Lot's of press noise the last couple of weeks about textbook organizations working with a small company called ScrollMotion, Inc. to develop e-Books for the Apple iPad. See:

Textbook Firms Ink E-Deals For iPad by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Yukari Kane - Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2010

Also, as previously discussed here, ongoing news about how the iPad format - allowing for more "computer-like" interactivity than a Kindle-like device, is changing the pricing model for e-Books - see:

Hachette Enters the E-Book Fray, Saying It, Too, Wants New Pricing by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2010

And, now, news of responses by the PC Makers, such as H-P, with netbooks of similar or better capability than the iPad. See:

PC Makers Ready iPad Rivals by Justin Scheck and Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal, 18 February, 2010

Something that the education community needs to push for is the use of open standards in e-Textbooks. This is because we cannot have students and teachers locked into a particular type of device or, perhaps most importantly, the online store from which books can be purchased. Unfortunately, one can only assume that ScrollMotion will be the "Apple approach" and lock buyers in. My hope is that organizations such as H-P, Intel, or Microsoft will work with educational publishers to take the higher ground of standards-based offerings. As discussed elsewhere in these posts, the IMS Digital Learning Services Standards (we have already shown how they can be used to interact with e-Books from CourseSmart and higher end online applications from publishers), in combination with other e-Book specific standards, are a perfect match for these types of devices - which are much closer to "computers" than "readers."

- Rob Abel