Telegenisys

GizmoCrunch writes: The Google eBook ecosystem will be accessible to smartphones, tablets, PCs and even web browsers, leaving it open to the majority of the public unlike other alternative such as Amazon store’s eBooks which mainly run on the Amazon Kindle only.

The truth is actually the reverse. Amazon’s Kindle apps run on iPhones, iPads, Android phones and pads, PCs, Macs and other smart phones. Amazon’s advantage is that their technology is based on HTML and so reflows naturally on all platforms while Google’s PDF based technology deals poorly with reflow and so tends to require pan and scan reading on smaller devices.

In spite of using PDF for storage, Google Books runs inside browsers and so is supported on a few platforms that Amazon has not bothered to write Kindle apps for, like Linux desktops.

If Google had gone for EPUB instead they could have claimed the high ground on platform coverage, but as it is there is a difference between being able to read a book on a platform and being able to read a book comfortably on that platform.

The New York Observer writes that Electric Publisher is offering a new alternative for e-book publishing. That is the e-book as a stand alone app.

This is of course not all that new as e-books as applications were offered long ago in the age of floppy disks.

Google Editions Allies with ABA in Ebook War vs. Amazon, Apple

Readers will use their Google accounts to purchase the books directly from Google, whose Google Checkout system will serve as the payment platform.

This is the point that seems to being overlooked by the media. The real battle is between the consumer’s iTunes account and their Google account. Apple and Google own their customers in a way that Amazon can’t match.

Cisco is attempting to avoid a direct comparison with the iPad by targeting their Clus tablet as a vertical market platform.

“Cius is aimed at markets in technologically transitional stages, such as education and healthcare.”

The advantage of not having thousands of “cool” apps for your platform is that the worker bees will be less tempted to use them for non-work activities.

As PC World notes, the first video enhanced ebooks “are similar to special features you’d find on a DVD.”

Pity that Amazon’s own devices can not support the rich content they can offer on the iPad.