Slashdot Mirror
Sony To Launch E Ink-based eBook In April
Holly Gates writes "Sony will launch an ebook based on E Ink technology in Japan in late April. The screen is about as big as half a paperback book and has a spatial resolution of ~170ppi. The device includes various edictionaries and audio playback functionality. I am a hardware engineer for E Ink by the way, but I figured slashdotters might be interested." An anonymous reader notes that it is supposed to "display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."
That's a marketing department gone bad.
"display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."
;)
:(
I wonder how fast you have to read then
OK, I don't know what the hell E-Ink is
"display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."
Great! Now I don't have to recharge my batteries in the middle of War and Peace!
Setec Astronomy
Basiclly an electronic newspaper is a self-contained, reusable, and refreshable version of a traditional newspaper that acquires and holds information electronically. (The electronic newspaper should not be confused with newspapers that offer an online version at a Web site.) The near-future technology - researchers expect to have the product available as soon as 2003 - will use e-paper (electronic paper) as the major component. Information to be displayed will be downloaded through a wireless Internet connection. A number of versions of the future technology are in development, although there are two frontrunners: Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is working on a newspaper that would consist of a single sheet of their e-paper (called Gyricon), while Lucent, in partnership with a company called E Ink, is working on a multi-page device (also called E Ink).
interesting times for sure.
CBDS
free ipod and free gmail!
enjoy the look and feel of paper while enjoying the benefits of modern electronic distribution!
Can it run OS/2? =)
It seems that no matter what I try, I have a time time absorbing and retaining information from e-books. Something about reading off a screen as opposed to paper just seems to shut off a part of my brain or something.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
supposed to display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries.
Hell, I can display trillions of pages on my 486 laptop.... unfortunately they're only on the screen for a microsecond each...
...is an eExcellent eIdea to the eExXXtreme.
iI agree.
Good viewing in direct sunlight (or so they claim) might make this the first ebook platform worthwhile. The only problem is, if it costs more than $200 it will probably be a tough sell. I can get a lot of books (especially used) for that, and not have to change to batteries. But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device. The biggest question in my mind, is just how much support are publishers going to give this thing? Judging from ebook platforms of the recent past, probably not much.
of having this device even though its half the size of a paperback it is still bigger than your average PDA?
I HATE THE GNAA. VERY VERY VERY MUCH
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Goddamn.
... fucking... chosen.. Plain Text mode then had to rechoose the mode. I fail it.
I would have made it in time, even before the SCO troll, IF i hadn't
BTW, The site is /.ed badly. Can't fidn the google cache either.
Nothing to see here
"The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper."
by far, thats my biggest complaint with handhelds (palms, etc). The screens are so hard to read in the daylight. Infact, the black and white palms seem easier to read in the day light than the color screens.
Also, phillips rollable display Amazing!
This sounds far more cumbersome to me than clicking my bookmarks every morning when I come in the office...
Can I bum a sig?
Boy are you wrong!
japanese idols are hot hot hot!! *pant*
The screen is about as big as half a paperback book..
WTF? with 3 replies, the page is already slashdotted. Now I'm in total fucking torture because I can't read the article to find out the dimesions of this friggin thing.... half a paperback... what the????
Can it display PDF's? Lack of PDF support is the only thing that stopped me from buying one of the current Ebook readers.
Tokyo, Japan , Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 24, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI), Sony Corporation(NYSE: SNE) and E Ink Corporation announced today the world's first consumer application of an electronic paper display module in Sony's new e-Book reader, LIBRIe, scheduled to go on sale in Japan in late April. This "first ever" Philips' display utilizes E Ink's revolutionary electronic ink technology which offers a truly paper-like reading experience with contrast that is the same as newsprint.
The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper. Its black and white ink-on-paper look, combined with a resolution in excess of most portable devices at approximately 170 pixels per inch (PPI), gives an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet - newspaper. Because the display uses power only when an image is changed, a user can read more than 10,000 pages before the four AAA Alkaline batteries need to be replaced. The unique technology also results in a compact and lightweight form factor allowing it to be ideal for highly portable applications.
Sony's e-Book reader LIBRIe, the first device to utilize Philips' display solution for enhanced reading, is similar in size and design to a paperback book. LIBRIe allows users to download published content, such as books or comic strips from the Internet, and enjoy it anywhere at any time. LIBRIe can store up to 500 downloaded books.
"In today's mobile world, we know that the quality of the experience and ease-of-use are important in driving consumer adoption of mobile devices. Up until now, consumers have been less willing to adopt e-reading applications because of poor display quality on cumbersome devices," said Mr. Yoshitaka Ukita, General Manager, e-Book Business Dept, Network Application & Content Service Sector, Sony Corporation. "This display solution provides a level of text clarity comparable to paper. Combined with our thin, lightweight device design, this novel e-Book reader offers users an enjoyable experience and the freedom to access material at their convenience."
"While the way people experience entertainment has changed dramatically with the rapid growth of portable entertainment devices like music and movie players, the way people read books, magazines and newspapers has not," said Jim Veninger, general manager, Emerging Display Technology, Philips Electronics. "The precision of this new high-resolution electronic ink display technology will revolutionize the way consumers read and access textual information."
The commercialization of this revolutionary display technology is a result of a strategic collaboration started in 2001 among E Ink Corporation, Toppan Printing and Philips together with Sony. Over the past 3 years, the four companies have made significant developments in manufacturing the world's first high-resolution electronic ink-based display module designed specifically for reading-intensive applications.
E Ink Corporation supplies electronic ink to their manufacturing partner Toppan Printing, who in turn processes the ink into a thin film called frontplane laminate. Philips integrates E Ink's frontplane laminate with an active matrix backplane and adds the driving electronics component. Philips works with Sony to co-develop and customize display solutions for innovative mobile devices.
"E Ink is thrilled that our first commercial launch is in product by Sony", said Russell Wilcox, president of E Ink Corporation. "Since the inception of our Company our goal has been to change the way people receive and view information. The strength of our partnerships with Philips and Toppan Printing has helped to make this dream a reality."
The longstanding partnership has resulted in more than 100 patents between all of the companies in a wide range of innovations including chemistry, electronics and
Reading books from a computer screen is not as good/enjoyable as from paper. So, this is definitely a step in the right direction.
I get most of my books from the library for free, and I don't read newspapers, so I am not sure that I would be willing to pay for one of these, no matter how cool they are.
BTW, it should be called Enk.
"display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."
How many dirty magazines does that total?
Since the last deploymenty of e-ink (the billboards), I eagerly awaited smaller implementations. It seemed like the billboards were just a proof of concept, since each pixel was quite large-- not suitable for computer diplays. However this looks like it will be really big (backwards pun not intended).
I hope I'm not being hasty in saying so long to luminescent displays. It certainly will be strange reading from a moving, reflective display, but I think it'll be much easier on the eyes, and well excepted. Kudos to Sony, and I hope other OEMs adopt quickly.
At 170 dpi, it will be a bit of a strain for my eyes. It looks interesting but I'll wait for at least 300 dpi.
The near-future technology - researchers expect to have the product available as soon as 2003 - will use e-paper (electronic paper) as the major component
Wow, I can't wait for 2003 to get here so I can try this out...
oh wait...
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
I am a hardware engineer for E Ink by the way
And the sysadmin just blocked all P2P ports, so I'll get him back this way.
"See how you like a good ole slashdotting, bastard!!"
I've been noticing Amazon carrying many more ebooks lately. The prices for the books are pretty nice too.
I've tried reading off a Palm or laptop and it just doesn't work. A nice high contrast device would be perfect.
The bottom line is this device needs to be cheap.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
I've been waiting for a device that I could use just to read information off of. My big complaint is that it will most likely be sold for $200-$400 instead of $50-$150. For $200-$400, I'd rather get a PDA. But if they could get these things under $150, then they'd sell like crazy. Actually, this tech could help PDA's increase battery life.
opps! sorry, I was in such a hurry on my submission since I know about this (a friend of mine works for E Ink) that I missed that typo, that should have read 2005. I'm still signing cheques with 2003!
CB(f&)
free ipod and free gmail!
I would be the first to say that I would rather hold a book than one of these.. but with the ability to search entire books you've read, I don't care how weird, or uncomfortable it may be, I would buy one of these to just load up old books I have already read and have them available for search. Amazon.com's search inside a book implimentation is rather weak, and doesn't cover all their books, maybe in the future when you buy any book it can come with a password to download its contents to your E-Ink reader. I know some things like this are available now, but not for all books, certainly not Foucault.
Holly Gates? Holy shit, they found a female engineer reading slashdot.
I will have to buy one of these eInk books to support supposebly real females in the field of engineering.
I work in law. One of the big advantages paper has over online databases is that you can easly flip pages to see what the next batch of entries are. Now when this thing can display say ten or twenty pages at a go, then it'll have some use.
