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slavetogravity
Feb 15, 2006, 5:17 AM
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Given the ever growing, ever expanding world of hand held technology, how practical do you think hand held electronic guide books would be? and if they’re a practical notion, how long before we see them available? Of course this hand held device could serve as more then just a portable electronic guide book. It could also be used to view digitally recorded music, movies, serve as a cell phone, GPS unit, you name it.
I envision a device similar to an Ipod, where the user can scroll through images of topos, similar to the photo images currently found in guide books. Moving the curser across the screen the curser would then highlight routes as it crosses them. The user could then click on the route and all relevant information about that particular route would be displayed.
So what do you think? Will the days of lugging around and owning a book shelf full of guidebooks be soon behind us?
The most practice reason I can think of that will make this idea a reality, is it costs very little to create and distribute a CD, where it costs a great deal more to print, publish and distribute books.
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gordo
Feb 15, 2006, 5:27 AM
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Make it happen...you could be the next millionare 8^)
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boltdude
Feb 15, 2006, 5:40 AM
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Actually Supertopo started out solely with online guidebooks (PDF downloads), the idea was to never need to do print guidebooks. The idea was a little ahead of reality though, which is why you can buy print versions these days.
Once devices such as you're describing come out and become cheap and reliable, it's only a matter of time until guidebooks are a thing of the past (except maybe for remote or rarely visited areas). All it takes is people really psyched on an area to create online material, and with large memory portable devices, you'll have pics and beta from all sorts of sources.
Might take a while though - 5 or 10 or even more years before you'll have cheap, reliable, and tough devices (the tough factor might be the crux), and depending on the climbing area, it might take much longer before guidebook companies go out of business. Hope so at least, since I'm a guidebook author...
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foyster
Feb 15, 2006, 6:32 AM
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Call me old fashioned, but I much prefer old school paper in my hand. And there is such a thing as too much preparation, it takes all of the adventure and fun out of it! I'm holding back on a gps unit, cause I love telling those stories where I could've needed one!
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slavetogravity
Feb 15, 2006, 6:38 AM
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In reply to: t's only a matter of time until guidebooks are a thing of the past (except maybe for remote or rarely visited areas)...
I don't know, I think the remote/ rarely visited areas have the most to gain from such technology. Who's going to go through the effort and commit the money to print a book that's only going to be bought by a few climbers? Burning CDs is much cheaper. Hell, I'm developing an area that's small and rarely visited and I'm make the info available online for free on RC.com. Of course the format could be better, but like you said the technology has the catch up to remedy that.
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gordo
Feb 15, 2006, 1:02 PM
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In reply to: Hell, I'm developing an area that's small and rarely visited and I'm make the info available online for free on RC.com. Of course the format could be better, but like you said the technology has the catch up to remedy that.
That's really the key...the device will be like an iPod or eBook device, where the data comes from all sorts of places and will be free for disorganized and cheap for organized material.
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toby_slim
Feb 15, 2006, 1:21 PM
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New palm pilots allow you to view pdf files. However it does not work super effiently on all pdf´s that i´ve tried. But with some optimization it´s doable. So basically the devices are already available but there is no market for the guides in that format since too few people own one.
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gordo
Feb 15, 2006, 1:24 PM
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Good point...the PDF may be the answer. You could already use a laptop that way. The Guidebooks won't drive the need, it will take advantage of it. Things like Porn, video phones, and poratable web will drive the technology!
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mesomorf
Feb 15, 2006, 1:53 PM
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I want a guidebook to come with a database that will show me, for example, all three star climbs, 10a to 10c, in the shade, that I haven't done yet.
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crotch
Feb 15, 2006, 2:19 PM
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I thought this would have already happened to textbooks by now, but kids are still lugging around backpacks full of books instead of a reader and some CDs.
