The Postmodern Book

I've been playing around with tk3, which is authoring software that allows you to create - with very little fuss -- functionally deep and content-rich e-books. I myself used the tk3 software to create an e-book of the first year of my daughter's life. It was a simple, little book that included photos, text, a few annotations, a couple of links and some short videos shot with a digital camera. However, the potential for this software is much greater than that.

In fact, for me its greatest potential is in education. Even teachers with limited computer experience can use it to make "personalized" textbooks for their classes, textbooks that can include audio, video, photos, weblinks and text in a single, simple interface. Students can use tk3 to create media-rich, interactive projects on topics that range from the personal to the political and beyond. For the reader, Tk3 has a powerful set of built in functions that allow you to highlight, annotate, bookmark and otherwise deface your book as you see fit and as fits your particular learning style.

But even more exciting is that a group at USC is creating an open-source sequel to tk3, a sequel they call Sophie. I've been having some trouble finding out exactly when Sophie will be made available (The original, proposed timeline suggested the first version would be out this August). As an open-source sequel, I assume it will be available free for download, ala Firefox (although "open-source" and "free" are not necessarily synonyms).

In any case, I will be tracking the development of Sophie very carefully. But in the meantime, I recommend that educators, artists and writers with a high-speed connection (and all the people looking for a way to create a different kind of family album) go to the Night Kitchen's website and download the trial version of tk3. You can also download the tk3 reader for free and download sample books (click on the "education" section at www.futureofthebook.org) created using the tk3 authoring software.

Perhaps Dave can create an e-book version of his new book?