Some say the multipurpose iPad will kill the single-purpose Kindle. I disagree. This year I have discovered the joy of single-purpose devices. Most computers are multipurpose devices, designed to do everything but not always in the best way. I easily prefer the single-purpose GPS mounted in my car over the equivalent function on my smart phone. The single purpose GPS has a larger screen that is easier to follow when driving. I recently obtained a tabletop internet radio. I can listen to the same stations on my computer, but the dedicated radio has better speakers and does not compete for my processor. The Kindle wins for the same reason. I can read ebooks on my laptop, but the laptop is too bulky and has many distractions. So too the iPad, on which users can surf the web, send email, take photos, watch videos, listen to music, and so on. One can browse the web on a Kindle, but the web experience is streamlined to reading-related activities, such as looking up related concepts in Wikipedia.

A single-purpose device is better for reading than a multipurpose device, but a dual-purpose device is even better for the kinds of reading I do on the Kindle. After three months of shaking down the Kindle, I still think print books are the superior technology for reading lengthy, complex and rich writing. At the same time, the Kindle is unnecessary for reading the snippets and other short content found on the web; laptops and smart phones are quite sufficient for that. However, there is a middle ground of reading. The best word for this kind of reading is ‘research’. Like long-form reading, it involves investigative reading beneath the surface, and it also necessitates note-taking and other information processing practices best streamlined by digital technology. As a hybrid of traditional books and digital technology, the ereader is ideally suited for the dual purposes of reading and writing.

For research, I want to be able to see my highlights and notes, juxtaposed with the original text, and be able to transfer selections to a new file. I also want to coordinate with my Delicious bookmarks, and post thoughts to Twitter. I cannot yet do these tasks on my Kindle, but I am not sure the iPad will be much better. Steve Job’s presentation did not make clear that the iPad takes notes at all, but I assume it will. The iPad will also have DRM and this means it will limit the users ability to copy the original text. My advice for the designers of the next generation of ereaders is to fully embrace dual-purpose design. I am inspired by two screen designs like the concept piece about the Microsoft Courier. Imagine being able to read on both left and right screens, then changing one screen to note-taking functions. Streamline the functions for reading and writing and it could be the ideal ereader.

After following the instructions, I kept getting an error when I tried to save the audio book file to disk: “Unable to acquire a license to play the selected title. The requested license is either invalid or already acquired.” I resolved it by *opening* the file when prompted, rather than trying to *save* it first to disk.

An unusual novel. If there is a spoiler in this brief review I am not sure it matters because it is not the plot but the setting and delivery that make this novel work. One, in Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead, the crossover to the afterlife is fantastical and deeply personal, but the afterlife itself is pretty much like this world. People still have their bodies, eat and work and love and sleep, but things are just a little better, enough to make it preferable to this world. A curious premise. Two, people only last in this afterlife as long as someone remembers them in this world, then they vanish, who knows where. Potent material for a story. Three, a deadly virus wipes out a near-future earth, except for one woman, Laura, stuck on a research station in Antartica. Wow. Just imagine how that reshapes the world of the afterlife. That is just the setup. There is no doubt where Laura’s battle to survive is going, but Brockmeier’s telling has you loving her and a handful of other characters. This novel is unlike any I have read, and that merits its recommendation.

My biggest debate was whether to build or buy. If you know fixies, you know that building one is the way to go. Pick up a 1970s frame at Goodwill, strip it down, thrown on the gear. Plenty of street cred. Looked through some used bike shops and friend’s basements but hadn’t found the right frame yet. Then I ran across a new Gary Fisher “Gritty”. It was just what I was looking for: lightweight, thin tires, short straight handlebar, humble appearance (not a target for theft), and a very reasonable price. It’s a dream to ride, though I’m still getting used to my pedals never stopping. I sensibly kept both brakes on, but I stripped off the reflectors. Come on, give me some street cred.

Robert Darnton was the Director of the Harvard University Library during two important events, the Google Book Search project and the university’s open access movement. In The Case for Books, Darnton provides a perspective on the interplay of private and public interests in libraries.

Google Books involves the digitization of public domain and out-of-print books to form the world’s largest digital library. This project entails scanning the works of research libraries, and Harvard was an initial partner. Darton approves of making books more accessible through digitization, but he is concerned that the libraries who provided these books will have to pay to access them. How high will these costs get? Google is a private enterprise and has an effective monopoly on digital books. Good intentions or not, the profit motive inevitably puts the squeeze on public interests.

The profit motive can also help define the essential niche of libraries. The public library first emerged as a response to the exclusive access of royals to library collections. Darnton predicts that Google Books will make libraries more important than ever. Google will not digitize everything. Copyright still protects new books. Being profit-minded, Google will focus on the 80% of mainstream interest books, not the special collections of research libraries. Scanning causes errors; 99% accuracy is still two or three letters wrong in the average book length paragraph. Version control may be an increasingly important role for research libraries.

