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Plastic Logic E-Newspaper
Ostracus writes with news of another contender for a next-gen device suitable for displaying a newspaper page. It's very thin but weighs a bit more than a Kindle. "Plastic Logic, a spin-off company from the Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory, has recently released its design of a future electronic newspaper reader. This lightweight plastic screen copies the appearance, but not the feel, of a printed newspaper. This electronic paper technology was pioneered by the E-Ink Corporation and is used in the current generation Sony eReader and Amazon.com's Kindle. Plastic Logic's device, yet to be named, has a highly legible black-and-white display and a screen more than twice as large compared to current versions available on the market."
From the article:
Plastic Logic's new device has an A4 sized display, can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books, and documents. Richard Archuleta, the chief executive of Plastic Logic, said the display was sufficiently large enough to match a newspaper's layout. "Even though we have positioned this for business documents, newspapers are what everyone asks for," said Archuleta.
The device has the display size of an A4 sheet of paper. This is the size size as office documents, technical reports, and white papers, or a newspaper folded up to read on the train.
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They couldn't sell it at that price. A newspaper costs less than $1. So to be value for money this has to outlast 500 newspapers... at one a day that means it'll be about a year and a half.
If the newspaper costs 50c then double that.
It also has to be as light as a newspaper, be simple to read when commuting and fold up into pocket sized otherwise it's doomed.
I think the problem is while the older generations still like news in dead tree format for the younger generations that time has past. Walking across the college campus I don't think I have ever seen a student actually reading a paper. What I see everywhere is little netbooks that let them read their news online AND watch Youtube AND do some document editing. So why on earth would anyone want to pay MORE than a netbook for this thing which does less?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
exactly. while I read the newspaper every day at work, when i am not at work i get my news from other sources. there are so many choices and I have found that if i really want to know what is going on in the US especially with the US military I turn to the BBC first. CNn isn't normally too bad, but the rest of them are so damn slow unless it is the latest celebrity that it just isn't worth it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
That thinking is limited. This isn't a 'newspaper' reader. It reads pretty much anything. What would it have been worth to have all your heavy schoolbooks in this instead of lugging around some heavy bag? And reference guides? I got a lot of free (legally) books off the web to learn computer languages, etc. The small ereaders are not useful for for such things (they are more fiction writing oriented), but this size screen works.
If you also figure Americans (for one) move every seven years - what would it be worth to just have everything on this device and a few memory cards rather than boxes and boxes of books - most left unread past the first chapter anyway statistically? (I'm the type to digitize everything - cds, movies, etc for such convenience).
The price will have to (and will anyway) come down for mass acceptance, but this technology is not mature enough for that stage yet anyway. It's still with the early adopters, most of whom of professionals with disposable income and gadget freaks.
" This lightweight plastic screen copies the appearance, but not the feel, of a printed newspaper. "
I'm reminded of Marshall McLuhan's observation that any new medium will have as its first content the form of the previous medium.
Why would anyone want to reproduce the format of the front page of a printed daily newspaper if you have a completely new medium available? Will the new medium be of such slow speed that the contents can only be renewed on the screen once a day (like the front page of a newspaper)? Do the various print topics have to be arranged in blocks like a newspaper? Will advertising really be necessary?
It's too bad that McLuhan died right when the digital communications era was beginning (1976 I believe). He would have had some significant insights for us.
One thing that I've noticed is that any new digital medium will ALWAYS reproduce its content in an inferior way to its corresponding analog medium. But, the new digital medium allows the content to be used in ways that so astonishingly different from the analog medium that it comes to surplant the original analog medium. The analog medium becomes a specialized subsystem of the new digital medium.
For example, consider music synthesizers. Press the cheap plastic keys on a cheap $50 plastic keyboard in BestBuy and you change the instrument being played by the keyboard. None of the instruments being sounded by the keyboard sound as good as the original instruments in orchestral form. But if you play piano, you don't need to spend ten years learning trumpet or violin to get the sound of a trumpet or violin for your music. You just press the digital button on the cheap plastic keyboard. Real trumpets and violin playing becomes a speciality and limited skill as a result of the original analog medium (instrument) being transformed by an inferior digital medium.
One problem that acceptance has is that there is religion around books and TV. It is this magical thing where if you read it in a book, you are somehow magically turned into a smart person, and if you see it on TV, you are somehow magically turned dumb. In the eternal struggle between good and evil, books are a force of good and TV is a force of evil. See previous story for a perfect example of people trying to prove this.
The problem for e-readers is that most people perceive them as falling into the TV category because the picture can change. They see them as TVs with REALLY slow refresh rates. Thus they are tools of the dark forces and will make you dumb by touching them. Since there is no hope of convincing these people that books and TV are not devices of good and evil, the only hope for e-readers is to distance themselves from TVs and its younger brother the computer.
You could do something really crazy and apparently anti-American, like planning ahead and anticipating problems before they happen. Something like "hey, I'm running low on toilet paper, maybe I should get some more before I run out!" It's really difficult shit, I know, but if you try your hardest and refuse to give up NO MATTER WHAT, then I think you can pull it off. I believe in you, man.
I think they are aiming wrong with these. they should try marketing them towards college students. even used some of my books are over a hundred. so the price isnt so much of a big deal compared to newspapers. It would be great just not to have to carry all those books around every day.