Adobe Systems Inc. this week announced its second major move in the e-book market in the last five months as the multimedia software vendor looks to build a consortium to take on Amazon.com Inc. and its market-leading Kindle e-book reader.
On Monday, Adobe released Adobe Reader Mobile 9, which improves the way smartphones and handheld devices display books and other documents that use the open PDF format created by Adobe.
This is the initial data from a Deep Log Analysis study currently underway in the UK. The study analyzes the clicking behavior of ebook users, and then places that data into context: do people go to the brick-and-mortar library, or stay home? How long do they spend reading the books or articles? This report captures the results of 20,000 e-book users in the UK between January and May, 2008.
"If one clear consensus emerged from the studies that have been finalized at Princeton University, Case Western Reserve University and the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, it is this: For students who were given the Kindle DX and tried to use it for coursework, the inability to easily highlight text was the biggest lowlight of the experience."
NYT asks:
Do schools need to maintain traditional libraries? What are the educational consequences of having students read less on the printed page and more on the Web?
* James Tracy, headmaster, Cushing Academy
* Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, English professor, University of Maryland
* Liz Gray, library director, Dana Hall School
* Nicholas Carr, author, "The Big Switch"
* William Powers, author, "Hamlet's BlackBerry"
Comments indicate strong belief in the importance of books