First Look at Windows 8 - Ina Fried - D9 - AllThingsD
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Exclusive: Making Sense of Our First Look at Windows 8
On Wednesday, Microsoft offered the first glimpse of Windows 8, a sneak peek that reveals much about both the influences and the strategic goals of the major overhaul of Microsoft’s 25-year-old operating system.
The fundamental goal with the new operating system, which is being shown for the first time at D9, is to create something that is equally well at home on an 8-inch tablet as it is on a powerful desktop attached to a huge monitor.
“It’s ‘no compromise’ and that’s really important to us,” Windows President Steven Sinofsky said in an interview with AllThingsD.
At the heart of the new interface is a new start screen that draws heavily on the tile-based interface that Microsoft has used with Windows Phone 7. All of a user’s programs can be viewed as tiles and clicked on with the touch of a finger.
Windows 8 essentially supports two kinds of applications. One is the classic Windows application, which runs in a desktop very similar to the Windows 7 desktop.
The other type of application, which has to be written in HTML5 and Javascript, looks more like a mobile application, filling the full screen. Internet Explorer 10, which is part of Windows 8, has already been configured to run in this mode, as have several widget-like apps for checking stock prices and weather.
Although Microsoft didn’t offer any details, the start screen that it is showing on Wednesday includes a prominent link to a store, ostensibly confirming that Microsoft plans to get in the business of directly distributing Windows programs, much as Apple has on both the iPhone and Mac.
Sinofsky noted that there were a few things that the iPad showed were missing from Windows–most notably a touch-first interface and an app distribution mechanism and new business model for developers. Windows 8, as the product is currently code-named, is designed to address all three of those issues, while preserving compatibility with decades of existing Windows programs.
Although Windows 8 is clearly influenced by the iPad and other mobile devices, the plan for the new operating system has been in the works since Windows 7 shipped in July ;several months before the iPad was first shown.
“We really did take a step back after Windows 7,” Sinofsky said. “We were clearly influenced ourselves by phones.”
Microsoft has also done work with the classic Windows desktop to make it more touch friendly, including using a new kind of “fuzzy hit targeting” to adjust for the fact that fingers are far less precise than a mouse. The goal, says chief designer Julie Larson-Green, is that classic apps, though designed for a keyboard and mouse, work well with touch. Apps taking advantage of the new programming layer, she said, are designed for touch first, but also work well with a keyboard and mouse.
Windows is growing more flexible in other ways. Microsoft said back in January that
from Nvidia, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, in addition to the traditional Windows processors from Intel and AMD. Though Sinofsky and Green used Intel-based machines for Wednesday’s demo at D, Microsoft plans to demonstrate some of the ARM-based designs later today at the Computex trade show in Taiwan.
On a technical note, Sinofsky stressed that after decades of ever-increasing system requirements that characterized Windows releases through Vista, Microsoft is once again building an operating system that demands fewer resources than its predecessor–a trend started with Windows 7, which worked on all Vista-compatible systems.
A key question is how well this new Windows will stack up against a new generation of “post-PC” devices running Android, Apple’s iOS and other operating systems.
There are other unanswered questions as well, including just when Windows 8 will be ready. Sinofsky declined to say, but said Microsoft will have a lot more to say about Windows 8 at a developer conference in mid-September in Anaheim, Calif.
The new Windows 8 Start screen.
December 30, 2013 at 1:32 pm PT
December 30, 2013 at 10:40 am PT
December 30, 2013 at 5:30 am PT
December 24, 2013 at 12:29 pm PT
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As a C/C# programmer I'm new to Qt and have little experience in C++.
What I want to do is 'making' the model of a QTableView in the class containing my data. In C# I could return a DataSet from a static method in a class containing all my stuff concerning this data, and bind this dataset to my table or list.
public class Books
//properties
//construtors etc...
static DataSet BookData()
// fill my dataset
return myDataS
In the main program I then bind my DataSet with the control I wanted to use
Is there a way to do so in Qt / C++ doing the same so that I can write something like:
QSqlTableModel* Books::BookData()
// Create an QSqlTableModel
// Fill it with my data
// or whatever is possible
in the main program:
ui-&tvBooks-&setModel(BookData());
And this with correct garbage cleaning or is this wishful thinking...
