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Electronic Paper Plant to be Built in Germany
Aqua_boy17 writes "BBC News is reporting today that Cambridge based firm PlasticLogic is set to build the world's first manufacturing facility dedicated to producing plastic circuits. In particular the company is focused on developing flexible plastic circuits that cost much less than silicon and would soon enable electronic paper devices that could be used to store large amounts of text and other data. The company has secured $100 million in venture capital and is set to build its first facility in Dresden, Germany. Construction of the facility should be completed by 2008 according to the article. Industry experts expect market demand for this technology to approach $30 billion by the year 2015."
Recently, I was viewing a TV program reviewing a number of cell phones (which are the current craze in India). And their findings was in terms of cost effectiveness and design, the Motorola MotoFone F3 was their choice. This cellphone is sold for just around $25. And how did they cut the cost so much ?
Enter their unique display which uses Electronic paper which is developed by the US based E-Link. This cell phone doesn't need power to constantly display an image on the screen. It only needs a little charge when the text (or whatever) needs to be changed. The display stays on even when the battery is pulled out! And more over it is a beautiful phone sleek and thin.
I believe more and more gadgets are going to be manufactured using this new technology. Sony has already released its e-book reader which has the same effects of reading a real book. So PlasticLogic the company is on to a good thing.
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Do you have any idea how many millions of electronic trees are going to die to feed this plant???!
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Although I never read the information in that format since I can rely on copies that are kept elsewhere.
I know a few people, myself included who dislike reading e-books due to the nature of the screen. Also it's not easy to curl up with a good e-book on a computer (laptops are too bulky and pocket pc screens are too small)
If this works and can link with eInk screens to create an easily held, clearly visible book format then I'd be happy to switch away from the dead-tree format.
And we'd save a few trees along the way
ACK NAK RST
This may be a tad off topic, but I still think it's interesting to imagine the effect on style and design ultra-cheap electronic paper could have. Remember the breakfast Tom Cruise had in Minority Report, where a cartoon played on his box of cereals?
If price drops enough, this may lead to inventions such as memory-cards with previews of the content showing right on the card, elecronic labels right in store shelves, changing walls in buildings, floors with directional arrows flying around, guiding you in unfamiliar places, electronic wallpaper for your appartment... add a few giftet artists to all this potential, and I'm sure the world would never look the same again (:
More and more, I think Clarke's third law holds true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
As the owner of one I really couldn't be happier with the device itself(the software that came with it is another story). I recently did a trans-atlantic flight and the device was a hell of a lot easier to take with me than even one book, let alone 2 or 3. Sharp display, and very readable text.
Sony's software sucks, but there are plenty of ways to get around having to use it, and they REALLY need more books in their bookstore. BTW, it costs $350USD.
Monstar L
Electronic paper is a display device, not storage.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Cambridge, Mass. and Cambridge, East Anglia. There must be something about those freezing cold winters that encourages people to stay indoors and invent things.
Pining for the fjords
I, too, have one of the new Sony e-book readers (QReader) and I can say the screen is simply outstanding for book reading. The screen is as easy on the eyes as reading on regular paper. It is a vast improvement over the PDAs I've used in the past for e-book reading.
Due to the backlight, I've found that using a PDA for e-book reading becomes hard on the eyes after several minutes, plus the size of the screen is a disadvantage when reading e-books. Besides the screen quality of the QReader, another advantage is that the screen is larger than a standard-paperback-book page, allowing you to put a large amount of text on a single screen.
Although the $350 price tag seems a bit high, it is the same price range as some PDAs, and some Compressed Digital Audio players like the iPod. Two of the less-noticed features of the Sony QReader is that it can also display pictures and play MP3 and AAC files (I think by AAC files it means AAC files without the Apple DRM attached). I think that, like with the iPod, more players will appear and the price will drop in time.
The battery life on the device is terrific. I've been using mine every day for about two months and I've only had to charge it (meaning the battery was near empty) one time. Often, the charge the device receives when connected to the computer gives you a day or two of use. I've found that the battery life is so long that I don't worry about leaving the device on by mistake since it will turn it will automatically turn itself off after an hour.
