Yeah it’s an add for Ikea but what an ad!
What cracked me up most? “Notice something? No lag. Each crystal clear page loads instantaneously no matter how fast you scroll.” The bookmark feature is fantastic as is the color coded system for multiple users. And the share feature! But best of all, the voice activated password protection feature. Amazing!
On a side note, does anyone know what that red fuzzy fruit in the bowl is?
Please forgive the post today. Monday beat me. Actually, Monday was just fine. The public transit system beat me. I promise tomorrow I will have a review of How Should a Person Be. I’m going to go start working on it now.
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Yes, I’ve seen this — it’s a hoot. The main thing I really miss in e-books is that ability to flick through it. Sure you can page forwards and backwards, but picking it up and flicking quickly through it to see what you might want, or to find something your remember seeing, you just can’t do.
Oh, and the fruit looks to me like the tropical fruit called Rambutan. It’s a bit like a Lychee inside – largish seed and juicy white flesh. You just peel them and go. The hooks on the exterior are firm but not prickly. A lovely fruit that we can buy in our shops here at certain times of the year.
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whisperinggums, yes, it is so hard to find things in ebooks. The search function doesn’t help you when all you can remember is that there was a really good passage about such and such somewhere around the middle of the book. Unless you can remember a specific phrase from the passage your are going to be a long time in finding it.
I have never heard of rambutan before or lychee for that matter. We don’t get fruit like that in Minnesota! It’s pretty even though it looks dangerous.
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You haven’t heard of lychees either? That’s interesting. Lychees – you’ve probably looked them up by now – are also round but just have a slightly rough skin, not the dangerous looking hook. There is another similar one called a longan, with a rather smooth skin. All three are in the Soapberry family. Lychees are easily found here tinned, and fresh in the markets and even grocery stories in summer. Most Australians of my vintage discovered them in our teens through Chinese restaurants. Lychees and ice-cream was THE Chinese restaurant dessert. Anyhow, there are articles for each of them in Wikipedia.
And, oh yes, re search function. Useful enough – particularly for non-fiction or travel books – but not wonderful as you say for fiction. I do use searching quite a bit at the Republic of Pemberley when I’m doing Jane Austen research but that’s a bit different.
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whisperinggums, clearly we are missing out on the tropical fruits in Minnesota. I suspect if they can be found it is only in specialty markets. They aren’t something that can be grown in MN and maybe they don’t ship or keep well? Also I wonder if it is a cultural thing. While there is a sizable immigrant Hmong and Somali population in the Twin Cities, there are even more Latin American immigrants and the state as a whole is culturally influenced by the early Scandinavian and Northern European settlers. So you can find things like lingonberries and lefse and lutefisk but not rambutan and lychee. But I will keep my eyes open, perhaps they will one day make an appearance at the natural food co-op I shop at.
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It’s probably more cultural. I think they do travel reasonably well. They wouldn’t grow in much of Australia and are probably mostly imported (though I haven’t checked that). For the longest time, we could really only get them in cans. But, we do have a large (and growing) Southeast Asian population and that’s what would largely be behind it.
We have far fewer berries … strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries are the most common, with others like young berries, and other blackberry like fruit being available on some specialist farms in our cooler areas.
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So interesting. We are big on the berries as well as cherries and grapes and citrus (though that is not grown in MN). Oh and apples!
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And of course, in summer, we are big on mango, passionfruit, and the like. And cherries in early summer. There’s a big cherry producing region only a couple of hours from where we live. Mangos and passionfruit though are my real love.
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love it! yes, pretty sure that fruit is a Rambutan!
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Helen, thanks for a second on the fruit. Have you had it before?
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Love this ad!
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misanthropologist, isn’t it a hoot?
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This is brilliant. And isn’t it ironic that it has to show us how a bookbook works as if we’ve all forgotten. I love that it teaches you how to flip the pages, and, shows how it is possible to view a few pages at a time. You see, that’s what I miss when eReading, which is just viewing one page at a time, feels so fragmented and disconnected. Remember the flip cartoons we draw by flipping the pages? You can’t do that on a eReader.
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Arti, yes, being able to flip through a book is a marvelous thing and I too miss it in digital books. Flip books! Yes! I remember making them when I was a kid. Hours of fun!
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I love how he pronounces “Ikea”!
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This advert rocks! Good for Ikea. I think that Erghammer is on to something!
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Ian, leave it to Ikea designers to come up with something such a simple and elegant design 😉
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Book Strings, isn’t it great? And I love that there is an umlaut over the first “u” in “guru”
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Ha, ha! So clever! I do love bookbooks.
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jenclair, yes, I think bookbooks are my most favorite thing 🙂
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Now…here is technology I can finally understand! Ingenious, remarkable, enlightened. Perhaps this is the era of the “bookbook” after all. (And don’t you just love Ikea?)
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Grad, I know, right? I do love Ikea and that they can also make fun of themselves
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Heh, most amusing! Boy I am getting old though. How old is the young man talking? He looks like someone glued a beard on a 12-year-old. Next thing I know, the policemen will be getting younger too!
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Litlove, heh, he is a young one, isn’t he? It seems these days that almost everyone is getting younger!
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Love it. Remember this: http://youtu.be/pQHX-SjgQvQ ? Ah, those wacky Scandinavians…
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Isabella, heh, I remember that one! It still makes me laugh 🙂
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That is simply brilliant! There is no more to be said.
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Alex, if all ads cold be so clever I wouldn’t mind that they are everywhere.
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I love the way they created something so evocative of the brand. The one benefit they forgot was the ability to work backwards or even to start in the middle. How Mich more enjoyable than always having to start at the start.
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BookerTalk, aren’t they clever? I think he does mention you can open it anywhere but he just does it in passing and doesn’t make much of a demonstration out of it.
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That’s pretty funny–there is certainly something to be said for the tactile experience! Of course then you have to recycle… That’s quite an invention they have….wonder if it will catch on?! 😉
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Danielle, yeah, I wonder if it will catch on? After all, people are really attached to their digital books 😉
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Very creative and funny! They hit on all the problems with e-books. I especially like the password protection!
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Joan, I suspect there are some avid readers working at Ikea. Isn’t the password protection hilarious?
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We were able to get canned lychee when we lived in MN. I think we found it at the Highland Park Lunds, or maybe Kowalski’s on Grand Ave. Not the same, but definitely a way to try it. Best comparison is a perfectly ripe pear. But better!
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Thanks for the tip Amanda! I live by Lake Nokomis so the Highland Park Lunds isn’t that far from me. Perhaps when I am in the neighborhood sometime I will venture in and see if they have a tin!
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