In Qt, this is generally done as follows:
Have a model that contains your data.
Invoke setModel on the view, letting the view display what's in the model.
Qt has two general approaches to models:
Use a concrete model and populate it with data. Such models include QStringListModel, QStandardItemModel and the models that interface databases, such as QSqlTableModel.
Create a class that derives from one of the base model classes, such as QAbstractListModel, QAbstractTableModel or QAbstractItemModel. Reimplement relevant virtual methods to implement your own model.
In your case, you can, for example:
Make the Books class have a QStandardItemModel as a member, and use it to store the book data. Do not store the data outside of that model. That class should expose the model to outside, and you can then set it on a view. This will be the easier approach, as you don't need to reimplement the model yourself.
If you wish to have the flexibility of SQL available to access the data, you can also use an in-memory SQLITE database, and expose it via QSqlTableModel, QSqlQueryModel or QSQLRelationalTableModel. Other than that, the approach would be as above.
(your answer) Have a method that returns a newly created static model.
Let the Books class inherit QAbstractTableModel. This requires you to understand the semantics of Qt's models, and is a bit harder.
If you wish to use static models, such as QSqlQueryModel, created on the fly each time the database contents change, you can easily leverage QObject's compositeness.
To manage the model's lifetime, it can make itself a view's child automatically, and delete any other instances that are also that view's children:
class Books {
static QSqlQueryModel * setModelOn(QAbstractItemView * view) {
Q_ASSERT(view);
for (auto child : view-&findChildren&QSqlQueryModel&())
auto model = new QSqlQueryModel(view);
model-&setQuery("SELECT name, pagecount FROM books");
view-&setModel(model);
39.8k74388
What I did to solve the case:
class Books
static void* GetBookData(QTableView *model)
model-&setTable("books.books");
model-&select();
in the library
QTableView *view = new QTableV
Books::GetBookData(view);
ui-&myCombobox-&setModel(view);
in the main program.
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Electronic books
by . Last updated: April 13, 2016.
Back in the 19th century English author, Martin Tupper wrote: "A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever."
It's true: books are friendly, familiar, and loveable and that
probably explains why it's taking us so long to get used to
the idea of portable
books. But with the arrival of a new
generation of electronic book readers, such as the Sony Reader,
and Amazon Kindle, the days of the printed word just might be numbered.
Let's take a closer look at electronic books (ebooks) and find out how
they work!
Photo: Left: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite electronic book reader. Right: The rival Sony Reader PRS-350 is considerably smaller and designed to carry around in your pocket. Both are smaller than the first generation of Kindles, because their touch-sensitive screens do away with the need for a separate keyboard.
Two in one: books... and the information they contain
Think of a book and you think of a single object, but the books we
read are actually two things in one: there's the information (the words
and pictures and their meaning) and there's the physical object (the
, cardboard, and ink) that contains them. Sometimes the physical
part of a book is as important as the information it carries: it's
really true that we judge books by their covers—at least when we're
standing in shops deciding which ones to buy—and that's why publishers
devote so much attention to making their books look attractive. But, a
lot of the time, the information is much more important to us and we
don't really care how it's delivered. That's why many of us now turn to
when we want to find things
out instead of visiting the local library.
In short, we've learned to split off the information we need from
the way it's delivered. Ebooks take this idea a step further. When we
talk about an ebook, we really mean a digital version of a printed
text that we can read on a handheld electronic device like a miniature
laptop — two quite
separate things, once again.
How do you store a book in electronic form?
An ebook is really just a computer file full of words (and
sometimes images). In theory, you could make an ebook just by typing
information into a word processor. The file you save has all the
elements of an electronic book: you can read the information on a
computer, search it for keywords, or share it easily with someone else.
