The bigger fool

Library Thing's "e-reader" http://www.librarything.com/

In celebration of April Fool's Day, Library Thing.com, a cataloging site for personal libraries, introduced it's own e-reader. The "LibraryThing-e" has all the features of a Kindle or Nook, with the addition of such features as a barcode scanner, a detection feature that "tells you where your reading-nemesis is at all times", and most importantly, casing that feels like old book leather, and that produces a faint book smell.

The introduction to the device is obviously a prank, but like all good humor, there are some underlying statements of truth and contention to the post. The first, and most obvious, is how despite all the awesomeness of an e-reader, there is still no substitute for a physical book, and several of the tangible elements - how it smells, the feeling of actually reading the book - are not emulate-able. 

Another satirical argument comes from another feature - "Though a ground-breaking arrangement with most publishers, the LibraryThing-e comes pre-installed with up to 200 of your LibraryThing books already scanned in; HarperCollins titles are restricted to a 26-page sample."

This comes form HarperCollins' decision to force libraries to limit circulation of their e-books to a mere 26 times before the file becomes permanently unusable, thus forcing the library to purchase a new e-book. Although this decision can be seen as an attempt to offset potential losses from e-book sales compared to physical book sales, it still negatively affects libraries by limiting the amount of books they can provide at a reasonable price.

(For the record, one of the reasons that HarperCollins gave for their restriction is that books end up in very poor condition after being circulated over 26 times. According to a video submitted by a librarian to Boing Boing, that simply isn't true.)

Another interesting "feature" is that the reader integrates many features of the Library Thing site within the reader, such as collection tracking, integration, and comparison via a wireless connection. I suspect this is a commentary on how new devices are becoming increasingly integrated. There's a long-standing joke about how you can do pretty much anything with a cell phone except for make a call, and that sort of functionality, well not being parodied here, is seemingly alluded to.

April Fool's Day has always provided people with opportunities to introduce humor into everyday life, and people in the tech world seem to especially take advantage of it (Google has a particularly lengthy history). It's interesting to see how there is both humor and commentary in it.