The article is more about the display hardware - which could be neat. Its success depends on the operating system, and how books are sold and stored.
All the DRM-enabled e-book devices (Rocket) and formats (Palm reader) introduced so far have failed. No one wants to buy an e-book that is tied to a specific bit of hardware, or one who's access disappears if you lose your Passport account (MS Reader). Some devices won't even *permit* unencrypted data.
I hope that the designers realise that. Actually, the designers probably do, but the marketing guys or the managers will insist on it.
"...this novel e-Book reader offers users an enjoyable experience and the freedom to access material at their convenience."
My convienence does not include intrusive DRM, thank you.
Not that I will get my hopes up...
Holly Gates writes "Sony will launch an ebook based on E Ink technology in Japan in late April
A hardware engineer, slashdot reader, and a girl nerd.
I sense a disturbance in the force....I find it hard....to believe....
You wouldn't happen to be available for a date??
Man, now you've got tons of people who can't pronounce CLI, you want to have them mangling the pronunciation of the LIBRI too?
As a side note - why in the world are e-books so damn expensive? I'm sorry, but if I can get a paperback for 10 bucks, I'm not going to shell out $25 for an e-book. Kazaa, here I come!
Either the publishers won't give it much support, or it'll be so burdened by DRI software that consumers simply won't care about it. If they have to pay each time they read a book...
PRESS RELEASE
FIRST-GENERATION ELECTRONIC PAPER DISPLAY FROM PHILIPS, SONY AND E INK TO BE USED IN NEW ELECTRONIC READING DEVICE
Tokyo, Japan , Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 24, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI), Sony Corporation(NYSE: SNE) and E Ink Corporation announced today the world's first consumer application of an electronic paper display module in Sony's new e-Book reader, LIBRIe, scheduled to go on sale in Japan in late April. This "first ever" Philips' display utilizes E Ink's revolutionary electronic ink technology which offers a truly paper-like reading experience with contrast that is the same as newsprint.
The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper. Its black and white ink-on-paper look, combined with a resolution in excess of most portable devices at approximately 170 pixels per inch (PPI), gives an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet - newspaper. Because the display uses power only when an image is changed, a user can read more than 10,000 pages before the four AAA Alkaline batteries need to be replaced. The unique technology also results in a compact and lightweight form factor allowing it to be ideal for highly portable applications.
Sony's e-Book reader LIBRIe, the first device to utilize Philips' display solution for enhanced reading, is similar in size and design to a paperback book. LIBRIe allows users to download published content, such as books or comic strips from the Internet, and enjoy it anywhere at any time. LIBRIe can store up to 500 downloaded books.
"In today's mobile world, we know that the quality of the experience and ease-of-use are important in driving consumer adoption of mobile devices. Up until now, consumers have been less willing to adopt e-reading applications because of poor display quality on cumbersome devices," said Mr. Yoshitaka Ukita, General Manager, e-Book Business Dept, Network Application & Content Service Sector, Sony Corporation. "This display solution provides a level of text clarity comparable to paper. Combined with our thin, lightweight device design, this novel e-Book reader offers users an enjoyable experience and the freedom to access material at their convenience."
"While the way people experience entertainment has changed dramatically with the rapid growth of portable entertainment devices like music and movie players, the way people read books, magazines and newspapers has not," said Jim Veninger, general manager, Emerging Display Technology, Philips Electronics. "The precision of this new high-resolution electronic ink display technology will revolutionize the way consumers read and access textual information."
The commercialization of this revolutionary display technology is a result of a strategic collaboration started in 2001 among E Ink Corporation, Toppan Printing and Philips together with Sony. Over the past 3 years, the four companies have made significant developments in manufacturing the world's first high-resolution electronic ink-based display module designed specifically for reading-intensive applications.
E Ink Corporation supplies electronic ink to their manufacturing partner Toppan Printing, who in turn processes the ink into a thin film called frontplane laminate. Philips integrates E Ink's frontplane laminate with an active matrix backplane and adds the driving electronics component. Philips works with Sony to co-develop and customize display solutions for innovative mobile devices.
"E Ink is thrilled that our first commercial launch is in product by Sony", said Russell Wilcox, president of E Ink Corporation. "Since the inception of our Company our goal has been to change the way people receive and view information. The strength of our partnerships with Philips and Toppan Printing has helped to make this dream a reality."
The longstanding p
Now even newspapers are in color. Would people really want a black and white only system?
It is, in a way, but for some, the feeling of sitting back with a newspaper or a magazine is hard to beat. For example, I like having the stories spread out on newspaper-sized pages, and this concept could allow one to grab all of the newspaper from a single download and take it to work, reading it on the train, for example -- and avoiding the disposal of all of that paper (one of the main reasons I discontinued my weekday subscription).
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The /. effect was making it hard for me to see the big picture, so get it here.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I haven't liked the concept of E-books because I don't want to lend my entire library out; I want to lend one book to someone and not be able to read that book, rather than have my entire library disabled when I let someone borrow a book - that hasn't been the case with e-books. Add the lack of additional functionality and I don't have a convincing reason to buy one.
Look up the definition of troll in the slashdot FAQ, the parent isn't it in the slightest.
This sounds really E Interesting if I can eWipe these E e's out of my eBrain.
E eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Look closely at the photo. It's got the little MagicGate symbol (it's DRM for the proprietary Memory Stick they sell) on the upper right corner of the device.
Taking Sony's previous approach to loading things not purchased by them (you know, the way you can only load the OS that came with their laptop?) and copy protection, I wonder if they're heading down the same road as the RCA ebook readers? The restrictions on those were pretty bad. Yeah, yeah, most people here could get around them, but my buddy's wife who got a "1200" model recently wasn't too happy to hear they wouldn't be selling anymore books and had locked down her account.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed and wishing really hard they just let me do what I want with it.
---- The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. -Thomas Jefferson
Wow! /sarcasm... love the books.
I'll be able to make it through ONE book of "A Song of Ice and Fire" on one set of batteries!
Basically the high-contrast, low-power displays could lead to PDAs, cell phones, pagers, e-books and other handheld devices that are lighter and more readable than ever before
And I've heard the deal is worth some $7.5 million to E Ink
Mar5us
FUCK YOU
To post on slashdot and not have a life is one thing. But to post on slashdot and also not appreciate or enjoy the glorious jests of trolls abound is a terrible way to live. I hope you stay a virgin, for the rest of your bitter life!
AND TO REPLY LOGICALLY TO YOUR RETARDED STATEMENT
It would be much less work for the editors to just keep them at -1 then to constantly be blocking IPs subnets, which would cost them a lot of time and nonsense coding.
YOU ARE A SHALLOW HUMAN BEING
If I could get one of these with wifi and a browser / rss reader. I'd probably stop using my PC to a large extent. Much of my time online is spent reading blogs and various online publications (salon, the economist, daily kos, etc) which have very few images. Eyestrain is a problem however and as far as text only viewing goes, paper as a medium would be a godsend.
Photos.
The resolution is decent, but the size is too small. Why not something the full size of a paperback book? At least as another option. Its a normal, familiar medium for reading, and would allow for actual pages that would match the conventional pages. This also encourages faster reading, skimming, et cetera. I would be a lot more comfortable purchasing something with a larger surface area. But then again, that may just be me.
Great tech, though.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
it's gotta be reasonably inexpensive...
it's gotta NOT have a closed proprietory file format
it should be able to (or be upgradable to) display the standard formats out there - basic text files, html based files with gif/jpg/png, acrobat pdf files that support search...
have or allow viewers for regular MS file formats (ppt, word, excel, visio, etc)
E-ink should be nice and easy to read and nothing like looking at a crt or lcd screen. Would be nice to have higher dpi however it is being called "first generation"... if the company does this right and it at least gets a good following we should see some improvements in features and resolution.
1. Save up cash ...
2. Wait for E Ink IPO
3. Profit!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
block the provider? are you aware of what you are saying?
When I think of electronic paper, I think of a 8.5 x 11 sheet or a newspaper. Something I can roll up, bend, fold, whatever. This thing is just electronic paper in a frame. What's the big advantage over black and white LED screens? This is not the revolution.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Of course the killer application for this is when the resolution and colored ink come out so that it can display pR0n! just kiding.. well maybe not we'll see!
I will not ever use this technology.
It's a BAD idea. My books are my books and the information that's printed in them will always be there no matter what, as long as I take proper care of them.
No matter what happens in the world, say some political wind blows and they decide that certain things are politicaly incorrect, with a few clicks of a mouse e-books planet wide will be "revised" to reflect the new "acceptable and correct" line of thought.
History will be rewritten to suit those that have the power and need to rewrite history.
I have many sets of encylopedias from the 20's through the 80's and I can see with my own eyes how history is being rewritten. LOTS of "facts" are revised on a regular basis. If you think it's not, you're living in a dream world...