The first attempt to create a worldwide library of ebooks was called
and it's still running today. Long before the World Wide Web came
along, a bunch of dedicated Gutenberg volunteers took printed books and
scanned or typed them into their computers to make electronic files
they could share. For legal reasons, these books were (and still are) mostly classic
old volumes that had fallen out of copyright. The electronic versions
of these printed books are very basic, text-only computer files stored
in a format called ASCII (American Standard Code for
Information Interchange)—a way of representing letters, numbers, and
symbols with the numbers 0-255 that virtually every computer can
understand.
Photo: The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite electronic book reader (left) alongside the rival Sony eReader (right).
This Kindle has a fairly unobtrusive set of LED lights built around the screen to make reading easier in the dim evening light.
Although it's hard to see in this photo, the Paperwhite does has a much whiter, crisper screen than the Sony.
The problem with ASCII is that the text contains very little
formatting information: you can't distinguish headings from text,
there's only one basic font, and there's no bold or italics. That's why
people developed much more sophisticated electronic files like PDF
(Portable Document Format). The basic idea of PDF was to store an
almost exact replica of a printed document in an electronic file that
people could easily read on screens or print out, if they preferred.
The HTML files people use to create
are another kind
of electronic information. Every HTML page on a website is a bit like a
separate page in a book, but the links on web pages mean you can easily
hop around until you find exactly the information you want. The links
on websites give you powerfully interconnected information that is
often much quicker to use than a library of printed books.
The greatest strength of ASCII, PDF, and HTML files (you can read
them on any computer) is also their greatest weakness: who wants to sit
staring at a computer screen, reading thousands of words? Most screens
are much less sharp than the type in a printed book and it quickly
tires your eyes reading in this way. Even if you can store lots of
books on your computer, you can't really take it to bed with you or
read it on the beach or in the bath-tub! Now, there's nothing to stop
you downloading simple text files onto something like an iPod or a
and reading them, very slowly and painfully, from the small
display—but it's not most people's idea of
curling up with a good book. What we really need is something with the
power of a computer, the portability of a cellphone,
and the friendliness and readability of a printed book. And that's
exactly where electronic book readers come in.
How do you read an electronic book file?
An electronic book reader is a small, portable computer designed for
reading books stored in a digital format such as ASCII, PDF, HTML, or
another similar format. (Currently the two most popular ebook formats are
EPUB, a worldwide, open standard that evolved from an earlier standard called OEB (Open ebook) and widely used by Sony Readers and most other ebook readers, and AZW, a
proprietary format developed by Amazon and currently readable only
on its Kindle reader.) Books take up very little space when you store
them in electronic format: you could easily fit 10,000 electronic
copies of the Bible onto a single . Most ebook readers can store hundreds
or even thousands of titles at a time and some have
connections so you can download more books whenever you wish.
The most important part of an ebook reader is the screen. The first
ebooks used small versions of LCD laptop screens which have a
resolution (sharpness) of about 35 pixels per cm (90 pixels per inch).
You could easily see the dots making up the letters and it was quite
tiring to read for more than a few minutes at a time. The latest
ebooks use an entirely different technology called electronic ink. Instead of
using LCD displays, they show words and letters using tiny, black and
white plastic granules that move about inside microscopic, spherical
capsules under precise
control. Displays like this have
about twice the resolution of ordinary computer screens, are clearly
visible in sunlight, and use much less power. In fact, they're almost
as sharp and easy to read as printed paper. We'll see how
these screens work in a moment.
The lack of books in electronic format is one of the things that
puts people off using ebook readers—and that's what 's
Kindle reader both an exciting development and an instant success. Amazon already worked
with virtually all the world's publishers as a bookseller, so it was
able to make huge numbers of titles available for Kindle in electronic
format&over 88,000 books were available on the launch date.
That's certainly what people want and expect from an ebook
reader, but whether it will finally make electronic books as popular as
iPods remains to be seen.
Photo: You can read electronic books right now, even if you don't have a handheld ebook reader.
