If you are a new reader here at the Spreed:Blog, you will find out in due time that we are quite obsessed with digital publishing and the ways that we take in digital content. Spreed’s goal is to make the digital reading experience more efficient on any electronic device. Our speed reading application is only one class of product we are working on. We want to streamline the entire online reading experience and make it more productive. As such we are constantly looking for the newest and coolest technologies out there that aid in the effective reading of electronic material. By far the most exciting new platform out there is the Kindle and we have covered this product here on our blog many times before. However, over the past couple of weeks there has been some very interesting news surrounding the Kindle and I just wanted to give light to all these new developments here:

Amazon Growth Slows a Bit; No New Kindle in 2008: Publishers Weekly

CFO Tom Szkutak said that while sales of the Kindle have exceeded expectations, it does not plan to release a new version of the e-reader until 2009 “at the earliest.” He noted that Amazon has ramped up manufacturing capacity for Kindle, and the device is in stock. When the Kindle was introduced last November, the readers quickly went out of stock. Amazon said the e-book reader now accounts for more than 10% of unit sales for books that are available both in digital and print formats. Bezos said purchase of e-books is “additive” to sales of print books with Kindle e-book buyers tending to buy as many print books in addition to e-books.

Oprah Comes Out For Kindle: The Guardian

Today in Chicago, and on TV screens across the USA, Oprah Winfrey is going to recommend her new “favorite gadget,” which is Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader. A brief video has appeared on Amazon’s website to plug the show — as spotted by Chris Nuttall at the Financial Times — which will also feature a guest appearance by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Kindle in the University: Brave New World Blog

Yale, Oxford and the University of California have all adopted Kindle programs, and now Princeton University Press will begin publishing Kindle-edition textbooks, launching, Robert Shiller’s new economics book “The Subprime Solution” on the device two weeks before the hard copy. Princeton plans to roll out hundreds of books through the Kindle’s online store. The questions over over the commercial ‘revenue sharing’ arrangements are between the parties and whether , as some may say, Amazon is buying trade. 

Those of you who are tech-savvy probably already saw the mistake we made in yesterday’s blog. In our excitement over what we had perceived to be a major step forward in mobile device design, we rushed to an incorrect assumption. A statement on Readius’s website was misunderstood and led us to think that this was something more than e-ink. But the article in the NY Times clearly stated otherwise. Oh well. At least we were right about the size.

One of our blog readers did point out that;

“…The new gen Sony Reader about to launch will read the ePUB format (a new standard in ebook formats put together by the IDPF), and ePUB is essentially XML. The Sony Reader with its E-ink display will therefore be able to have internal links (index entries, table of contents, references, etc.), re-sizeable and re-flowable text, etc. I.e. all the trappings of XML.”

This is a positive step, but until e-ink is able to display in colour and handle multimedia, there wil be significant usability limitations.

At Spreed we love the Kindle. Any technological innovation that makes electronic reading easier and more accessible is alright with us. But the product has two clear limitations that bother us. First, and foremost, is its size. We get it – Amazon is almost metaphorically replicating the traditional book here. But in this case we think holding on to a form factor that is quickly becoming anachronistic is a mistake. People no longer want “portable”, they want “pocket-size” when it comes to their mobile devices. Why should their mobile reading device be any different?

The second limitation is Amazon’s decision to use e-ink. Again, they’re trying to replicate the traditional reading experience. Less light being emitted from the page means fewer saccades (eye movements) which means a slightly more pleasant experience. But at what cost? E-ink is necessarily a picture of the page. It is not HTML or any dynamic code, and that renders the device little more than a picture window. Obviously, Spreed is all about leveraging the power of the computer to assist and improve the reading experience, so our bias here is pretty transparent. But by opting for e-ink, rather than a traditional browser, the Kindle forces itself into a corner and prevents the user from using the device in so many other ways.

Thankfully, there are others out there who are moving in the right direction. Case in point: Polymer Vision’s new Readius. Check out this article from the New York Times that describes the Readius in more detail.

The Readius is trying to offer pretty much everything that the Kindle does. Only it meets the two criteria above – it’s pocket-sized (therefore truly mobile) and is not limited by e-ink. Take a look at the picture and it’s not hard to imagine the device as a phone. Isn’t that exactly what we really want?

Congratulations to Polymer Vision for taking us one more step in the right direction.