FAD or future? Booktrack adds music, sound effects for the E-book; Peter Thiel invests

Robin Wauters is currently staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. In addition to its activities, professional blogging, he is an entrepreneur, the organizer of the event, from time to time the Council consultant and an angel investor, but most importantly champion full launch. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found from his home or ... ? Read More

A new startup called Booktrack launched this morning (in fact, the NYT started it yesterday), in an attempt to create a whole new genre of e-books.

Booktrack creates synchronized soundtracks for e-books that aim to "dramatically increase the reader's imagination and participation".

Running technology pairs of notes and sound effects with the text automatically tempo one reading speed. Booktracks can be downloaded for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch and Android applications are on the way. Check Booktrack Bookshelf for books that are available.

The company has teamed up with Sony/ATV music publishing, Park Road Post and full fathom five, and its technology is already fully integrated into the new novel "the power of six", Pittacus Lore (James Frey), published by HarperCollins Children's books.

Booktrack and publishers will share revenue with the participating authors, composers and musicians, the company said in a press release.

Booktrack is based on former PayPal and early investors Facebook (and longtime Board member) Peter Thiel as authors who will cooperate with the company. Other initial investors and advisers Booktrack include Marc d ' Arcy, Director of the global creative solutions on Facebook and Derek Handley, CEO and co-founder of mobile marketing and media company Hyperfactory.

The latter will also serve as Chairman of Booktrack.

Paul Cameron, Booktrack founder and CEO, in a press release compares e books in their present form, with "cinema with not a soundtrack", but I'm not sure I agree with this statement – reading is quite otherwise use the content. I'm not sure the soundtrack makes e-book can be nothing but detract from the experience of reading, actually.

Of course I only briefly tested technology with one Booktrack e books, so I'm not fully made up my mind yet about its potential to disrupt the e book genre.

Wired's Charlie sorrel, for one, thinks the idea stinks. He does a good job, but it isn't (and shouldn't) stop companies from trying, obviously.

In the coming weeks and months Booktrack said he will publish specially curated collection of short stories from some of the best authors around the world, starting in September with "South" of Salman Rushdie. Booktrack release editions of the classics, such as the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the tale of Peter Rabbit, Peter Pan, the three Musketeers, pride and prejudice, Jane Eyre, Romeo and Juliet and more.

I look forward to reading Paul Carr's thoughts on this one.

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E-book Microsoft Reader finish

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He wrote for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts, it would like you to read: the perils of externalization of knowledge | Generation I | Surveillant society | Select two | Frame war | User manifesto | Our great sin his personal site — coldewey. cc. ? Read More

Microsoft officially MS Reader system puts them to sleep. First introduced in 2000, readers of e ink, were more than a twinkle in the eyes of some materials, the application was designed to use e-books on LCD screens, using Microsoft's ClearType font smoothing and relatively compact, familiar format.

.Lit filetype and read-only application received light support, the latest desktop version, appearing in 2007 and last updated mobile, bringing it up to speed with Windows Mobile 6.1. You can't blame them, really; He was never much more than a hobby (e-book were far from big business back then), and they could not have foreseen the hardware advances that would make the Kindle and other popular devices for reading electronic books by default. As so many Microsoft projects, he was ahead of its time, but too little, too early.

How Microsoft plans to consider e-books now is anybody's guess. It's quite possible that with the new look of Windows 7, Microsoft wants to bring in support of the e-book with custom reader. The actual dates of Reader roll-up at any time in the past year, and the group can work on making use of relevant patents and domestic successes do Live or tablet e-reading environment at Microsoft.

Reader development coincided with the first Microsoft's Tablet push, including such things as handwritten notes and highlighting. Palm trees and other had similar features, but Microsoft has thought ahead and may have laid some Nice accessories for their next effort, if it exists. The attractive full-screen application and integration in Windows 8 to offer me that we will see at least something native, if not an attempt to replace the selected ecosystems as the Kindle and Google Books.

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