?" and take it from there.
They've been taught to write HTML in Notepad, and for the last 5 years they've each dutifully produced web pages each with a question and a pair of yes and no links to the appropriate pages.
Now. After 10 minutes a few had pencil and paper but one was using Google Docs diagram editor, one another few drawanywhere.com to make their sketches. I asked why. -no pen, they said.
Arts & Social Sciences students. No pen... But no problem, to them. One was using Dreamweaver, which they hadn't been shown. I asked if she knew the program. - no, but it seemed a good place to start learning. Another was linking Google Maps to pages and copying its walking times for the 'how to get to the bus stop' section. A row of students discussed who would go out and photograph the bus stop "with our building in the background"
This is a change. Is it just this cohort? My excellent teaching? An experience of this elsewhere in digital humanities or other fields?
Sunday 23 May 2010
People of the book, leaving quietly
What we study – material on a computer : finding, preserving, absorbing (that is, digitising analogue material: text, images, sounds), re-using and creating (to a minor extent) – we've regarded as something that we do that adds value to traditional subjects (history, literary studies, whatever) and that our department exists because the medium is new, and the traditional scholars and students are not really up to date with the new medium. Whether using it to analyse what exists already, or to analyse that which has been created on the new medium. The implicit assumption is that eventually they'll catch up and we won't be needed anymore. We thought that with undergraduates in level 1 – that as the level of computer literacy rose so the need for the course would fall. We didn't realise they would not suddenly come in understanding what a database was and how it might be used, or even that they wouldn't start to arrive knowing how to search for and evaluate information. The alternative view is that as the creative and the intellectual world moves onto and into the new medium then it is we who will continue and the people of the book who will gradually fade away to become irrelevant.
Tuesday 20 April 2010
A L Kennedy
Stranded here while the ash cloud floats invisibly overhead I've been reading an old short story by A L Kennedy. She says
"Go into any place where history is stored and listen. Hold your breath. Hear how still it is. ... It is the huge, invisible, silent roar of all the people who are too small to record. They disappear and leave the past inhabited only by murderers, prodigies and saints."
I think its 'prodigies' that lifts her above the merely good.
Anyway, the digital will change that. We all have our 15minutesoffame and there won't be room for the exceptional, just the promotional.
"Go into any place where history is stored and listen. Hold your breath. Hear how still it is. ... It is the huge, invisible, silent roar of all the people who are too small to record. They disappear and leave the past inhabited only by murderers, prodigies and saints."
I think its 'prodigies' that lifts her above the merely good.
Anyway, the digital will change that. We all have our 15minutesoffame and there won't be room for the exceptional, just the promotional.
Walls of silence and incomprehension
Oulu, Northern Finland. I'm here to teach for 5 days, 2 hour sessions to Literature and Linguistics students who've never written a web page before. When I asked, 5out of 7 said they didn't consider themselves creative. At all. Yes they're sure.
Six said they did not read for pleasure, none of them ever wrote, voluntarily, anything longer than an SMS message. Except for exams, one helpfully offered, and they all nodded.
So, five two-hour sessions, including this one, to get them to write a short piece of hypertext fiction, using a pencil and Notepad, no HTML editors. Piece of cake.
I have not begun before two of them say they can't come on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, and another is away Thursday and Friday, at a close friend's funeral.
Any bets on success?
Six said they did not read for pleasure, none of them ever wrote, voluntarily, anything longer than an SMS message. Except for exams, one helpfully offered, and they all nodded.
So, five two-hour sessions, including this one, to get them to write a short piece of hypertext fiction, using a pencil and Notepad, no HTML editors. Piece of cake.
I have not begun before two of them say they can't come on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, and another is away Thursday and Friday, at a close friend's funeral.
Any bets on success?
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