In his position at Harvard, Darnton defended a motion in favour of the open access movement. Open access makes scholarly articles available free of charge on the web. It addresses the contradiction of being charged exorbitant rates for freely generated content, crippling libraries and scholarship. As I see it, this long-term interplay of private and public interests may not be an unhealthy one. Private companies tend to lead with innovation, making digital journals available in the first place. I am not sure libraries would have accomplished this feat on their own. Sooner or later, private interests confuse profit as tactic with profit as strategy. It threatens the ability of libraries to provide their service. Open information is the solution. It is a repeating pattern. First there was the open source operating system. Open access to academic journals is another instance. More recently in libraries, we have seen the emergence of the open source ILS to redress gouging by vendors over the years. Open information is a promising pattern.

Darnton uncases the book from its traditional bindings to give it a fresh take in the digital age. He has creative ideas about the evolution of the ebook, but still prefers the usability of the print book. According to Bowker’s Global Books in Print, more new titles are appearing every year. Soon a million will be published annually. Will digitization ever be able to keep up? It is worth remembering that digits are also a physical resource, with concomitant scarcity. Compound that with the scarcities imposed by copyright and the private interests, we can be sure of the ongoing need for libraries to provide public access to books.

Reading my first book on the Kindle, I was satisfied with the way it let me highlight text. The functions for entering and editing notes were also acceptable. One immediate limitation I found was that notes must be linked to a particular location in the text. When I wanted to jot down a general note, I improvised by creating a general notes section at the beginning of the text. Jumping back to it was a bit of a pain. It is possible that a reader will never want to do another thing with their notes, other than view them again on some future re-reading of the book. Good old-fashioned marginalia. If so, that reader may be satisfied with the Kindle’s note-taking functions. Many readers like myself make notes so we can do something with them: homework, research, a book review, or a journal entry. These tasks require copy-pasting the notes into other files, operations not easily performed on a Kindle.

In order to use the notes, I had to find a way to transfer them to my computer. I plugged the Kindle into my computer and inspected the files on its disk. Each book is associated with an “.azw” file, Amazon’s protected file format. You can open the file with the free Kindle for PC software. I was delighted to see the book content with highlights and notes neatly lined up beside it. I then discovered that I could not copy-paste from it! Furthermore, the software is tied to my purchased books. I cannot use it to view other files I may have read on the Kindle, nor does it show my newspaper subscription.

The Kindle has an unprotected file, “My Clippings.txt”, in which I found the highlights and notes for all my books and subscriptions. I could copy-paste this content. The notes are associated with the location numbers of the original book text, so I can, in principle look up the original text for further reading by using the “Go to Location” feature on the Kindle’s menu; another pain. I would prefer that the Kindle create a separate text file for each book, but notes for every book are lumped into the single text file.

A Kindle book is also associated with a “.mbp” file, Amazon’s mobipocket format used to store user notes. This format is supposed to provide content protection, though software referenced at Wikipedia provides a way to extract the notes. The software extracts notes for a particular book, but there is data loss in the conversion.

The kicker about these limitations is that they are artificially imposed by Amazon. We invented digital technology to enhance our information processing capabilities. We wanted ebooks because they would bring the wonders of digital technology to our books. Copy and paste are the simplest of note-taking functions, but Amazon has deliberately limited them to protect their product, even though copyright law legally entitles people to copy content for personal research. At the same time, Amazon does not seem to care much about the privacy of my data. The Kindle does not provide password protection, so anyone who comes across my device can read my notes. When I use the Kindle for the PC software, I see my notes. Amazon has uploaded my private notes to their server! A disappointment.

What can you do about it? One idea. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. Among other activities, they developed the psiphon censorship circumvention software. Using the software, people outside the firewall can let in people inside the firewall to browse the web anonymously and without restrictions. Curious that the psiphon website is down for remodeling this week, but other similar software packages like PHProxy are available. I suppose this kind of software can also be used in restrictive workplaces if you have an outside server to install it on. Wonder if anyone has tried that?

Freedom to Read keeps alive awareness that books are removed from the shelves in Canadian libraries, schools and bookstores every day and free speech on the Internet is under attack. The 2010 campaign is running this week. In honour of that event, I have temporarily replaced my Reading Gallery with images of all the posters used since the campaign started in 1984. Each time you refresh my homepage you will see a randomly selected image from that collection.

Tim Miedema snapped this photo of a nine-inch thick book he came across in a country garage. It is an encyclopaedia and dictionary. The owner found it in a barn. Tim is one of my several siblings. You can click the photo or this link to view his online art gallery.