BoSacks e-paper Reporter

Netbook Creator to Launch Game-Changing E-Reader

2009-10-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

By: Michelle Maisto
Asus is hoping to do for the e-reader market what it did for PCs when it introduced the first netbook. Asus, it's reported, will release one, if not two, e-reader in 2009, a "premium" version of which will feature two screens with a booklike spine.Asus is planning to enter the e-reader market later this year with at least one, if not two, device, the Times of London is reporting. The company that invented the netbook is innovating again, as the designideas it shared with the Times would surely shake up the market. Unlike the single, flat screens of current e-readers-such as the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and Plastic Logic Reader-the Asus version would feature two screen on a hinged spine, more exactly mimicking the look and feel of a book.

Additionally, the Asus e-reader would feature full color, instead of the monocolor screens its competitors use, for a realistic ink-on-paper look.

It would also feature touch-screens and offer online connectivity. Consequently, readers would have the option of reading on one page and pulling up a Web page-with supplemental materials, for example-on the other, making it a natural educational tool. Another option, reports the Times, is for the second screen to act as an on-screen keyboard, enabling the e-reader to be used like a laptop.

A Webcam, speakers and a microphone for Skype also will be included. "Our ethos is innovation-as our brand is less well-known, we have to run faster than the competition to develop new types of products," a spokesman for Asus told the Times. "Any such product-including an e-reader-has to have the right combination of functionality and price. No one is going to buy one for £1,000." Asus is said to be working on "budget" and "premium" versions.

The premium is likely the double-screen version described above. The budget model, dubbed the Eee Reader, after the company's Eee PC netbook line, is expected to be more traditional and compete at a considerably lower price point.

The Times reports that Asus will likely try for a price of 100 British pounds, or approximately $164. In a July 29 report, Forrester Research found that the e-reader market is growing, "albeit from a very small base," according to report author Sarah Rotman. She concluded that the market will grow once prices fall. "While some will jump on board when prices hit $199 in 2010, others will hold out for a $99 device in 2012 or a $99 E Ink screen accessory for PCs and smartphones that could (and should) come out sooner," she wrote. In a Sept. 1 report, Forrester reiterated the same, forecasting that interest will rise as prices drop.

The same author predicted that e-readers won't reach the purchase numbers of MP3 players-which in 2009, 61 percent of the U.S. online population owns-but that digital cameras, which took 10 years to reach 50 million U.S. consumers, are a more likely model. If Asus can do for the e-reader market what it did for PCs, it'll be back to the drawing board for the researchers.

Media Goes Crazy over Amazon deleting '1984'

2009-07-21T07:42:00.000-07:00

Media goes crazy over Amazon deleting '1984'
Media goes crazy over Amazon deleting '1984' from Kindle, but 99-cent ebook was illegal copy

By Nate Mook and Tim Conneally

Amazon issued a statement Friday night saying, "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances." However, the company did not touch on whether it would monitor more closely what books get uploaded as part of its self-serve system for publishers to avoid such circumstances altogether.

The press loves a juicy story, and Amazon served one up on a silver platter this morning by automatically deleting certain copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from customers' Kindles. But many facts were left out of this media frenzy, namely that the ebooks were essentially pirated copies sold for 99-cents by a company that had no rights to the material.

Amazon was able to remove the titles because the Kindle is configured to automatically sync up with the user's Bookshelf via the electronic book reader's WhisperNet wireless service. When the company removed the unauthorized books from customers' accounts, they also disappeared from the Kindle. Amazon then delivered a cryptic e-mail about what happened: "We recently discovered a problem with a Kindle book that you have purchased. We have processed a refund to the payment method used to acquire this book.

The next time the wireless is activated on your device, the problematic item will be removed. If you are not in a wireless coverage area, please connect your device to a computer using your USB cable and delete the file from the documents folder." Naturally, the media went wild. Amazon deleting books remotely? And the book in question being 1984, the dystopian classic where deep surveillance and censorship is the norm? It could only get more ironic if it was Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451. David Pogue at The New York Times hopped on the story early, claiming that "the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition," and stated that Amazon "electronically deleted all books by this author." Pogue asserted that "Amazon...caved" on the matter.

The normally-reliable Harry McCracken at Technologizer wrote, "The books' publisher decided that it wasn't so hot on the idea of electronic rights after all." TechCrunch went so far as to compare Amazon's action to burning books, writing that the retailer deleted "perfectly legal versions" of 1984 and Animal Farm. "Big Brother is in your Kindle. Watching," TechCrunch's MG Siegler wrote. According to the NYT's Pogue, "it's like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we've been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table." Oh, give me a break. Whatever happened to a little fact checking? I guess we don't bother with that when a juicy story can be used to drum up comments and pageviews. I hate to be a party pooper ("Kindles" is now a top trend on Twitter with comments on this nearly every second), but let's get some facts straight before we compare Amazon to Big Brother: The two books in question were published for the Kindle by a company called Mobile Reference, which offers public domain books for around $1. Mobile Reference did not have the right to sell Orwell's novels because 1984 and Animal Farm are still under copyright protection in the United States.

They were not legitimate or "perfectly legal" copies of the books, but rather illicit copies that should not have been sold in the first place. Contrary to what the New York Times reported, the publisher did not change its mind, nor did Amazon cave to pressure. Rather, Amazon was notified that copyrighted material was being sold on the Amazon store without permission and it removed said material. In addition, the NYT's claim that Amazon deleted all works by this author is incorrect. In fact, there are still multiple copies of 1984 still for sale on the Kindle -- just not for 99-cents from a company that had no rights to do so. Other ebooks published by Mobile

Reference that do fall under public domain are also still for sale.

This is not the first time such an event has happened. Amazon has had to perform widespread recalls from the Kindle at least two other times in the past, and the company sent out the exact same notification. Ayn Rand's books were put up on the Kindle Store without consent from the Ayn Rand Institute and had to be pulled down, while unauthorized copies of Stephenie Meyer's popular Twilight series had to be removed as well. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was reportedly offered for sale for a few hours on Monday, even though electronic versions of the books have not been authorized. Of course, those titles don't invoke the delicious irony of Amazon lurking inside your Kindle and deleting 1984.

That's not to say that Amazon's actions were completely justifiable. The two ebooks may have been illegal copies, but they were purchased by the customer. In the real world, if you purchase stolen goods, you don't get to keep those goods, but you're also properly informed of the situation. This is where Amazon messed up. Instead of being honest about what happened -- that it sold unauthorized ebooks and has done so in the past -- Amazon only told customers that there was "a problem." While removing such titles from a customer's Bookshelf and in turn deleting them from the Kindle may be standard policy, a lack of communication about what actually happened has led to a media firestorm that will surely last through the weekend. Amazon also could have offered customers a legitimate replacement copy of 1984 or Animal Farm and footed the difference, because in the end, this was Amazon's mistake. Perhaps most importantly, this case and the others before it highlight a major problem with Amazon's Kindle Store.

The retailer shouldn't have been selling copyrighted material in the first place, and it needs to take a serious look at its acceptance policies to prevent such occurrences in the future. By comparison, Apple has stringent reviews of all applications submitted to its iPhone App Store. So is Amazon going to come take legitimate books off your nightstand because a publisher changed its mind, or even burn down your library as TechCrunch implies? No. But hopefully it will put policies into place on the Kindle Store so it won't need to recall unauthorized ebooks in the future.

What Makes the ebook Experience Potentially Viable

2008-12-04T18:32:00.000-08:00

Kindling eBooks
by Peter Brantley
With the Amazon Kindle ebook reader announcement increasingly looking like it is imminent, and with a review at Ars Tecnica of the latest generation Sony ebook reader ready to stoke a smoldering fire, it is an interesting time to speculate about the future direction and utility of ebook readers.

Booksquare today had an interesting muse about what makes the ebook experience potentially viable, and it is not the kind of DRM-laden entrapment that many vendors are providing now. Rather, the model should be that developed in other content areas, such as video.

[Start] with the expectation that media -- whatever kind -- will be accessible on demand. For my money, no matter what cool this or that is launched by major entertainment media, it's the YouTube model that exemplifies today's environment. Love it, hate it, don't understand it, YouTube works. You don't have to do anything special to access programming. This "just works" ability is what today's consumer desires ... and it's the base level expectation of today's youth.
The blog's authors observe how potentially capable the Apple iPhone is as a platform for ebooks, with its native support for reflowable text (including, potentially, IDPF's ebook format, .epub). But with Amazon pushing Kindle hard, how much attention is being paid to alternative channels, such as the iPhone, or the not-quite-here-yet promise of Google's open stack, Android?

Quick show of hands: how many publishers out there are actively engaged in discussions with Apple to ensure that the iTunes store stocks and promotes ebooks? Making sure that the iPhone has the right technology to facilitate reading ebooks? Or heck, any other kind of text? How many of you are making your voices heard when it comes to making certain that iPhone customers are able to download and read books on their phones?
With the bevy of press starting to ride herd on the new generation of dedicated readers, I've begun to try to think through how I feel about their potential success or failure, with the inevitable comparisons to the iPod and the music industry. (Alert! Speculation rampant below!).

I think, on reflection, that the comparison between audio (and video?) and book acquisition is less apt than it might seem at first glance. Given the extant media packaging within each sector, there was innately a higher barrier to the goal of acquisition and use in the music -- compared to the book -- industry, with the possible exception of a few select publishing markets. With growing digital options, the "LP album" as a compilation of tracks quickly became an obviously inefficient, undesirable bundling of content, screaming for disaggregation; perhaps the closest counterpart in the publishing industry, reference works including cookbooks, travel lit, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, have similarly and thoroughly escaped their legacy bounds; in these cases the conversion to print was not merely literal, but transformative.

In contrast, when one considers long form narratives, whether fiction or non-fiction, there is less of an impetus to migrate from print use except for the possible advantage of portability and more extensive support for visually handicapped readers; on the flip side, there exist some non-trivial barriers (drm, format wars, etc.) to electronic access. Exceptions to this equation tend to be concentrated in areas where consumption modes are inherently mass-market, and where volume exists in transactions; Harlequin may well be the single most successful ebook publisher in the market today. Replicating their striking success through niche markets, or across smaller-impact imprints, is likely to prove difficult.

One might argue that until text-based book production, as a creative process, turns more mixed media, and lends sufficient scaffolding for user generated content, re-use, and re-publication, the appeal of any dedicated, standalone device will be weak. Instead, it will be easier to generate marginal cross book-sector penetration with mixed-use devices (iPhone/gPhone) in which reflowable text/html formats (such as epub) are a straightforward application.

Not coincidentally, it is these same devices that will most readily support the envisioning and enactment of new forms of creative expression, ranging from discursive texts which mutually engage authors and readers; location-sensitive rich-media manga with self-selected forking plots; narratives with multiple entry points and randomized outcomes; hybrid reality games where communication, collaboration, and interaction occur in a combination of physical and the digital spaces; and artistry that we cannot yet imagine.

Maybe the Kindle and Sony devices will be successful; if so, I think it is likely to be a short-term success, a last gasp of a long-enduring form of socially constructed content packaging rendered anew in digital form. Unfortunately, current ebook manifestations lack the emotive sensitivities of the old, without taking advantage of the opportunities of the new, both in terms of consumer experience and in their power to inform and entertain. How we read will be transformed as much as what we read.

Intrinsically, what will ultimately make devices a success is their openness to hacking and experimentation - although content publishers and distributors might not want to hear it, that is ultimately what will make the market.

NYT's 10K subscribers on Kindle: The start of something bigger?

2008-12-01T11:16:00.001-08:00

NYT's 10K subscribers on Kindle: The start of something bigger? The Nieman Journalism Lab
http://www.niemanlab.org/2008/11/nyts-10k-subscribers-on-kindle-the-start-of-something-bigger/

One other important note from that internal New York Times memo my colleague Zach got a hold of: The company reports it has "more than 10,000 paid subscribers" to an electronic edition of the newspaper on Amazon's Kindle ebook reader. To my knowledge (please correct me if I'm wrong), that's the first time a major newspaper has released numbers on how it's doing on Kindle - a platform lots of newspaper execs are eager to see turn into a saving grace for their industry.

