Five Top Publishers Plan Rival to Kindle Format 123
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?"
about time, Kindle sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
eInk (like the Kindle display) is definitely nice to read but a little color and maybe some sound would definitely help.
Kindle might be great for reading the occasional novel but it is worthless for any kind of textbook or reference material. Those just have too many pictures, charts, heck even syntax highlighting, and alternate fonts to be effectively used on the Kindle.
ePub may have potential as a standard but some of the current implementations are awful. They need to learn how to restrict the reflow (I don't know how much of that is the format and how much is the implementation).
Re:Yet Another Format (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news: Sony just announced they are dropping their proprietary format in favor of ePub. (http://ebookstore.sony.com/press-room/)
I feel a disturbance in the force...
Re:Tough call... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Yes because I've always Wished (Score:3, Interesting)
And epub -- which is, under the hood, basically just XHTML + a specialized adaptation of CSS + a variety of image file formats, including both bitmap (e.g., PNG) and vector (e.g., SVG) which a reader must support -- already supports illustrations and photographs, and most dead-tree newspapers don't use much color, so neither a new format nor a device with features not found in typical ebook readers -- except maybe bigger page size, but bigger paged e-ink-based readers are available -- are needed for that.