Pocket PC eBooks Watch - eBook and beyond  
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Exclusive Interview
Palm Digital, You Are No Betamax
Here are exclusive Pocket PC eBooks Watch interview with Peter Fry and Lee Fyock from Palm Digital Media (was PeanutPress)
Q: 1. What do you think of Multimedia eBooks? Will Palm digital media moving toward that direction?
Peter: I can see all sorts of great title becoming available. From children's books with animations to Text-to-Speech for the visually impaired, computers add the ability for authors to break free of the printed page. We have begun looking at adding these features to our book making process, but we don't have anything to announce yet. :)
Lee: Multimedia eBooks are fun, but they aren't books. They're something else. Authors are not (generally) artists, producers or directors. For example, even paper books have had the ability to include pictures for quite some time, but most narrative fiction titles do not.
Some reference works gain greatly by the inclusion of non-linear and multimedia content, but for straight narrative fiction, I see text as the implementation method for the foreseeable future.
The best examples of interactive multimedia eBooks that I've seen are the Living Books series. Check out "Just Grandma and Me" at www.broderbund...asp?OID=4142150&SC=0120056015

Q: 2. You get a lot of praised as one of the most desirable DRM solution for the clients side. Have you ever found any case on cracking the security of your ebook?
We feel that, as long as we continue to offer good books with an easy-to-use DRM, our customers won't feel the need to crack our format.

Q: 3. Palm had been used by many students, will the Palm eBooks will support complicated tables, graphics, that will be required by student text book soon?
With the desktop versions of our Reader we are now looking at adding feature support for books that are intended for larger screens. All of those features will be added eventually, but for now we're concentrating on Palm and PocketPC screens, and books that we call "immersive reading".

Q: 4. Lastly, one time in a seminar, I discussed about Palm format vs. MS Reader format, one of the audiences compared them as Betamax (Palm Digital Media) vs. VHS (MS Reader). Do you think it is a fair comparison? Are you going to keep the exclusivity of your format for Palm Digital Media store only or are you going to spread them to conquer the market share?
Peter: No, BetaMax lost. :^) We've licensed our DRM to OverDrive (www.overdrive.com) and Lightning Source (www.lightningsource.com) and very soon our DRM will be available at most of the online bookstores. You can purchase books using our DRM from WHSmith (ebooks.whsmith.co.uk) already.
Lee: In addition, we support more OSes and more devices than the Microsoft Reader does. That puts us much more in the "VHS" camp than in the "Betamax" camp.
Fictionwise just announced the availability of over a thousand eBooks in Palm Reader format -- http://www.fictionwise.com/. Our format is spreading far and wide, and that's the way we like it. :-)

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