Given that the electronic Times costs $13.99 a month, that would mean the NYT Kindle edition is generating in the neighborhood of $1.68 million a year. How much of that goes to NYT Co. and how much stays with Amazon is unclear.

Amazon has been tightlipped about how many of the devices it has sold, which has led some (including me) to think it might be a smaller success than some had hoped. (TechCrunch claimed in August it knew the number: 240,000.) If we do some highly crude back-of-the-envelope calculation, that would mean The New York Times has a penetration rate on the Kindle of around four percent.

Not bad, considering the Kindle is the first incarnation of that dreamy aspirational future of newspapers: no physical distribution costs, plus a steady revenue stream that comes from news consumers, not advertisers.

This also provides some guidance in how other newspapers might be doing on the Kindle. Amazon publishes rankings of its newspapers' sales: The NYT comes in second behind The Wall Street Journal, but ahead of the papers you might imagine (The Washington Post, Financial Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune). Amazon's sales-ranking systems are famously inscrutable - just ask any author who tries to track how his book fares hour to hour - but I'd guess the Journal is generating Kindle revenue numbers similar to the Times', since they sell their edition for only $9.99 but have more subscribers. My suspicion is that there's a pretty steep dropoff in Kindle sales numbers after the NYT, then a much steeper one after the FT - I'd be curious to see numbers from a major metro like The Boston Globe or The Denver Post. The early-adopter crowd that is currently buying Kindles is, I suspect, more interested in a national news product than their local daily.

I've been at a number of conferences recently where newspaper people point to the Kindle (or at least Kindle-like devices) as a major source of industry salvation - arguing that the Kindle will have an adoption slope similar to the iPod's, and that they'll soon be seen in every park and subway around America. And since Kindle users pay money for content, there may be a business model for newspapers after all.

I'm not yet sold on that vision. I think for the Kindle to reach mainstream success, it'll have to shift its focus from being an ebook reader with a junky mobile web browser to being a great mobile web browser with an ebook reader attached. It'll have to become something more like the iPhone with a bigger screen and better battery life. (There are signs the iPhone might already have the ebook-reader lead over the Kindle, although without the business model attached.)

And when that shift happens, it'll become trivially easy to read newspapers' (free) web sites on the device - which I suspect will undercut Kindle newspaper subscriptions just as it undercuts print newspaper subscriptions. But the NYT's numbers are among the first public signs that people - at least some people - are willing to pay to get news in the electronic format of their choice, even when they can get it on the web or their phone for free.

Esquire magazine unveils cover with electronic ink

2008-09-24T05:33:00.000-07:00

Esquire magazine unveils cover with electronic ink
By KRISTEN A. LEE
AP Business Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080908/ap_on_hi_te/esquire_electronic_ink

Although readers keep shifting to the Internet, Esquire magazine's editor is sure print isn't dying, and he aims to prove it Monday by unveiling a 75th-anniversary issue with a cover that features electronic ink.

"For the last couple of years I've been in search of ways to do something that shows that print is a particularly vital product," said Esquire magazine's editor-in-chief, David Granger. "I really do think that print is the most exciting and rewarding medium there is."

A 10-square-inch display on the cover of Esquire's October 2008 anniversary issue flashes the theme "The 21st Century Begins Now" with a collage of illuminated images. On the inside cover, a two-page spread advertising the new Ford Flex Crossover features a second 10-square-inch display with shifting colors to illustrate the car in motion at night.

The displays, which Granger said have boosted advertising in the issue, were developed by E Ink Corp., a Cambridge, Mass., company that also supplied the electronic paper technology for the screen of Amazon's Kindle e-book reader.

The technology for both products uses micro-capsules of ink that are controlled by an electric charge. Unlike the Kindle, the magazine's display is not linked to a wireless network, so it cannot be updated.

Scott Daly, a Dentsu America Inc. executive who oversees media buying for Canon, Toyota, aigdirect.com and other companies, said the concept is a needed shot in the arm for the newspaper and magazine industry.

"A lot of people will say that there isn't that much excitement in the magazine world, but this proves that there can be," Daly said.

In the first half of 2008, newsstand sales of U.S. magazines fell more than 6 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Meanwhile, the economic slowdown has exacerbated a decline in advertising revenue for newspapers and magazines' print editions. The Publishers Information Bureau reported that magazines had roughly 8 percent fewer ad pages in the second quarter of 2008 than the same period a year earlier.

Ad pages for Esquire, a general-interest magazine targeting higher-income men, were down 5.7 percent in the first half of 2008, according to the Magazine Publishers of America.

Esquire's circulation gained slightly compared with 2007, according to the ABC.

"If we want to keep print vital, print advertising has to be just as vital as print editorial," Granger said.

So far, he said, the electronic display has been a strong draw: The October issue has the most ad pages of any issue in his 11 years as editor-in-chief of Esquire.

Granger wouldn't disclose the extra cost of printing the electronic display or its gain from Ford's ad buy.

"Flex is a breakthrough product for Ford, and the Esquire opportunity offered us the chance to show the vehicle in a way we could never previously have imagined," Jim Farley, Ford's group vice president of marketing and communications, said in a written statement.

Esquire is printing 100,000 copies of the October issue with the special cover, which will sell for $5.99 - $2 more than the standard $3.99 cover price - at Borders and Barnes & Noble stores and certain newsstands. Without the e-paper cover, single copies of the anniversary issue will sell for $4.99. Esquire's total monthly circulation is roughly 725,000.

Esquire first approached E Ink about a collaboration more than seven years ago, but the technology was not yet ready for magazines. In the summer of 2007, Esquire and parent Hearst Corp. again contacted E Ink about creating a display for the anniversary issue. The biggest hurdle, Granger said, was packing the six batteries and two computer chips needed for the displays into the magazine's cover. The batteries are guaranteed to last 3 months but expected to work for more than 6 months.

"It was a very difficult process because at every step of the way, nobody had ever done this before," Granger said.

Granger predicted that Esquire will someday include e-paper displays linked to a cellular network or radio frequency, which will allow the magazine to add updates to stories during the month an issue is on sale.

"It could be a year away, it could be three years away, but it will happen soon," Granger said.

E Ink has an exclusive agreement with Hearst through June. Granger said he hopes to use an electronic paper display again in the magazine during the first half of 2009.

"We're already in meetings about what we can do at Esquire and throughout the Hearst magazine division to really take it to the next level and show what this technology is capable of," Granger said. Hearst Magazines' titles also include Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and SmartMoney.

Granger believes e-paper is the technology to finally usher magazines into the 21st century.

"I treasure the magazine experience of, like, going into this little world that's been prepared for you by somebody else," Granger said. "It's not like the Web, where there's just this constant cacophony of noise."

E-paper, Granger said, can incorporate digital technology into magazines without making them unrecognizable. "It preserves that experience but then it adds a little something else," he said, "a little incentive to spend even more time with your magazine."

U.S. News Loses Weekly War as Sector's Ad Pages Plummet

2008-06-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

U.S. News Loses Weekly War as Sector's Ad Pages Plummet
Biweekly Will Focus on Franchise Rankings, Cede Space to Time, Newsweek
By Nat Ives
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=9qd94ncab.0.5xroaocab.cuf4zubab.1&ts=S0340&p=http%3A%2F%2Fadage.com%2Fmediaworks%2Farticle%3Farticle_id%

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- U.S. News & World Report, the longtime No. 3 weekly news magazine, is dropping to a biweekly frequency starting next year, effectively ceding its troubled category to larger rivals Time and Newsweek.

Source: Media Industry NewsletterAll three traditional newsweeklies have already taken steps such as cutting paid-circulation guarantees as competition has increased and the news cycle has gone into hyperdrive. U.S. News has already trimmed its frequency to 36 issues this year from 46 last year. But the move to publish issues only every other week -- with additional specials on occasion -- provides the strongest signal yet that the ground has permanently shifted under the old newsweeklies. "'News' and 'week' becomes an oxymoron," was how Brian Kelly, editor of U.S. News, described the effect of always-on media last week. "It's a very smart, strategic move," said Brenda White, senior VP-director of publishing activation at Starcom Worldwide.

"When you think about it, what their brand stands for is the rankings: the 100 best hospitals. There is a franchise there, and they capitalized on it." "They're really embracing change," Ms. White added, "vs. fighting or just thinking about it."

It's probably helped focus everyone's mind that ad page sales are suffering this year under the added weight of a recession. Ad pages so far have fallen 23.7% at Newsweek, 27.2% at Time and 32.7% at U.S. News, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Around in five years?At a panel last week, media critic and provocateur Michael Wolff suggested the newsweeklies' challenges would only get worse. "If Newsweek is around in five years, I'll buy you dinner," he said.

(Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham sees a different future: "I like steak," he told Ad Age later, "and look forward to dinner.") But there's no getting around the fact that demand for the print versions is dwindling. Time reported average paid circulation of nearly 3.4 million for the second half of last year, down 17.6% as it drastically cut its guaranteed circulation; newsstand sales declined 19.4%. Newsweek's average was flat at 3.1 million, including a 16.3% decline on newsstands; its rate-base reduction did not take effect until January. U.S. News also reported flat circulation, at just over 2 million, as newsstand slipped 7.9%; it, too, cut its rate base in 2008. The newsweeklies are investing heavily in their websites, where they expect to find future audience growth. The new idea at U.S. News is to let the web do what it does best -- provide instant news updates and vast stores of reference material -- so the print edition can publish less often.
"Because we're able to provide our audience with much more current information on the web, it frees us up to do some better storytelling in print," Mr. Kelly said. Websites for all three are, in fact, turning in growth, but Time and Newsweek are faring much better, in part because of their collaborations with other players including CNN and MSNBC. Time's site averaged 4.5 million monthly unique visitors last year, up 34% from the year before, according to Nielsen Online.

Newsweek's 6.5 million average unique visitors represented a 38% gain. U.S. News averaged 1.3 million unique visitors for a gain of 6.5%. Redesign in storeU.S. News executives are turning away from the old category battles. "We're definitely less concerned about the broader issues for the newsweekly category," said President William D. Holiber. "We're more concerned about focusing in on how we can connect our users and readers with our advertisers. The direction that we're taking puts us in a position to do that."

U.S. News is also revealing a redesign next month which will play to print's strengths, such as the capacity to engage readers with that better storytelling Mr. Kelly mentioned earlier. It is refocusing its editorial efforts on providing "what it means to me" content in health, education, personal finance, public affairs and opinion. Its online offerings will include expanded e-mail newsletters, themselves a relatively recent arrival, and a new opinion area later this month. The brand is also creating a U.S. News Media Group to house and market its print edition, the companion site, its popular rankings of colleges and other institutions, the Rankings and Reviews site introduced last year, and newsstand specials such as "Secrets of the Civil War."

Bits, Bands and Books

2008-06-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

Bits, Bands and Books
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/opinion/06krugman.html?em&ex=1212984000&en=5d9bf58981e47170&ei=5087%0A
Do you remember what it was like back in the old days when we had a New Economy? In the 1990s, jobs were abundant, oil was cheap and information technology was about to change everything.
Then the technology bubble popped. Many highly touted New Economy companies, it turned out, were better at promoting their images than at making money - although some of them did pioneer new forms of accounting fraud. After that came the oil shock and the food shock, grim reminders that we're still living in a material world.
So much, then, for the digital revolution? Not so fast. The predictions of '90s technology gurus are coming true more slowly than enthusiasts expected - but the future they envisioned is still on the march.
In 1994, one of those gurus, Esther Dyson, made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product - software, books, music, movies - the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to "distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships."
For example, she described how some software companies gave their product away but earned fees for installation and servicing. But her most compelling illustration of how you can make money by giving stuff away was that of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged people to tape live performances because "enough of the people who copy and listen to Grateful Dead tapes end up paying for hats, T-shirts and performance tickets. In the new era, the ancillary market is the market."
Indeed, it turns out that the Dead were business pioneers. Rolling Stone recently published an article titled "Rock's New Economy: Making Money When CDs Don't Sell." Downloads are steadily undermining record sales - but today's rock bands, the magazine reports, are finding other sources of income. Even if record sales are modest, bands can convert airplay and YouTube views into financial success indirectly, making money through "publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing."
What other creative activities will become mainly ways to promote side businesses? How about writing books?
According to a report in The Times, the buzz at this year's BookExpo America was all about electronic books. Now, e-books have been the coming, but somehow not yet arrived, thing for a very long time. (There's an old Brazilian joke: "Brazil is the country of the future - and always will be." E-books have been like that.) But we may finally have reached the point at which e-books are about to become a widely used alternative to paper and ink.
That's certainly my impression after a couple of months' experience with the device feeding the buzz, the Amazon Kindle. Basically, the Kindle's lightness and reflective display mean that it offers a reading experience almost comparable to that of reading a traditional book. This leaves the user free to appreciate the convenience factor: the Kindle can store the text of many books, and when you order a new book, it's literally in your hands within a couple of minutes.
It's a good enough package that my guess is that digital readers will soon become common, perhaps even the usual way we read books.
How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won't last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices.
Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors' other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it's good enough for me.
Now, the strategy of giving intellectual property away so that people will buy your paraphernalia won't work equally well for everything. To take the obvious, painful example: news organizations, very much including this one, have spent years trying to turn large online readership into an adequately paying proposition, with limited success.
But they'll have to find a way. Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we'll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.
It won't all happen immediately. But in the long run, we are all the Grateful Dead.

