Plastic Logic E-Newspaper 75
Ostracus writes with news of another contender for a next-gen device suitable for displaying a newspaper page. It's very thin but weighs a bit more than a Kindle. "Plastic Logic, a spin-off company from the Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory, has recently released its design of a future electronic newspaper reader. This lightweight plastic screen copies the appearance, but not the feel, of a printed newspaper. This electronic paper technology was pioneered by the E-Ink Corporation and is used in the current generation Sony eReader and Amazon.com's Kindle. Plastic Logic's device, yet to be named, has a highly legible black-and-white display and a screen more than twice as large compared to current versions available on the market."
Already dead... (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Already dead... (Score:4, Informative)
The alternative link [thefutureofthings.com] listed in the article is working at the moment.
Marshall McLuhan (Score:5, Insightful)
" This lightweight plastic screen copies the appearance, but not the feel, of a printed newspaper. "
I'm reminded of Marshall McLuhan's observation that any new medium will have as its first content the form of the previous medium.
Why would anyone want to reproduce the format of the front page of a printed daily newspaper if you have a completely new medium available? Will the new medium be of such slow speed that the contents can only be renewed on the screen once a day (like the front page of a newspaper)? Do the various print topics have to be arranged in blocks like a newspaper? Will advertising really be necessary?
It's too bad that McLuhan died right when the digital communications era was beginning (1976 I believe). He would have had some significant insights for us.
One thing that I've noticed is that any new digital medium will ALWAYS reproduce its content in an inferior way to its corresponding analog medium. But, the new digital medium allows the content to be used in ways that so astonishingly different from the analog medium that it comes to surplant the original analog medium. The analog medium becomes a specialized subsystem of the new digital medium.
For example, consider music synthesizers. Press the cheap plastic keys on a cheap $50 plastic keyboard in BestBuy and you change the instrument being played by the keyboard. None of the instruments being sounded by the keyboard sound as good as the original instruments in orchestral form. But if you play piano, you don't need to spend ten years learning trumpet or violin to get the sound of a trumpet or violin for your music. You just press the digital button on the cheap plastic keyboard. Real trumpets and violin playing becomes a speciality and limited skill as a result of the original analog medium (instrument) being transformed by an inferior digital medium.
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Not that weird that something trying to be something else may fail. Just look at synths instead, which gives much better music than that acoustic resonance stuff ;) ... or transvestites! :D
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Oh yeah and trumpet playing has always been a specialized skill...I don't think marching bands will be replacing their trumpet lines with casio keyboards anytime soon.
Nice form factor but... (Score:1)
They keep emphasizing the form factor is the size of a piece of paper. But a piece of paper has a display size equal to a piece of paper, this doesn't.
No mention of the display size.
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And what about cost? Seriously, if this thing is $500, I don't care how great it looks; for me (and I am guessing, the average slob) that would be too expensive.
Re:Nice form factor but... (Score:4, Insightful)
They couldn't sell it at that price. A newspaper costs less than $1. So to be value for money this has to outlast 500 newspapers... at one a day that means it'll be about a year and a half.
If the newspaper costs 50c then double that.
It also has to be as light as a newspaper, be simple to read when commuting and fold up into pocket sized otherwise it's doomed.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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exactly. while I read the newspaper every day at work, when i am not at work i get my news from other sources. there are so many choices and I have found that if i really want to know what is going on in the US especially with the US military I turn to the BBC first. CNn isn't normally too bad, but the rest of them are so damn slow unless it is the latest celebrity that it just isn't worth it.
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Maybe they actually want to be able to read what's on the screen while walking across the college campus under the bright noon-day sun.
I'd really like to get one of these e-ink things, but it still just feels like its too early. The current devices remind me of that MP3 player I bought with 32MB of compact flash memory and a crappy little 1-line red LED display. The e-ink readers are still very pricey and lacking in basic features like that. Crappy support for viewing PDFs, inability to display multiple
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Because reading on a screen suck? This may have more comfortable contrast, higher resolution, don't heat up your lap to 80 degrees while sitting in the bed, is probably silent, don't distract you from your reading, ...
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Re:Nice form factor but... (Score:4, Insightful)
That thinking is limited. This isn't a 'newspaper' reader. It reads pretty much anything. What would it have been worth to have all your heavy schoolbooks in this instead of lugging around some heavy bag? And reference guides? I got a lot of free (legally) books off the web to learn computer languages, etc. The small ereaders are not useful for for such things (they are more fiction writing oriented), but this size screen works.
