I am going to take the weekend to read some books in digital formats. Mainly on the iPhone, but I feel like a digital screen is a big change from the printed book.

I have never read a book in digital format, although I probably have read parts of many books online.

My original thoughts on digital eReaders was that they will have a place but the printed book will too. There is no better way to really understand something that to just try it out – hence this weekends experiment.

There are many choices in the eReader world including options from Sony and obviously the Kindle. The problems with getting books in these formats is the license.

I love being able to give or receive a recommended book, as was the case with Predictably Irrational, and that option does not exist with the book I recently bought from Amazon using the Kindle app. If I like the book, I have to recommend someone to purchase it again.

I was thinking about this problem yesterday and it stuck 24 hours later and is worth sharing. I would prefer to be the new DRM keeper of the book I bought. For example, imagine if I purchased a book, then could “loan” it out to you with a maximum amount of days before it “expires” being 365. If you needed longer, you would simply have to come back to me and I can extend the “rental”. This would keep the social interaction intact, and keep folks on schedule to finish a book.

I am not sure this system completes the social contract as when the book “expires” you do not really have to return anything – but maybe a notification system would do this for you.

Further, imagine if you loaned someone a book and could track each others progress and have discussions. Knowing someone is reading a book you loan them is a good feeling.

This problem may not be solved for some time, but thinking about libraries in the future can lead to some interesting conversations about the future of books.

Post from: Eric Friedman
You should follow me on Twitter here
Digital Reading

I have been exploring way in which publishers are thinking about controlling (or releasing control) of their content, and even how some are thinking about DRM’ing their content.

In searching I came across a new approach linked by HN, by Tynt Tracer, doing it in a new way on sites like SFGate and Esquire.

Take the following article found on SF Gate

If you cut\paste any amount text you get the following:

If consumers don’t step up spending, companies will find it hard to chalk up the revenue gains they need to truly recover.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/27/financial/f034546D98.DTL&type=business#ixzz0Mb6ooxRV

Notice: I did not put in the “read more…” text as it was automatically included once I had copy\pasted the text over. This action continues the natural behavior of people to take and interact with content and appends the source automagically.

You can see the link stays with the text. Tynt then surfaces exactly what parts of the article are becoming “hot” and which are not. This can be tied back to your analytics system and provide some much needed insight into the world of publishing and what is getting used.

The other reason I like this type of technology is that it jumps into the current behavior stream of users.

Cut\Copy\Paste – three actions that have been around for awhile and will continue to be the way in which people move around content.

Tynt does not solve the problem of tracking passed links, as many of the URL shortners like Bit.ly do, but it at least provides some user interaction data and perhaps link back data where none previously existed.

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Post from: Eric Friedman
You should follow me on Twitter here
Auto source copied text with Tynt Tracer