Could the new TabletPC be the form factor that finally ushers in wider acceptance of e-books? It's raising hopes among digital publishing and media executives who gathered here at a TabletPC digital publishing conference.
"Publishers are excited about it," said Nick Bogaty, executive director of the Open eBook Forum, an interoperability standards consortium that organized the one-day conference.
"This will jump-start things, and it will certainly jump-start a lot of the e-book activity that two years ago was supplied by venture capital money," Bogaty said. After the dot-com bubble burst, many venture investors and publishers pulled back on their electronic publishing ventures.
Neil Budde, publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online, said he found the TabletPC easier on the eyes. "What I find exciting about this is that it's a device that people will start using to read and take with them. It's almost like you need a format for reading."
He also noted interesting elements of page orientation on the tablets that are more comfortable for reading books, compared to a scrolling orientation used with Web publishing. John Frederiksen, product manager for Microsoft's eReading Group, told the audience to keep the faith about e-books and their expected growth. He's also upbeat about them because he's optimistic about the potential of TabletPCs.
News source: Internet News
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