There's free electronic book software available for all the popular operating systems. You can also download versions of
the Amazon Kindle that work on a PC, Mac, iPad, or cellphone. Here's an electronic book reader
running on a normal computer screen, showing the first page of F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned.
How does E Ink& work?
Since electronic ink has been crucial to the success of ebooks, let's
now take a detailed look at how it works.
You're probably reading these words in the same way that I am&by staring at
computer screen. For people over the age of about 35, who
grew up with computers that used blocky green and black screens with
just 40 characters across and 25 down, modern screens are wonderful
and amazing. But they still have their drawbacks. Look closely, and
you can see jagged edges to the letters. Try to read an LCD screen in
direct sunlight and (unless the screen has a very bright backlight), you'll really
struggle. But the worse thing is that LCD screens lack the
lightness, portability, and sheer user-friendliness of
you can happily read a book for hours, but try the same trick with a
computer screen and your eyes will quickly tire.
Photo: Computer screens as we knew them in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, the best screens could display no more than about 64,000 pixels and often just uppercase text or very crude "pixelated" (square block) graphics. Computer games like Space Invaders, shown here, were very primitive&but still highly addictive!
Back in the early 1970s, the Xerox Corporation that had pioneered
a decade earlier became concerned about the threat that
computers might pose to its core ink-and-paper business: if everyone
started using computers, and offices became paperless, what would
happen to a company so utterly dependent on paper technology? It was
for that reason that Xerox pumped huge amounts of money into &,
(Palto Alto Research Center), the now-legendary campus where modern,
user-friendly personal computing was pioneered. Among the many innovations
developed there were personal computers that used a
(the "desktop" screen featuring icons, later copied by the Apple Macintosh& and Microsoft Windows&),
... and electronic paper, which was invented
by PARC researcher .
The basic idea of electronic ink and paper was (and remains) very simple: to produce an electronic display
with all the control and convenience of a computer screen but the
readability, portability, and user-friendliness of paper.
Photo: The E Ink& display on a Sony Reader (bottom) is much sharper and easier to read than a typical LCD screen (top). Magnifying by about 8&10 times and zooming in on a single word, you can see why. The E Ink display makes sharper letters with a uniformly white background. The LCD display blurs its letters with anti-aliasing to make them less jagged, though that makes them harder to read close up. The red, blue, and green colored pixels used to make up the LCD's "white" background are also much more noticeable. Unlike the E Ink display, an
LCD does not use a true white background: it relies on your eye and brain to fuse colored pixels instead. The resolution of E Ink is also far greater: typical LCD displays use around 90 pixels per inch, whereas E Ink displays use at least twice as many pixels.
How does electronic ink and paper work?
Most electronic ink and paper screens use a technology called
electrophoresis, which sounds complex but simply means using
to move tiny particles (in this case ink) through a fluid
(in this case a
or gel). Other uses of electrophoresis
include DNA testing, where electricity is used to separate the parts
of a DNA sample by making them move across a gel, which enables them
to be compared with other samples and identified.
In one of the best-known electronic ink products, called E Ink& and used
in ebooks such as the Amazon Kindle, there are millions of microcapsules,
roughly the same diameter as a human hair, each of
which is the equivalent of a single pixel (one of the tiny squares or
rectangles from which the picture on a computer or TV screen is built
up). Each capsule is filled with a clear fluid and contains two kinds
of tiny ink granules: white ones (which are positively charged) and black
ones (which are negatively charged). The capsules are suspended
between electrodes switched on and off by an electronic circuit, and each one
can be controlled individually. By changing the electric field
between the electrodes, it's possible to make the white or black
granules move to the top of a capsule (the part closest to the
reader's eye) so it appears like a white or black pixel. By controlling
large numbers of pixels in this way, it's possible to display text or
Animation: Electronic ink works through electrophoresis. Each pixel (microcapsule) in the display (the gray circle) contains black (negatively charged) and white (positively charged) ink granules. When a positive field (shown in blue) is applied to the top electrode, the black capsules migrate to the top, making the pixel look black
switching the field over makes the granules change position so the pixel appears white.