Problems with the paperless revolution, and a proposal

2008-04-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

Problems with the paperless revolution, and a proposal
http://eleraama.livejournal.com/50211.html

I like books. Quite a lot. I often claim that I collect books; this is a lie. I hoard them. Stash them. Ferret them away. I love the physicality of the media itself, and it's something I would never, ever give up, not in a million years.

But I did something strange. I bought a Sony Reader, that bastion of e-Ink technology. And I love it. I can carry as many books as I want without ever increasing my load in size or weight. I can read computer documents in something approximating paper without wasting a single sheet. It's glorious. However, there is a problem.

I have nothing to read on it. I have perhaps three hundred volumes in my collection, and not a single one of them can I put on my Reader without having to buy it again (excepting those under the purview of Project Gutenberg).

Take, for instance, my copy of Wheelock's Latin. It's a large book, even in paperback. I would like to study it in between my classes, but it's much too heavy to carry with me all the time. My Reader is the perfect solution to this-- except that I would have to buy a copy of the book again. A book I've already purchased, again, just so I can have the convenience of putting it on a device I own. Amazon does not offer the book for use with the Kindle, but I estimate it would cost somewhere between ten and fifteen dollars-- equal or more than what I paid for the paper copy. This is simply unacceptable.

I have a few solutions that fall into three categories: What I Want, What's Reasonable, and What Would Make Most Consumers Happy.

What I Want: I want to be able to take a photograph of the book itself and submit it for instant, free access to a digital copy of the book in a human-readable format without DRM.

What's Reasonable: I would settle for buying a book that contains a digital copy of itself in a format that is not DRM'd but not quite human readable (ie, the Reader's LRF format). I would even be willing to pay slightly more for the privilege, perhaps even up to half the book's value, depending on the book (though more realistically, up to about five or ten bucks).

What Would Make Most People Happy: For books to come with free or cheap copies of themselves in widely available DRM formats, such as those of the Kindle, Reader, and Iliad.

Is it such a hard request, publishing world? I'm perfectly willing to shell out more cash for the privilege. Let me give you my money for something that literally costs you nothing to make.

(In the meantime, I suspect I'll start leaving Wheelock in the car and taking it with me before class.)

Hearst Interactive Backing Kindle-Like E-Book Reader Startup

2008-04-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

Hearst Interactive Backing Kindle-Like E-Book Reader Startup FirstPaper
Posted By Rafat Ali
http://www.paidcontent.org
Hearst Interactive, the digital media investment arm of Hearst Corp, is incubating a Kindle-like e-book reader, paidContent.org has learned, and the separate venture is called FirstPaper. The stealth startup is based in Palo Alto and New York City. It is developing this device based on Linux and will have some variation of Mozilla browser or its underlying technology (XUL) in it. Some hints about the company's plans are here and here in the job listings.
Hearst has also invested in E-Ink, the electronic display technology firm, so there might be some synergies involved. E-Ink supplies its technology to Sony (NYSE: SNE) Reader, Sony's critically acclaimed e-book reader. In fact, Lee Shirani, the former head of Sony Reader's e-book store, is now working as FirstPaper's SVP.
A story in Crosscut, a Seattle news site, back in July last year mentioned that Hearst is planning to test-market a wireless online newspaper within the next two years, using E-Ink technology. But unlike Kindle's small, hardback reader, Hearst plans to employ the technology on a flexible screen almost as big as a tabloid paper. The e-paper can be updated by simply touching the screen. That was quickly denied by Hearst back then, though again, not sure if FirstPaper is related to this. Also not sure if Hearst is the only one funding this company, though the company describes itself as "well-funded".
E-mails and calls to FirstPaper and Hearst for comment were not returned

Polymer Vision Readies Rollable E-Book, Cell Phone

2008-01-23T18:51:00.000-08:00

BoSacks Speak Out: Does anyone else notice the symmetry between this article and the Simon Dumenco's, Let's Hear It for Print!? I do. In a few weeks I will be posting a review of the new Kindle by Amazon in Publishing Executive Magazine. These new e-paper devices like the one below are still young and feisty and no where near the maturity that they will soon develop. But mark my words, they will grow out of this adolescence into a vibrant force to be reckoned with. They are not yet ready for the keys to the car, but one day we will have to let them drive on their own, and they will do so very nicely.

"At 16 I was stupid, confused, . . . and indecisive. At 21 I was wise, self-confident, . . . and assertive. At 45 I'm stupid, confused, . . . and indecisive. [Is] maturity only a short break in adolescence?"
Jules Feiffer

Polymer Vision Readies Rollable E-Book, Cell Phone
Polymer Vision's upcoming Readius is an e-book with a flexible screen and cell phone capabilities.
Peter Sayer, IDG News Service
Polymer Vision plans to launch Readius, an e-reader with a flexible screen weighing little more than a cell phone, in the middle of this year, it said Tuesday.
The long-awaited gadget will be a boon to those who now get their daily news fix by scanning the headlines on an e-reader -- but who miss the way they could roll up their old newspaper and tuck it in a pocket when they had finished reading.

The key feature of the Readius is its flexible screen, 5 inches across the diagonal, with a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels (QVGA) in 16 shades of gray.

It has mutated a little since Polymer Vision showed early prototypes of the wrap-around flexible screen a year ago: "The concept is the same, but we have added mobile phone functionality," said Thomas van der Zijden, vice president of sales and marketing.

The latest device, now ready for production, functions as a triband phone with a high-speed mobile wireless connection. Unlike Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader, which can only connect to U.S. wireless networks, the Readius will operate almost worldwide, as it works with the HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) 3G (third-generation) service favored by European, Asian and some U.S. operators.

Although the device will function as a phone, dialing unfamiliar numbers will be awkward, as it has only eight buttons. That's not a problem, according to Van der Zijden, as mobile phone users make most calls to numbers already in their address book -- and the Readius can be synchronized with a PC through its USB 2.0 connection or Bluetooth 2.0 wireless interface.

In addition, the wireless connection can be used to download e-mail using the POP3 and IMAP4 protocols, or from Web-based services such as Yahoo mail, Google's Gmail or corporate servers using the Webmail function of Microsoft Exchange, according to Polymer Vision.

The Readius weighs 115 grams and measures 115 millimeters by 57 mm by 21 mm when closed. It has a slot for Micro-SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) memory cards up to 8G bytes in capacity. One battery charge will allow up to 30 hours of continuous reading, and for those with tired eyes the device will even play audio books -- and podcasts and MP3 music files, the company said.

Polymer Vision is seeking content providers willing to sell material through a dedicated Internet portal offering wireless downloads for the Readius, and is also looking for mobile networks and retail outlets to provide additional distribution channels.

Content will have to be adapted to the small screen resolution, but there are no obstacles to that: the platform is open and can display PDF, HTML and ASCII text files, said Van der Zijden. The devices run the Windows CE operating system with a custom user interface, and can use the OMA 1.0 DRM (digital rights management) to prevent copying of content. Polymer Vision may add other DRM systems depending on demand from content providers, he said.

The company expects to have the Readius available to partners by the end of the second quarter, so that they can sell it early in the third quarter.

The price will depend on operator subsidies and contracts, but Van der Zijden expects it to be comparable with that for high-end smartphones such as Nokia's N95 8GB or Apple's iPhone.

One operator that expressed an early interest in the Readius is Italy's Telecom Italia. Polymer Vision is developing a special version for Italy that will include support for the DVB-H broadcast protocol, said Van der Zijden. While this is normally used to broadcast television signals, Telecom Italia plans to use it to deliver large quantities of data to a wide audience -- such as a daily newspaper that subscribers can then unlock.

Pre-CES: LG Philips to show hi-res roll-up display

2008-01-05T08:23:00.000-08:00

Pre-CES: LG Philips to show hi-res roll-up display
In a major technology breakthrough, LG Philips will debut what it says is the world's highest-resolution 14.3-inch flexible color "E-Paper" display at CES. Boasting both higher resolution and faster display rates, the display is less than 300 micrometers thin and is flexible like a heavy paper. "You can roll it up and take it with you," says Mr. In-Jae Chung of LG Philips, who describes the new surface as being as easy to read as a piece of paper.

Seoul, Korea (January 3, 2008) - LG.Philips LCD a leading innovator of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) technology, announced today that it will debut the world's highest resolution 14.3-inch flexible color E-paper display at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008.

The 14.3-inch E-paper display, which is equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper, represents a significant improvement over its predecessors with a never before seen resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels, and the ability to display 16.7 million colors, making it perfect for use in high end multimedia applications. These displays are extremely energy efficient, only using power when the image changes. Additionally, the displays are extremely thin, at less than 300 micrometers.

LG.Philips LCD's use of metal foil and plastic substrates, rather than glass substrate makes the flexible color E-paper display bendable and durable, while maintaining superior display qualities. Like its predecessors, this 14.3-inch display uses a substrate that arranges thin-film transistors (TFT) on metal foil rather than glass, allowing it to recover its original shape after being bent. Furthermore, it can also be viewed from a full 180 degrees, so that images always appear crisp, even when the display is bent.

This new display uses LG.Philips LCD's proprietary processing technology to minimize panel deformation and prevent circuit structure change during high-temperature processes-focusing on the designs of the color filter structure and TFT, as well as color filter lamination technology. This allows the display to overcome processing difficulties inherent in the lack of heat resistance in metal foil and plastic substrates.

"Our new 14.3-inch flexible color display is nearly the equivalent size of an A4 size paper, but you can roll it up and take it with you," said Mr. In-Jae Chung, LG.Philips LCD's chief technology officer and executive vice president. "The reflective foil substrate is as easy to read as a printed sheet of paper and can be used in a number of applications like electronic textbooks and smart ID cards, where picture quality is as important as durability and portability."

LG.Philips LCD will also unveil the highest resolution mono flexible E-paper which is similar in size to a B5 size paper and it plans to launch this mono flexible E-paper in 2008.

According to a recent report from Displaybank, a Korea-based research firm specializing in the display industry, the flexible display market is projected to grow into a USD 5.9 billion market by 2010, rising to USD 12 billion by 2015.

Can It Kindle the Imagination?

2007-11-25T20:52:00.001-08:00

Can It Kindle the Imagination?
We read the fine print on Amazon's new gadget.
By Steven Levy
NEWSWEEK

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says that the Kindle may be the most important thing he's ever done. But how well does it work? As the first journalist to get his hands on the device, I found it fit my hands pretty well. It's comfortable to hold, and the huge NEXT PAGE and PREVIOUS PAGE buttons on the sides make it easy to keep reading at a steady pace. On the other hand, the prominence of those buttons makes it almost impossible to pick the Kindle up without inadvertently turning a virtual page.

