"What publishing can learn from the iPhone" points in a direction I've been thinking about for a while: we need to lessen our tie to notebooks and desktops when interacting with data.
Part of this equation is Google Gears which allows offline interaction with web applications. When I'm in the store and want to know if I have a particular book in my library, or what that wine was that I enjoyed the previous week but can't quite remember exactly which one it was, I want to have access to the information I need so I can make a well-informed decision. I want to be able to update my catalog at the point of purchase instead of trying to remember to do so later after I get home. Maybe I'm in another city, or traveling. The closer in time I can make all the tasks that go together, the more likely I am to do all of them. Managing data syncing and allowing client-side storage of data enables this.
The other bit of the equation is designing sites that work well in a hand-held format. Now that we have a device that provides a full CSS2 (and some CSS3) compliant browser that looks like a real browser, we can design those sites.
The only thing we need to convince Apple to do is provide Google Gears in their iPhone installation of Safari. This would allow the iPhone to be like a small tablet computer that can store limited amounts of information, even if the network is unavailable.
Before then, though, we have an opportunity to play with the format for print publishing, even if we use public domain works. The iPhone is about the right size to feel like a small book and for the text to be a column of print—comfortable to the eyes and hands. This might be the opportunity to finally bring text to an electronic medium and not remove all of the comfortable aspects of reading dead-tree print.
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