A book that needs batteries.
Where's my broker?
But how many Libraries of Congress is that?
But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device. Are you implying that I could somehow easily "rip" my books to a format this could read? If not I'd have to re-purchase all of my books in digital format. No thanks. Dead trees are cheaper and work just fine.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
The trick would be, to have an open text format so that ANYONE can create an ebook that can be read on it. That way you can say, import all of the texts from Project Gutenberg. You'll never run out of reading material.
This is not a sig.
None of the press releases are saying it, but:
All three of the Impress Watch articles say it will cost around 40,000 yen - approximately $400 USD. And this is just for the reader, subscribing to the e-book service costs $5-10/month. They do, however, have the option of just purchasing single books for 350 yen, about $3.25.
PC Watch article
K-Tai Watch article
Internet Watch article
There are also MANY more pictures of the device available at the above URLs. There's even some showing a manga on the screen of the thing, for those of you interested in that sort of thing.
I do have a few pictures posted in my article as well, but it's really nothing you couldn't have found yourself.
My Franklin "ebookman" has two great features that make it better than regular books:
- I can hold it in one hand
- I can read it in a dark room
which means that when the little one refused to sleep at two in the morning, I can carry her around my (dark) house and read a book. Can't do THAT with any kind of regular book -- they don't have lights, and they can't be read in one hand.
OTOH
Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
it would be great if they can bundle good collection of books free with this device, specially the free ones like from project gutenberg. true, people can download their own books too, but it won't cost them a dime if they ship pre-installed or privide removable media with copied books. that would allow them to test the device in the store or during the trial without wasting too much time and money (buying e-books).
my biggest problem with e-book was that there was no way to try the device without getting locked into it or spend too much time installing software on PC etc before I can find out how comfortable it was.
As for Sony, don't get me started. I still think most of their products are overpriced and proprietary, and come with poor tech support. The last support call I had to make about a brand new Vaio laptop with a bad wi-fi adapter ended with the support guy telling me that the hardware was fine, it was the WLAN, and I needed to contact my systems administrator. All along I told him I was the systems administrator and could vouch for the health of the WLAN. He just repeated the same scripted conclusion about contacting my systems administrator and refused to escalate my concern. Nice outsourced script-reading I tell ya. For a $3,000 price tag (including all of the accessories) I hoped for Lexus service staff.
After my most recent experiences supporting Vaio equipment I wouldn't buy Sony unless I was being physically threatened...
As a previous poster pointed out, this is more like paper out of a printer than a screen. The article actually focuses more on the quality than the convenience:
an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet - newspaper.
I think the iPod is the right analogy. I think the combination of usability and capacity makes it a breakthrough- too many people are averse to reading from luminous, pixelated displays. But carrying around a *readable* library in your pocket is invaluable- think of grabbing your corner table at the local coffee joint, hacking away on your laptop and having a separate, readable screen that can show you any O'Reilly book ever. It would be especially great for students- not to mention the possibilities of making course texts available at a reduced price, how many times have you had to load a pile of cumbersome books into your knapsack for a study session across campus at the library?
I have a lot of interesting books sitting on my shelf at home- it'd be great to have the ability to pile even just 2 or 3 of them into my pocket and take them anywhere.
That should be "Riburi!", you insensitive clod.
Now you don't have to go to the store to pick up your newspaper.
Holly Gates is a man. Proof: http://positron.org/people/hgates/index.shtml
...
Another good thing about Baen - all the e-books are in non-DRM formats. They make the books available in rtf, html, and microsoft reader formats, as well as a couple others.
Also, if you want some *legally* free ebooks, they have the free library (around 40-50 titles at least), as well as a cdrom library they started adding to some hardcover books (iso files can be found online in various places, all legal).
Now if only other publishers would learn from Baen...
Shouldn't that be "E-Launch"?
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Is it as readable as paper?
Are you going to do some lightweight electronic book with a hard drive (using some radio net to my computer so I can buy new books).
Then I want to buy all my books electronically at low cost -- since I both already own them and you don't need to print them.
Then I'll throw away all my bookshelves and get more living area! I will never have to get out of my sofa to fetch another book!
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
And how long before SCO's stock symbol changes to SCOXQ?
(yeah, yeah, I know not to feed the trolls, but damn, these shills do need to be refuted)
The whole E-ink technology has been bandied about for quite some time---at least two years ago in Popular Science, I think. Whether this is yet-another-vaporware announcement of the technology, I don't know.
Originally they were looking at honest-to-god pages, where you would have the pixels in the "paper" and a transparent circuitboard printed right into the page (some titanium chemical whatsits, I think).
If they're doing just one page on the device, I suppose they haven't beaten the problem of making a transparent control scheme for the pixels, they're just packing all the ugly tiny wires behind the display.
Still, it would be really cool if they ever solve the problem and make multiple-page displays that you can flip just like a book. You could have it expend energy to refresh ten pages, then read to the back, flip back to the first page, load the next ten pages or so, and repeat.
Now how much does it cost and can I roll it up to discipline my dog!
One usually RECYCLES his newspaper. So yeah, there's some processing cost to turn your newspaper into another one, but it's okay. You're not killing trees.
My other car is first.
The way these thing work is pretty cool. You basically have to thin sheets like a sandwitch, and in the middle are tiny little balls that make up the pixels. Each ball contains smaller magnetic material that can cause the ball to display either black or white (depending on which orientation the magnetif field is). Multiply that single ball times a several thousand and you have a very simple low power display device. Most of the other solutions for eInk are the same, and i believe this version was made by MIT.
- tristan
Still takes a lot of Oil, Water, and Electricity to recycle that paper.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
I'm not sure if anyone has designed such a thing as a dual screen e-book, but i think a device like that, coupled with a screen that actually gave the user the illusion of reading a conventional book would be pretty nice.
He's been posting that stuff for so long, I don't even notice him anymore. It seems just natural to me that there is a notice about some licensing fee below every article.
That is, the enormous weight of all their books is too much for their tiny frames. With more and more other crap being shoved in there, kids can barely take it. There was once a time that kids could leave their textbooks either at home or school. The kid could take one book home for the homework that night.
Now, every class assigns twenty minutes of homework every day, even for elementary school kids, and most of the teaching is done directly out of textbooks. That means having all the books in both places. Insanity.
This sort of thing could change all that. Instead of four thick textbooks, the kid would have a single nice little device... textbook manufacturers won't want to make their books available electronically, but at least the assignments can be sent home this way. All those photocopied sheets and such.
Many copyright barriers, but luckily, one of the few things that can break through even the most entrenched laws is a serious threat to the health of children.
DRI? DRI's a good thing... now we can have 3D games on our ebooks!! Yay!
My other car is first.
Yes, I meant LCD screens. Anyway, will this particular technology lead to rollup readable paper?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Can I get my barcode tattoo done with this?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Burn them to CD-ROM if you want.
And if you think paper doesn't get revised, go to a bookstore and buy a new edition of a book you read long ago. You'd be surprised how often things get revised. It's not just that the cover art gets revised to show the actors from the current movie version instead of the original cover art, or the blurbs on the back get revised for more current advertising value, or the books get subtitled (e.g. "Farenheit 451 - The Temperature at which Books Burn".) They don't get revised as fast as Whitehouse.gov speech transcripts, but they do get revised.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Look, it's all because of the food, or lack of it. How many short, shrunken, bow-legged, long trunked balding Asian women with gray teeth are at your local university (taking over your jobs)?
Now take a look at Asian women born and bred here? (Bananas, yellow on the outside, white on the inside). Great bodies, nice teeth, round bubble butts.
It's not genetic, it's their food.
Apparently this device is to be used in a rental service there:
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20031114S0027
It almost sounds like it's going to be used to distribute printed materials for a subscription. Depending on the pricing and whether I could use the eBook to carry my own documents, I'd snap up one of these in a microsecond...
No. An environmentally aware person recycles his newspaper. But you'd be surprised at how many end up in waste bins on the corners of city streets. So although the newspaper itself may be printed on recycled paper, it will ultimately be disposed of and thus necessitate the killing of trees to continue to feed paper needs.
Now, the drawback to this technology is that you MUST resist the urge to leave your newspaper on the seat of the subway or tram when you're done reading it. That would be somewhat cost prohibitive.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
E At Joes.
Still takes a lot of Oil, Water, and Electricity to recycle that paper.
As it does to run a huge computer sever, and hundreds of clients that access that server. I don't know which way would be more environmentally friendly. It would interesting to see a study on that.
Not enough for The Wheel of Time fans...
P.S. I heard that the 2nd-last book is out in 2005. Yay!
Can you only use "books" from a them or can I grab stuff off of Gutenburg or make my own?
How hackable is this thing? Can I use it as a primitive PDA?
Any idea what it costs?