Navigation through the various features is via a novel system centered on a clickable "select wheel" that moves a silvery cursor up or down a slim bar, like an elevator moving through a shaft. It's dead simple to master, but a little slow.
The real acid test was whether the Kindle was capable of transporting a reader into that trancelike zone where the world falls away. My suspicion, since I've had a Sony Reader (which uses the identical E Ink technology), was that it would, and I was right. I read a Dan Silva thriller, Richard Russo's new novel and Eric Clapton's unsatisfying memoir, and didn't feel I was missing anything that I would have gotten in a "real" book.

It's also exciting to get a daily dose of The New York Times and other papers. But the interface for newspaper reading is disappointing-you have to painstakingly go through article lists, and often the stories are insufficiently described. Still, getting the Times in one burst on a daily basis, no matter where you are, is closer to getting a hard-copy delivery than picking out articles on the Web, and it costs $13.99 a month, compared with the $50-plus I pay for home delivery. Do the math.

The real innovation of the Kindle is connecting by its wireless Whispernet, which works well from pretty much everywhere. When you go to the Kindle store, you are greeted like an old friend, since your Kindle account is linked to your Amazon buying history and recommendations. Not every book I wanted was there (paging Philip Roth), but plenty were, and the $9.99 price for best sellers and new books makes purchases more attractive. The coolest thing you can do with a Kindle, hands down, is buying a book-just click BUY and, bang, you have the book in less than a minute.

Though the copy protection doesn't affect book-reading, it is limiting, and annoying. You can't print out a passage, e-mail it to a friend or copy it into a document. You can't lend a book to someone, or sell it after you're finished.

Searching-inside books, inside the device, in the store and on the Web-is speedy and easy. You can do Web browsing on a Kindle, but it doesn't display pages well. (No YouTube, as the device doesn't support animation.)

I didn't scientifically test the battery life, but I found that when you're warned that you have only 20 percent of your power left, you should recharge immediately, because when it goes, it goes quickly, and there's nothing more frustrating than a device that plays dead. And yes, you can replace a battery, for about $20.

The Kindle, mainly because it is not just a device but a well-designed cog in a coherent and useful service, is a high point so far in electronic reading. Deciding whether it's worth the $399 price tag is a classic early-adopter question: if history has any validity, you'll eventually be able to buy an improved version for less. But I'd say that any voluminous reader, particularly one who travels, would be delighted to receive a Kindle by the fireplace this holiday season.

E-Paper Comes Alive

2007-11-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

E-Paper Comes Alive
E Ink is making color and video versions of its e-paper, but commercial products are a few years off.
By David Talbot

The new Amazon Kindle e-reader, unveiled yesterday, is the latest in a line of ever-improving black-and-white e-paper displays that don't use much power and are bright even in daylight; they more closely reproduce conventional paper and ink than do backlit displays. But bigger technology leaps are imminent. E-paper pioneer E Ink--the company whose technology underpins the Amazon gadget's display--is prototyping versions of the electronic ink that are bright enough to support filters for vivid color displays, and that have a fast-enough refresh rate to render video.

Add it all up, and it represents an emerging trifecta of color, video, and flexibility set to transform a display technology once seen as suited only for rigid black-and-white e-readers like the Kindle and the Sony Reader, and other niche applications like train-station schedule displays that don't need to change quickly. "This latest thing they've done with the video is a key milestone in the history of e-paper technology development," says Gregory Raupp, director of the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University. "Until this point, you have been limited to static image applications."

E Ink's basic technology uses a layer of microcapsules filled with flecks of submicrometer black and white pigment chips in a clear liquid. The white chips can be positively charged, the black chips negatively charged. Above this layer is a transparent electrode; at the base is another electrode. A positive charge on the bottom electrode pushes the white chips to the surface, making the screen white. A negative charge pushes the black chips up, rendering words and images.

But the basic technology only produces a black-and-white image. So, E Ink has been refining the ingredients, the electronics, and the mechanics of that process. For example, in recent months the company has developed ultrabright inks that reflect 47 percent of ambient light--a significant improvement over the 35 to 40 percent in existing E Ink black-and-white displays. Higher reflectivity versions should go into commercial products, such as the Sony Reader, in about two years.

This higher brightness makes color displays possible. E Ink uses transparent red, green, or blue filters affixed above the picture elements. In essence, software controls groups of microcapsules sitting below filters of particular hues, and it only turns the microcapsules white when those hues are sought. The E Ink filters are custom-made by a partner, Toppan Printing of Tokyo, to work well with the specific shades, brightness, and reflectivity of the E Ink technology. The first color experimentation began several years ago, but it has been steadily improving in brightness and contrast, says Michael McCreary, E Ink's vice president of research and advanced development. He offered no estimate for a commercialization date.

In another set of advances, tweaks to the E Ink particles and their polymer coatings, and to the chemistry of solution inside the microcapsules, have helped improve the speed at which the particles can move. McCreary says that for years, conventional wisdom held that E Ink technology could never be made video ready, because particles had to be moved through a liquid. But E Ink has done it, thanks to polymer particle coatings and "special stuff in the clear liquid," McCreary says.

In the company's Cambridge, MA, headquarters, two prototypes show the payoff. One is an e-reader display in bright, vivid color. Touch a button, and an image of a bunch of flowers appears; bring the display outside, and it shines brighter because it is reflecting ambient light. (As with black-and-white e-paper, until a user changes that image, the unit consumes virtually no power.) The other prototype, a six-inch display hooked up to a computer, showed a video clip from the animated movie Cars. It was a bit grainy but was switching frames 30 times per second. Two years ago, the switching time in products with E Ink technology was just one frame per second.

While the video version is still several years from market, "this was a landmark research advance in the history of e-paper," says Russ Wilcox, E Ink's CEO. Invoking the long-held dream for e-paper--that it can be an electronic replacement for real newsprint--he added, "You can imagine a USA Today weather chart where clouds are actually moving."

E Ink is working with several leading display makers to develop flexible transistors that will create E Ink and other color displays that are bendable and even rollable. LG Philips recently announced the world's first 14.1-inch flexible color e-paper display using E Ink technology. The color version uses a substrate that arranges thin-film transistors on metal foil rather than on glass. And last month, Samsung used E Ink technology to set a new world record in terms of the resolution of a large flexible color display. (Samsung's 14.3-inch screen has a 1,500-by-2,120-pixel resolution.) No commercialization date has been announced for these technologies.

Other companies are also making advances in e-paper. One of them, San Diego's Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, has developed a MEMS-based version that can produce video-ready refresh rates and will appear in monochrome and bicolor displays in the next year or so. (See "E-Paper Displays Video.") But E Ink is generally acknowledged to have the best technology in terms of simulating the look of paper, says Raupp, whose research lab has partnerships with 16 display makers, including both E Ink and Qualcomm. "Put the two side by side--which one looks like paper? There would be no contest," Raupp says of E Ink and Qualcomm. The move into video and color "expands the application space" and makes E Ink a leading candidate to become a fixture in flexible displays, he adds.

Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books

2007-09-10T05:50:00.001-07:00

Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books
By BRAD STONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/technology/06amazon.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=technology&adxnnlx=1189166495-c+pbzSp3dgLhtKgJH2JKLA

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 - Technology evangelists have predicted the emergence of electronic books for as long as they have envisioned flying cars and video phones. It is an idea that has never caught on with mainstream book buyers.

Two new offerings this fall are set to test whether consumers really want to replace a technology that has reliably served humankind for hundreds of years: the paper book.

In October, the online retailer Amazon.com will unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader that has been the subject of industry speculation for a year, according to several people who have tried the device and are familiar with Amazon's plans. The Kindle will be priced at $400 to $500 and will wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon's site.

That is a significant advance over older e-book devices, which must be connected to a computer to download books or articles.

Also this fall, Google plans to start charging users for full online access to the digital copies of some books in its database, according to people with knowledge of its plans. Publishers will set the prices for their own books and share the revenue with Google. So far, Google has made only limited excerpts of copyrighted books available to its users.

Amazon and Google would not comment on their plans, and neither offering is expected to carve out immediately a significant piece of the $35-billion-a-year book business. But these new services, from two Internet heavyweights, may help to answer the question of whether consumers are ready to read books on digital screens instead of on processed wood pulp.

"Books represent a pretty good value for consumers. They can display them and pass them to friends, and they understand the business model," said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, who is skeptical that a profitable e-book market will emerge anytime soon.

"We have had dedicated e-book devices on the market for more than a decade, and the payoff always seems to be just a few years away," he said.

That disappointing history goes back to the late 1990s, when Silicon Valley start-ups created the RocketBook and SoftBook Reader, two bulky, battery-challenged devices that suffered from lackluster sales and a limited selection of material. The best selling e-books at the time, tellingly, were "Star Trek" novels.

Hopes for e-books began to revive last year with the introduction of the widely marketed Sony Reader. Sony's $300 gadget, the size of a trade paperback, has a six-inch screen, enough memory to hold 80 books and a battery that lasts for 7,500 page turns, according to the company. It uses screen display technology from E Ink, a company based in Cambridge, Mass., that emerged from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creates power-efficient digital screens that uncannily mimic the appearance of paper.

Sony will not say how many it has sold, but the Reader has apparently done well enough that Sony recently increased its advertising for the device in several major American cities.

"Digital readers are not a replacement for a print book; they are a replacement for a stack of print books," said Ron Hawkins, vice president for portable reader systems at Sony. "That is where we see people, on the go, in the subway and in airports, with our device."

Book publishers also seem to be preparing for the kind of disruption that hit the music business when Apple introduced the symbiotic combination of the iPod and its iTunes online service. This year, with Sony's Reader drawing some attention and Amazon's imminent e-book device on their radar, most major publishers have accelerated the conversion of their titles into electronic formats.

"There has been an awful lot of energy around e-books in the last six to 12 months, and we are now making a lot more titles available," said Matt Shatz, vice president for digital at Random House, which plans to have around 6,500 e-books available by 2008. It has had about 3,500 available for the last few years.

Amazon has been showing the Kindle to book publishers for the last year and has delayed its introduction several times. Last fall, a photograph of the device, and some of its specifications, leaked onto the Web when the company filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to get approval for its wireless modem, which will operate over a high-speed EVDO network.

Several people who have seen the Kindle say this is where the device's central innovation lies - in its ability to download books and periodicals, and browse the Web, without connecting to a computer. They also say Amazon will pack some free offerings onto the device, like reference books, and offer customers a choice of subscriptions to feeds from major newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the French newspaper Le Monde.

The device also has a keyboard, so its users can take notes when reading or navigate the Web to look something up. A scroll wheel and a progress indicator next to the main screen, will help users navigate Web pages and texts on the device.

People familiar with the Kindle also have a few complaints. The device has a Web browser, but using it is a poor experience, because the Kindle's screen, also from E Ink, does not display animation or color.

Some also complain about the fact that Amazon is using a proprietary e-book format from Mobipocket, a French company that Amazon bought in 2005, instead of supporting the open e-book standard backed by most major publishers and high-tech companies like Adobe. That means owners of other digital book devices, like the Sony Reader, will not be able to use books purchased on Amazon.com.

Nevertheless, many publishing executives see Amazon's entrance into the e-book world as a major test for the long-held notion that books and newspapers may one day be consumed on a digital device.

"This is not your grandfather's e-book," said one publishing executive who did not want to be named because Amazon makes its partners sign nondisclosure agreements. "If these guys can't make it work, I see no hope."

For its part, Google has no plans to introduce an electronic device for reading books. Its new offering will allow users to pay some portion of a book's cover price to read its text online. For the last two years, as part of the Google Book Search Partner Program, some publishers have been contributing electronic versions of their books to the Google database, with the promise that the future revenue would be shared.

The service could be especially useful to students and researchers who find information they need through a Google search, but it is also likely to include material suited for leisure reading. It will be separate from an effort called the Google Book Search Library Project, which is digitizing the collections of some libraries. That program has angered publishers and led to several pending lawsuits over copyright issues.

Both the programs of Google and Amazon are drawing attention, and some skepticism, from traditional book retailers. Barnes & Noble, the largest bookseller in the United States, once invested in early e-book creator NuvoMedia and sold its RocketBook in stores before getting out of the business in 2003.