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aaronbr86
Feb 15, 2006, 2:29 PM
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Some textbooks are moving to pdf. In some of my classes I have the option of getting a .pdf of the textbook. This is troublesome in some ways ie. you have to print out problems if you are going somewhere without a computer. The upside though is that it is usually cheaper (along the lines of $40 for a semester) and it has many valuable tools you can access online. Give it a few more years and I think you will be seeing more and more online textbooks. But not to hijack the thread...
Pdf files are great for guidebooks IMO simply because I can print the pages I need or the area I need and they are much easier to transport. It saves me lugging a book around that has 1100 climbs I dont need.
-Aaron
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robdotcalm
Feb 15, 2006, 2:29 PM
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As a guidebook author and publisher, I’ve thought about this a lot. Eventually, guidebooks on a handheld device will happen, but one cannot predict the exact nature of the technology that will succeed. For example, despite backing by large companies, e-books have been a failure commerically—they satisfied a need nobody experienced. On the other hand, the home grown MP3 technology has become dominant (and not just for popular music) despite the attempt of many large companies to suppress it, the technology has made CDs very last century.
When climbingboulder.com went online a few years ago, I thought it would decrease my sales, since for specific routes, it supplied much more information from different points of view than could be placed in a guidebook. However, it appeared to provide a boost for my sales.
At the present time, the audio portion of handheld devices is far superior to visual displays of such devices especially in bright sunlight. Until the visual display is improved, guidebooks will maintain their advantage.
I suppose if somebody had the time and inclination, he could could scan an entire paper guidebook, save it as pdf and then post it on a website. As a publisher, I’d be unhappy with that, but I’m not sure there’s much I could do about it given the small amounts of money involved in the guidebook business and the rates charged by intellectual property rights lawyers.
Cheers,
Rob.calm
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herbaltee
Feb 15, 2006, 2:33 PM
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When I read this I think wifi hotspot on top of El Cap....Instant access to beta 24/7
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chalkfree
Feb 15, 2006, 2:34 PM
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This sounds like the HitchHiker's guide. I'd think that tough and reliable would be the main constraints here. I would never buy something like this that I wasn't absolutely certain wasn't going to run out of batteries, or get crunched in my pack on that chimney. It's pretty good and hard to destroy a book by accident if you keep it dry, but something like a Palm is a whole different story.
Good luck
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robdotcalm
Feb 15, 2006, 2:38 PM
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In reply to: I want a guidebook to come with a database that will show me, for example, all three star climbs, 10a to 10c, in the shade, that I haven't done yet.
I’ve found that in writing a guidebook (I use Adobe FrameMaker)that it was very efficient to mirror the book in an Microsoft Access database, which I wrote myself (such databases are available commercially, but usually cost about $10K). Now with the database, if you asked for climbs with a SW exposure and rated 10b or 10c, the answer would be available immediately with a simple query.
Cheers,
Rob.calm
_______________________________________________________
‘Tis better to have trad and failed then not to have trad at all.
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granite_grrl
Feb 15, 2006, 2:54 PM
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The initial problems would be durability (handle knocks and dampness), affordability (I'm hesitant enough with my digital camera at the crag thinking it could get stolen, or heven forbid, dropped a couple pitches off the ground) and battery life.
But even if these things get resolved I think it would take a long time to phase out the paper version of a guide book. First, a lot of people just like the look and feel of paper, I know I hate reading a computer screen for too long. Secondly, people like to add their own notes in books, tircky to do with an electronic file.
I do like the idea of obscure guides being avaliable, but they could always be published online in pdf version for download.
The only other thing I wonder is the effect on guide book authors. Would electronic publishing help becuase it would lower the publishing cost, or hurt because people will copy and burn files from each other and not actually buy the guide?
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ericg
Feb 15, 2006, 3:29 PM
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The Red River Gorge has an awesome online guidebook that is constantly expanding and is available as .pdf downloads for individual walls. The .pdf's can be put on Palm pilots or anything else that has memory.
