Recommended: yes

Eragon got some stick because the plot so closely mirrored Star Wars and both of the previous books have taken their fair share of flack about the lack of originality.

I’ve enjoyed the series, though the books are a little childish, but Paolini was only young when he started writing them (and is still only 26) and the books have matured with him, tackling more complex issues with each one.

Likewise, there were only going to be three originally. It has expanded to include a fourth, upcoming, book, and so has changed from a trilogy to a ‘cycle.’

Brisingr is a fairly hefty book, but it’s a nice read, nothing too heavy of slow. One thing you have to admire is the scale of story. While the overarching plot has been known for a while, you didn’t get much scope of this vast conflict that has consumed the whole land, but Brisingr opens it up.

That’s not to say this is classic fiction, but while it might not stand next to the great fantasy epics, it has eclipsed most with it’s reach and that’s because the characters are engaging enough and it offers some home comforts (familiar races, etc) mixed with enough new things (for most of us) to keep it interesting.

11 Mar 2010

I’ve read a couple of posts about e-book pricing of late. The latest was from The NY Times, which has a decidedly US slant (as you’d expect), but previously was one from the BBC. I’ve written about this before as well, and stated that the three things that are stopping e-reader and e-book adoption are:

• Price
• Availability
• Interoperability

So let’s take a quick look at each.

Price

Yes, as stated in the NY Times article, there probably isn’t as much saving over print versions as we all imagine. So consumers need to be realistic. On the other hand, when I can buy a paper copy cheaper than the electronic one, you know things are off. I don’t care if you put the price of the printed versions up (well, I do) but e-books must be cheaper than a paper equivalent. So when the hardcover is out, it should be cheaper than that, and when the paperback is released, it needs to drop in price to be cheaper than it. Simple.

So how come, over at Waterstones the hardcover version of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol is £9.79 and the eBook (as they state it) is £13.58? And that’s in a 30% off eBooks offer as well. I’m sure there are some arguments about competition, maybe the publishers don’t want people to buy the electronic copy. For electronic sales to kick-off though, that should be at least the same price (you could argue it’s immediately available so this offsets the relative extra cost). It’s not limited to hardcover/new release books either. Angels and Demons is available for £4.79 in paperback (two different versions) but is £6.54 for the eBook.

Now take into consideration that you can’t loan the electronic copy (sometimes you can, but only if allowed and only if your friends have a compatible reader) and you can’t sell it on when you’re done as you can with a physical copy and electronic copies fall behind again.

So, the price needs to be below the cheapest available paper copy.

Availability

Amazon doesn’t even list e-books for sale, though the likes of Waterstones, WHSmiths and CoolerBooks do. What you’ll find is a relatively tiny range limited to brand new blockbusters and cut-price classics. Typically the female-dominated crime sector doesn’t do too bad, but anything else is missing so much you’ll easily find gaps. None of the Harry Potter books are available in electronic format by way of an example.

You can’t even guarantee all of an author’s back catalogue is available. Taking Dan Brown as an example again, three of his five novels are available (The Lost Symbol, Angels & Demons and Deception Point) but not the best selling book of all-time: The Da Vinci Code.

To make matters more interesting, some stores have different versions (not different formats) of the same book. CoolerBooks has three versions of Angels & Demons listed, two at £4.86 and one at £5.56, I’ve got no idea what the difference is.

Interoperability

Which brings is on to interoperability. Amazon’s Kindle uses its own format, CoolerBooks has a whole page dedicated to the formats available. WHSmiths talks about four different formats but Waterstones seems to stick with one. Which one is compatible with which reader? No idea.

MP3 is currently the standard for online shops selling music downloads. Not because it’s the best format, far from it, but it works on the widest range of hardware. As has been shown before, proprietary formats don’t work and eventually consumers will force a winner. PDF and EPUB seem to be winning the format war, so I expect the Kindle to start supporting it soon and, whether it’s the best or not, so we’ll eventually end up with a standard.

Whether that works on all the hardware is another matter (because of DRM). As seen in the music industry, the DRM will be subverted soon enough and so they might as well drop it now. That would drop this barrier so at least I can take my eBooks with me and read them on whatever hardware I choose to buy.

Is that it? Is that all that is holding back adoption of e-books? No, the hardware is not there yet either, but it’s coming. Wholesale adoption, especially by those who read the most, is probably help up by availability the most. More books need to be available before it becomes viable to switch.

Incidentally, when do we get to drop the hyphen? E-book, eBook, ebook? We’ll get there eventually.

1 Mar 2010

The ever-excitable Jason Bradbury has posted a written and video review of his experience playing with an early prototype of Microsoft’s much anticipated Project Natal gaming interface (check out the videos on the Natal YouTube channel here).  I’m not much of a gamer, though Natal does hold some interest in the same way the Wii does, by breaking gaming away from controllers.  I’m up for games where I can control the movement as if playing the the real world.

So from that perspective it excites me, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  If the gesture and voice recognition is as good as they allege it is we could be looking at a game changer for human-computer interaction.  We really would have a Minority Report-style interface.  For normal interaction it’s probably less important (voice commands and gestures have limited use at your desk, and keyboards are as fast if not faster than writing, dictating would be good, but too noisy and public), but imagine it for interacting with almost anything else.  Voice commands or gestures would work great for watching TV (‘increase volume’, ‘decrease volume’, ‘change to BBC 1’), no more hunting for the remote.  What about browsing through online stores, reading books, playing music, mixing music would be great with gestures.  Google’s Nexus One phone has shown voice recognition has come on recently, imagine dictating notes, text messages or emails to your computer (I still think there’s an issue with privacy and noise to overcome though).

Gestures would work well for some things on your computer too, how about adjusting the volume by using a volume dial gesture and just rotate up and down to increase and decrease?  Combine that with some augmented reality and you have a universal interface for controlling anything.  Look at the thermostat control and options would be displayed, then just tap the virtual options without getting up.  Then you could even design your own interface instead of having to put up with whatever the designer thought was important.

That’s just the direct interaction element too.  The demos have the system recognising objects and colours, perhaps more, so the implications for passive interaction are big too.  It could identify the book you’re reading and download related material or suggest other authors, maybe read facial expressions and select music to match your mood, or identify when it’s getting dark and offer to switch on the lights.

Maybe MS are doing a better PR job than the others, but I don’t seem to have seen this from anyone else.  If the technology is as good as they lead us to believe this could have an impact a long way from just games consoles.  Microsoft could make an exponential leap forward in game and general technology interface design if Natal does debut before the end of the year as planned.

23 Feb 2010

Recommended: yes

I obviously forgot to put up a review for this book. This is the fourth book in the Septimus Heap series I’ve read (you can find links to the reviews of the others on the Reading page). My memory of it is rather vague as I read it some time ago, but from what I remember I felt it was better than its predecessor, Physik. Having said that, it wasn’t a complete return to the form of the earlier books.

That’s not to say that the book isn’t enjoyable, it’s still a good read filled with some interesting ideas. It still seems to meander around and then finish a bit too abruptly though. I also think that the series lacks a good strong villain.

20 Feb 2010

I thought this sort of thing was limited to storylines in books by overly paranoid others, but where you hear about how a school used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home you have to worry.

18 Feb 2010