Stephen Riggio, chief executive at Barnes & Noble, argues that for most people the value of traditional paper books will never be replicated in digital form. Nevertheless, he plans to compete with Google and Amazon. Mr. Riggio said in an interview that the full texts of many books will become available on the company's Web site over the next year to 18 months. He also said that Barnes & Noble was considering introducing its own electronic book reader - but only when it can sell one at a low price.

"If an affordable device can come to the market, sure we'd love to bring it to our customers, and we will," Mr. Riggio said. "But right now we don't see an affordable device in the immediate future."

3D Holographic Display Developed"

2007-09-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

3D Holographic Display Developed
http://www.techlemming.com/2007/08/31/3d-holographic-display-developed/

Great news for the Star Wars fans out there. Researchers from USC have taken us a step further in the quest for a 3D Holographic Display. They are now able to present interactive 3D graphics to multiple viewers, from all angles.
It consists of a high-speed video projector, a spinning mirror and FPGA circuitry to decode specially rendered DVI video signals.

Samsung Improves Resolution Of E-paper

2007-08-31T08:06:00.000-07:00

Samsung Improves Resolution Of E-paper
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7008352605

Windsor Genova - AHN Writer
Seoul, South Korea (AHN) - The electronic paper invented last year by South Korean information technology firm Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., has enhance its resolution, making it more readable.

The company announced on Wednesday that it has increased by two and a half times the resolution of the A4 paper-size black-and-white flexible display. Samsung added that it had made the e-paper more durable.

According to Samsung, the first black-and-white e-paper is an electrophoretic display with a high definition resolution of 1,366 X 768 pixels. It works using only 300 milliwatts of power at one frame per minute, which is 1/500 that of a conventional liquid crystal display.

Samsung also had invented a color and flexible e-paper. Made of plastic substrate, its 130-degree centigrade, low-temperature non-crystalline silicon processing prevent distortion of color images even when the surface is bent. The color e-paper also continues to show a static image even when power is turned off.

US academics: e-paper revolution looms large

2007-08-09T05:13:00.001-07:00

US academics: e-paper revolution looms large
Tim Sheahan, printweek.com, 08 August 2007

A move away from conventional newspapers could become reality within the next five years due to advances in e-paper technology, according to US academics.

US-based Purdue University's David Janes leads a team from several American colleges to develop flexible displays.

The team is using nanotechnology to create a high-tech display that could be used for newspapers with moving pictures that update automatically, he said.

Janes said: "So instead of seeing a static picture on your newspaper headline, you would actually see a character talking at you. Certainly, I think this would be a way to do that."

Janes' group – one of many working with e-paper – uses transparent transistors that contain tiny nanowires to light a flexible screen.

"We will no longer be constrained by simply having this rigid glass panel we hang on our wall or our desk, and we'll be able to wrap displays around other things," he added.

Transparent Transistors to Bring Future Displays

2007-07-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

Transparent Transistors to Bring Future Displays
Researchers claim to have created the first prototype of a new design for semiconductors, devices in which transparent electronics are built on top of a flexible transparent base. This promises a step closer towards flexible color screens for consumer electronics, e-paper and "heads-up" displays in auto windshields.

The transistors are made of single "nanowires" or tiny cylindrical structures that were assembled on glass or thin films or flexible plastic.

"The nanowires themselves are transparent, the contacts we put on them are transparent and the glass or plastic substrate is transparent," said David Janes, a researcher at Purdue University's Birck Nanotechnology Center in the USA and a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

"Other researchers had previously created nanowire transistors, but the metal electrodes in the transistors were non-transparent, which made the overall structure opaque," said Tobin J. Marks, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Chemistry and a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University in the USA.

"Our study demonstrates that nanowire electronics can be fully transparent, as well as flexible, while maintaining high performance levels," Marks said. "This opens the door to entirely new technologies for high-performance transparent flexible displays."

Findings were detailed last month in a research paper in the journal "Nature Nanotechnology".

The main areas of application include transparent displays for uses such as eyeglasses, visors and heads-up displays on windshields enabling drivers to see information without looking down at the dashboard; flexible displays for future "e-paper," promising to allow full-motion video; and transparent and flexible electronics for RFID tags, electronic bar codes and smart credit cards, which resemble ordinary credit cards but contain an embedded microprocessor.

The nanowires were made of zinc oxide or indium oxide. Although nearly all the publicity for nanowires concerns carbon, they have been made of many inorganic materials including gold, platinum, silicon, indium phosphide andgallium nitride. Inorganic nanowires are showing useful laser emission, for example.

Unlike conventional computer chips, the thin-film transistors could be produced less expensively under low temperatures, making them ideal to incorporate into plastic films, which melt under high-temperature processing.

The nanowires are transparent because they are made of materials that do not absorb light in the visible range of the spectrum. In conventional electronics, transistors are connected to the rest of the circuitry by tiny lines of metal that act as wires. But in the new approach, the nanowires are the transistors.

"This is a different kind of wire," Janes said. "It is basically taking the place of the silicon in silicon electronics."

It is claimed that higher performance is realized due to the devices having better "on-off ratio" than previous thin-film technologies, making the new thin-film transistors practical for portable battery-powered devices. However, IDTechEx notes that some other printed transistors have a satisfactory on off ratio of one million.

The new nanowire transistors could be used to create electronics based on OLEDS which are now used in cell phone and MP3 displays and the newest television sets, say the researchers.

The technology could also be used to create new flexible antennas that unfurl like a sail and aim their signals more precisely than current antennas. This could be useful for certain military communications when you would want to transmit in a tight beam to only one other soldier.

The new transparent technology has been shown to have carrier mobilities similar to those of conventional computer microprocessors, meaning electrons travel in the devices at nearly the same speed as current consumer electronics but in a low-cost, flexible package. This is a huge advance on current printed electronics where inorganic compounds are the best but stilll have mobilities typically of 4-40 cm2/Vs, well below silicon and limiting the frequency of operation.

Future research is expected to include work to integrate the thin-film transistors into large circuits and to develop ways to interconnect numerous transistors - quite a challenge with this geometry. IDTechEx has written the only in depth report on the new printed and thin film electronics based on inorganic materials. These semiconductors and dielectrics have superior properties to the more popular inorgnic compounds. Inorganic conductors are also covered.

Transparent transistors to bring future displays, 'e-paper'

2007-06-26T18:54:00.001-07:00

Transparent transistors to bring future displays, 'e-paper'

Researchers have used nanotechnology to create transparent transistors and circuits, a step that promises a broad range of applications, from e-paper and flexible color screens for consumer electronics to "smart cards" and "heads-up" displays in auto windshields.

The transistors are made of single "nanowires," or tiny cylindrical structures that were assembled on glass or thin films of flexible plastic.

"The nanowires themselves are transparent, the contacts we put on them are transparent and the glass or plastic substrate is transparent," said David Janes, a researcher at Purdue University's Birck Nanotechnology Center and a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Other researchers had previously created nanowire transistors, but the metal electrodes in the transistors were non-transparent, which made the overall structure opaque, said Tobin J. Marks, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Chemistry and a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University.

"Our study demonstrates that nanowire electronics can be fully transparent, as well as flexible, while maintaining high performance levels," Marks said. "This opens the door to entirely new technologies for high-performance transparent flexible displays."

Findings were detailed this month in a research paper in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The advancement has three broad areas of potential applications:

-- Transparent displays for uses such as heads-up displays on windshields and information displays on eyeglasses and visors. The displays enable drivers to see information without looking down at the dashboard and could project information on visors for workers without obstructing their view. Potential applications also include sports goggles for spectators to follow a particular player while having relevant statistics displayed and real-time interactive information for soldiers and surgeons.

-- Flexible displays for future "e-paper," promising to allow full-motion video. E-paper is a technology designed to mimic regular ink on paper. Unlike conventional flat-panel displays, which use a backlight to illuminate pixels, e-paper reflects light like ordinary paper and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely without drawing electricity while allowing the image to be changed later. Potential uses of e-paper include low-cost, energy efficient ways of displaying information and video as a replacement for paper in magazines, newspapers, books, electronic signs and billboards.

-- Transparent and flexible electronics for radio frequency identification tags, electronic bar codes and smart credit cards, which resemble ordinary credit cards but contain an embedded microprocessor. This microprocessor replaces the usual magnetic strip on a credit or debit card, increasing the security of data stored on the card and enabling computers to "talk" to the microprocessor. Such a technology could be used to display balances on cards and could be used for the free flow of people through transportation systems, avoiding the need of ticketing machines or validation gates. The cards could contain encryption software, secure data for use in pay phones and banking, and to contain health-care data for patients and allow tamper-proof identification information for workers.

The nanowires were made of zinc oxide or indium oxide.

Unlike conventional computer chips - called CMOS, for complementary metal oxide semiconductor chips - the thin-film transistors could be produced less expensively under low temperatures, making them ideal to incorporate into plastic films, which melt under high-temperature processing.

Liquid crystal displays now used in applications such as color cell phone screens are made with thin-film electronics. This thin-film technology makes it possible to lay down electronic devices in large sheets containing individual pixels. Current thin-film electronics use technologies known as amorphous silicon and poly-silicon.

"These approaches work fine if you have a flat, rigid display that's going to be opaque," Janes said. "They require fairly high-temperature processing, so they are not good on plastic, although industry is working really hard to get them on plastic and make them lightweight, flexible and transparent."

An alternative, emerging technology uses so-called "organic" or "plastic" transistors to replace the conventional silicon that has been a mainstay of microelectronics for decades. While this technology enables transistors to be embedded in or printed on flexible plastic, it has lower performance, although major advances are being made, Marks said.

The new research represents the best of both worlds.

"You can get high performance because the nanowires themselves give you some unique performance advantages, and you could still think of dispersing them down over large areas for displays, smart credit cards and other applications," Janes said.

The nanowires are transparent because they are made of materials that do not absorb light in the visible range of the spectrum. In conventional electronics, transistors are connected to the rest of the circuitry by tiny lines of metal that act as wires. But in the new approach, the nanowires are the transistors.

"This is a different kind of wire," Janes said. "It is basically taking the place of the silicon in silicon electronics."

One reason for the higher performance realized in the new technology is that the devices have a better "on-off ratio" than previous thin-film technologies, Janes said.

Having a good on-off ratio helps conserve power, making the new thin-film transistors practical for portable battery-powered devices.

"In a transistor, you are trying to turn it off and on, like a switch," Janes said. "But unlike a wall switch in your house, a transistor never really turns completely off. There is always a little bit of leakage through it, sort of like crimping a garden hose."

The nanowire transistors help to reduce this leakage while also offering the possibility of precisely controlling the pixels in displays.

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"We think of transistors as switches, but we don't just want them to be full on or full off," Janes said. "We'd like it to have gray scale, to be able to mix up many colors to get different subtle shades. And that's in part where this on-off ratio comes into play. We want to be able to turn it on, have the pixel light up really bright, but we also want to be able to controllably dim it down."

Television screens contain millions of pixels. Rows and columns of circuits crisscross in the large arrays, with each pixel located at the intersections. Control circuitry drives transistors and turns them on and off.

Researchers found that transistors using a single nanowire carry enough current to drive a single pixel.

"Ideally, we want to have circuitry where each pixel has a drive transistor and then some control transistors with it so that you can turn your pixels on and off," Janes said.

The new nanowire transistors could be used to create electronics based on another emerging technology called OLEDS, or organic light-emitting diodes. OLEDS are now used in cell phone and MP3 displays and the newest television sets, Marks said.

Unlike liquid crystal displays, the pixels in OLEDS directly emit light.

"In LCDs, the whole screen is backlit by a white light, and then each pixel is basically just a little filter that you can turn on and off," Janes said. "So the light you see is not directly being emitted by that pixel; it's being kind of screened by that pixel. In OLEDS, each pixel directly emits light, making the color richer and eliminating the need to backlight the display. Because OLEDS pixels are bright only when their part of the image is bright, they are more efficient, and they are ideal for use in transparent displays."

The technology also could be used to create new flexible antennas that unfurl like a sail and aim their signals more precisely than current antennas.