Check it out
http://www.redriverclimbing.com/RRCGuideV2/
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lajhanata
Feb 15, 2006, 3:35 PM
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I've got a few on line guidebooks, and they have there uses. I find printing a few copies of a single route or two on alpine climbs is awesome when you don't want to haul the whole book. In bouldering areas where the boulders are far apart, or climbs where you aren't sure a route begins, it's handy to have GPS coordinates too.
At the crag having a bunch of printed pages is a pain though, ditto with close together bouldering fields. It seems the idea of having a digital book for this kind of stuff has a lot of problems, but being able to print at home, stuff your topos in a sandwich bag and go is pretty cool.
Somebody was talking about textbooks and stuff not going digital, but a lot of them have. Probably close to half of the textbooks out there today have some sort of supplemental software. Maybe Guide books should do the same. It ups the price of text books by a third or more, maybe it could do the same for guidebooks. Of course, the more digital these things go, the more bootleg beta there's gonna be...
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aaronbr86
Feb 15, 2006, 3:39 PM
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I have an ipod, a laptop, and my brother has a pocket pc but I dont think I would tote any of these along for a guide (well except maybe the ipod) but I would print out the .pdf's. It cost me $0.06 a page to print documents here, or I go to work and print them for free. If I only need 20 or so pages of the guidebook it will only cost me $1.20. I think thats the way to go.
-Aaron
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j_ung
Feb 15, 2006, 4:05 PM
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Seems like we're waiting more for battery technology to catch up rather than devices.
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crackers
Feb 15, 2006, 4:32 PM
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I think that we're quite a ways off right now from having electronic guidebooks. The capability of the screens just isn't there yet. You have at best .7 megapixels of resolution in a desktop screen, and when compared to the visual density of print it is obvious that the technology is new and far from mature.
I think that it might be the next or next but one generation of screens that finally deliver the resolution necessary to have a really good electronic guidebook. When the screen arrives, i'm willing to bet that it will be a matter of months to a few years before everybody switches. The index just can't compete with a fully functional natural language search.
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weschrist
Feb 15, 2006, 4:52 PM
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Supertopo PDF guidebooks have one huge problem, you cannot do a "search" for routes, etc. They are essentially just scanned graphics and Adobe can't search for specific words in the document (at least mine are that way).
Once this is fixed I can't imagine any reason not to dload the guide book and print off the sections you want when you want them... then if they get rained on you simply go back home and print them off again.
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dingus
Feb 15, 2006, 4:53 PM
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Yes, the prospect of walking around with 50 or 60 pages of loose leaf print, shuffling through them on a windy day and what have you, oh, the joy!
The topo mapping softwares are closer to penetrating reality imo. Amongst peak baggers and high pointers, this software has pretty much taken over. Coupled with sat photos an amazing amount of detail is available.
Know what? The 7.5 minute USGS maps are FAR FAR superior to anything you're going to print off your home printer on 8.5 x 11 format. Field use will demonstrate this like nothing else.
Squinting at a little black berry screen in the bright sunlight, trying to cram as much into into as small a display screen as possible? What are you thinking?
Next you'll be asking for a gps unit on the back of the harness that beeps every time you veer from the carefully crafted waypoint route.
You can have my printed guidebooks and maps when you pry them out of my cold dead fingers. E-bullshit is not the answer to everything.
DMT
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weschrist
Feb 15, 2006, 4:56 PM
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In reply to: Yes, the prospect of walking around with 50 or 60 pages of loose leaf print, shuffling through them on a windy day and what have you, oh, the joy!
wow, either you cover alot of ground in one day (50-60 pages worth) or you have missed the obvious concept of taking only what you need.
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bobd1953
Feb 15, 2006, 4:59 PM
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Dingus wrote: You can have my printed guidebooks and maps when you pry them out of my cold dead fingers. E-bullshit is not the answer to everything.
To a certain generation it is. More play toys and less skills.
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