If people can add their own "books", expand it like some have done with the iPod and it's $100 to $200 I'd get one. If I can only use their files then forget it. I am really hoping for the best but I suspect it's a closed system. YACD (yet another cool device) that might die (as I look over at my MagicLink).
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
...better than iInk.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
now you've got tons of people who can't pronounce CLI
I am the CLI Commander!
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
..common to PDAs?
Will it be feedable by an RSS aggregator?
Can I download my emails to it?
Can I read word / text documents on it?
Will I be able to read Gutenberg titles on it?
If the answer's "yes" to most of those questions, I can see everyone in NYC carrying one.
Will Palm license this display technology for their phones?
But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device.
That is a big selling point for me. Not so much the ability to take my entire book collection wherever I go, but just being able to keep my enitre book collection in a small place. About 2 weeks ago I bought 2 big plastic tubs and filled them up with books so I could store them in my attic because they were taking up too much space.
The biggest question in my mind, is just how much support are publishers going to give this thing? Judging from ebook platforms of the recent past, probably not much.
Right... I was wondering the same thing. I was real interested in eBooks several years ago when I first started reading and hearing about them. But unless you wanted to read some pretty obscure stuff, it wasn't useful.
Just need to cross reference it with everything2.com and wikipedia, and you have your own hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.
Don't forget your towel!
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
...display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries.
You could make more money selling these batteries to Apple for use in new iPods.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
The only problem is, if it costs more than $200 it will probably be a tough sell.
Are you kidding? If it is as easy to read as newspaper, than imagine the change for students, especially college age. Instead of constantly carrying heavy textbooks everywhere, you just have one appliance that holds all your information.
Imagine the cost savings in buying textbooks if there is no more physical costs involved. If there is something like a 60% discount for e-books, you could pay for the thing in one semester. Of course that would require the books be available on whatever format that is required, but this has killer app written all over it.
Also, I dream of having all of my reference books, my whole O'Reilly shelf, in one easy-to-read, portable, cheap-when-compared-to-a-laptop device. If they could integrate some sort of note takening interface on this, even at 1/2 the battery life, I would definately buy one for $200.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
It's already here. Read the Slashdot article regarding this.
Why would they design it for alkaline batteries, instead of recharging it like a cell phone?
The Color versions are still X and White, e.g. Red & White instead of Black & White.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The biggest question in my mind, is just how much support are publishers going to give this thing? Judging from ebook platforms of the recent past, probably not much.
.txt books floating around the p2p scene. Even if it is difficult to "rip" a book, the collective ation of the internet says that only one person has to do the work for the efforts to be availible to all. If the book-reader is so much better than the dead-tree paradigm, then the readers will make it standard. It's just like mp3's -- add value over a CD (no more heavy cd case, hours of music w/o moving a muscle) and the technology took off. With the ebook, the right device could lead to mass downloading of searchable, lightweight books. No more having to lug two novels through the airport because you're almost done with one. The publishers can either jump on board or run around screaming and suing (the RIAA strategem).
There are lots of
I think the textbook manufacturers have the most to fear. College kids are very sensitive to their book bills. Saving $100 on a book for a non-major class seems too good to pass up. Combine this with easy internet access and a nice device to let you take your electronic book to class, the cafe, or to a sudy group, and you have just undercut prentice hall, wiley, and thre rest of the big players.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
At 30 Frames/sec, a battery life of 10,000 pages is less than 6 minutes.
Its a "low power" technology only when slowly flipping through static pages. But for more active screen work, scrolling, its not going to have very good battery life -- even at 2 frames per second, its only going to get a hour and a half. Even animating the pointer will drain energy if done at too high a frame rate.
I expect that for PDA applications, this display wil be better than the current crappy generation battery-sucking machines, but not as good as the old Palms and Psions.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
E-ink isn't colour, so this wouldn't be an issue for it, but I'd still say 170dpi 'paper-style' reflective would be very nice indeed; probably superior.
"Won't SOMEONE think of the children!!??"
True. Which is why the real killer app for this type of device is to throw in a WiFi card and a web browser. Who cares about stupid proprietary content when there's an Internet out there?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
engineering doing marketing, than marketing doing engineering...
For some eBooks you don't have to pay. There are free eBooks and even free AudioBooks available.
how does this work? is it the same way that etch-a-sketch works - i.e. "summat to do with magnets" i couldn't understand the waffle.
I don't mind the device having DRM. Like you, I too have a problem if that's all it allows. IMO if it allows anyone to create their own "books" then it should do well. Being able to send a book directly to another one would be very useful and cool.
They need to take a lesson from the iPod: DRM and non DRM audio files allowed. Although I suspect Sony has already figured the profit on the exclusive sale of books for this device.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Here are some examples of the proper usage of these popular words:
1. Too. I am too drunk to walk.
2. To. Let's go to the store.
3. Two. I want two burritos.
Please, for the love of Pete, please, oh please try to use these correctly!
Thanks.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Well, at least there's the Library of Congress, who's whole point is to archive all books published in the US to keep for all time. Hopefully it won't meet the same fate as the Library of Alexanderia. So long as the library isn't destroyed, there's really no way that all of those millions of books could possibly be replaced with revized editions or mysteriously dissapear.
Nice troll.
Hello! You must be American!
Libri is latin and means a book. Frankly, I think LIBRIe is a great name that actually appeals to bookworms unlike for instance the name Rocketbook which appeals to.. well.. nobody. More importantly, LIBRIe appeals to bookworms *around the globe* since in almost every literate country the word libri is instantly associated with literature, whether they are taught latin in schools or not. Those who read nothing but their tv-guides won't make this association so easily, but then again, they are not in the target audience anyway.
I like LIBRIe and I don't think I'm alone.
If it will handle PDF and text, then already you can get all the Project Gutenberg texts, and a lot of online texts. That alone would make it worthwhile -- but upload/download has got to be easier. USB might be good for that.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
ZMcNulty or Holly Gates, or anyone who's actually gotten to play with one of these things for a minute:
I'm curious (and I'm sure a lot of people on slashdot are): how long does it take the book to refresh the screen when you turn the page?
This seems important for two reasons: if it's really slow, like to the point of being a visible lag time, it would be sort of annoying to read a book on it. I used to read ebooks on my PDA, and there were lots of annoying things about that (tft screens suck in bright light, the batteries die really quickly, the screen size is so small you have to flip the page every paragraph, etc). But the biggest annoyance was that it would sometimes take a whole second or two for the PDA to flip the page.
The other reason is that if the refresh rate of the EInk is fast enough, you could presumably run animations on them. Which would be a pretty cool application. Although 10k screens at 25fps yields only about 6.6 minutes of animation, so they'd have to work on the battery life.
Also, does anyone know what kind of processor and OS this thing is based on? Sony uses PalmOS for their PDAs; although PalmOS would be overkill for a simple device like this, I wonder if they bothered to build a whole new one.
\
Imagine the cost savings in buying textbooks if there is no more physical costs involved. If there is something like a 60% discount for e-books, you could pay for the thing in one semester. Of course that would require the books be available on whatever format that is required, but this has killer app written all over it.
:(
I am perhaps a Troll or someone of little faith, but i think they will sell them the same price as the dead tree ones and take the magin profit for them. As an excuse, you know, everybody will copy them like MP3 !!! bouhou
10,000 "page changes" per set of batterys divided by 60 frames per second... Hey, I can play Quake for 2 3/4 minutes on this thing before having to change batteries! More seriously, I'd love to see this tech in a subnotebook pc.
2. Place face down in scanner.
3. Scan
4. OCR
5. Repeat as needed.
With that said I hope they don't expend a lot of effort on DRM. BTW, I think I just violated the DMCA.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
hear my tale of woe.
I bought a Nuvomedia Rocket eBook in the year 2000. This is essentially the same device (and is content-compatible with) the Gemstar REB1100. I have bought approximately $400 worth of content for it.
All of its technical and usability characteristics are quite good. I can read for pleasure on it for extended periods of time and get lost in an immersive reading experience.
Gemstar has folded their eBook operation and pulled the plug on their servers. The DRM-protected content is keyed to a hardware serial number. When the device finally fails (and its battery life is now down to about half what it was originally), I believe that to all intents and purposes I will lose all access to that paid content.
Meanwhile, I have 25-year-old paperbacks that continue to be perfectly accessible.
What is needed to make eBooks popular is not any technology breakthroughs, but something that will hit greedy publishers over the head with a clue-by-four. When strangers see me reading on this thing it is often a conversation-starter. The conversation usually ends when they ask me what eBooks cost. I say "About the same as a hardbound for books that are only out in hardbound, and about the same as a paperback for books that in paper," they stare at me in disbelieve and the conservation ends right there.