"What the military would really like is for the soldiers to be able to pull up to their destinations and unroll this large-area antenna array and be able to communicate with each other," Janes said "Most antennas don't work this way now. For example, you might notice that your cell phone sometimes gets a signal and sometimes doesn't. Part of the reason for this is that your antenna doesn't have any way to look just in one direction versus everywhere. You want this sort of omni-directional effect in commercial broadcast antennas for television or radio, but for certain military communications you'd like to go just from one soldier to another and transmit in a tight beam."

The new transparent technology has been shown to have "carrier mobilities" similar to those of conventional computer microprocessors, meaning electrons travel in the devices at nearly the same speed as current consumer electronics but in a low-cost, flexible package.

"The significantly higher mobilities than other thin-film transistor technologies offer the potential to operate at much higher speeds and to use much smaller transistors and other devices," Janes said.

Research has been funded by NASA through the Institute for Nanoelectronics and Computing, based at Purdue's Discovery Park, and at Northwestern University.

Nanotechnology is critical for the advancement because electricity flows differently on the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter, than it does in larger wires. The nanowires used in the research measure as small as 20 nanometers in diameter. A single nanometer is roughly the size of 20 hydrogen atoms strung together.

Future research is expected to include work to integrate the thin-film transistors into large circuits and to develop ways to interconnect numerous transistors.

The arrival of flexible chips — a summary

2007-06-23T04:28:00.000-07:00

The arrival of flexible chips — a summary

The flexible chips industry doesn’t grab a lot of headlines, but it is bringing together nanotech, biotech, and other technologies to possibly usher in some revolutionary new products.
We’ve been quietly checking up on some of the venture-backed companies in this area, including Nanogram, Plextronics and Plastic Logic. They are few, and slow-moving, but worth a look.
Their potential applications sound straight out of sci-fi: interactive displays embedded in anything from clothing to wall paper, newspapers that update in real-time, soldiers wearing camouflage that changes color with their surroundings. There’s hype, too. Last month, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper dismissed a report saying it was looking to test flexible “e-paper.”

However, with the right high-tech materials and machines, semiconductors can be deposited on highly durable, flexible and — importantly — cheap substrates like plastic, often replacing silicon and glass. See this picture below.

Those inky looking things are circuits. Instead of the highly complex, capital-intensive fabrication process used today, printed electronics, in a way similar to newspaper printing, uses a roll-to-roll method, literally printing circuitry on the material as it scrolls by.
The near-term applications of flexible electronics will dramatically reduce the cost of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, with most people expecting these RFIDs will be as prolific as bar codes are right now. Other players are making lightweight, flexible and relatively cheap solar panels that can go nearly anywhere. Later on, these flexible solar panels could actually bend to follow the sun as it tracks across the sky.
Then here’s military applications, where flexible electronics could enable soldiers to shed as much as 20 lbs of equipment, with GPS, threat detection, and health monitoring systems built into their clothes.

Before any of this can happen, a number of factors need to line up: Nanotech companies have to develop the right substrates; manufacturers need to implement new ways to mass produce them; and mainstream companies have to buy in.

Pittsburgh’s Plextronics uses organic polymers for substrates and aims to combine light, power, and circuitry in one tiny device. The company has raised over $16 million from Birchmere Ventures, Firelake Capital, and Draper Triangle Ventures. One of its major clients is PolyIC, which prints the chips, is the product of a joint venture between Siemens and Kurz. Milpitas, Calif.’s Nanogram, though not technically a start-up, changed its direction in 2004 and has since raised $25 million from a number of investors, including Technology Partners, ATA Ventures, and Nth Power Technologies. It is taking a different approach than most other companies in the field and working with silicon instead of plastic. It has recently partnered with a manufacturer in Japan to work on producing materials for flexible displays. Some other start-ups working on materials for flexible circuits are Guided Particle and Polyera.

The industry is in its infancy. In the last three years, $350 million in venture funding has gone to companies working in the field, $100 million of that invested by Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investments in UK’s Plastic Logic for their production facility in Dresden, Germany. But compare that $100 million to the $2-4 billion spent on silicon wafer production facilities — the room for growth in flexible electronics becomes clear. Polymer Vision, a potential competitor, has raised $21M (see alarm:clock euro).

Some big companies are already active. Sony and LG.Philips LCD have made announcements, and Motorola was one of the presenters promoting printed electronics at a recent conference organized by the U.S. Display Consortium.

The conference attracted over 50 VC firms, including Applied Materials, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Battery Ventures.

A foldable TV that fits in your T-shirt

2007-05-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

A foldable TV that fits in your T-shirt
Sony has released footage of a 0.3mm foldable display which, it says, could be used to install television in clothing
(Sony)

The prototype flexible screen
Jonathan Richards
Sony has offered a tantalising glimpse of the television of the future, releasing footage of a foldable screen so thin it could be embedded in clothing.

The screen, which is only 0.3mm thick and can be folded while it plays video, was demonstrated by researchers before a conference in California this week.

In the 27-second video, a lab worker with white gloves is shown manipulating the 6cm (2.5 inch) display while it shows images of bicycle stuntman, a lake and a fish. At one point the display is curled into a tube while the images continue to play, unspoilt.

Sony said it didn't yet know what products may result from the technology, which has taken five years to develop, but hinted at a range of personal items that could incorporate a folding display.

Carl Gressum, an analyst at Ovum, said it could be used to create a folding 'sheet' kept in the pocket or wallet that would display news and other information relevant to an owner's location.

"As with any of these prototypes, however, it will come down to price," Mr Gressum said. "This technology is undoubtedly expensive, and until you see a big market where flexible panels can be sold at a cost which justifies manufacturing them, then researchers will be developing them just for the sake of it."

The screen, which was also demonstrated a 'Society for Information Display' symposium this week, uses a technology known as 'organic light-emitting diode' (OLED), which is different from the two predominant display technologies – liquid crystal (LCD) and plasma, both of which are made out of glass.

Sony's existing 'e-reader', which is a tablet-shaped device about the size of a paperback, has a fixed screen.

"To come up with a flexible screen at that image quality is groundbreaking," Tatsuo Mori, professor at Nagoya University’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said. "You can drop it, and it won’t break because it’s as thin as paper."

One problem with OLED displays, which are a matrix of polymers covered with organic compounds, is that they cannot emit blue light for as long as they can the two other colours – red and green.

"At the moment you only get 5,000 hours of blue light from an OLED screen before it fades, as opposed to the 25,000 to 30,000 hours that is standard for televisions," Paul O'Donovan, an analyst at Gartner, said.

Sony has exhibited an OLED television with a screen just 3mm across at its thinnest point, but the product has not yet been released.

Other companies, including Philips and Seiko, are working on flexible displays, and Plastic Logic, a Cambridge-based firm, plans to bring out a foldable e-reader early next year, possibly in a leather wallet-type format.

Plastic Logic's device, however, which uses a technology called 'e-ink', does not yet have the potential to play video.

HearstSeattle newspaper to publish on e-paper

2007-05-21T05:28:00.001-07:00

HearstSeattle newspaper to publish on e-paper

US newspaper publisher Hearst has announced that it will trial versions of the Seattle Post Intelligencer on electronic paper within the next two years.

The 120 year-old company, which dates back to William Randolph Hearst's proprietorship of the San Francisco Examiner in 1887, will pioneer flexible colour LCD displays from LG Philips to deliver real-time daily news.

Articles carried on the electronic newspaper will be today's, rather than yesterday's, claim Hearst officials.

They hope to run the trials in other cities where Hearst publishes daily newspapers. The company owns 18 newspapers, 29 TV stations, 18 magazines and numerous websites in the US.

The electronic display will be a colour tabloid size (A3) screen the thickness of card, so that readers will be able to roll up the screen and carry it.

Turning the page, i.e. refreshing the screen with a new page image, will involve touching a pressure-sensitive control at the page edge.

While the screens will be made by LG Philips, they use technology developed by E Ink, a company in which Hearst invested when it was spun out of MIT a decade ago.

LG Philips Launches Bendable E-Paper Color Monitor

2007-05-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

LG Philips Launches Bendable E-Paper Color Monitor
LG Philips shows the world's first A4-sized color "e-paper" display.
Matthew Broersma, Techworld
Monday, May 14, 2007 12:00 PM PDT

LG.Philips LCD on Sunday took the wraps off the world's first A4-sized color "e-paper" display, following up on its black and white display of the same size a year ago.

The 14.1-inch, 4,096-color display is paper-thin and flexible, and can be viewed from up to a 180-degree angle, meaning images remain crisp even when the display is twisted around, the company said.

The image is designed to be comparable to print quality, LG.Philips said. The display is less than 300 micrometers thick, and only uses power when the image changes.

E-paper is a concept designed to open up new frontiers in the world of LCD displays and to replace paper in some cases. A number of companies have debuted prototypes of such lightweight, thin, flexible displays, including Taiwan's Prime View International (PVI) and Japan's Seiko Epson.

LG.Philips' version of the technology uses a substrate that arranges Thin-Film Transistors (TFT) on metal foil rather than glass, making the display flexible and allowing it to return to its original shape after being bent. The latest display includes a color filter coated onto the plastic substrate.

The company's development process for the color display centered on overcoming processing difficulties related to the lack of heat resistance in metal foil and plastic substrates.

That meant developing processing technology that minimizes panel deformation and prevents circuit structure change during high-temperature processes, as well as research into the lamination technology and the design of the transistors and color filter, the company said.

PVI recently introduced Vizplex, an e-paper technology that, like LG.Philips' displays, uses electronic ink from E-Ink. PVI's smaller displays, between 1.9 inches and 9.7 inches, are due out this summer and are designed for mobile phones, music players, bulletin boards and electronic books.

Seiko Epson introduced a high-resolution, A6-sized e-paper display using E-Ink and a manufacturing technique called surface-free technology by laser annealing (SUFTLA).

Maybe it's about time to be curling up with an ebook

2007-05-14T04:48:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's about time to be curling up with an ebook

It has long been predicted that books are about to be replaced. Andrew Marr spent a month using one of the most recent gadgets
By andrew marr
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Sunday, May 13, 2007, Page 12

If you are selling ebooks, I'm a hard sell. For one thing, my enthusiasm for traditional books is just this side of pervy. I live among mountains of them and always have, among the most beautiful mass-produced objects of all time. Some of my most treasured possessions are broken-backed, scribbled-in, jacketless books first read when a teenager; they've lasted longer than merely human friends. When I eventually become a nasty-minded, dribbling old man I'm sure I will be found creeping round second-hand bookshops, sniffing the produce, snuffling with pleasure.

If, that is, the bookshops are still there, and have not been put out of business by ebooks -- digital versions that can be read on computers or hand-held devices. But I'm a sceptic. A very long time ago, 10 years or more, I vividly remember being at Davos for the rich-or-clever people's annual frolic in the snow, and being assured that epaper -- "electronic paper" -- was about to transform the way we read.

So why the tortoise progress of the ebook?

It's partly that traditional books are such good technology. They are a little larger than the hand, extremely portable, nice to hold and look at and remarkably cheap. Yes, there is an environmental issue but most are made of cheap, sustainable woodpulp. Simple technology that works is unlikely to go out of fashion.

Beyond that, most ebook readers simply aren't good enough, whether they're dedicated devices or the multi-purpose palmtop computers made by the likes of Palm and Hewlett-Packard. They're fine to use for an hour or two when you are sitting upright in even indoor light, but they're pretty useless when you are traveling, sitting in the garden or slumped in the bath. The ebook reader that is as easy on the eye as a real book, and as quick to flick through, and as portable, hasn't arrived.

Or perhaps it has. Enter Sony's Reader and iRex's Iliad, which are being touted as the first really useable, easy-to-read products. I've had an Iliad for a month to try out. It costs ?449 (US$890) plus VAT, or slightly more with a handsome leather case that makes it look like a slightly larger, thinner Filofax.

It is meant to be read, at length, and its claim is that the screen is good enough to allow you to read, even a Tolstoy, even in sunlight, and actually enjoy the experience. It works with a basic menu, four buttons separated into news (of which more anon), books, docs and notes. There is a small pen-like stylus attached to the back, which lets you make notes or add comments to your documents and -- the best innovation -- a thin silver bar on the left of the screen that you flick with your thumb to turn the pages.

