August 9, 2009

I wake up with an interesting idea.


      Every once in awhile I wake up with a new idea.
      The effect when I announce this at the breakfast table is predictable. Women begin to weep, cats howl and dogs crawl under the table. But on the morning of December 1, 2007, for some reason it was different.
      The idea was elegantly simple. It was the possibility of a new web-based media which might be termed the
neobook.

      Everything that the interesting new Kindle was, it wasn't.
      It turned state-of-the-art computer technology and web transmission away from an effort to replace the classic on-paper storage format, and around to a simple reinvention of book costs and distribution.
     
It might be sponsored by the same advertisers who sponsor conventional saturday morning kid TV shows and cartoons.
      But the content would be completely different, and could put free books into the hands of every child in the world.
      The promise of the idea was irresistible.
      And now, after almost two years in development, the concept has become the new Kids’ Book Network.
      Welcome to KBN.