If you also figure Americans (for one) move every seven years - what would it be worth to just have everything on this device and a few memory cards rather than boxes and boxes of books - most left unread past the first chapter anyway statistically? (I'm the type to digitize everything - cds, movies, etc for such convenience).
The price will have to (and will anyway) come down for mass acceptance, but this technology is not mature enough for that stage yet anyway. It's still with the early adopters, most of whom of professionals with disposable income and gadget freaks.
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The problem for e-readers is that most people perceive them as falling into the T
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Seriously? You've met people that believe that?
So far, all the people that I've met who read books but reject ebooks claim to like the feel of a book in their hand. Personally, I think that's bullshit. For me, the worst part of a book is the ability to lose my place. With physical books, this happened to me a -lot-. With ebooks, it does happen once in a while, but not nearly as often. Compare once a week to once a year.
I attribute their rejection to resistance to change, rather than actual preference.
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worst part of a book is the ability to lose my place. With physical books, this happened to me a -lot-. With ebooks, it does happen once in a while, but not nearly as often. Compare once a week to once a year.
Bookmarks?
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Yeah, when I drop a book, the bookmark almost always pops out. Very, very annoying. At one point I ended up buying one of those clip bookmarks that clips on the back of the book and has an arm over the pages to keep your place. That worked pretty well, except on large books. And I managed to pop one of them off a few times, too.
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Yes, I have met people like that. They won't say it out loud that they believe it is some magic force, but they stop just short of it. I have honest to goodness offended people with the statement "Books are not inherently better than TV." I don't mean I've met people who disagree with that statement (which I have, and they are just as religious). I mean that they covered their mouth as it dropped open and said "You can't really mean that." with the same tone of voice they would have used if I said that crushing kitten heads was a great way to spend the holidays. In this area at least (Northern California) it is a down right common.
TV is not nearly as bad inherently as it is actualized.
The easiest (re)producible media of any era, gets (by far) the largest amount of crap content of the era.
Pulp in the early 1900's. "Reality" shows on TV now. Tomorrow Web 3.11
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I think books lend themselves to good stories better, but video lends itself to detail better. It's a bit of a tradeoff...
I can read a book that takes me many, many hours to finish (Atlas Shrugged!) but if a video takes more than 3 hours, it's interminable. On the other hand, if a book tries to put the detail of a movie in, it's really boring.
So really, 'inherently better' is a personal opinion, and not a fact that can be argued.
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Ironically, I find that it is easier for me to find the specific information I'm looking for in a book than by using my e-book reader. (Irex Iliad).
The current downside for an e-book reader is the extremely slow refresh rate, as it makes it impossible to just "flip" through a book.
That being said, I would not give up my Iliad for anything. I love it, and it was one of the best purchases Ive made.
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It depends on the 'ebook reader'. I have used PDAs for nearly a decade now, and I find them plenty fast. My current Nokia N800 sometimes responds slowly, but most of the time it's nearly instant.
I know the e-ink ones are really slow, and that's what has stopped me from buying one so far... But having the big screen size might be enough to offset that for me.
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Maybe you need to understand where their prejudices come from before you can convince them to change their ways.
This probably comes from the fact that many people born in Europe and the USA during the late 1880's didn't get a chance to learn to read or write (their parents were too poor to afford to educate all their children). These were the grandparents of people born in the 1940's (who are in their 60's now). They still remember the humiliation of their grandparents not being able to read a newspaper or
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That's strange - just about everyone now I see on public transport is using either touchscreen Blackberry's or mobile phones, especially among this demographic. Being able to view street-maps is the biggest advertised application. Though, it is the van drivers who are the ones who stop and ask passer-bys for directions - they "can't read maps" and just ask for a direction to head towards.
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> So to be value for money this has to outlast 500 newspapers... at one a day that means it'll be about a year and a half.
Assuming it is so locked it only replaces the newspaper. If it also displays eBooks and PDF technical documents the value proposition gets a little better, But I know I won't be buying into a ebook reader until I can buy something that at can at least display an entire 8 1/2 x 11 page at at least fax 196dpi resolution, be able to work with stock PDF files stuck into an SD slot (it c
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.. and usable as emergency toilet paper in case you didn't noticed you had ran out.
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.. and usable as emergency toilet paper in case you didn't noticed you had ran out.
Well.. they are usually pretty thin. A scraper perhaps?
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Introducing the Amazon Kindle 2.0 - Now with emergency scraper!
After having introduced the Amazon Kindle we noticed a huge demand for ...
