TUAW just ran a piece about the rumor that Apple might announce an iBook creation tool on January 19. Normally, I’d wait for the event and blog about real announcements but I’m bored today and want to write.

It makes perfect sense for Apple to bake in iBook creation tools into iOS, whether as a stand alone app or export features in Pages or iOS. It would be even greater if they provide a one-click submit process for publishing to the Apple Store. Of course, this would result in a surge of low quality books in the store and lead to even more publishing of stolen IP, which is difficult for Apple to keep a close check on.

While Apple do profit well from their closed content systems, such a move would contribute to the democratization of publishing. This is also the event where they’ll announce their moves into textbooks for education. It’s an event worth following.

Apple is about to announce moves into the textbook sector of publishing. I’m very interested to see what they deliver. Although I have several Kindle books (admittedly being read from my iOS devices), I much prefer the iBooks interface (at least on said iOS devices). In digital publishing, textbooks are more problematic then plain text books. Ironically, textbooks have much more than just text. They need tables, charts, diagrams, pictures and in digital editions they might even have audio, video and interactive media.

I think a good solution to educational textbooks and reference books will enable the complete break from paper print. And why do I think this is necessary? Books kill trees.

Unless someone can develop a material that behaves and feels like paper (I imagine something grown with bacteria), then we have to accept that we must give up paper print books. There are not enough trees in the world (natural growth or farmed) to support enough paper books for everyone to have reasonable access to textbooks, let alone other non-fiction and fiction.

Paper printed books are a social and environmental injustice.

This was not the case when the Gutenberg Bible was first printed. At that time the situation was quite the opposite, at least socially. Paper printed books were a social justice.

There are at least two strong counterpoints here.

Paper books are nicer. No argument there. They definitely are. That’s why Amazon invested so much in the electronic ink display on the Kindle. We are creative creatures, and printed books are art. In fact, printmaking is considered a fine art by some. It might be a stretch, at least for now, to argue that digitally published works are fine art.

The electronics industry is far from environmentally or socially friendly/just. This recent report by oekom research highlights that the consumer electronics industry has the worst labor practices of any industry. And the environmental impact of the consumer electronics industry is a given.

Both good points. So, is it a case of the lesser of two evils? Seems to be, at least for now. Here’s to hoping that environmentally and socially friendly and just print and digital products are not far away.

Good article summing up some recent discussions on the tech blogs about human rights and Internet freedom. First, there’s the notion that access to the Internet can’t easily be defined as a human right, instead the Internet can easily be seen as an enabler of human rights. Second, are the two ideas of Internet freedom, which amounts to contesting censorship, and freedom via the Internet, which means online freedom leads to offline freedom. Click through for the full article. I’m just an interested reader.

Think I’ll start a series of posts mentioning websites that are blocked by the Great Firewall of China (GFW). Of course, there’s plenty of websites dedicated to this information. I’ll just mention the ones I want to visit for which I have to use a VPN to jump the GFW.

Today’s featured websites you can’t access from the glorious mainland are:

Mashable. Probably indirectly because of their focus on such social media as Facebook and Twitter, and regular coverage of how social media is used in activism and protest around the world.

Star Wars: The Old Republic. Inexplicable. No idea. The game itself runs without needing a VPN. As does WoW and numerous other MMOs. The approach towards gaming in China is pretty irregular. There are laws in place aimed at keeping people away from some kinds of gaming, presumably so “vulnerable” people will instead focus on becoming the engineers and scientists the country “needs”. You can’t legally buy gaming consoles in China and many popular local online games are forced to implement penalties on players who spend too much time online. There definitely is a higher instance in China of gaming and Internet addiction but I don’t believe it is a major civil issue requiring legislative controls. Some parents just need to get a little more involved and interested in their child’s life. Given the current one child policy, development imperatives and parenting culture, I can fully sympathize with the few young people who want to escape into the free and open spaces of an online game where they control their destiny.

To be continued…

I’m on a little blogging spree today. Binge blogging isn’t very disciplined and not good practice, but the combination of a day off and kicking back in a great coffee shop to catch up on news is making me a little more vocal than usual.

Apparently, a lot of people think the future will be all tablets and smartphones and the like.

I’m writing using the WordPress app for iOS on my iPad 2. In fact, for almost three months, I have done everything from this iPad and my iPod (as I’m holding out for the iPhone 5). My Linux netbook, while being a beautifully configured and fully capable system, is collecting dust on the shelf. I have been using these two Apple devices for everything—reading news (Reeder), research (Safari, Wikipanion), writing and sharing documents (Pages, CreatePDF, Dropbox), preparing and presenting classes (Keynote), student records (Numbers), communicating (Skype, Facebook, QQ, Foursquare), and games (Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Real Racing, Deep Green). For real productivity I whip out the Bluetooth keyboard.

I must admit there’s one exception. The monolithic black box sitting on my desk at home is needed to run SWTOR. Except for that one gaming vice, I am almost completely decoupled from traditional “PC” devices. Now, I don’t want to categorically say that I’m an Apple fanboy, but I haven’t seen my Android tablet friends (of which I have plenty) achieve the same level of productivity exclusively on tablets and smartphones. And they are geeky and competent enough to use their devices to their full potential. Instead, I typically only see them using their Android tablets and smartphones for Facebook, reading websites and showing off useless apps that they think are cool.

I have two pages (screens) of apps on this iPad with no app groups. That’s just 18 non-Apple apps. My iPod has 40 but less than half are used regularly for productivity, communication or entertainment.

Well, I have to also admit to using the desktop to run a video streaming client (so I can watch foreign film and TV in China), and the occasional music or video torrent. Plus, as I’m holding out for the iPhone 5, I carry a cheap LG mobile for text and calls. If I wanted to get back into web/app development or media, I would of course need something like a MacBook. But, I’m an average content consumer/creator with typical professional digital needs.

Perhaps, in the not-to-distant future, I will have one device to rule them all.