Advantages and disadvantages of electronic ink
If you've tried reading an electronic book, you'll know that electronic ink
and paper is much easier to read from for long periods than an LCD
computer screen. Since the microcapsules stay in position
indefinitely, with little or no electric current, electronic ink
displays have extremely low power consumption. A typical ebook reader
with an E Ink display can be used for something like 2&4 weeks of
average everyday reading on a single charge&which is much less
power than a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Low power consumption means
use and that translates into an
other words, electronic ink and paper is environmentally friendly.
What about the energy needed to manufacture your reader in the first place?
According to British environmental auditor ,
who's done the math, you've only to read 20&70 ebooks t the Cleantech group has estimated
that a Kindle makes savings in carbon emissions after just one year's use.
The disadvantages are less obvious until you start using electronic ink
in earnest. First, although the displays work excellently in bright
indoor light and daylight, including direct sunlight, they have no
light of their own (unlike LCD displays, which have backlights shining through
them from back to front so you can see them). That makes them hard to use in poor indoor light,
especially in the evenings, which is why many ebook readers are sold
with clumsy addon lamps. Electronic ink also takes much
longer to build up the image of a page than an LCD screen, which means
it's unsuitable for everyday computer displays using any kind of
moving image (and completely unsuitable for fast-moving images such
as computer games and videos). Sometimes parts of a previous page
linger on as "ghosts" until you've turned another page or
two. You've probably noticed that, when you "turn the page"
of an electronic book, the entire screen momentarily flashes black
before the new page is displayed? That's a rather clumsy compromise
to prevent ghosts, in which the screen tries to erase the previous
page before displaying a new one (a bit like
Etch-a-Sketch&!).
Another major disadvantage is that most electronic ink displays are currently
black and white. Color displays do exist (E Ink produces one called Triton, in
which a layer of red, green, and blue color filters is mounted over
the usual black-and-white microcapsules) and better ones are in development, but they're much more expensive than their
black-and-white electronic paper (or LCD equivalents). In time, we're
bound to have color electronic according to
Amazon's Jeff Bezos, however, speaking in mid-2009, a color Kindle ebook
reader is "multiple years" away: "I've seen the color displays in the laboratory and I can assure you they're not ready for prime time." (Amazon's color Kindle Fire& product, announced in September 2011, uses an LCD display.)
Photo: Night and day, are you the one? Here I've propped a Sony Reader against the screen of a conventional laptop and photographed it in different light conditions. Left: In bright light or daytime outdoors, electronic ink displays are much easier to read than backlit LCD displays, which become virtually invisible. Right: In dark indoor light in the evenings, things are reversed: LCDs are much easier to read and electronic ink displays are a struggle to decipher unless you sit in strong light (or use a clip-on light attachment).
Which electronic book reader should I buy?
Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook, Elonex&which one should you buy? The decision is a little easier than it used to
be now Sony has (regrettably) stopped making ebook readers, though I'd still recommend looking out for cheap secondhand
Sonys on auction sites).
They're all broadly similar: they're all light, portable, and handheld and they all have large internal
that hold hundreds or thousands of books.
S others (like the older and cheaper Kindles) have miniature
. Some have
connections for do others (such as the Sony Readers) have to be connected to a computer with a
cable. If you connect with USB, running an ebook reader is rather like running an iPod or MP3 player: typically you maintain a library on your PC with a piece of software similar to iTunes, to which you add and remove books and other documents. When you plug in your reader, it "syncs" (synchronizes) its internal
with the library on your PC, adding any new books and deleting any unwanted ones. If you have a wireless reader, you maintain your library on the reader itself or in the
(stored on a remote computer somewhere and accessed online), adding and removing books directly. So... wireless or cable?
It's not a big issue, I don't think, though elderly people who have little experience of using a computer may find buying books easier
with something like a wireless Kindle with its built-in, easy-to-use bookstore).
