My response to a discussion on eBooks, on a trawler board (12/1/2006)
Here's what I am doing, which is somewhat similar:
I've found that many people carry laptops these days, with wireless connectivity.
I'm building a new boat now, and am building an onboard intranet that anyone onboard can access via their laptop, using a wireless connection.
At the center of the system is a 2 terabyte network server (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=144&categoryid=25). My plan is to load up the server with anything I think our guests, or ourselves, might be interested in.
Definitely going onto the server are:
- Digital editions of as many nautical magazines as I can find. For instance, I bought from www.zinio.com all of the old issues (and current issues) for Cruising World, Power Cruising and others. I wish that Passagemaker were available in some electronic format!
- I will put a lot of eBooks on the server, but am not yet convinced people like reading on their computers. The magazines make sense, because this makes it easy to treat them more like a reference database, easily looking up all the articles on wherever we're cruising next. I will certainly put online EBook versions of any books I can find on marine electronics or diesel engine repair.
- All technical information I can find on all the systems on the boat.
- All the cruising guides, light lists, etc I can find in digital format
- Charts
- Searchable digests of the various nautical message boards
- Web pages showing data collected from the onboard monitoring system (http://www.palladiumtechs.com/)
- Anything else I can find in digital format that I think might be fun for our guests
I'll be putting up a simple web-page based intranet, so that anyone with a laptop, and a wireless connection, aboard the boat, can find fast access to what they are seeking. Note: To users of the network, it will feel like they are accessing this information via the web, whether we happen to be connected to the internet or not.
I'll also have a separate server holding DVDs and music CDs (http://www.kaleidescape.com). The server for the DVD and Music is expensive, but the other server, that I'm using for the magazines, charts, etc is very inexpensive -- around $1,100. Of course, it would be infinitely cheaper and simpler to just have piles of magazines in a bookcase -- but, there are lots of things in boating that could perhaps be accomplished simpler and cheaper via some other means (like moving from point a to point b). My hope is that I can create a cool enough interface to all this information that it makes it fun and efficient to surf through all the content.
Perhaps this is all a bit over-kill, but our plan is to circumnavigate, and we will often have no access to television, or a fast internet connection.
-Ken Williams
Nordhavn68.com |