(2012-01-27) Flow Open Source Interactive Textbook Builder

The first interactive marine science Text-Book for the IPad is called Cachalot (French for “sperm whale”). It’s a free, app-based book that covers the latest science of marine megafauna like whales, dolphins and seals with expert-contributed text, images and open-access studies. Through an Open Source digital publication system called FLOW, the book also offers students Note Taking tools, Twitter integration, Wolfram Alpha search and even National Geographic “critter cam” videos. FLOW isn’t the first or most feature-rich publication tool, nor is Cachalot the slickest interactive textbook on the market (a market in which Apple just announced its interest). But DavidJohnston’s title is an easy-to-update, “good-enough” product that didn’t require millions of dollars and years of effort to create and manage. A cadre of Duke University computer science graduates, in fact, built the platform in one semester on a $5,000 budget.

Seems like the "InterActive" bits are mostly supplements for which you could just link out to the Web Browser (from an EPub reader). And I don't want my Note Taking integrated into a single book or book-platform (Loosely Coupled).

Duke University’s open-source effort represents a departure from InkLing and other commercial ventures. It sacrifices a wide offering of interactive features, monolithic downloads and wow-factor in exchange for simplicity, speed and flexibility. As new scientific knowledge enters a field, a leading academic could make a quick edit in FLOW to instantly and seamlessly update a student’s textbook. Books In Browsers!