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From the article:
Plastic Logic's new device has an A4 sized display, can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books, and documents. Richard Archuleta, the chief executive of Plastic Logic, said the display was sufficiently large enough to match a newspaper's layout. "Even though we have positioned this for business documents, newspapers are what everyone asks for," said Archuleta.
The device has the display size of an A4 sheet of paper. This i
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No mention of the display size.
2nd paragraph says, "A4 sized display"
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8.5"x11" and A4 display would imply to me printing edge to edge. But I look at the picture and there appears to be large areas on top, bottom and both sides that don't print.
The plastic logic site itself mentions over and again the form factor size but has no mention of the actual screen size. They seem to be glossing over the actual size. It's not that hard and screen size is an expected stat for something that is a viewing device.
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Alternative uses for newspaper (Score:1)
Darn, now I'd have to think of other ways, when I'm stuck in the toilet, out of toilet paper!
Obligatory FoxTrot [google.com.sg] reference (something about swatting someone with a "Rolled up Internet").
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Looks really nice but... (Score:2)
It looks really really nice. This would be amazing for reading scientific papers, sheet music, newspapers & books. Unlike the kindle it has a decent sized screen, can show PDFs and doesn't look like shit.
On the other hand, I've yet to see what the UI is like (they haven't shown it in any videos), and in all the videos I've seen it takes almost 2 seconds to turn the page. That could get really annoying.
If they fix that I'd gladly pay the £300+ they're probably asking...
(Sidenote: fix your cha
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Honestly I don't understand the point of these rudimentary attempts at book and newspaper replacements. Until they can COMPLETELY REPLICATE the look and feel of a book or newspaper in its flexibility, durability, persistence (won't die when the battery dies), and cost, there's little point.
Today anyone can buy a basic laptop for $300, or even cheaper, that provides all the news and information one could ask for. Amazon with their kindle product, and this company, and several others out there have a lot of
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"Why should I buy a Kindle when I have a perfectly good laptop and a palmtop or two (phone, PDA) that have basically the same technology?"
They don't have the same technology though. The advantages over LCD are that they are much much nicer to read, the battery lasts (apparently) for weeks and they are (at least in plastic logic's case) considerably more light-weight.
The advantage over actual paper is that they can store many more pages, and they don't waste paper.
They will succeed even if they aren't quite
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Not just newspapers, I hope (Score:2)
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First time something nice (Score:2)
This is the first time I actually see something that might just work. It's nice. Has a decent formfactor and could really work for me. Finally something that doesn't make you look like an idiot while communting on the bus and reading LOTR.
Summary isn't quite right (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not quite right, the iLiad DR1000S is on the market right now (and the wifi capable DR1000SW in soon) and they both have similiar sized screens (an A4 sized piece of paper sans normal margins). The difference is that these screens are traditional e-ink screens with glass (?) prone to cracking/breaking while Plastic Logic's is flexible.
There are other drawbacks to both. This is Plastic Logic's first device. 1st Generation devices can really suck, not to mention 1st one ever out of a company. iRex's pushed out previous ereaders (iliad) but they all suffer from a battery problem: as I understand it the CPU never really goes to "sleep" - draining the thing in a day. One of the point of e-ink was that it takes no energy once the display is rendered. So obviously this is a drawback. Also, since the battery is non-user changeable it will cost that much more to replace more frequently. They promised to fix it soon, but what are promises worth?
OTOH, iRex recently opensourced much of their software system with more soon to come. Which is a major plus. Also, it has a wacom enabled screen - allowing you to annotate your texts and take notes on it. The problem with all e-ink displays right now is that there will be lag from your writing and it being rendered.
In reality, we're in the opening stages of the e-ink revolution (much like cell phones in the 80's) and that means we won't have a truly GOOD device for many years. Kindle helped really kickstart it. Hopefully we will see color soon, although that is really one of the lower priority things considered.
IMHO, this is a niche that a competent software/hardware company (Apple) could really exploit much like they did in previous 'established' niches when the time comes. Just set up a book section in iTunes and they'd have half the market already.
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What I wanted to add was that e-ink readers could be incredibly useful beyond the instant newspaper/book, library in your hand idea: especially if they would ever combine it with things something like a stylus version (doesn't exist) of the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen (released this year). The pen has few button, rather relying on 'special' paper that really just has some prearranded dots to orient the pen as well as some functions on the bottom of the sheet for the pen to do it's thing. Since that company
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> IMHO, this is a niche that a competent software/hardware company (Apple) could really exploit much
> like they did in previous 'established' niches when the time comes.
