April 2008: Go ahead and flip the pages, whether of a newspaper or the latest glossy company report.

No, don’t do it with real paper – it’s so wasteful and you kill trees. Do it on your screen with an E-Book reader.

Visually, the reading experience is little different from holding a paperbound copy, except you can store everything neatly on your folders in your hard disk.

E-Book Systems, a Singapore-based software publisher, has seen its so-called book-flipping application used extensively by companies and publishers who enjoy the ease and economy of putting their content as computer display rather than the messy, expensive approach of printing on paper.

Last month, the Today newspaper (the freebie paper that you see stacked up outside MRT stations) becomes one of the latest to use E-Book.

After three months of development, vendor E-Book Systems and MediaCorp Press (publisher of Today) now offers EasyReader, a software platform that presents the newspaper that is virtually like real paper.

A major advantage of EasyReader is its offline access. Users can download the latest TODAY Digital Edition onto their notebooks to read on the go.

Another application using the browser is in annual reports, such as Max Capital Group’s 2007 report (picture).

Reading content on computer screens is painful to the eyes and numbing to the brain. This “unnatural” way of on-screen browsing motivated E-Book Systems co-founder and president, Dr Ho Seng Beng, to search for a more natural, more restful way to display information.

Understanding the aesthetics of the printed book and the sense of thumbing through a book volume, the former university lecturer turned entrepreneur helped found E-Book Systems in 1998.

The company’s core product is a book-like interface for a more positive on-screen reading experience.

The proliferation of electronic documents on the World Wide Web has led to a need for faster reading on screen.

E-Book Systems capitalized on this growing trend by offering its flipping platform. Its services also include document conversion (i.e. converting printed pages to electronic) and helping customers to customise their content.

Dr Ho mentions that E-Book Systems has worked with some of the best in the digital publishing industry such as Anchor Publishing which launched an e-lifestyle magazine (available in the on-line version) for the urban male called “Espresso” in 2007.

“We want to bridge the disparity between print and online publications and combine the best of both worlds with a familiar and easy to use creative presentation coupled with interactive viewer/reader experience,” says Dr Ho.

“With E-Book Systems’ Digital Flip Technology, we are able to bring life to digital content with its ability to integrate multimedia, and display it in a realistic 3D page flipping interface.”

The company’s main product, the FlipViewer Xpress, features an intuitive page-flipping interface that lets you turn pages, rapidly skim content and go directly to a certain page number — just like reading or browsing through a printed publication.

While you are reading the current page, the next few pages are streaming into the PC, so there is no lag time when you “flip” to the next page. You can immediately visit the publishers’ or advertisers’ Web sites by clicking on links on pages and advertisements inside the digital publication.

The latest version of FlipViewer Xpress can incorporate text, images, animation, sound and video into a single media-rich document. Offering Flash object support, FlipViewer Xpress allows the publisher to embed Flash interactive movies or animated advertisements in the FlipBook.

There is a DRM licence management control which has several levels of user permission to prevent data theft.

You can also share a digital book with a friend via e-mail. Your friend can simply read the book using a standard browser without installing any software.

Mr Akira Kamei, COO of E-Book Systems in Japan says initially people in the publishing industry were negative to FlipBook. “But after observing and using the FlipBook, many editors and creators have responded positively. The strong Digital Rights Management (DRM) functions also reinforce their conviction that their intellectual property rights are being protected”.

Adopters of the technology include publishing houses, trade magazines, retailers and media owners.

E-Book Systems also offers publishing tools to companies who want to convert printed publications into its digital 3-D page-flipping format. Customers include Pearson Scott Foresman, Softbank Japan, FHM Germany, CNET China, M2Media 360 and Max Capital Group.

If your company is thinking of using the Digital Flip Technology for newsletters, publications, and catalogues, it will cost you above S$500 for the licensing fee.

Publishers using FlipViewer include Singapore Press Holdings for MyPaper, Eastern Publishing (trade publishing) and Golden Dragon Publishing (lifestyle magazines).

Retailer customers include Carrefour Singapore for its online promotions brochure.

E-Book Systems is gearing towards the expansion phase and hopes to be listed by 2010. In the next few years, marketing efforts will be steered towards deeper penetration in existing markets like US, China, Japan, Korea, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

Article extracted from Infocomm Singapore Portal