I used to get very excited about flexible displays like this one, regarding the future of newspapers: A Warning to LCDs – Watch Your Back, AMOLEDs are Coming.
Tag: e-paper
Plastic Logic E Book Reader Video Tour and Hands On – Gizmodo
Another step toward electronic paper: this Plastic Logic prototype has a working touchscreen.
Plastic Logic E Book Reader Video Tour and Hands On – Gizmodo
Amazon.com: Scobleizer: The Kindle Store
“It’s risk free—all Kindle Blog subscriptions start with a 14-day free trial. You can cancel at any time during the free trial period. If you enjoy your subscription, do nothing and it will automatically continue at the regular monthly price.” Funny st
The word Kindle makes me think of burning books
All branding aside, the oncoming launch of Amazon’s e-paper device essentially begins the practical discussion about e-paper in earnest.
Books are a neat trick, but I’m pretty exclusively thinking in terms of the future of newspapers here.
Things to pay attention to:
- EVDO: This device has ubiquitous Internet access when in cell range. That’s good. Obviously, any cell phone with a data plan has the same thing, although I’d argue the iPhone handles the user interface for news better than many other devices at the moment.
- DRM: The e-books (which users will be able to by at $10 a pop from Amazon) will be in a proprietary format, not based on an open standard. Start thinking now about what newspapers will do as devices like the Kindle improve enough (read as: get lighter, less expensive and better-looking) to get a solid adoption rate going. Will your paper (or company) charge users for a Kindle subscription and encode the pages so they can only be read on a set number of devices? (Think iTunes-style DRM.)
- Price: $400 isn’t that bad. I usually see sub-$200 as a spot where mass adoption becomes possible, but $400 is halfway there. Remember when DVD players cost $400? Me neither, because it wasn’t that way for long.
- The wider Web: It’s not clear from what I’ve read so far if the Kindle has a browser built in, but it clearly has some sort of Web access. That’s smart, and necessary. There’s something weird going on involving paying to subscribe to blogs in a feed reader, but the question for news organizations will be whether to make it easy or hard for users of future e-paper devices to get off their reservation and out to the Web.
- Hackability: Given the recent history of the PSP and iPhone, I’m going to take a wild guess that the Kindle will be hackable, and that users will do interesting and unexpected things with it. That’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.
And a red herring to ignore:
It’s ugly. Seriously. Instead of looking at it directly, try to imagine a device with similar funcationality, but thinner, with a flexible screen, and fewer buttons. That’s what it will look like in, let’s say, four years.
The Future of Electronic Paper – TFOT
And the past, too. An interview with an early e-paper researcher from PARC.
The Future of Newspapers – The Dilbert Blog
Whoa. Dilbert is as into e-paper as I am, it seems. I knew we were thinking alike these days.
Foldable, bendable battery made from paper developed – International Herald Tribune
And here’s the power supply for the e-paper of our futuristic dreams. Next?
Foldable, bendable battery made from paper developed – International Herald Tribune
YouTube – Sony’s flexible, full-color OLED
Video of the demo. Lots of questions about how long it lasts, costs of the OLED materials, viability of mass production, but that’s one sexy demo.
Razor-thin TV screen you can wear as a T-shirt | the Daily Mail
Hello, full color flexible video display. I’ll take mine with wifi and a USB port, thanks. via Digg.
Razor-thin TV screen you can wear as a T-shirt | the Daily Mail
E Ink’s blueChute bluetooth enabled e-ink concept – Engadget
Bluetooth e-paper. It’s starting… at least in prototype form. How long until this is a flexible wi-fi (dare i say wimax?) e-ink tablet? 10 years? 5?
E Ink’s blueChute bluetooth enabled e-ink concept – Engadget