Flexible screens - why am I so grumpy?
For some reason, talk of e-ink and flexible screens tends to bring me out in a rash of luddite grumps.
I don’t quite now why - but I suspect it’s because I’m generally cautious about any technology which is always ‘two or three years away’ and is supposed to change our world.
It maybe because I see all as the DeLorean car of publishing technology. Just too futuristic for its own good.
It maybe because all the great leaps tend to be truly disruptive and painful, and this feels strangely comfortable (it’s like a paper without the paper! keep your layout! turn the pages! add video!).
Anyway, this all came flooding back to me last night as I was catching up on some of the coverage of FirstPaper which has been backed by Hearst, and is apparently two years away from launching.
[That's a generic pic, by the way]. A quick look at a job ad for one of the senior software engineers gives you a good technical sense of what they’re up to.
Idris Mootee loves the idea.
They are 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. So kind of like a big mousepad that works like a screen in the size of Rolling Stone magazine. Touch screen functions and customizable column are what I predicted. This is an interesting one to watch. Who wants to read from your IPhone if you can have a digital tabloid?
Anyway, at this stage - unless you happen to be in the hardware game it’s a purely hypothetical debate. I spoke recently with someone at one of the big publishers who said that actually e-books were turning into a surprisingly healthy business for them - but it’s still a niche.
Which do you think will have more active users in three years time: e-readers or whatever twitter turns into?
Anyway, if I can stop being curmudgeonly for a second, I do have a dream here, but it is not an e-ink newspaper facsimile. It’s one of these devices, flexible and indestructible with a super smart rich media news reader/aggregator at the front end. So, I get just the stuff I want, always on, with pics and video - effortlessly and wirelessly aggregated.
How hard can that be?
Simon @ April 11, 2008
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