Five Top Publishers Plan Rival to Kindle Format

eldavojohn writes "Time Inc., News Corp., Conde Nast, Hearst Corp., and Meredith Corp. are teaming up to create a digital newsstand and somewhat open format that 'can render our content beautifully on those devices that come to market' instead of the gray inked Kindle's energy conscious display. Devices are being made for the new format with the launch coming next year. The format will also target smart phones and tablet computers. Will this pose a threat at all to the Kindle?"

Oh? NewsCorp?

[Improv]

Is Murdoch's News Corp actually going to enter the news business?

Re:Where have I heard this before...

[digitig]

PDF is very poor for eBooks, because it doesn't have enough information regarding the significance of content on a page and the page size is hard-wired into the document, so for example PDF text doesn't reflow well if you change the font size on a reader, header and footer information get messed up, tabular information is a no-hoper on an eReader at anything but native page size and so on.

Re:Kindle's energy conscious display

[nurb432]

Sure they can, if they want to. They could add native PDF support in an update for us Gen 1 owners too, but haven't, so don't hold your breath :(

Re:Yet Another Format

[Fizzol]

ePub is an ebook format. What they're talking about is more of a multi-media format.

Re:Yet Another Format

[geekoid]

Depends, the author could give them the rights to distribute. In which case it's there content.

It's never your content. It's your book, but that's different.

Re:Kindle's energy conscious display

[CaptKeen]

If only I could leave a recipe open for more than 10 minutes w/o the stupid screen saver like image coming on.

This has been fixed in the 2.3 update - the screen timeout is now set to 20 minutes.

Re:Tough call...

[Bourdain]

Mod parent up

without the desire of paying umpteen dollars extra per month just to download books

I'm 99% sure there is no montly data fee to use a kindle / nook / etc. --> That cost is built into the unit and/or the [proprietary] media

Otherwise I agree with your post in that ebooks are in a nascent state at the moment and are still years away from being popular primarily due to the limitations you listed.

Re:Yet Another Format

[PopeRatzo]

In that same vein, I find it telling that they call it "our content". No, it isn't. It's either the creator's, or mine

They believe it is theirs because of the Divine Right of Publishing Conglomerates and Corporate Power. They are invested with the power to claim something belongs to them and it must be ever so.

Personally, I'm getting a big kick out of the fact that Conde Nast and their ilk are hurting, bad. I've come to believe that anytime a rich and powerful corporation suffers, an angel gets its wings.

Re:Tough call...

[MrCrassic]

Looks like I spoke too soon. The 3G actually is free. [cnet.com.au] However, my remaining points are still valid.

Re:People keep missing the point

[mark-t]

,P> Actually, color e-ink displays would have to be illuminated from the front, just like b&w e-ink displays. It has to be because what shows on the back side of the display is exactly same as the front, except with colors inverted. Subtractively, the colors on opposite sides of the display will always amount to black (or something very close to it), and thus be opaque (or at best have truly abysmal contrast if you tried to shine light through it).

The nice thing about such reflective displays is that, like most other objects that we look at, contrast improves as ambient illumination increases, and because good contrast is of paramount importance for tasks such as reading, it feels much more natural than a display that operates by hurling photons at you, and is therefore generally far easier to read for prolonged periods.

Re:Where have I heard this before...

[Raul654]

That's because PDF should only be used for printing. If you are reading PDFs on your computer monitor, somebody screwed up [useit.com].