Two weeks ago at the online O’Reilly Tools of Change con­fer­ence, I closed a pre­sen­ta­tion on eRead­ers with a dis­cus­sion of the Microsoft Courier, a dual touch-​screen dig­i­tal codex. In the­ory, Microsoft will be bring­ing this 7” fold­ing com­puter to mar­ket some­time next year. What excites me about this device, in terms of eRead­ing, is the poten­tial for new inter­ac­tions with a text. One obvi­ous option is to actu­ally read an eBook in codex for­mat (as we would a tra­di­tional “paper” book). How­ever, that’s not really par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing, nor does it nec­es­sar­ily take advan­tage of the real poten­tial of this sort of device to cre­ate rev­o­lu­tion­ary new forms of reading.

How might the sec­ond screen enhance read­ing? I’m not sure, and I haven’t had a chance to really wres­tle with that. But we can look to the exam­ple of the Nin­tendo DS portable gam­ing sys­tem. A key fea­ture that dif­fer­en­ti­ates it from the Playsta­tion Portable(PSP) is the inte­gra­tion of a sec­ond, touch sen­si­tive screen, into game expe­ri­ence. Given the pos­si­bil­i­ties that opened up, we shouldn’t be sur­prised if sim­i­lar things hap­pen with read­ing when we add a sec­ond screen. But, in order for that to hap­pen, some­thing else needs to occur.

Beyond the Courier’s inno­v­a­tive form, it has another key advan­tage over exist­ing eRead­ers – it’s a soft­ware devel­op­ment plat­form. I can’t go out and down­load soft­ware to run on a Kin­dle. This means that the way we read on it, and other eRead­ers, is restricted to how their design­ers imag­ine we should read on them. While I trust Ama­zon to be experts at deliv­er­ing con­tent to the device, I don’t asso­ciate them with inno­va­tion in terms of read­ing; nor do I look to Apple or Microsoft (or Google… more on that in a sec) for that matter.

Just as mod­ern print­ing was started by an run-​of-​the-​mill gold­smith in Mainz¹ , I think that a truly rev­o­lu­tion­ary form of on-​screen text inter­ac­tion is prob­a­bly going to be cre­ated by a pro­gram­mer that nobody has ever heard of (maybe a mem­ber of the Open Pub­lish­ing Lab). In order for that to hap­pen, eRead­ers need to be able to have Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Kits and run third party soft­ware.²

Bot­tom line, beyond price point and color, at the con­fer­ence I said the future was mul­ti­ple screens and open soft­ware devel­op­ment. Why didn’t I buy a lot­tery ticket that day??!! Since the con­fer­ence, three new eRead­ers have been either hinted at or announced that all fea­ture dual screens. And, if I’m read­ing the tea leaves right at least two of those will sup­port third party software.

Each of the units fea­tures one eInk dis­play and one LCD dis­play. Two are tablet for­mat with side-​by-​side dis­plays. The third is a codex like the Courier. And, per­haps most inter­est­ing, if the rumors are true, all three will run Google’s Android Mobile OS.

The first reader, and the one we know the least about, is the just announced Barnes and Noble Nook. It fea­tures two screens and runs, accord­ing to Giz­modo, Android. Giz­modo, an indis­pens­able web­site for stay­ing on top of tech devel­op­ments, also ran the fol­low­ing “leaked” ren­der­ings of the device. And at $259, the same price as the sin­gle eInk screen Kin­dle, Ama­zon should be con­cerned. The Nook adds a num­ber of new fea­tures includ­ing unique abil­ity for users to lend eBooks to friends. For a full com­par­i­son, see Barnes and Noble’s com­par­i­son of the Nook to the Kin­dle.

The other two read­ers were announced this week. The first of these two is the Spring Design Alex eReader. Like the B&N model, it’s a tablet with neigh­bor­ing eInk and touch sen­si­tive LCD screens. And, based on the press release, it’s def­i­nitely run­ning Android. Also, like the B&N reader, it fea­tures tele­phony net­work­ing, via a GSM chip which means that it can access the web in the US and Europe. Spring Design also says that it will have expand­able mem­ory via SD cards. The sim­i­lar­ity between it and the B&N device, in terms of fea­tures and form fac­tors does lead one to won­der if there might be an OEM agree­ment between the two companies.

The final eReader is the enTourage eDGe™. The eDGe is a codex design which folds down to 8.5” x 10.75” x 1” (approx­i­mately the size of an aver­age hard cover) with side-​by-​side sen­si­tive eInk (sty­lus) and LCD (touch) screens. It will be expand­able via USB and SD card and will have audio and video play­back capa­bil­i­ties. Unlike the pro­posed Microsoft Courier, it doesn’t have a cam­era. And another big dif­fer­ence, like the Alex, it’s run­ning Android. It’s also $490, which means that it has a tough road to hoe.

From a brief bit of research, there’s noth­ing float­ing around the web to sug­gest that Android is opti­mized for dual screen dis­play. In fact, the only other dual screen Android device I was able to find is a Russ­ian cell phone. That said its a free, open, wire­less plat­form and oper­at­ing sys­tem. It does every­thing a device needs to act like a com­puter, uses lit­tle power, and sup­ports end­less out­side devel­op­ment.³ And that final point is the most impor­tant for this story. Android is, with­out a doubt, a soft­ware devel­op­ment plat­form, which, in the­ory means, that all of these devices should be able to run third party soft­ware. And that pos­si­bil­ity of open­ing up soft­ware devel­op­ment means that we may be approach­ing the next phase in the devel­op­ment (tip­ping point per­haps) of eReaders.

There’s also another take­away here. In a mat­ter of a few days, Android has become a major plat­form player in the eReader space. If I was Apple or Microsoft⁴, I’d be tak­ing notice at this point. If these third party com­pa­nies pull it off, Android will have offi­cially expanded beyond mobile phones to other hand held devices. Like­wise, if I was Ama­zon, I’d be a bit con­cerned as well. The Kin­dle is a closed plat­form, whose pri­mary appeal is based on an easy, one-​click buy­ing expe­ri­ence – not nec­es­sar­ily a read­ing expe­ri­ence. All of these devices are inter­net enabled, mean­ing that it’s entirely pos­si­ble that they could bring a sim­i­lar one-​click expe­ri­ence to shop­ping for read­ing mate­r­ial. Cou­ple that with poten­tially rev­o­lu­tion­ary read­ing expe­ri­ences and we could have the mak­ings of real Kin­dle killers.

Time will tell. And this should def­i­nitely make for an inter­est­ing Tools Of Change con­fer­ence this Spring!

1. sorry Guten­berg, but its true [↩]
2. At the time I pre­sented, the Plas­tic Logic reader, just renamed the Que, was one exam­ple of an com­ing eReader that was sup­posed to have an asso­ci­ated Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Kit. [↩]
3. Thank you to Evan Schnittman for remind­ing me of what makes Android such a entic­ing mobile devel­op­ment plat­form. [↩]
4. It’s some­what ironic that Android’s expan­sion to other mobile devices comes at a time when Microsoft is rebrand­ing its mobile plat­form as phone only. Though to be fair to MS, appar­ently the Plas­tic Logic Cue will run Win­dows CE. [↩]