For those who've waited for a more interactive e-book to surface, here it is: Vook. The company, founded in 2008, has created a new platform, blending stories with video and social media to create what they bill as a new reading experience.

 It looks pretty cool.

 So far, Vook has partnered with publisher such as Simon & Schuster and HarperStudio to provide cookbooks, exercise guides, self-help and even a romance novella by best-seller Jude Devereaux. They all incorporate the text of a traditional book, with video interwoven, much as photos are used in a traditional bound book. Even better, you can connect with the author and other readers using either the same Web browser, if you're reading on your computer; or the same application, if you're using your iPhone or iPod Touch.

I'm not sure if this platform would suit every book -- for instance, I'd prefer to imagine my own characters and settings in my fictional favorites -- but in the case of cookbooks, biographies and historical texts, actual footage used to enhance the text is a great idea.

Can you imagine how much more exciting learning about World War II or the Berlin Wall coming down would be for high-schoolers if they could watch the events as they occurred? Or mix in some Bill Nye-type to explain why physics really isn't as boring as every student thinks it is.

 Sometimes, technology really is exciting.