Photo: Horses for courses: Portable versions of the Sony Reader have a much smaller page size than a typical hardbook book. That's great if you want to carry your reader in your jacket pocket or your handbag so you can read while you're travelling. It's much less attractive if you do most of your reading at home: the smaller the screen, the more often you'll need to turn the pages. This is one example of why it pays to think about how you're going to use an ebook reader before you buy it.
Displays and batteries
The best and most expensive readers use extremely high-resolution E Ink screens that work better in daylight than at night
(you'll need good indoor lighting or a clip-on light if you're planning to do most of your e-reading in the evenings); LCD-screen readers (such as the Elonex) have backlit screens that favor indoor use and (like computer screens) can be tricky to read in bright sunlight. Amazon's current state-of-the-art reader, the Kindle Paperwhite, has discreet little LED lights built around the edge of the screen that make a noticeable difference when you're reading indoors in the dim evening light.
E Ink apparently uses energy only when you turn the pages, so the Sony Reader can happily survive for about two weeks of very heavy use on a single charge of the batteries, while the Kindle Paperwhite claims up to eight weeks of battery time. That means it's also very environmentally friendly to read books or documents from a handheld ebook reader compared to reading them on a computer screen.
Some ebook readers can cope with ebooks in all kinds of different formats. The Sony Reader, for example, lets you read Microsoft Word and PDF files, as well as standard formats such as EPUB. The PDF viewer is really neat, allowing you to rotate the screen or scroll documents column-by-column for easy reading. The Amazon Kindle doesn't currently support the EPUB format, but it does allow you to view other file formats such as PDF. You can also mail documents to your Kindle, which is something you can't do on a Sony.
Photo: You can use the Sony Reader in "landscape" orientation if you find that easier, though you have to switch it over manually from the keyboard (unlike with a smartphone, the display doesn't rotate itself). Here I'm reading a PDF file of
by physicist David MacKay. If
matter to you, reading documents on an ebook reader like this might appeal, because it uses a fraction as much energy as a laptop. The text is much more legible than it appears in this photograph.
Finding ebooks
Most books currently produced by publishers are copyrighted, which means you can (and should) expect to pay a fair price if you want to use them.
A decade ago, when I first wrote this article, relatively few publishers had embraced ebooks. Today, most publishers make most new books
available in at least one electronic format, and many sell direct to readers from their own websites, but
they're taking their time making backlist and out-of-print titles available this way.
Generally, it's relatively easy to find new mass-market bestsellers in ebook format but harder to find more specialized books and quality, literary fiction. Public domain classics are the easiest books to find in ebook format, largely thanks to the sterling and visionary work of
(and, more recently, the , which currently
promises over a million free ebook titles).
If you enjoy reading classic novels, buying an ebook reader is probably a no- if you're more a fan of 20th century literary fiction, you'll have a harder time finding what you want in digital form.
Unfortunately, the standard of production for ebooks is noticeably lower and sloppier than it is for
print books: expect to find scanning and formatting errors, missing endnotes, redacted photos (because of copyright issues),
artworks that are blurred or don't display properly, tables that don't fit on the screen, and worse.
It's quite obvious that publishers don't apply the same high editorial and proofreading standards to printed books and ebooks.
Take a moment to send complaints direct to a publisher whenever you find a really sloppy ebook, copy the author in if you can find contact details for them&and be sure to ask for a refund.
If you buy copyright ebooks from either Amazon or another outlet, you'll find they're protected by what's called DRM (digital rights management)&effectively a kind of
that prevents people from
distributing pirate copies of books illegally. Amazon uses its own DRM system, while Sony (and others) use a system developed by Adobe called
(ADE), which requires you to register
your reader the first time you use it. DRM protection restricts what you can do with books you've bought, but it's not necessarily the drawback it seems. First, it's very much a necessity from a publisher's point of view: it's only because ebook readers like the Kindle have DRM protection built in that publishers are starting to take what they see as a major risk in making their books available in digital formats. Another advantage of DRM is that it allows libraries to lend people ebooks for limited periods of time (using systems like
). I'm delighted to find I can log in to my local library and download, for free, for periods of up to 14 days, a fair selection of a few hundred popular ebooks. Once the borrowing time has expired, the books delete themselves automatically from my reader. Be warned that some libraries allow lending only in EPUB and PDF format, and you might not be able to borrow books on a Kindle.
