Penguin's iPad books get impressive demo showcase

E-readers like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader better watch out; Penguin have just showcased what they plan to do with the iPad’s iBooks store, and it’s looking mighty impressive. All look set to be fully interactive, with sound effects and videos included in certain titles too.

Penguin demoed a whole range of books for all different ages at the showcase. First up was children’s favourite Spot the dog. An interactive picture book, it featured sections where children could colour in a line drawing of Spot with a virtual paint brush, and a section where shaking the iPad would mess up Spot’s room, ready for a bout of drag-and-drop tidying on the touchscreen.

Reference books were also displayed. Dorling Kindersley’s The Human Body lets readers zoom into different parts of the human body, and featured videos of each part working up close. A Paris travel guide was also shown, with a GPS map included, and a built in itinerary app to plan your trip, as well as a virtual post card tool.

The Twilight-style Vampire Academy was a more straightforward novel, but also included social netowrking features. Readers can vote for their favourite vampire from the series, and compare the results online from within the e-book.

Perhaps most interesting of all though was Dorling Kindersley’s Starfinder. By holding the iPad up towards the stars, the tablet’s built in GPS was able to identify each constellation and give details and beautiful expanded pictures of each.

iBooks looks to be taking the ebook experience to whole new levels of interactivity. Penguin’s showcase is exactly the sort of thing that will sell the iPad to those sitting on the fence still, but with no UK release confirmed yet for iBooks, us Brits are left on tenterhooks.

Via: Paid Content