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CourseSmart Looks Ahead at eTextbooks on Apple's Tablet

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Apr 12, 2001
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The Wall Street Journal reports on eTextbook publisher CourseSmart, which is looking ahead to the release of Apple's much-rumored tablet and is using this week's CES conference in Las Vegas to show off its thoughts on how its content could be offered on the new device.
However, Coursesmart Executive Vice President Frank Lyman has a very different take on the potential of tablet computers for reading. Tablets could include the ability to look at color graphics and integrate other sources of information such as video and outside links, he said.

"The key is that with multifunction devices, you can do more than just read the textbook. You can interact with the content," he said. “It is all about having your textbooks integrated with other tools and resources that you use for learning."
Click to expand...
In order to promote its vision, CourseSmart has developed a preview video demonstrating eTextbook usage on a concept Apple tablet. While the company has no inside knowledge of the device, it has clearly paired its ideas of how the tablet might function with Apple's existing software design aesthetics.



Article Link: CourseSmart Looks Ahead at eTextbooks on Apple's Tablet
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/05/coursesmart-looks-ahead-at-etextbooks-on-apples-tablet/
Wouldn't making books for the Kindle be a better idea?

Honestly, what they are describing sounds exactly like a website more than a book.
 
If this tablet turns out to do everything it's supposed to do I can't wait for these things to replace textbooks, laptops, newspapers and the whole shebang (sp?).

:apple::apple::apple:
 
Levono jumped the gun with the tablet

The "Apple Tablet" has already been released by Lenovo. ;)

It's called the IdeaCentre 300A -- a mash between an oversize iPhone and an iMac.

ideacentre_a300_01.jpg
 
I just got done buying $400 worth of books! Hopefully at the beginning of next school year they'll be on a tablet! :cool:
 
OMG!!! I want a tablet NOW!!! I'm going to waite in line at midnite if I have to. I'm buying 10,000 of Apple's stock right now.

I might even go back to college with this device.

why not Kindle? Kindle sucks! Its device is stone age compare to iSlate. :D

The next step for Apple's tablet is to do something like what Microsoft's Table do. The ability to put a digital camera on top of it and it instantly opens the camera's content or something in that nature with other devices. I would be shock if Apple's tablet does this plus all the features on the iPhone and more. I would buy 100 of these tablet and resell it. :D
 
LillieDesigns said:
If this tablet turns out to do everything it's supposed to do I can't wait for these things to replace textbooks, laptops, newspapers and the whole shebang (sp?).

:apple::apple::apple:
Click to expand...

That's why a lot of people have been expecting TOO MUCH out of Apple's tablet with ridiculous features that probably won't see the light of day. Apple's new tablet is doing to do very much what these tablets at CES are going to do. That's exactly their role until a few years from now, they may expand to other functions. And NO, it will NOT make phone calls which is anti-thetical to the iphone. Apple's tablet will have a slightly different way of interacting with a new OS and input.
 
AidenShaw said:
And hopefully they won't cost $500 as e-books! :eek:
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:eek: That would suck!

One thing I didn't like was that books "expire" lol! If they expire the prices better be pretty cheap! :D

Sometimes I like to keep my textbooks for future reference.
 
Wow!

Such an impressive UI from the client. If the tablet remotely resembles anything like this in regards to interactivity and functionality I'll buy it.

Who cares about price!?! Take my money Apple I don't care anymore. My mobile lifestyle will be complete:

  • iPhone
  • iPod Nano (For working out & plugging into my vehicle)
  • Tablet (Light Productivity, iTunes U, Video Podcast/Movies)
  • MacBook Air (For my programming duties and light photography/video work)
  • ** New Mac Pro with new Cinema displays (For when I need heavy workloads to get finished)

iDisk


:apple:
 
DipDog3 said:
Wouldn't making books for the Kindle be a better idea?

Honestly, what they are describing sounds exactly like a website more than a book.
Click to expand...

Kindle? What Kindle? Monochrome screen? That was 1984. Amazon should've gone color in the first place and that was their big mistake, even though the e-ink, if I understand correctly, makes it easier on the eyes to read.

Website? Um. Tablets are supposed to have web browsers to go online. But interactive magazines with 'hot link' ads are what you are looking at. And much more.

EDIT: And by the way, that video is a demonstrator to portray what is expected from the tablet devices, NOT just Apple only but the market as a whole. It's prototypical in nature. The real deal is at CES to be touched and played with.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Coursesmart can't even get decent resolution for it's current textbooks on the mac so I wouldn't expect anything too revolutionary from them.
 
As an academic I just don't know how that would go. Some advantages, but I really need to be able to use my books in such a way that I can quickly view at least two or even three at a time or in rapid succession.

I am just not convinced about how practical that will be.
 
worthless

I have to laugh about how worthless this design is. In any of my intense classes (Calculus, Economics, Stats) I am constantly flipping back and forth between to and three places in the book and scribbling little notes into the margins. It’s natural, intuitive, and it flows with my learning process.

Compare with what they propose. Want to flip around to look at an example of page 10 for a problem you’re solving on page 15? It’s simple! Just click on the bookmark access screen, then after the preview for each page loads, simply use the coverflow interface to find the reference bookmark. Then simply click on the previewed bookmark and wait for the page and its graphics to load. Then, simply visually scan the formula on the page and use multi-fingered gestures to zoom on the formula. Simply repeat this process to return to the page from which you started. Repeat infinitum. It couldn’t be simpler!

Yeah, how long would it be before I flung my device at the wall? Ten minutes?

And how about “you can add your own notes!” only, since the keyboard is represented on the screen, using it requires your locus of attention, thus making it useless for taking notes during class.

Face it, there are certain natural interfaces that cannot be digitally replicated, and textbooks (especially technical textbooks) fall within that domain.
 
AidenShaw said:
And hopefully they won't cost $500 as e-books! :eek:
Click to expand...

It honestly wouldn't surprise me. More and more the new editions are nothing more than rearranging figures and the layout to screw up the pagination relative to each edition. Sometimes they move a chapter or two. Then there is the obligatory moving of review questions if the teacher assigns them as homework, making it so he has to give out question numbers for multiple editions (no, they don't change the questions, just the number). It is more likely for a typo to survive an edition increase than the page number.

It has really become quite predatory how each edition is nearly incompatible with the last, forcing everyone to have to buy the new one if not everyone can get the previous edition.
 
All I can do is shake my head...kids these days have it so much easier than we did. Any they don't even know how good they've got it.
 
I really need to be able to use my books in such a way that I can quickly view at least two or even three at a time or in rapid succession.

I am just not convinced about how practical that will be.
Click to expand...
Well...buy three iSlates then, you cheap bastiage! :D
 
Michael73 said:
All I can do is shake my head...kids these days have it so much easier than we did. Any they don't even know how good they've got it.
Click to expand...
+ 1,000

Thank God somebody said it! LOL I can remember going to the library to check out a book I really needed for a report only to find that somebody had already checked it out and I had to wait days for them to return it! I can remember waiting months to see a single movie on television. At least it was easy to find said movie because there were only 4 or 5' freakin channels!

Eh...these youngsters will never understand how good they have it. How could they?
 
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