Our friends at CodeMeetPrint alerted us to an announcement that Amazon will be distributing the Queen’s Christmas address as a free Kindle eBook on December 25^th.

Thanks to a Wodehouse inspired youthful Anglophilia, I’m a casual fan of the royal holiday address, most particularly George’s VI’s eve-of-WWII 1939 broadcast which he concluded with the quote, “I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year / Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. . .” (always gives  a chill) – but for Vook, Amazon’s plan to release the eBook version is bigger than the Royal Family.

The bookification of the Queen’s speech is a royal-crest-in-the-ground and rampant flag for why eBooks will become such a prevalent content form in 2024 and beyond.

eBooks ship fast. You can create and inticingly package content like the Queen’s speech—and deliver it the same day. It’s what we’ve been saying for months, highlighting efforts like the LAT and NYT’s eBooks, free eBooks from daily email businesses and Vanity’s Fair titles. Now the Queen’s onboard: In 2024, everything can be an eBook. They’re the information rich packaged Web pages of the future — only easier to read on mobile devices.

And Vook’s going to be the Dreamweaver of eBooks — the interface that lets you make better and better experiences.

Here’s proof. While I’ll happily download Amazon’s speech eBook, I wish I could read it with the video or audio of the address included. It’s not like it’s hard to do — I just made my own eBook of the Queen’s first televised speech in 1957, and included the video. Consider it a holiday present from Vook—and a demonstration of where eBooks are going next year.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE EBOOK EPUB FILE.

If you click this link on your iOS device or Color Nook, the eBook will automatically download and open in your iBooks or Nook reader.

And for all of you who are or who want to create eBooks, may Vook be your code-free WISYWIG light in 2024 to guide you through the unknown of div classes, page breaks, ePub 3 and KF8!

Last night I attended CodeMeetPrint at General Assembly where Findings, Projeqt, Urtak and MagAppZine (now MAZ) presented and sat for a Q&A. The last time I was at General Assembly for a presentation, Steve Jobs died—so happily this time I remember the products and the entrepreneurs. Here’s a wrap-up of what we saw. The pitch lines are mine, and definitely not company endorsed.

Findings:

Like Instapaper meets highlighting in Kindle

I’ve liked this company for a while. They allow you to highlight and save your favorite quotes in Kindle books and on the Web. You can collect and share key excerpts. It takes the Kindle highlighter feature that next important  step. A quietly innovative and valuable service; exactly what you’d expect from a Betaworks company.

MagAppZine:

Apple Newsstand apps with no coding required

The presentation highlight was founder Paul Canetti revealing he landed beta clients by cold-calling 100 magazine companies – technology is crucial but that commitment makes a businesse successful. MAZ (Canetti announced the rename that night) has an easy to use tool for app publishing through Newsstand that incorporates PDFs into an iOS container. The PDFs can also be enhanced with rich media links.

Urtak:

Two men’s epic battle against Internet commenters, waged through Platonic dialogue

Urtak’s co-founder Marc Lizoain shaped his presentation more as a jeremiad against Internet commenters. You can read his take in this article, but what’s impressive is the solution Urtak’s built for better communication on blogs and the Web—a Yes/No Question & Answer widget that shows high engagement rates that won’t dissolve into flame wars.

Projeqt:

The Power Point killer app

An initiative from TBWA, Projeqt has more institutional heft behind it – and they’ve used their resources to craft a beautiful and engaging new way to create and share presentations. It could be a Web-app power point killer, it could be a Web-app HTML 5 book app killer. I didn’t realize til halfway through the presentation that the slides I thought were a gorgeous lead up to the product demo were in fact the product demo in action. It looks like a way anyone could create an excellent Web reading experience right now. I might be missing something, but this one feels pretty revolutionary.