It is charged, like a laptop, mobile or any other similar device, and the battery should see easily you through a day's reading and writing. For those interested in detailed specifications, I can say it weighs about the same as a medium-sized banana. It powers up quickly and turns off easily.

Here is the first crucial thing: the screen does work. By "work", I mean that the words stand out clearly without shimmering, and that you can certainly read it outside, in dappled light and direct sunlight, as you would not be able to read a normal computer screen. The effect is matt, not shiny, and black-and-white, not color.

What about page-turning? It is slower than a book. There is a distinct "one-and-two" count as the page dissolves and re-forms after your thumb has touched the flicker, and it can be disconcerting. I found it more cumbersome than turning a page. Speeding this up will be important if the ebook is to really catch on. There is a scroll-bar on the bottom of the page, and with the stylus you can jump to different parts of the book, but again this is slower than the real thing, and obviously you can't turn over the corners of pages -- electronic bookmarks are, we're promised, on the way.

My advice to the makers is to refine the page-turning just a little more, offer a battered blue cloth-bound wallet and, above all, make it smell -- just a little musty, please. Or dank. You could offer a choice. But it's clear enough that after all the waiting and the over-hyping, the ebook is arriving. Before long you are going to see them being carried nonchalantly around. And after that some of you, at least, are going to buy one.

E Ink Upgrades Electronic Film, Displays

2007-05-11T18:54:00.001-07:00

E Ink Upgrades Electronic Film, Displays
Byhttp://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C12603/: Dave White

A well-known electric ink company has given its products a serious upgrade.

E Ink says its new imaging film is 20 percent brighter and twice as fast-switching as its predecessors. The new film, Vizplex, will also be available in a wider range of formats and sizes than before.

E Ink—whose technology can be found in medical tablets, eReaders, phones

E Ink Upgrades Electronic Film, Displays

2007-05-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

Searching for an invisible solution

2007-05-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

Searching for an invisible solution

See-through electronics may sound like science fiction, but developers are already working on them, writes Michael Pollitt.

Advertisement

AdvertisementATROPE in science fiction films is the person standing in front of a transparent screen, manipulating the images there: think Tom Cruise in Minority Report or Ben Affleck in Paycheck.

It's the multi-touch screen, but with a screen that has disappeared.

Transparent screens don't exist - yet.

But Tobin Marks, a professor and synthetic chemist at Northwestern University in Illinois, is trying to turn this science fiction into fact. "I like to make unusual things and process unusual things in unusual ways," he says. "You can imagine a variety of applications for new electronics that haven't been possible previously - displays of text or images that would seem to be floating in space."

We're not talking about holograms here, but see-through colour screens fixed to transparent backing materials such as glass or plastic. For example, Marks imagines a vehicle windscreen that could display a route map, military goggles to give soldiers information, or even a shop window that doubles as a billboard - switch it off and the billboard becomes a window again.

By shunning silicon, Marks has made a new type of thin-film transistor from inorganic and organic materials. Thin-film transistors are commonly found in LCD TVs and computer monitors.

Marks's research group has combined films of an inorganic semiconductor - indium oxide - with a multilayer of self-assembling organic molecules for insulating properties.

The result is a transparent, high-performance thin-film transistor that can be assembled inexpensively on glass and flexible plastics while outperforming silicon transistors.

But all this is only halfway to transparent monitors. In your laptop screen, opaque thin-film transistors drive pixels - liquid crystals - that act as tiny shutters to a light source behind them. Put the invisible electronics behind the pixels and the result is remarkable.

Marks's idea is to combine transparent transistors with existing light display technologies, such as organic light-emitting diodes, liquid crystal or electroluminescent displays.

"Examples could include visors for motorcyclists, assembly-line workers, soldiers and athletes. More exotic would be displays as in the film Minority Report which seem to be floating in air," Marks says.

Dr John McCardle of Loughborough University in Leicestershire, Britain, a lecturer in electronic product design, said transparent electronics were an exciting proposition at first glance.

"There's the obvious integration into transparent products such as windscreens, spectacle lenses and improved computer displays. We even have the possibility of enhancing solar panels where windows could double up as power generators."

McCardle says thin-film components use less energy to manufacture.

But also he likes the idea of hiding the "ugly technology" of components, wires and printed circuit boards.

Although his ideas for invisible electronics go beyond those envisaged by Marks, McCardle suggests some rather more sinister angles not seen in films.

"There is the inevitable interest from the military sector and its use in covert surveillance is assured," he says.

"Where do we stand when there is the potential to be surrounded by invisible cameras hidden in windows and mirrors?"

Dr Henning Sirringhaus of Cambridge University, co-founder of Plastic Logic, is developing a flexible plastic display for portable electronic readers.

Sirringhaus appreciates the new applications for invisible display electronics but has other ideas to do with the aperture ratio: the proportion of thin-film transistor to each pixel being driven. In a typical LCD screen, the light source is behind the pixels which change shape to allow light through.

If you looked at a single pixel through a microscope, you'd see a thin-film transistor blocking one corner. The trick is to make it as small as possible so that it lets through the most light.

"On each pixel of the display, you've got one transistor. That transistor is used to turn on and off that pixel. With transparent electronics, in principle, you could use the whole pixel," says Sirringhaus.

Invisible electronics, he adds, is a concept looking for the right technology. Although Marks has now made a major breakthrough, we're still a long way from the big screens you see on the big screen.

Libraries to cut out print with eBook loans

2007-05-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

Libraries to cut out print with eBook loans
Caitlin Fitzsimmons, printweek.com
http://www.printweek.com/PrintWeekDaily/News/654664/Libraries-cut-print-eBook-loans

A library initiative in Canada to offer loans via eBook readers could be another blow for print.

EBook technology is gaining traction in the library sector with a Canadian government research body and eBook aggregator MyiLibrary partnering to launch a new service called eBook Loans.

Billed as an “electronic twist on the traditional library-interlending model”, the service offers instant access to tens of thousands of electronic books from academic publishers such as Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Blackwell and Springer.

Pay-per-download for individual journal articles have been available for some time but this is thought to be a first for full-length academic books.

Each loan costs £11.33 (CAN$25), payable online using a credit card. Users are given access to an eBook through a URL that expires after 30 days.

This widens the choice of books available to researchers and reduces the cost of inter-library loans for the institutions, while providing a new revenue stream for publishers.

Chief executive and president of Ingram Digital Group, which owns MyiLibrary, James Gray, said: “This launch is the culmination of months of tireless research into how to develop a robust and intuitive inter-library loan system that easily integrates into library workflows.

“The ability to deliver the content instantaneously is a key feature of this service, and one we believe will help libraries service the needs of their patrons in the most effective way possible.”

MyiLibrary’s partner in the venture is the National Research Council Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, a science and technology research centre and one of Canada’s biggest publishers of scientific books.

Publishers and technology companies have been actively developing eBook products, which allow readers to transport several books in a small package, eliminating the need for print and paper.

In the consumer market, Sony last year announced the launch of its eBook Reader in the US and agreements with several publishers, including Cambridge University Press, Simon and Schuster, Random House, HarperCollins and Hachette Book Group USA, to make 10,000 titles available for download.

Fujitsu debuts e-paper tablet device (updated)

2007-04-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

Fujitsu debuts e-paper tablet device (updated)
By Jon Stokes
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070423-fujitsu-debuts-e-paper-tablet-pc.html

At some point, I'm going to write my very last e-paper/e-ink article for Ars. After almost a decade of thin, flexible, low-power displays being "three to five years away," I can finally see that the time for e-paper's mass-market debut is almost upon us. A case in point is Fujitsu's new FLEPia portable tablet, samples of which are now available in limited supply as of this past Friday.

FLEPia boasts an array of impressive features, starting with its display. The device is based on Fujitsu's e-paper technology, a technology that the company announced over two years ago. In a nutshell, Fujitsu's e-paper works by sandwiching a thin layer of liquid crystal between two sheets of plastic. The application of an electrical charge causes a pixel of the liquid crystal to change states from clear to opaque, with the result that multi-pixel displays require energy only when the image is changed. Red, green, and blue layers of the material are fused together to make color versions of the display that can output either 8 or 4,096 colors.

This display technology, which appears as an XGA touchscreen in the FLEPia device, is backed by pretty standard PDA-level hardware: an Intel XScale processor, an 802.11b/g card, USB 2.0 support, a headphone jack, an SD card, and so on. The tablet runs Windows CE 5.0, and its battery can stand up to 50 hours of usage.

With a physical profile right out of Star Trek and a lightweight, color e-paper-based display that comes in standard paper sizes (A4 and A5), it might seem at first that FLEPia means that e-paper is now just another display technology. And if it's just another display technology, then I can quit writing about e-paper, right? Well, no.

The A5 and A4 models that were announced on Friday carry price tags of $1,264.85 and $2,107.81, respectively. According to Fujitsu, these things won't hit consumer-level price points until at least 2010, which puts them... yep, three to five years away.

Oh well. At least the Sony Reader has finally brought e-ink to the mass market. Of course, judging by reviews, the monochrome device is hobbled by a number of implementation issues that make me want to steer clear of it for the time being. Maybe by the time Sony fixes the problems to the point where they can nail the "mass" part of "mass market," Fujitsu or someone else will be further along with a potential competitor.

Update: The price originally quoted was for lots of ten, and not individual units. This was by all accounts clearly marked on the Japanese press release, but not being a reader of Japanese I didn't catch it. The correct prices have now been included.

E-paper display maker goes into volume production

2007-04-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

E-paper display maker goes into volume production
By David Manners
Electronic News
http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6436042

Nemoptic, an e-paper display company, is moving into high volume production following an agreement reached with Seiko Instruments (SII).

“The availability of a reliable high volume source will bring about a radical change in the marketplace for e-paper displays,” said Jacques Noels, CEO of Nemoptic. “SII is the world leading producer of CSTN-LCD displays and it combines excellent technological expertise with a cost-competitive capability.”

Under the deal, Nemoptic gives SII its display technology in return for SII giving Nemoptic manufacturing capacity.

Asked by Electronics Weekly, how much capacity he’d be getting, Nemoptic’s CEO, Jacques Noels, replied: “Whatever we need.”

Noels is expecting very high demand. “There is no other bistable technology capable of supplying the electronic shelf, and no one else can achieve full compatibility with STN manufacturing,” claimed Noels.

SII will make the displays in its existing, full depreciated, STN factory which will make manufacturing costs very low.

“It is a very generic technology,” said Noels, “capable of 32 grey levels, 32,000 colors, transmissive or reflective, with passive or active addressing, and on plastic.”

He added that it is suitable for both a bendable or a rollable display, but Nemoptic was only currently working on the bendable option which he thought was a couple of years away from commercialization.

Noels, formerly CEO of Thomson Semiconductors, before it merged with SGS-Ates of Italy to become STMicroelectronics, joined Nemoptics two years ago when the company had been developing the technology for five years.

For the last two years he has been getting the technology up to the point where it can be manufactured in volume.

'Electronic Paper' Edging Toward Reality

2007-04-29T06:59:00.001-07:00

'Electronic Paper' Edging Toward Reality
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2111994,00.asp
By Reuters

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—"Electronic paper" has long been hyped as the future of newspapers and books, but products like e-books have been slow to take off. That may soon change, say executives involved in the pioneering technology.

While Internet companies are scanning libraries of books and making them available online, E Ink Corp., which emerged out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a decade ago, is seeing a surge in orders for its portable, foldable displays that mimic conventional paper to carry such books.

"Nine different companies launched products last year based on the technology," said Russell Wilcox, E Ink president. "In the last nine months we've gone from manufacturing tens of thousands of parts to millions of parts."

Among those products are Sony's Reader tablet, whose black-and-white displays can be read in bright sunlight or a dimly lit room from almost any angle—just like paper—without traditional back-lit screens that chew up power.

While the displays are becoming more flexible and conserve power, they face other limitations such as working only in monochrome and failing to display video—areas critical to attracting advertisers and consumers to the technology.

Wilcox said E Ink, whose revenues have grown at a rate of 200 to 300 percent annually in the last three years, is testing a color prototype that could be launched next year, potentially opening the technology to e-magazines and e-newspapers.