And that doesn't even speak to the issue that I can't lend these books to my wife or my son, and couldn't even if they owned compatible eBook readers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Actually, I know WHY they chose the name... I just think it's a dumb name. They're clearly trying to build some kind of brand recognition with the e(acuteaccent)... started with the CLIe(acute) and now moved on to the LIBRIe(acute)... It's just not very creative, IMO.
What format will it support.
What format will Ineed to use to transfer existing books to us it with.
Can I transfer existing books over to this format, or even at all to this device.
Will the downloads avaliable have time restraints on it, can I read them as much and as often?
What publishers will be supporting these companies.
Basiclly this sounds like a good device, the E Ink is a great idea, but I will want to transfer all my personal documents, along with the 3 gigs of ebooks I all ready have, along with being able to download new books from the web.
They dont really say much about this side, only that it looks pretty and how much it can hold (500 txt or xml files is not that much, 500 pdf files can be alot)
TruePunk | Games
I am perhaps a Troll or someone of little faith, but i think they will sell them the same price as the dead tree ones and take the magin profit for them. As an excuse, you know, everybody will copy them like MP3 !!! bouhou :(
Nah...there's already textbooks available as/with webpages that are cheaper if you only get the web version. The only drawback is that it's usually a limited subscription.
You're right! Baen kicks a lot of butt when it comes to sharing their content... But they are far and away the minority. What I would LOVE would be the ability to buy every Heinlein Baen book in one big package...
I don't know if its just me, but...
The placement of the forward/back buttons would drive me nuts. I don't know if the button placement has anything to do with the way the designers read (right to left? - where the next button is at the end of the text), but forcing me to go back to the beginning of the text to find the next page button is counter to the way my brain works. I would try using this for a day and stop out of sheer frustration.
I had a motorola phone and the page forward/back buttons worked counter to what I expected them to be. Every time I went scroll through a menu, I ended up scrolling the wrong way, then had to switch buttons and scroll the other way - it drove me absolutely crazy. The calendar was also designed for the european market (dd/mm/yyyy) as opposed to (mm/dd/yyyy), which is what I am used to. I can't tell you how many times I set an alarm incorrectly, because I was forced to use a standard which I was not used to working with (no, there wasn't an option to change it). Imagine being forced to used metric measurements when driving, or building a house. How many mistakes would you make.
Just my 2.
First off, this is obviously made for Japanese readers expect the "screen" to be on the right hand side for a US release if it happens.
That said, the main fault I see with this (aside from aforementioned political ramifications of the maleability of electronic content) is that I'm used to reading books in a "butterfly" style, that is across two pages of an open book.
If someone were to make one of these with two reading surfaces and a simple "next page" button on the lower right corner (and a previous page on the lower left) and bind it like a book, I would be all over it.
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
that is all.
If I buy this ($400), and decent OCR software (too danged much!), I can scan all my books in, oh, 8 zillion hours. That's assuming I can upload the scanned text to the reader. Then I won't have any need to spend big bucks on more bookshelves.
Alternatively, I can get a sheet-fed scanner (~$300), and slice up all my books, to scan through them more quickly. Then I can stay warm (451) all next winter burning the pages.
There just isn't a really good solution, but still, this is the product I've been looking for for years. Why did it take so long? If I can get stuff for a reasonable price, without having publishers performing a colonoscopy, I'll go for it.
From what I've seen, ebooks sell for the same or slightly more than the paperback version, even including shipment costs for the paperback. Which is entirely ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as audiobooks, which sell for more than hardbound versions.
Ofcourse, there's no real ebook market. LCD screens with cleartype are just passable for reading ebooks, but they don't come anywhere near the experience of dead tree editions. And this eink reader is the very first one I've seen that actually is usable where you'd want to use it, on the beach and on the plane (respectively overbright, and too dark).
thanks for listening.
so your complaining that the e-book can be changed so you prefer the hardcopy but you also claim that hardcopies are being changed.
I'm failing to see how your reasoning fits your conclusion as both mediums are equally subceptible to revisions.
The advantage of electronic books is that a simple program can be written to compare previous versions to new versions to see what exactly has been changed in seconds.
Try that with a hard copy of an encyclopedia.
You're also making the faulty assumption that all changes are bad. The reason history gets "revised" is because as more work is done more facts come to light. It's not always the case that the revision is a step in the wrong direction. It's more often the case that a revision corrects something that was wrongly assumed in the past.
It's also the case that competing versions of any topic exist at the same time. You can't very well compare versions with hardcopies nearly as easily as you can with electronic versions. Because it requires searching. Electronic searches are always faster and more comprehensive than manual searches. When you're manually looking for name or word it's easy to overlook a mention in large volumns. An electronic search will never miss regardless of the size.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
yeah, what he said.
also: can you write in the margins? can you turn down page corners? can you find that quote you're looking for by remembering that it's about halfway through the book, on the right side, a third of the way down the page?
seriously, these are some of the reasons that people like books. designers of electronic book replacement technologies are going to have to think about this kind of functionality.
Wow.. Sony released an expensive etcha sketch!
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/102/C2393/
The PPI (Pixel Per Inch) resolution of this ebook dislay is really great, that will provide enough pixels to make nice shaped letters and make much it more pleasant to read from a display. Contrast and virtually zero battery consumption are added bonuses.
2 1/
More PPI is the way monitors and displays should go. But for most of 20 years monitors has stayed more or less fixed with a dot size of 0.25~0.28mm giving about 100 PPI.
In the meantime hordes of consumers and marketing departments has kept all talk about monitors based on display size in inches 15", 17", 19"...
Most notable difference was when IBM introduced the T220 display in 2001 which has amazing 204 PPI giving a total display of 3840*2400 pixles at 22" - and it looks great. Unfotunately the price level for the time being is also great, about 8000 EUR.
They have a new version of it called T221 here:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/intellistation/t2
Hopefully in the future more consumers and manufactures will realise that display quality (PPI) is getting more important than size.
Its a newton with a keyboard. gdamn Apple is 10 years ahead of everyone.
I wonder why someone hasn't already hacked up an e-reader for the ipod.. 20 gigs or whatever of storage would hold quite a few ebooks.
Take catalogs for example. Sure, you could look up what you want online. I do that almost all the time, and I'd be one of the first to buy a Web-connected e-ink catalog. But when you just want to browse, I can't stand having to click-tap-scroll-push-wheel through the pages. I need to be able to put my thumb on the side of a book, flip through and feel the breeze in my face while watching the pages go by...
Seriously though, until they can think of a better input device to navigate an eBook, they'll never replace paper. I'll get an eBook. You'll get an eBook. We'll all accept whatever's out there, eventually (we'll probably even begin to like DRM!). But IMHO, paper is here to stay.
-- If you can read this, you are too close to my signature.
I'd like to see an event-driven PDA, where the hardware is only running to process events, not for background tasks like redrawing the screen.
E ink could get us closer.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Granted, the whole 'e' thing is getting old. I still think that its use is warranted here since afterall, it reads e-books.
I also agree that it's not very creative, but think it's a good thing. I've just about had it with some of these overly creative names for products/companies that don't describe them in any way. LIBRIe says that it's book and it's 'e'. 'nuff said.
(No reply needed. It's a matter of opinion and I do see and respect your viewpoint.)
My Clie was a life saver for that. I could read it in my kid's room without turning on the light. Also, when standing on the train, the one-hand reading feature is a wonder.
The cake is a pie
I like my Linux Journals and Linux Magazine issues...I lay down on the couch, and my cat jumps up and tries to suckle on my earlobes.
;)
If anyone tells me animal companionship isn't mentally healthy, I'll sick a Rottweiler on em.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
...they can't be read in one hand.
You mean, like a paperback?
-Styopa
Along with other posters, I think this looks immensely better than current portable book displays... That said, what in the world are they reading?!?
LRN 2 SWM
My books are my books and the information that's printed in them will always be there no matter what, as long as I take proper care of them.
Does taking proper care of them include keeping backup copies of them in a fireproof safe and/or separate physical location?
I have many sets of encylopedias from the 20's through the 80's and I can see with my own eyes how history is being rewritten.
That's swell, grandpa. You won't see a goddamn thing with your own eyes when your home is burglarized, flooded, or burned to the ground unless you have backup copies of your precious information.
Since it's digital, you can use error-correction code when storing the data and also compare checksums of the copies.
You can be reasonably certain that you made a completely perfect copy if everything checks out.
...the enormous weight of all their books is too much...
Great. Obese American kids won't have to carry so much. Maybe we can set a world record for the fattest kid(but we probably already have it).
Hey, we also won't have to burden our "yank-tank" SUVs so much with all the weight of the extra books.
God bless you, Sony!
Obesity is becoming an epidemic in the USA. These 50lb backpacks are not a threat; they are the only exercise these fat kids get!
Besides, if you lighten the load, you've just made room for a bigger lunchbag, some midday snacks, and the latest Teen Cosmo issue.
