Why?
There are some definite large advantages to reading on an electronic device. The most obvious is that you can carry quite a few books with you on a very small reader. This is compelling, but in the end, books are not really like mp3s, most people seriously read only a few books at a time, so I hardly find the ability to carry around a library all that interesting.

However, there are other, more enticing reasons to get one. First of all, you don’t have to have physical books anymore. I imagine that for many people, this would be exactly the reason not to get an e-reader. This sentiment is fully understandable, books have a certain stature in our culture and owning books speaks volumes (pun intended). But, the majority of what I read is really not worth having in print. Not that it is garbage, but I tend to read things that are very low on graphics and high on text. ACM papers, for example, are not particularly aesthetic.

Then there are the little conveniences that comes with having digital versions of books. First of all, it is search able. When you have digital book, you do not need to go through the absurd action of looking texts up on Amazon, inside a book you already own. Additionally, you benefit from having books accessible everywhere where you have internet connectivity, if you save them in the cloud. Paper versions lack this distinct quality. Oh, and did I mention they don’t weigh anything?

What struck me most though, was the increased time spent reading. Apparently, it isn’t only me. Reading becomes more of a habit and the portability of an e-reader means that you can read it wherever you are. Don’t be put off by the small screen though, you hardly notice this after a few hours.

Pricing

Pricing of Tony Judt’s (excellent) Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 on amazon.com

Then, a few words about the pricing of ebooks. I fully understand that only about 12% of a paperback is packaging and distribution. Electronic books are thus not bound to be much cheaper. But what makes my head spin, is the fact that paperbacks are often more expensive than electronic books. I find it hard to swallow that, somehow, paperbacks can be produced more cheaply than electronic books. I am aware that converting books into their respective digital versions is costly, but surely, this process can’t possibly push up the price of digital books to the extend that they end up being more expensive?

So, all in all, I am very satisfied with my purchase and can heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to read more, or is already reading on a backlit screen and wants to have less strain on their eyes. The downside is that you might end up forking out more for a product that is undeniably of less quality than physical books: kindle does not really allow you to donate your old e-books to the library or give them to a friend, does it?

Since coming back home on the 3rd of March I have been working at the Deutsche Telekom Design Research Laboratories here in Berlin, leaving little time left for blogging.

However, the Design Research Lab is a very interesting and environment for an internship and I am very lucky to be working with a bunch of really bright people.

Project I am working on at the moment is coined Next Neighbourhood, and if you are interested you can have a look on our team blog to find out more about what we are up to. Topics covered range from Design Methodology, Community Informatics to Participatory Design. All in all, very exciting times!

If you have ever used an iPhone you’ll notice that there are some really cool gestures that you can do.  Amongst them is this cool little On/Off gesture. It works really well on the iPhone, the gesture is natural and very clear when you have tried it once or twice. Great.

Lately I have started to encounter this little interaction in different places that are certainly not gesture based. Prime example of this was Spotify. The latest Spotify builds allow you to sync some playlists to you hard drive giving you access to it offline (which is great). Instead of using a good old checkbox to do the trick, they have resorted to copying the iPhone’s way of of doing it, with a slider. The massive difference is though that sliding with your mouse is a lot harder to do than swiping with your finger on a screen.

The kicker however is the fact that this little slider is not even a slider, although you’ll forgive anyone for thinking it is one. It actually behaves rather differently from the iPhone slider, namely that you have to click it to change its state.

My guess is that when they developed the iPhone client of Spotify they thought that simply using the controls that are being used in on the iPhone would also work on the desktop. Well, guess again.