eBook Technologies Acquired By Google

Google has just acquired a company by the name of eBook Technologies. What is this place, you might ask? It's a search engine! Oh I got you, good joke. This group eBook Technologies is what appears to be a small company (just judging by the design of the site) that has big potential (just judging by the company that just acquired them), and is aimed at supplying "intelligent reading devices and licenses technologies that enable automated publishing and control over content distribution.

This news comes relatively near news that Google's eBookstore has become officially open for business. As TechCrunch points out, a cached Products page on eBook Technologies homepage appears to shed some odd amounts of light on what Google might want to do with them.

Mentions of distribution technology such as a couple models of physical devices that might be described as eReaders could point toward a future where Google has them create one for their eBook library. On the other hand, seeing as how these devices don't seem to be the prettiest of things and because of the fact that Google's still working on distributing their Google Chrome-based Notebook, (not to mention they're still working on their new library on smartphones,) I and we wager it's more likely along the lines of distribution in the digital sense. Take a peek at the cached page below, having been mined by TechCrunch, of course:

The eBook Technologies, Inc. ("ETI") platform consists of four parts: electronic reading devices (eBook devices) plus their associated UI firmware technology, the "Online Bookshelf", an Internet-based content sales and delivery system (the eBookstore), and eBook content conversion / publication tools.

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Device designs include intuitive controls for managing familiar reading functions including: turning pages, searching through texts, marking up text, and looking up definitions. These "paper book" functions are enhanced by technology: i.e. searching is instantaneous, text mark-ups can be "written" directly on the touch-sensitive screen, marked up text can be erased, and definitions are automatically indexed against a virtual dictionary. The ETI reading device family current includes two models. The ETI-1 has an 8.5" diagonal, full VGA color screen device, Compact Flash® memory, 56K modem and an Ethernet port. The ETI-2 has a half-VGA 5.5" grayscale screen with 8MB internal memory and SmartMedia® card extension, a 33.6K modem and a USB port.

The core underlying firmware used in ETI's eBook device technology is available for license. It consists of the following components: an embedded operating system, a file system, networking infrastructure, a graphics subsystem and most importantly the intuitive ETI reading experience layer. Heavy use of a book metaphor avoids computer-centric interactions throughout the UI, reinforcing the immersive quality of reading and replicating it uncompromisingly within ETI reading devices.

A key feature of the eBook platform and, a breakthrough for both avid readers and professional customers, is the ability to purchase and/or access reading materials anywhere and at any time. Instantaneous access to content is enabled through a built-in modem, USB, or Ethernet connection on the eBook device. Once connected to the ETI eBook Network via the Internet, customers can browse, select, access and optionally purchase eBook content from an eBookstore. In consumer deployments customers can also retrieve any recently or previously purchased content from their own personal "Online Bookshelf". Content retrieved from the "Online Bookshelf" is downloaded to the ETI device which can then be read off-line. Content is delivered in a secure format that can only be decrypted by the specified ETI eBook device. Any proprietary user information, such as credit card and contact information, is securely maintained by the eBook Network.

The ETI eBook Express Manager provides enterprise customers with the core elements of the eBook Network that enable an enterprise to centrally manage the delivery, access, and updating of enterprise content to individual or groups of eBook users. Individual eBook devices can be centrally administered and all content transfers and updates are easily audited.

ETI eBookstore

The eBookstore is a sophisticated ecommerce system for the marketing, sale, and distribution of digital content to eBook customers. With relationships with over two dozen major publishers, the eBookstore is considered one of the leading providers of national bestsellers, popular periodicals, and major newspapers. Also, the eBookstore allows customers to browse, select, and purchase content either directly through an eBook device, a web browser from an Internet-connected PC, an offline Catalog, or through an alternate web e-tailer.

For more detailed information on ETI Network Services and the ETI eBookstore click here.

Content Conversion and Publication Tools

The ETI eBook format is based on an industry standard XML-based markup format (the Open eBook Standard) that ETI founders helped to pioneer. This format is the source format used by most ebook reading systems (for example, Microsoft, Palm and MobiPocket).

ETI offers a content creation and preview tool, to convert existing content and documents into the ETI eBook format. The software runs on Windows and Macintosh desktop systems and is capable of processing text, generic Open eBook texts and Microsoft Word files into device-specific ETI eBook titles. Automated scripts allow for daily, weekly or monthly download to ETI eBook devices as soon as the data is available from the content purveyor.

A server-side component of the ETI publishing tool, provides pagination, compression and encryption functions.

[Via TechCrunch]