This is the future of your daily newspaper. Yes it's been claimed before, but this time I finally believe it.
Think about libraries, their limited inventory of books, possible royalty payments for authors, expensive real estate taken up by bookshelves for browsing, limited number of copies of each book, lost or damaged books, etc, etc - replace all that with a bunch of kiosks that could be located anywhere. Governments and academic institutions should be jumping on this bandwagon. I wouldn't be surprised to see some developing countries implement this first.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
Newspaper and magazine publishers start giving away these devices (locked and DRM'd) with pre-paid long-term subscriptions to their e-issues (just like cellphones). After a year or so, new versions come out and the technophile start selling their used devices for cheap. Us cheapskates buy the used models, hack into them and load them up with books downloaded from usenet.
Really, the largest threat to American children in America is that they are fat. I say load up MORE books so those little fat-asses can get some exercise...
:)
Let's see how far into the depths of moderation hell this one goes
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Can you photocopy the stuff?
.txt file out there (or docbook, i m not picky) and formatting it for view?
As a student, you can't highlight the page.
Is there a "toolkit" for taking a
Can the thing be used to company-genereated management reports?
"Piter, too, is dead."
We already know English-speaking Americans think they are the centre of the world. There is no need to prove this in. Every. Slashdot story!
That'll be a cool hack.
Even better will be when you can download images to these to use as a visual aide in your RPG of choice.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Was that an alphaville reference?
It's not offtopic, it's IN the topic. Look up there at the article, "from the small-in-japan dept." As in "Is that a reference to alphaville's first big hit 'Big in Japan', or something else?" I was asking a question.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
For those who know where to look, you can find a fair amount of copywrited text content online. The thing is, what the hell do you do with it? You really don't want to read an entire novel sitting at your desk. And printing them out? Easier to just buy the book.
Until now. Assuming this device can display content unencumbered by DRM, its only a matter of time until these files become more prevalent.
I'm not sure what it all means, though. The publishing industry has been vigilant about making sure digital copies of their media stay out of the hands of pirates, and probably think they've been very successful. But the real reason text content hasn't been traded much on P2P networks is because of the lack of an acceptable playback device.
So, now what?
What does this thing need a keyboard for?
Unless you're very special, you need two hands to turn the page.
I might read English on this thing, but if you know Japanese, you can see from the pictures that the resolution is still crap compared to paper. I read almost all my news online, but almost never read sites in Japanese, unless they use flash, because the resolution is just too horrible. You can see from the photos that even a not-so-complex kanji like 'yami' starts to become jumbled together on this thing. Japanese paper printing technology is second to none on the planet. I'm still going to prefer printed Japanese for a long long time (at least 5 years ;).
And, with decent manual dexterity, a lack of arthritis, and hands which are not tiny, a paperback can easily be read one-handed. But, you are right, that is not a combination that everyone posesses.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think this tech would be ideal for outdoor sporting goods (GPS, fish-finders, etc...). Usually when you're out boating, its a bright-sunny day and you can't make out the display at all.
Have you considered that "small-in-japan" refers to the miniturization of technology? I certainly didn't read it with the sexual innuendo you attribute to it.
The screen is too small for a textbook. You can't even fit a decent diagram on a screen that size. The technology is applicable, although one nice thing about textbooks is the ability to mark them up, and this device lacks that capability. Also they're only going to probably knock about ten bucks off the price of a textbook for edelivery and you're not going to be allowed to sell it - they won't sell them electronically unless they can DRM them. So it's probably not going to be useful for textbooks any time soon. If you want to bring about freedom from commercial textbooks, you're going to have to support the people writing Open-license textbooks. Open licensing is our only reasonable defense against the serious financial down sides of capitalism.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If it will hold my entire O'Reilly library and have a good viewing, bookmarking and search interface I'd be interested.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
I don't understand how it can be easily readable in sunlight - it says the display is "reflective" - wouldn't that mean if you were outside you'd just see huge reflections of the light from the sun?
I belong to the ______ generation.
If you added a LCD strip below the screen you could stick more dynamic things there, i.e. (the LCD displays the echo of text you are inputing, then when you are done, that line is dumped to the e-ink, kinda like old word-processor/typwriters).
I really don't see a problem with getting any app running with minimal screen updates.
What I'm kinda worried about is wear and tear.
- How bad does IR/UV light bleach/ruin the screen?
- How many times can a microcapsule change colors before it wears out?
- I've never seen a 170dpi screen, but how bad will a couple of stuck pixels look?
I'm anxiously awaiting some reviews.I already read eBooks on my PDA, so like you said, the price better be right.
These things better have great software too... Right now, I can read PDB, TXT, RTF, HTML all without screwing around with converter software. (Thanks uBook) If these things require special proprietary formats, count me out -- even if they give you a converter.
But it has an itty bitty screen. You'd be constantly scrolling the text.
I read the internet for the articles.
If all the world were electronic paper,
and all the seas were digital ink.
If all the artificial trees
Were virtual bread and imaginary cheese,
What should we have to pretend to drink?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Or hell, even just make an open interface protocol and let anyone sell content for the thing. And don't enforce any protection scheme (or make such a scheme optional) so that content providers can compete on that basis and people like Creative Commons won't get locked out.
The display technology may be here, but it doesn't look like they've really thought seriously about the ergonomics of an ebook. The thing is laid out like a giant PDA. An ebook should need very few buttons, and should be more along the lines of a TV remote, or better yet, an iPod. The main things I want are page forward/back, and some sort of proportional "page flip" dial or bar, all positioned for comfortable access by the hand holding the book.
Unfortunately, from what I understand, Baen does not have the e-rights to most of the Heinlein books they have published (I might be wrong about that, because it's been a long time since the discussion). This means they cannot offer them for sale in Webscriptions or put them up in the Free Library. This is a sad state of affairs, but it may be changing... I think one of his books is on one of the CDs, or actually in Webscriptions. I can't check right now to be sure of that, though.
An LCD is usually back-lit, and doesn't do a very good job of not reflecting light when not back-lit.
The parent poster, Chuck Bucket, is a plagiarism troll. This post was taken from this site. Mods, please check the post text on Google before you mod it.
Sapere aude!
I wonder what happens when you shake the screen. ala etch-e-sketch
Here's what I've always thought would be the perfect combination:
A "smart" cover/spine combination with several (think, like, 25 or so) pages of e-ink type flexible material bound into it, see: Link from Forgery on Slashdot
I'd like it to work like this:
You grab the book from the shelf and open it up. If you want to change subject matter, you select the new subject from the inside of the front cover, then close the book and open it again: like magic, it's the book you need at the same place you left it.
Here's how the pages work. Each page is bound into the spine, and refreshed according to your own selective algorithm.
Simple set: The first page is contents. Selecting a chapter sets the other pages to that chapter. Browse away!
Or: The book remembers where you stop reading. The middle page is set to your current page, other pages back and forth are set accordingly. When you get to the last page, flip back to the center to keep going.
Or: A catalog has each page set to an overview of the items in that section. Browse to the page you want, press a button, flip the the front: The whole book expands to that chapter.
Or: A newspaper has each section on the second-nth pages (First page is Front page material and index) Flip to the page and press the expand key. All of the pages are now that section - Read away.
I envision a system where you can electronically earmark pages, then group them together at the front or back of the book, add or remove pages, take e-notes on the page with a stylus using generic markup language and carry the notes along with you.
(Okay, I'm a little excited about this stuff)
Is that for a "normal" reading speed, or flipping through as fast as you possibly can? I hate stats.
You're nothing; like me.
The energy efficiency of a light bulb is pretty poor but they could build in (or have a clip-on) white LED book light
My daughter has one - one of her Christmas presents last year. $15 at Costco. Runs for months on a couple of AAA batteries, and she uses it for several hours every night. Nice bright white light from a couple of tiny LEDs.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
hours of music w/o moving a muscle
Wow. Most people can't go more than a couple of seconds of no muscle movement without being dead. What is your secret? You must teach me!
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
I wonder if this is a solution in search of a problem. Most E-Book readers probably already have PDAs and aren't real likely to carry an additional device. That's why convergence is always such a draw - we believe in fewer, not more, discrete devices. Meanwhile, slow adopters are still reading dead trees.
So what happened? Did Sony, who makes wonderful Clie PDAs (Palm-based), simply have a screen technology in need of a device and build a device to match and now are searching for a matching problem?
Come on, when are we going to get e-paper printed in e-ink that I can fold up and stick in my pocket?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I have heard about this technology and I heard from a few sources that our military already has paper thin screens that they can use to project an image of stuff on one side of an object to the other side to create a type of "predator cloaking". This is where our military is going...once again, science fiction is proving to be the truth.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
I don't think this will be replacing my paperbacks anytime soon. eInk is great and all for replacing LCDs or enhancing billboards, but when i'm reading a book i want to feel the texture of the paper.
