Ebook 98 Tech Notes

Electronic writer Eileen Buckholtz continues her Electronic Book '98 follow-up with more notes from the workshop.

During a session on Intelligent Electronic Notebooks, Rich Lysakowski from CENSA (Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Association, www.censa.org) talked about new environments which are becoming a source repository for recording lab data and observations: Records archiving will be the major challenge beyond the Year 2000. More records were generated in past 10 years than in all prior human history. Archiving and migration of information are driving market evolution.

For some applications like collection of official test data for scientific studies, 98% of information is in electronic form but it has to go to paper to be an official record. This will change according to Lysakowski.

Matt Howard from PARC/Xerox shared their research on a Gyricon display that has paper-like qualities. It's thin 0.12 to 0.4 mm, flexible, reflective with a wide viewing angle, low cost, low power to write, no power to store. It uses Bichromal spheres cast

in elastomer. These spheres are dark on one half and white on the other and rotate in an electric field. This technology may find it's way into the next generation of electronic books and have a wand to literally print text on the page. Neat!

Christina Lampe-Ounerud, from Arthur D. Little presented news about advances in portable power using polymer electrolyte technology. These new batteries provide ultimate efficiency in packaging without heavy steel cans, and provide power much longer. In the future new advances will see batteries for laptops lasting over 300 hours instead of 3 or 4.

Evelyn Sasmor, Director, Online Publishing McGraw-Hill discussed the publishers editorial role of selection, editing, presentation, marketing, and distribution in an online environment. They've had success with putting books online as "Beta Books" where potential customers could read and comment on sections of forthcoming titles. Copyright protection and authenticity of content were also of concern. The authenticity issue is especially important with titles such as Harrison's Online Medical Reference.

Carol Risher, Vice President of Copyright and New Technology Association of American Publishers discussed the Digital Object Identifier. Many thanks to ebook author Eileen Buckholtz for sharing these notes with us!

Make sure to check out Buckholtz's new book, "Y2K Run to Save Your PC from the Year 2000 Bug" at http://www.y2krun.com.

Glenn welcomes your comments at glenn@ebooknet.com.