And they will. They will let everyone else perfect the technology first, then swoop in with their superior marketing skills and their cult of followers to form a firm base set of customers. In an emerging market that is a big advantage. Look how it worked out with the iPod. At the time the portable player market was small enough th
Color isn't quite right (Score:2)
"In reality, we're in the opening stages of the e-ink revolution (much like cell phones in the 80's) and that means we won't have a truly GOOD device for many years. Kindle helped really kickstart it. Hopefully we will see color soon, although that is really one of the lower priority things considered."
If you follow one of the links in the story. The future of things talks about the technology behind different kinds of E-ink. Including one which I linked to in the past that does color.
I don't know; nostalgia maybe. (Score:1)
copies the appearance, but not the feel, of a printed newspaper
Getting there... (Score:5, Informative)
This is a little more like it.
I've recently seen a similar new product for musicians and teachers. It's a display like this one except mounted on a standard music stand. It's got a monochrome display, a SD card slot and a USB port (I believe there's a wireless option, too) and is made to display pages of sheet music. The pages are "turned" by a foot pedal. It can hold scanned sheet music as well as connect to music publishers. There are already several "fake books" (something working musicians use to enhance their repertoires) available in this device's native format. It can also display PDFs and the native format of some of the sheet music editing/publishing applications on the market, such as Sibelius Forte.
As someone who teaches music a bit and has tons of printed music, I can see this (or the less expensive version which is sure to come soon) making my life a lot easier.
Oh yeah, I think there's even a touch screen for making annotations or for input of musical calligraphy.
We've been waiting for products like this - e-readers, etc - to hit the mainstream market for what seems like an awful long time now. I think it might finally be here (I hope).
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Cool, I guess you will refuse to use regular sheet music too.
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Who knew drummers read music?
Most of the drummers I know can barely make it through a comic book without moving their lips.
Live and learn...
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That sounds great, but I think it would be even better if you could play back music with it as well. e.g. backing or accompaniment. Adding a basic MP3 player and MIDI synthesizer to it probably wouldn't increase the price significantly, given how ubiquitous the technology is.
Plastic Thinking (Score:1, Flamebait)
How great. A company takes a e-ink panel and wants to put it into a very small enclosing. There's no product yet, but this "innovative" and "great" idea, that only the geniuses at "Plastic Logic" could have.
There was no breakthrough in engineering, no battery issues or lag problems solved, no improvements in robustness - just the idea of putting a panel into a small case. Look at the promotion video on their website. Even the promotion model can't display its pages without massive horizontal errors. Page fl
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no kidding. the Suit's explanation didn't exactly wow me either: "it works by taking uh anything that you would normally print out or read on paper, like a newspaper or magazine, and transfers them from either computer or wirelessly, you know, to the device, so that you can, read them."
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Sorry but you're wrong. While the 'frontplane' - the e-ink display is the same, the 'backplane' - i.e. the drive electronics is different.
Plastic logic use some kind of plastic circuitry that allows them to make the device so thin (apparently).
Fair point about the refresh rate & row/column defects though. Hopefully they'll fix those for the production version.
Meh (Score:2)
The main advantage of e-ink displays, apart from low power and high resolution, is that they're flexible and can be rolled up [gadgetvenue.com].
Like a newspaper for example. Would you buy a newspaper that you can't fold or roll up?
If I can't stick it in a pocket I won't buy it.
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No the main advantage is that you can store all your books/papers/other printed material electronically on one device, and read it comfortably (i.e. not like an LCD).
And have you never heard of hard-back books?
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Link to engadget article with video (Score:1)
http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/11/plastic-logics-e-reader-vs-amazon-kindle-fight/ [engadget.com]
I have to say, they have a nice demo :-)
Now How Do I Train My Dog? (Score:1)
wrong target marketing (Score:1, Insightful)
I think they are aiming wrong with these. they should try marketing them towards college students. even used some of my books are over a hundred. so the price isnt so much of a big deal compared to newspapers. It would be great just not to have to carry all those books around every day.
missing the concept (Score:2)
It seems to me people that don't understand the desire for this tech are missing the concept. While they use MP3 players and understand that it makes their music portable they totally miss the fact that this tech makes it possible to make reading material just as portable. Yes. You can open a laptop, connect to a network, connect to a web site, read and article. You can do that for music too. However, how portable are you. Really? How portable is an MP3 player. Add music, plug in ear phones, go jogg