The screen is too small for a textbook. You can't even fit a decent diagram on a screen that size.
The screen is too small for some textbooks.
There's still plenty of material with no or just small images.
I think Apple already has this one patented.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I've been waiting for an e-Ink based bookreader to come out for a while now, but this one is not very appealing. There isn't much detail in the article, but from what I can see, the Sony design seems to have a number of flaws:
1. It's "similar in size and design to a paperback book", but the display is much smaller than what you'd be looking at in a paperback book. A lot of space seems to be taken up by margins, and about 1/4 of the display page seems to be used for a qwerty keyboard. Why the heck does a bookreader need a keyboard so badly that it's worth eating up valuable display space? Why does it need one at all? Furthermore, even if the display covered the entire "page", it's still only displaying half of what a paperback would display. I thought one of the advantages of the e-ink style technologies was that you could make them thin-- why didn't Sony build a clamshell design with displays on either side?
2. Unlike a paperback, a user of an ebook has no way of roughly estimating how far into book he or she is. I can't read Japanese, but in the picture, the display appeared to be entirely text; I'd at least put in some kind of scroll bar showing my relative position within the book. It's not at all clear from the article how I'd be able to sort all my 500 books, bookmark pages, or switch rapidly between specific points in different texts, but the fact that they don't mention any of those things is a bad sign.
3. Why is it using AAA batteries? Why not lithium? It's not clear what storage system it uses, but wouldn't an iPod-like 50GB hard drive store more than 500 books? If so, why aren't they using that?
4. The LIBRIe "allows users to download published content". I do not wish to be allowed to download published content, I want iLibrary. I want to be able to sort and manage a large number of ebooks by a wide variety of characteristics (author, ISBN, date published, subject, title, etc.), I want the ability to create hyperlinks between different parts of different books, I want the ability to "highlight" text (college-textbook sense, not word-processor sense)-- and turn different sets of highlighting on and off. I don't see any indication that the LIBRIe has anything beyond basic connectivity.
5. As other people have pointed out, it should be able to read plaintext, PDF, and HTML at a minimum. The DRM stuff is the final nail in the coffin, for me.
I was really excited by other slashdot stories about e-ink, but if this is what it ultimately amounts to, then I'll stick with paperbacks. Despite claiming "we know that the quality of the experience and ease-of-use are important in driving consumer adoption of mobile devices", they seem to be pretty unclear on both concepts. I guess I'll have to wait for Apple to develop an e-ink thingy....
Why is it funny and not insightful ? You know this is gonna be used first by the pr0n industry, like many new technologies.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
No, you're a plagiarising liar. I understand that you could be confused, though....
f in ition/0,,sid40_gci535029,00.html
http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/sDe
The bookstores will still kill you with costs no matter what form the book comes in :-/
Reflective as in the display term. A reflective display doesn't transmit light, it reflects it. A transmissive display transmits light, it doesn't reflect it.
The vast majority of LCDs are transmissive in nature, meaning that they require a backlight to be read. There are transflective displays that are both transmissive and reflective, but they aren't very common. This has to do with the way LCDs work.
Start with a polarized light source. When you charge the LCD cells, they polarize in the other direction. This blocks out a certain color.
These E Ink displays use a really cool technology that involves tiny charged colored particles floating in a white solution. When the top of the cell is charged, the particles go there and stick. When the bottom is charged, they go there and stick. The display doesn't generate light, nor does it transmit light. In fact, it won't be readable in the dark without an external light source.
Assuming that the manufacturers use a non-glare coating, you probably couldn't tell the difference between a sheet of ePaper and some normal paper, other than that the ePaper wouldn't have fibers in it.
It's been a long time since I've heard much about subscribing to book clubs, e-books or otherwise. Re-emerging trends for the 21st century?
Mistake. Big mistake. You will learn from this - pack books in small boxes.
The size of the screen could be mostly overcome by the e-book format not being physically limited in number of pages -- the extra content can just be shuffled into more pages in the book.
;) 2) logical trains of thought in most textbooks generally seem to me to be longer than a few paperback pages but often are only a couple of textbook pages (particularly in introductory texts), so the shorter pages would make it a bit harder to follow the train of thought in the smaller format because of the increased page turning necessary.
This wouldn't be done in a traditional textbook for two reasons 1) the biggest reason IMO who wants a paperback book sized textbook that while small in width and height is 2000 pages long 3-4" thick (unless its machinery's handbook, but thats a reference anyway
While the first is easilly overcome by effectively removing the limit on pages the second would require reformatting, or rewriting the content (ie a substantial amount of money) for a smaller page, but might not be a bad thing for teaching kids brought up on Video games, sound bites, and 30 second commercials.
But the basic point I was trying to make before I began rambling is that you could get around the major limitation of the smaller page by increasing the number of pages in the e-textbook - even having the diagrams on its own page (though again this could make it harder going from a traditional formatted book to flip back and forth between text and diagram, but a specially formatted book might make it even better than a traditional book -- oops rambling again).
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Will the experience of especially fiction be different when you don't know when it's going to end?
-I am an elective eunuch.
Because I stopped buying Sony after the DMCA was passed. You know, all that money they get from consumers is why they can buy Congress-Critters.
Too bad the rest of the don't like the DMCA world voted with their walets. Guess the lack of nice shiny kit is too much to bear.
I want to publish my ebooks on this. Anyone any idea if it runs PalmOS or what?
Does it support self published content? Does it support english? I have a REB1100, and I love it, but want more screen realestate.
Yay me!
And to bring this full-circle I'd like to point out that Hamlet is availiable for free from Project Gutenberg
as for college text books and bookstore costs (which are obscene at the best of times) can be dealt with buy some enterprising students. I mean if a student is willing to take the time to type it in or OCR the thing even at 10-20$ a head to classmates could cover intitial costs. this of course ignores the obvious copyright issues. it waould make life easier for people in histoy and english majors who deal in a lot of old/public domain content anyway. again it would only work if the format is open.
I'd love one of these but I won't buy it if I can't display unencrypted .TXT, .DOC, .PDF, etc. files without having DRM shoved in my face.
.TXT version on the net. (P2P, usenet, http, etc.) I load the .TXT version on my PDA and throw the book on a shelf. I can load that .TXT version on either of my PDAs, my laptop or any of my computers. I can transport it on any form of media. Floppy, CD, DVD, CompactFlash, MemoryStick, USB hard drive, USB flash drive, etc. That's the kind of flexability I want in a reader.
These days I buy a book in paper "format" then search for a
Your faulty assumption is that it has to refresh the screen at some type of rate. Not every new display technology is a screen as we know it.
Yes, but then you freeze the layout. The advantage of HTML, plain text, and similar file types is that the formatting can change to fit the display. EBooks are a great chance to move away from page breaks in the middle of the screen, lines that don't wrap properly, text that's an uncomfortable size, &c.
PDF is great for one thing: representing a printed page. But books are more than just printed pages.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I agree 100%. I've never felt like we needed a replacement for paperback books. This is the first ebook device that sounded like something I might take to as readily as a paperback, but it better be cheap! Frankly, I probably wouldn't pay much more than the price of a paperback for one of these, say $10. If the whole market is like me, then none of the current ebook device makers stand a chance!
-Rich
You know where I can really see this being useful? For displaying music. I sing in a choir and organising music is a pain. During rehearsal skipping to the same page the conductor is looking at can be very time consuming and confusing. But with a set of connected ebooks (or emanuscripts, if you like) he conductor could always make sure people got the the right page instantly. It could be equally useful for orchestras.
by far, thats my biggest complaint with handhelds (palms, etc). The screens are so hard to read in the daylight.
Check out the Sony Clie. They are visible in all light conditions. The angle issue is still a problem, but much less than the light issue. Sony seems to have gotten it right. I've never had a problem with one.
This device appears to suck for a number of reasons, most of which can be attributed to trying to hang onto all the features/limitations of old technology. Here are the things I notice at first glance from the press release:
Why would I want to read anything like newsprint? Are newspapers not printed on cheap paper and low in quality when compared with magazines? Is the "experience" of newspaper not a direct consequence of its cheapness? At least this device does not appear to have a newspaper's awkward page size and related difficulty of having to fold pages.
Does this mean it does not have a backlight? Paper sucks for several reasons:
Why would someone want a device that emulated technology over 1,000 years old?
Just because newspapers are widely read does not mean they are high quality. This is yet another case of the fact that popularity does not necessarily imply goodness (but everyone here knows that: Just look at MS).
Disposable batteries are great for the environment. So, I guess the user will have to go to 7-11 from time to time to get new power. Recharging at home would be much more convenient.
So, this will not fit in my pocket? What happens if I am not carrying a backpack today? Are books not the size they are because of the constraints of the medium: paper? The point is to get the advantages of paper without its limitations. This device seems to be emulating many of paper's limitations.
