Back to the Future… with the e-book

In a move that would seem appropriate to the Hollywood move title “Back to the Future”, e-book technology is moving forward by moving backwards. For some psychological, emotional, or yet to be determined reason, we find the old printed book format appealing. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we had such an exposure to them in school so, we are now emulate that successful paper and ink approach.

Unlike the e-books of a few years ago, today’s e-books are doing a great job at emulating the old paper and ink features. MS Reader offers a reader optimized page size, great highlighting, note taking, and bookmarking. MS Reader is enhanced by ClearType which makes reading MS E-books much more comfortable than this page.

Another great format is Xplanabook. It has many of the features of MS E-books and is not so format restricted.

Here is more on e-books. The new formats might make a real difference in your next project and they are really easy to produce. They do have a place in “Rapid E-learning”.