Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

This is a less traditional panel run by 4 first year MLIS students with a lot of Q&A.  Great format.

Shortcomings of Kindle as etext:

• Bad keyboard
• Only Black & White
• Slow to refresh
• NO page numbers
• Kindel does not support folders and is tough to find texts on
• Fails to play well with others, the web browser bites
• Cant take notes on PDF’s
• Text to speech was turned off due to copyright and to turn it back on you have to go through an non-blind navigation menue. 4 schools were sued not to use Kindel due to the lack of accessibility.
• Amazons  uses DRM through tethering the Kindel to Amazon.
• The browse wrap agreement takes way all users rights.
• You never own the books you purchase
• You may NOT copy, lend or share your books

How should etext be:

• open access to the text, I have fair use rights let me annotate and cut & paste
• no propitiatory formats
• use an open source reader
• add collaborative tools
• Freedom to tinker with and add your own apps or improve the OS
• Sell the etext reader do not license it.

“Tools are made to accomplish our purpose, and in this sense they reperesent desres and intentions. We make our tools make us: By taking up particular tools we accede to desire and we manifest intentions”