So can any modern PDA such as an iPAQ, a Zaurus, or even a smartphone like the Sony Ericsson P800. However, those devices can do so much more. They certainly have backlights. They display HTML. They can be used to read PDF documents as well. Unless it is really cheap, what is the point of buying a dedicated ebook reader? This is especially true since most ebooks contain DRM and HTML pages do not. What sort of DRM garbage does this device have? What limitations will there be on my downloads? What constraints will there be on how and when I read?
So can any device with an MTD reader. Not only that, but additional cards can be purchased to contain more books. Plus, multi-function devices such as PDAs can play music and tell you what time it is in Nairobi (if you cared, of course).
Can this device be used with one hand? If not, the ease-of-use argume
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Liber is book in Latin -- "Libri" means either "books" or "of a/the book"
Recycling newsprint creates a lot of toxic by products.
I remember hearing about e-ink a couple months ago, I had no idea it was this close to production stage.
Please use a proper link. But, good observation and the grandparent will be modded accordingly.
Call me when the color model comes out. If I can't read an eComicbook on it as well, then it's not worth the 'paper' it's printed on.
Yes, for one it's highly unlikely that something like this will be attempted, at least not until it can be done effectively, as that's not what E-Ink is intended for, it's intended for pages that are for all intents and purposes static. And besides, a cursor moving would not need to refresh the entire page, only that cursor (And even then, only around the rim for the most part -- the rest will stay black as it moves across the screen until the pixel drops off the edge of the cursor).
I hate grammar Nazi's.
I've never gotten the US naming of numbers:
1 thousand = count to 100 100 times: so you have 100 thousand.
1.000 - 100.000
1 million = count to 1thousand 1thousand times: so you have 1 thousand million.
1.000.000 - 1.000.000.000
1 billion = count to 1 million 1million times. Highest number would then be 1 million billions.
1.000.000.000.000
In the US a billion is what's otherwise known as "a thousand million" back home. They came up with "millardo" to give a direct translation. Why does the US have to be different? or is this in use in other countries?
How long would the battery life be of static pages? And are they in color? I'd really hate to render fleshtones in grayscale.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
...this article about a color e-ink display (!) claims that:
Switching between dark and bright states takes only about ten milliseconds - fast enough to produce sharp video images.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
This seems to be a revolutionary technology to me. LCD display does not seem likely to be a viable, low cost solution for being THE uquibitous electronic display technology. The limitations that are holding it back in my opinion is its high power consumption and minimum size contraints. Other technologies today cannot handle the resolution. Its obvious that E Ink seems to be the perfect technology for ebook type devices, but why can't we take it a step further, and use it as displaying devices in general? Why can't we use E ink in place of LCDs in portable devices? I keep thinking that my IPod would be a perfect candidate for E Ink display technology. It's display has low volitility, and its low resolution. E Ink will be sharper than the current lcd in addition to adding to the battery life of the Ipod. I can't really see any constraints on using E Ink instead of LCD except perhaps for the lack of backlighting. I'm sure that they will be able to add color to E Ink as well, making it even more desirable to replace LCD in particular devices.
I have been doing all my personal reading for the past couple of years on my PDAs. My current Sony Clie has been by far the best yet. Since I normally read at night, I keep the backlighting low, and find it both very easy on my eyes, and it last quite a while. During the day, I adjust it for lighting conditions, but still find it easy on the eyes. Having my books on the PDA means that I always have my book with me, and since I keep my reading list on there, I always have the next book waiting to start. I won't give it up for anything.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
I don't know about that. I have a number of books I've bought and read on my Palm from two different companies. Those I bought from Baen Publishing don't have any DRM that I can recognize, and those from Palm Digital Media just want the credit card number that bought them originally. Based on what I've seen, I think that book publishers think that the motion picture and music companies are as insane as your average /.er does. They've delt with similar problems (in not on the same potential scale) for years and while they get peeved about people violating their copyrights and file lawsuits over it, they generally don't seem to view their customers as potential infingers.
you could set it to autoscroll.
Good viewing in direct sunlight (or so they claim)
The display contains a bunch of cells with differently charge, coloured particles. So it really should be just like reading paper: light just bounces off the particles (or doesn't) like normal paper. I get annoying glare on my glossy textbooks though...
The only problem is, if it costs more than $200 it will probably be a tough sell.
I really hope and expect these things are less than that! They don't need nearly as much processing power as any Pocket PC, but maybe they would be like the m105 Palms ($130CAD maybe).
I can get a lot of books (especially used) for that, and not have to change to batteries.
(There is a tonne of content free available in digital formats.) I hope they use some USB chargable cell or something in the future models rather than AAAs.
Think of that next time you're at the busstop with nothing to read!
Great idea! I'll just wander down the street searching for an unsecured wireless access point and use my credit card to pay $10.00 for the electronic version of a $7.00 paperback, then miss my bus waiting for the download to finish. Fortunately, that will give me enough time to stop by the newsstand, not to buy a book of course, but to spend another $4.00 on batteries to read it once the next bus arrives.
Hopefully, the reader will come with a nice pleather belt pouch, so I can carry it right next to my cellphone, pager and Pocket-PC/GPS/Netstumbler, to fill-out my geek utility belt.
Seriously, I don't understand the marketing strategy on e-books. The reader costs $400, requires $4.00 worth of batteries every week, and serves no other purpose. Current PDA's don't have the screen size or battery life to make them attractive substitutes. The e-books themselves cost more than printed equivalents and are copy-proteccted, so you can't buy them "used," can't sell or even give them away when you're done, and can't even put them on a shelf to re-read or reference at a later date.
From a practical standpoint, I supposed that e-books would be an ideal alternative to school textbooks, but the electronics are too delicate to withstand the abuse a typical student would impose. And once again, cost and copy protection are impediments.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
Production costs for textbooks are nowhere near 60%. Try more like 10-20%. The rest is profit along a three-tier distribution channel and logistics, and the logistics are very low when dealing with school bookstores and required textbooks. And, as with every new media, publishers will (and currently do) charge a premium for the new convenience and technology (i.e., records --> cassettes --> cds; or vhs --> dvd) in spite of production cost savings.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
This would be a killer app if:
It was input output... forget all the fancy pda software, just let me scribble on the damn thing and import it into my pc, or call it back up on the screen, taking notes, anotating text, this would be awesome.
There are two types of people: those that can fill in the blanks,
No need to hack up an e-reader. There already is one on there. The only issue would be converting the books to the ipod note format, which is basically HTML with additional URL types that let you link to audio tracks from within the note.
"At 30 Frames/sec, a battery life of 10,000 pages is less than 6 minutes."
Sucks if you are Data, but for most people who read one page a minute there shouldn't be a problem!
Anyway, it is probably because they use AAA batteries, which aren't that great.
I agree totally - $400 is too much for something that appears to have a lot of DRM embedded inside it.
I thought that e-Ink displays were meant to be cheap! Considering that the rest of the device could be made from cheap components, like 3 year old Palm hardware running whatever eBook OS this device runs. $100 would be the high end of what I'd expect to pay for this.
Still, it is early days yet. Maybe the market will sustain a $300+ eBook device.
Keep in mind that this thing has a resolution of 170ppi. Also keep in mind that the display was optimized for non-turned reading time. If they tried a standard screen instead, it would get a LOT LESS than 10,000 page turns.
Why in the world would they print all 10,000 of those pages on a set of batteries? Who wants to carry around a set of batteries covered in tiny print and a magnifying glass just to read a book?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
No, Sony's "WEGA" series has gotta have the worst naming (or maby just the worst logo design) ever -- I'm supposed to pronounce it "VEGA" when it's clearly spelled "WEGA"???
Next you're gonna seriously expect me to pronounce "GNOME" as "guh-nome"... heh.
Have you ever actualy looked into what ebooks cost, what formats they use, or how big they are? All the ebooks I've bought from Baen's webscriptions.net, fictionwise, and peanut press cost at least 15% less than the paper versions. Most of the ebooks in my library are entirley unencrypted, I think I might have two that have some kind of DRM. Most ebooks are about 100kB to 500kB, even at dial up speeds that shouldn't take more than one or two minutes to download.
I do all my ebook reading on my monochrome ipaq 3135 that cost me $135 a couple years ago. It has a rechargable li-po battery that lasts me several days and a 240x320 screen that I find very easy on my eyes.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Well, "Vega" would be the german pronunciation of "Wega"... so what with Sony being a clearly German company... oh wait... hrmm... and they're not French either... Well maybe their marketing departments used to be in Germany, and now they're in France?
Could be. Or maybe it's just standard marketroid fumbling, like the trend of giving Spanish names to (usually lousy) Asian cars sold to (largely English-speaking) Americans -- Tiburon, Del Sol, etc.
My successful first post rate is 96+%.
What a sad, sad commentary on how you are spending your life.