Who invented electronic books?
~3000BCE: Ancient Egyptians make the first
from the stem of the papyrus plant.
105CE: Chinaman Ts'ai Lun develops modern paper from hemp fiber.
~1450: German Johannes Gutenberg invents the modern process of
with movable metal type, which leads to a vast increase in the popularity of books.
1945: In a famous article in Atlantic Monthly called , US government scientist Vannevar Bush proposes a kind of desk-sized memory store called Memex, which has some of the features later incorporated into electronic books and the World Wide Web (WWW).
1968: Computer scientist Alan Kay imagines a portable computerized book, which he nicknames the Dynabook.
1971: Michael Hart launches
at the University of Illinois: an electronic repository for classic, out-of-copyright books.
1990: Sony launches its , a portable electronic reader costing $550 that stores and reads books from compact discs (CD-ROMs). It is a commercial flop.
1990s: Encyclopedia publishers such as Britannica and Dorling Kindersley (DK) experiment with making their books available on interactive CD-ROMs. DK wins many awards for its CD-ROMs, but closes its multimedia business in the late 1990s as competition mounts from the Internet.
Late 1990s: Several new handheld, electronic book readers are launched, including the SoftBook, RocketBook, and Everybook&but fail to make much impact on the marketplace.
2000: Best-selling horror author Stephen King launches a short novel called Riding the Bullet in electronic format and sells over half a million copies.
2001: Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales give the world Wikipedia&an electronic encyclopedia anyone can contribute to.
launches its wireless Kindle reader with thousands of electronic books available in electronic format, along with newspapers, RSS feeds, and other forms of "digital content."
2010: Amazon Kindle becomes Amazon's number one bestselling product, confirming that electronic books (and readers) really have arrived!
2011: Project Gutenberg celebrates 40 years of producing and distributing electronic books.
2014: A report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers predicts ebooks will outsell printed books by 2018, but UK bookstore founder Tim Waterstone argues the market will go into decline.
2014: Sony stops selling its Readers after growing sales of smartphones and tablets cause a major fall in sales.
2015: The Association of American Publishers reports a dramatic reversal of fortune, with a 10 percent fall in sales of ebooks (which still account for only a fifth of the market).
Find out more
On this website
by Alexandra Alter. The New York Times. September 22, 2015. Why has there been a dramatic decline in ebook sales and a resurgence in printed books?
: BBC News, 4 June 2014. A new market study predicts that the British market for ebooks will reach &1 billion by 2018. Not everyone agrees the ebook revolution will continue, as you can see from another BBC story,
, from 31 March 2014.
by Jack Schofield, The Guardian, 15 September 2011. Jack explores the differences between EPUB, AZW, MOBI, and a plethora of other ebook file formats that you might find confusing.
by Mark Say, The Guardian, 14 April 2011. How libraries can lend books in electronic format, thanks to systems such as OverDrive, ebrary, and Public Library Online.
: BBC Click, 27 June 2011. How schools are turning to ebooks, iPads, and cloud computing.
by Spencer Kelly, BBC News, 27 November 2009. A six-minute video review of ebook readers explores the pros and cons of different models.
by Bill Thompson. A thoughtful technology writer sees different strengths and weaknesses in paper and electronic displays and sees both technologies surviving side-by-side for some time yet.
More about E Ink
: Lots of interesting technical information and background.
: E Ink's YouTube channel has some great little videos demonstrating black-and-white and color displays.
by Helmut Kipphan. Springer, 2001. A huge, detailed review covering every printing technology you can imagine, from traditional books to electronic ink.
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