The Longo Review » Future http://longoreview.com Everything and anything related to books and ebooks. Sun, 28 Mar 2010 04:03:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Longo Review has had a face lift… http://longoreview.com/2010/03/the-longo-review-has-had-a-face-lift/ http://longoreview.com/2010/03/the-longo-review-has-had-a-face-lift/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:53:59 +0000 admin http://longoreview.com/?p=42 If you are a frequent or even infrequent reader of the Longo Review blog you may have noticed that it has gone through a general face lift.  As of this month the tempo of new articles and comments on this website should increase considerably.

I hope you like the new look and continue to come back for more comments on books and ebooks.

]]> http://longoreview.com/2010/03/the-longo-review-has-had-a-face-lift/feed/ 0 MCGRAW-HILL’s CEO confirms iPhoneOS based tablet will be announced tomorrow http://longoreview.com/2010/01/mcgraw-hills-ceo-confirms-iphoneos-based-tablet-will-be-announced-tomorrow/ http://longoreview.com/2010/01/mcgraw-hills-ceo-confirms-iphoneos-based-tablet-will-be-announced-tomorrow/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:15:00 +0000 admin http://longoreview.com.s89472.gridserver.com/?p=23

In a live TV interview MCGRAW-HILL’s CEO confirmed that Apple will introduce an iPhoneOS based tablet device. He also mentioned that MCGRAW-HILL has been working with Apple for quite some time.

UPDATE: I first saw this on Wired and noticed that it was also on MacRumors. In a couple of hours it was all over the net. I guess some people at Apple must be pretty upset by now.

]]> http://longoreview.com/2010/01/mcgraw-hills-ceo-confirms-iphoneos-based-tablet-will-be-announced-tomorrow/feed/ 0 The Climate is Changing… Can eBooks help? http://longoreview.com/2009/10/the-climate-is-changing-can-ebooks-help/ http://longoreview.com/2009/10/the-climate-is-changing-can-ebooks-help/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:27:00 +0000 admin http://longoreview.com.s89472.gridserver.com/?p=19 I love my traditional, paper, books as much as any other book lover does.  Holding a reading device while sitting in a confortable armchair doesn’t really equal sitting in the same chair with a nice, original, book in your hands…

But… Let’s get real about it… We’re in a changing world.  There are too many of us, placing too much strain on our environment.  Our climate is changing and it doesn’t seem to be for the better.  Can we really justify the continued use of paper books when they are not necessary?

Over the past four years I must have purchased somewhere around twenty paperback or hardcover books.  During the same period, I have certainly aquired more than one hundred and fifty eBooks and some ten audiobooks.  While the overall phisical experiece might be different, my enjoyment of the works themselves was not diminshed at all.  In this last month alone I read over ten eBooks and listned to six audiobooks.  

If you haven’t yet started to make the move to electronic, you should try it.   Do your little bit to help reduce climate change by reading in electronic books, using a low power device such as a Kindle, a Sony Reader or on your iPod or iPhone. 

]]> http://longoreview.com/2009/10/the-climate-is-changing-can-ebooks-help/feed/ 0 Reading on the iPhone and iPod and the future of books http://longoreview.com/2009/05/reading-on-the-iphone-and-ipod-and-the-future-of-books/ http://longoreview.com/2009/05/reading-on-the-iphone-and-ipod-and-the-future-of-books/#comments Sun, 10 May 2009 00:46:00 +0000 admin http://longoreview.com.s89472.gridserver.com/?p=12 One of the first things I did after I got an iPod Touch was to install eReader on it. Actually, it might have been the first application I installed, though I can’t be totally sure.

I have been reading books electronically for a long time as I have always been a big believer that this is the inevitable future of books. I’ve read a lot of books on my PocketPC and on notebooks and now that I’ve got some on the iPod I feel we are getting closer to what I used to envision for this technology back in 1997.

Back then I set out to create both an ebook reading and a creation software. I was certain that the future was all about buying books on the Internet and immediatelly downloading them to your reading device. As these devices were not immediatelly available I was writing a PC version of what I though the device should do. It was a lot of fun, even though it didn’t really go anywhere as we were not able to raise capital to really startup the busines.

Still, this early experience, and the fact that I just “believed” that this was the future, made me follow advances in this area closely and made an early adopter out of me. Through these years I’ve always maintained that what was really needed was a device that was light and thin, but that still had a big enough screen to be confortable to hold and read.

The Kindle DX is a step in the right direction, as far as screen sizes go, but it is also a step in the wrong direction in respect to price and functionality. If I am going to carry a device of tha size around and pay that much for it, I expect it to do a lot more than allow me to read.

The iPhone and the iPod Touch are a step in the right direction in regards to the functionality of the device and even in regards to price, but still have a small screen. Now, if Apple only released a Kindle sized device with the capabilities of the iPod Touch we would be just about where we need to be get the masses to really take to reading electronic editions.

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