I agree that the desktop software and the QReader could use improvement (such as the an automatic method of syncing between the computer and the reader, and the ability to use playlists when playing MP3 files) but it is functional and fairly easy to use, it just requires you to manually move the files from the computer to the reader. But this is the first version of both the reader and the software and I'm sure that it will be improved in future versions.
One of the best features of the reader, and the reason that I bought one, is that I can put my own content (such as my address book) on the reader: I'm not limited to what I purchase from the Sony Connect Store. In addition to the Sony e-book format it supports the following formats: PDF, text, and RTF. One of the problems I've had with e-book readers in the past is that the displayed formatting tends to be unpredictable (such as a blank line between the paragraphs in the source document disappearing when displayed on the reader). With the Sony QReader, the standard formatting of my documents (such as bold, underline, line spacing, indents) is predictablity rendered on my reader.
Returning to my original point, I've been very pleased with the QReader. It was good buy for me. Thanks for reading.
The state of eBooks has been the same since the year 2000. It's never been a technology issue. I'm glad your new Sony is nice, and I'm sure it's a significant improvement over the Rocket eBook, but the Rocket eBook is more than good enough.
The problem is, was, and for the foreseeable future will be, as you say, "they REALLY need more books in their bookstore." (By the way, how are those books priced? There is also a problem with overpricing and greed. Circa 2000-2001 I had numerous conversations with interested onlookers about my Rocket eBook and there was always mounting interest until they said "What do the books cost?" I'd answer "Same as hardbounds for books that aren't in paper, otherwise same as a paperback." Their jaw would drop in disbelief and that would be the end of the conversation).
But it wasn't the price. It was lack of titles. An electronic bookstore with a thousand titles may give the impression of plentitude, but it's less than a good airport bookstore and it doesn't even compare to a plain old brick-and-mortar mall bookstore.
At one time, I went over the list of books chosen for Oprah's book club. At the time there were about forty titles. Something like thirty of them were available as audiobooks, yet only about six were available as eBooks in any format whatsoever. For no eBook format were more than three or four of them available.
There are numerous ways of reading eBooks that are good enough to provide a comfortable, enjoyable, "ludic" reading experience, but until you can buy the books you want at a reasonable price, it ain't gonna happen.
I own approximately $300 worth of content I purchased for my Rocket eBook which is locked down to the particular serial number of my physical device. Nuvomedia and Gemstar are long gone, the servers are shut down, there's no customer service available, the battery life on my device is now down to a couple of hours... and when the device fails I'll be the proud possessor of expensive content which is completely inaccessible to me.
I hope you have better luck with your Sony.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The point of this will be downloading magazines and your daily paper via wifi while you're on the bus (with near zero distribution costs, most papers could go free since the ads will make them more money), and having your favorite reference materials at hand, plus a book or two would be a real boon. I'd probably even start to read again away from the computer.
The thing is, the cost of content will have to drop. If I no longer get a physical copy, I shouldn't have to pay for the printing process, and all the overhead that implies. Lower prices might well mean a higher readership because more people would buy more books if they were cheaper and they had the time to read more than they currently do. Well known authors wouldn't have to go to a publisher anymore. They'd write their book, pay an editor out of pocket, and Amazon will let you sell a book download for 3-5 bucks, and take 2 or 3 dollars for themselves. Amazon could host a million books in the size of a small data center, and each book would pay for itself in Amazon's eyes in the first 10 copies. A hundred thousand in sales would be a quarter of a million in profit for the author. Dozens of niche authors would come out of the woodwork because the cost of self publishing would drop through the floor, and we would see an American Idol type of situation in literature, because there are all kinds of talent out waiting to be found. Further, in episodic type literature, an author might even let you download the first 2 books of a series to entice you to read books 3-4 after the first couple have been out a few years, since your downloading the first two books would cost him nothing. Hopefully, this sort of situation would yield higher quality material as well, since the author's current and ongoing sales outlook would depend directly on the number of units sold instead of getting a large contract up front before the book is even written.
Obviously, I've been looking forward to electronic paper for a while now. Just a while longer until it's really affordable.