Ebooks: Apple will be the one to beat.
I'm on an email thread with some colleagues talking about ebook readers (Kindle, Sony, Nook, etc.) and social reading services like copia (http://www.thecopia.com). And as promising as a lot of this is-I love every bit of this because it's heading in a direction I want reading and publishing to go: more ebooks-to me, Apple's iPad looks like the device to get.
I've gone through a few generations of iPhone-the original, 3G, and I currently use the 3GS. I love the Kindle app for the iPhone. I’m also a fan of eInk and have used Sonys and Kindles for several years-love the paper-like experience of the tech.
I haven't used an iPad yet-I just ordered one, but I already think eInk's days are numbered.
Apple's really done something here with the iPad. Here's what every other ebook reader vendor is up against: color, clarity, brighter, bigger screens with support for full length video, superior audio, ability to plug into full sized TVs and projectors, WiFi and 3G access to the largest media channel-audio books, movies, television, podcasts, indie content-and ebooks!, not just annotating but full word processing, video editing, and presentation capabilities built in, 150,000 existing apps, a device that’s ready and adaptable through app development with the largest developer community of any mobile device. I can't see any ebook reader effort coming close to what the iPad seems to promise, except maybe a better name.
As far as the social reading side, the Copia thing, I think that’s an even steeper climb than the device market. The major social nets like Facebook already provide the groups, apps, linking, twitter cross-posting, commenting and content creation tools for readers-and all the authors and readers are already there, registered, friending, communicating. Who's up for joining a new community on the ground floor? Unless copia is radically different or focused in the way that Mendeley is different, focused on providing community and content services for academic and corporate researchers, I can't see it taking off.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
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