Kingdom Keys Bookmarking Blog

I recently walked into an Apple Centre and quizzed the staff about the iPad. "See, I just bought this book (Blink from Malcolm Gladwell) at Dymocks. Can you show me how I could have downloaded it onto an iPad instead?"

The clerk proceeded to enter the title and name of the author and the search returned zilch. The excuse was the local Australian download site was just being setup and there were very few titles available. My next question was: "Can I download an ebook as a PDF document and read it on the iPad?"

Again the Apple staffer disappointed me by saying that their gadget was running the Safari web browser and as a consequence it may not be able to download the file. Instead I'd better use another computer and then transfer to the iPad.

My last statement was: "And you want AUD $500 for the privilege of using this?" He corrected me and said "No, AUD $629." I said "That's a joke!" end of conversation.

Never did he mention I could go to amazon and download the thing as a Kindle file, then run the Kindle application on the iPad. Company policy I suppose. Why should we enquire about a new product from an Apple logo knuckle-head?

I think I'll stick to paperbacks for a while until the dust settles down. An electronic reading device is bound to become a commodity. When that happens prices will be affordable and the range of titles available will grow exponentially. But shall we see a repeat of the VHS versus BETA war of incompatible standards? I hope not but you can bet we will see some strong arm marketing tactics from one dominant player to corner the market.

In this information age we have seen Google raiding the public libraries and who knows who will be next at pushing the boundaries. Lurking behind the scenes is the whole issue of copyrights and intellectual property. We've seen it with music CDs, we've seen it with DVD movies and now books are going to be the next field of Chinese piracy. Whenever there is a demand and whenever there are crooks a black market will emerge.

Maybe this is the time to self-publish your memoirs before nobody remembers how to turn a page anymore...

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