Underscoring its aspirations to mainstream media, the company's chairman is Kenneth Bronfin, president of the interactive media division of Hearst Corp., which publishes 12 daily newspapers and 19 magazines including Cosmopolitan.

E Ink holds more than 100 patents on its "electrophoretic" ink technology in which electric charges are sent along a grid embedded in the paper that cause tiny black and white particles to move up and down, creating text and images.

Technological Leap

Motofone, Motorola Corp.'s low-cost mobile phone for the developing world, uses the technology because of its ability to conserve power, along with Seiko Epson Corp.'s wristwatch, a flash-memory stick and several other devices.

James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said E Ink needs the technological leap into color and ability to show video before it can reach the masses.

If it can achieve that, McQuivey said, E Ink could threaten to displace the cheap and ubiquitous liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), while revolutionizing how we think about reading.

Electronic billboards, for example, would no longer need to be bulky or costly to erect. They could be hung from just about any wall or folded into the back of a car for easy transport.

"It's so clearly apparent when you use the technology that it could revolutionize so many screens in our lives and it could put screens on things that don't have them but could or should," said McQuivey.

Another challenge for products like e-books is that the number of books available to download in the United States and Europe remains relatively small.

But Sony reckons that will change as consumers discover the ease of using one device that stores hundreds of titles, and as the Internet makes downloading easy.

"More and more things are going online from Amazon and others," said David Seperson, a product manager of Sony's Reader. "We're seeing real growth in digital text."

"Also there is a potential shift in what people would consider reading. It used to be mainly books. Now there are blogs. And there's all kinds of Internet things which will work well because you can take that stuff off the computer screen, and take it with you to the beach and start reading."

Copyright (c) 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Electronic paper

2007-04-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

Electronic paper
http://www.cafebabel.com/en/article.asp?T=T&Id=10610

An immense market is preparing itself for a new technical revolution - electronic or 'e-paper'
Prototype of e-paper used by the press (Photo: EverJean/ Flickr) What if, tomorrow, we hold in our hands the equivalent of the Daily Prophet from the Harry Potter adventures or USA Today as envisaged by Spielberg in his film ‘Minority Report’? With text displayed on plastic-coated paper, we would turn the pages virtually with a click, and illustrations would come to life.

OK - tomorrow, it probably won't happen, but why not the day after? For Bruno Rives, founder of Tebaldo, an agency involved in new technological trends and usages, there is no doubt that 'we are now in year zero of electronic paper.' The concept has existed for several decades. But it has now reached its 'technological maturity', according to Jacques Angelé, director of technological programmes for Nemoptic, a French company at the cutting edge of e-paper development. 'Ideally, this new object weighs 150 to 200 grams, is 5mm thick, and 7 to 8 inches diagonal. It must be simple to use and be constantly updated; if not, it’s just another PDA or palmtop.' After several unsuccessful attempts, like the Cybook launched in 2000 by French company Cytale, the e-paper is now ready. On your marks, get set…… develop!Numerous businesses are positioning themselves so as not to miss the boat, as it is all expected to move very quickly. Angelé predicts that, 'everything will play out over the next three years.'

Until then, the main players in this market are getting a foothold and we will certainly see a 'bonus for the first on board.' Europe and its innovative businesses are well positioned for when the time comes, but the competition will be fierce, both in the development of this little technological marvel, and in its applications in the press or in publishing.Even the first electronic ink is European! 'Of course, E-ink comes from American MIT, but the patent for it was given to Phillips, a European, so that it’s integrated with the paper,' explains Rives. European companies are blossoming: Nemoptic (France) is developing electronic ink, Plastic Logic (UK) is working on the paper whilst Ganaxa (France) is thinking about the software.Elsewhere, in January, Plastic Logic announced the installation of a new factory in Dresden, East Germany, to develop its e-paper. It'll be the first centre in the world producing flexible plastic screens. 100 million Euros was invested in ‘Silicon Saxony’, which beat New York and Singapore to the contract. And this is indeed where the competition lies. '

We are good at technological supplies, but much less so at situating ourselves in the markets,' according to Rives. Most of all, stay ahead of the gameHow can we fight, or even just resist when faced with the Chinese, Japanese and Americans? Angelé believes we must 'unite the players to propose competitive solutions, and not just defence strategies. With an acute awareness of the economic interests at stake, we could energise the industry, anticipate the evolutions and even facilitate them!' His company also works hand-in-hand with other French businesses on the ‘Sylen’ electronic reader.

Regarding the applications for this new technology, in press or publishing for example, the same case applies: European businesses must definitely not rest on their laurels. 'The big players have already seen the immense market that is preparing and, like Amazon, are positioning themselves so that the average user goes to them for what they want,' Angelé explains. We need to understand their point of view: this is a new support enabling the creation of numerous editorial or commercial partnerships that will give the consumer access without an intermediary, without the barriers of language or national law!

New start for the press?Regarding the press, each is considering their electronic declension after taking its place on the Internet. Les Echos, a French economic daily, is amongst the first to take the plunge. 'Via the site lesechos.fr, we will now very quickly propose a subscription enabling us to deliver the first machines at the end of April/beginning of May,' announces Philippe Jannet, technical director of the electronic edition of Les Echos.

The content will be continuously updated, and will support Bluetooth, Wifi and GPRS connections.'It’s a new opportunity for the press!' rejoices Rives, who personally worked on this project. 'It's a chance to seduce readers who don’t usually read the papers, and re-conquer those who have turned to the free papers. The investment is not so big if we consider what’s involved!'The condition is that they take into account the reader who will require a 'richer format and will not be content with one newspaper only. The content must be enhanced with encyclopaedic information, graphics, and so on,' suggests Rives. This is a requirement for which the Belgian daily De Tidj paid the price.

It 'threw in the towel, its version being an identical copy of the newspaper but in e-paper format. It didn't take into account the particularities of the machine,' explains Jannet, assuring that Les Echos would not commit the same strategic error. As for us, we will also have to get used to a new object.

Though a page in black and white doesn’t shock us if we think of it like a pocket book, it may seem austere for other applications. Will it be long until it hits colour or video, and will it long before we get a foldable electronic page? Maybe the technological attraction will make us forget the grainy texture of paper between our fingers. In principle, and even Rives agrees, that it is 'certainly a difficult alchemy.' But, he reminds us, 'paper did not explode in 321 BC, we had to wait until the 1500s.'

Plastic modified to meet electronic needs

2007-04-09T16:49:00.000-07:00

Plastic modified to meet electronic needs
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20070409-15314200-bc-us-plastic.xml

AUSTIN, Texas, April 9 (UPI) -- A U.S. scientist has modified a plastic so its ability to conduct electricity can be altered during manufacturing to meet future electronic device needs.

Yueh-Lin Loo, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, conducted her research with a plastic called polyaniline, which could serve as flexible, inexpensive wiring in future products such as military camouflage that changes colors, foldable electronic displays and medical sensors.

By combining polyaniline with a chemical that gives it conductivity, Loo discovered she could increase the plastic's conductivity one- to six-fold based on the version of the chemical added.

The results of her research involving the chemical polymer acid appear in the April 7 issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

Have Newspapers Reached Their Deadline?

2007-04-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

Have Newspapers Reached Their Deadline?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/11/sunday/main2556674.shtml

(CBS) There was a time when the only way to find out what was happening was to buy a newspaper, but these days there are plenty of ways to get your news. Lynne Taylor doesn't go any further than her couch to catch up on current events. She gets some news from radio and TV, but when she wants to read, it's all online. "I'm checking to see what's going on in the world now and online makes me feel like I've got a real 'now' as opposed to paper 'now,' [which] is yesterday," Taylor, a Ph.D. student, told Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver.

In a way, Taylor is every editor's nightmare. It's in large part because of younger people like her that newspapers are in turmoil today. Papers across the country have been or may be sold, with workers laid off as well. Major advertising revenue for many papers is down, too, and classified ads are increasingly being placed on Internet sites.

In fact, newspaper circulation in the United States has been falling for two decades, from a high of 63 million in 1984 to 53 million or less today. Editor and publisher of the Chattanooga Times Free Press Tom Griscom is fighting to keep the Tennessee paper solvent and relevant with new focus on local news. The paper is a combination of two newspapers which merged nine years ago because of declining readership. "We've got a total of 40 reporters that cover sports, lifestyle and of course the news side," he said. "We're telling them that story about Medicare and children and what it's doing to children here, rather than the fact that President Bush sat down and made a, you know, the latest announcement."

And like most papers now, the Chattanooga Times Free Press is not just about what's in print. In fact, at the top of the paper there is an ad for the paper's Web site. "Because that's the deal," Griscom said, "if you want to follow us throughout the day, go to the Web site 'cause we're gonna be posting breaking news." In fact, Braver was there on a big news day; Chattanooga had just lost out on a new Toyota plant. She followed reporter Mike Pare as he headed out to cover the latest developments.

He said he would file a couple of stories on the plant that day. Those Internet stories will come in addition to the longer piece Pare will file for the next morning's paper. Everyone at the Times Free Press is well aware of predictions that printed papers are dead or dying. Rising paper prices have led some papers, like the Wall Street Journal, to shrink (literally).

In addition, although e-readers now are just for books, companies like Plastic Logic in England are developing small wireless devices, called E-paper, which will mean we won't ever have to carry real paper around to read the news. But Griscom's not ready to give in. "We will progress way far ahead, no doubt about it," he said. "But I'm not predicting there will not be ink on paper. I just don't — I mean, I don't know."

There is uncertainty about the Internet, too. Griscom said the paper hasn't started making much money off their Web site yet. "We make some, but it's not gonna be anywhere near the print product," he said. "We're understanding a little bit better how the Internet works, how it interacts with what we're doing." Samir Husni, chairman of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi, is a world-renowned expert on print journalism. He says that what is killing newspapers is not that people have forsaken print, but that papers have become too predictable. He cautions newspapers against putting too much faith in their Internet operations. "Every couple of years we seem to go through a cycle — print is dead, print is dead," he said. "Anybody who is realistic will know that we will have printed paper products from now 'til eternity."

"When was the last time you were surprised by a front page story in a newspaper?" he added. "When was the last time you said: 'Wow!'? Let me give you an example: Sunday, few weeks ago was the Super Bowl, everybody knew the Colts won. What were the headlines, almost no exceptions? 'Colts win Super Bowl.' Big surprise!" "If I read the newspaper, if I pick up the magazine, what's in it for me?" Husni says that newsmagazines are suffering even more than newspapers. Each of the so-called Big Three are seeing decreases in advertising and steady circulation drops over the past 20 years, and staff reductions. It is easy to see why, talking to Husni's students. "It's not as immediate," Jason Katavitz said. "They come out weekly at best." Husni says that whether in print or online, traditional newspapers and magazines have to do a better job of showing how their stories relate to readers. "We are seeing an upswing in terms of the alternative newspapers that are coming to town, in terms of the alternative magazines that are coming to town they can relate to.

They feel, 'It's my grandfather's newspaper, my father's newspaper, I'm not going to relate to it — I want something for me.'" The editors of The Politico, dedicated to intensive political coverage, agree. John Harris and Jim VandeHei think they've found the new way. They both left top jobs covering politics at the Washington Post to found Politico, which launched just last month.

It's a hybrid: There's a paper edition three times a week. But unlike traditional newspapers, it's the Web site that drives the paper — complete with videos and all kinds of blogs. "We're gonna be more conversational, more irreverent, we hope more 'insider,'" Harris said. For example, this past week, the day after the Scooter Libby trial, most newspapers led with the verdict. The Politico, having given the details the day it happened, was busy speculating on the future.

But won't something be missed if traditional newspapers disappear? "You know, I'm still very sentimental about that, at the same time, I've actually grown to become a platform agnostic," VandeHei said. "I don't care if I'm reading it on paper, if I'm reading it online. I just want smart news, smart analysis, and I want to be able to read it and think about it when I want to." Which seems to suggest that newspapers and magazines must look at changes in reading habits not as a death knell but as a challenge "The danger is that you cling to a past and that inhibits you from being creative enough and aggressive enough, bold enough, optimistic enough to embrace all of these new opportunities," Harris said.