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Sad to see. This was the only promising execution of ebooks for the tablet age, and Facebook is where it goes to die? I know they probably got obscene amounts o

Sad to see. This was the only promising execution of ebooks for the tablet age, and Facebook is where it goes to die? I know they probably got obscene amounts of cash, but it is still disheartening to see innovations swallowed up by decidedly non-innovative companies.

schrototo 15y ago
While I thought Our Choice was a pretty snazzy product, and I think it's a shame that they're discontinuing work on their publishing platform, they did have a somewhat conservative approach to ebooks. No selectable text, "interactivity" that was pretty much limited to embedded videos and charts, and so on. What made it special was the incredibly "fluid" interface, meaning there wasn't a single button or control, you navigated the book purely by touching what you wanted to move and it worked like magic. But there's lots of other ways books can be done in a digital format. For one really excellent example look at Inkling [1]. Now that's revolutionizing a medium (in this case textbooks). [1] http://www.inkling.com/ http://www.inkling.com/
- ilovecomputers 15y ago
  Push Pop's first publication did have a novel interface, but it was fundamentally no different than what we are used to. It was a book with other forms of media embedded within it. I can get behind Inkling being revolutionary because it seems to me (focusing on their Social Learning feature) that it is closer to Vannevar Bush's vision of the memex. It is like the memex[1] in that it is taking advantage of the interactivity and social capabilities of current tech to create an interface that better matches the way we learn. The way we learn indirectly from others via books (where information is frozen and up to you to learn from it) and the way we directly learn from each other (mainly communicating about a topic in a conversational manner). [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think
endergen 15y ago
Have you seen Inkling? They're doing amazing stuff in this space.

schrototo 15y ago

While I thought Our Choice was a pretty snazzy product, and I think it's a shame that they're discontinuing work on their publishing platform, they did have a somewhat conservative approach to ebooks. No selectable text, "interactivity" that was pretty much limited to embedded videos and charts, and so on. What made it special was the incredibly "fluid" interface, meaning there wasn't a single button or control, you navigated the book purely by touching what you wanted to move and it worked like magic. But there's lots of other ways books can be done in a digital format. For one really excellent example look at Inkling [1]. Now that's revolutionizing a medium (in this case textbooks). [1] http://www.inkling.com/ http://www.inkling.com/

ilovecomputers 15y ago
Push Pop's first publication did have a novel interface, but it was fundamentally no different than what we are used to. It was a book with other forms of media embedded within it. I can get behind Inkling being revolutionary because it seems to me (focusing on their Social Learning feature) that it is closer to Vannevar Bush's vision of the memex. It is like the memex[1] in that it is taking advantage of the interactivity and social capabilities of current tech to create an interface that better matches the way we learn. The way we learn indirectly from others via books (where information is frozen and up to you to learn from it) and the way we directly learn from each other (mainly communicating about a topic in a conversational manner). [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think

endergen 15y ago

Have you seen Inkling? They're doing amazing stuff in this space.