BPN 1562 Samsung acquires Liquavista

This is great news for the e-book and iPad world. Technology analogue to the e-Ink display technology will now be further developed and implemented by Samsung but with colour and video. Liquavista is interesting to display producers for their LCD processes can handle 90 percent of the Liquavista production process; it will make the production process into a LCD 2.0 exercise. This will make the display cheaper than the e-Ink display at its start.
I gues that we will see Liquavista displays implemented by next year. Guess that the Samsung Galaxy will be the first implementation. It will be a winner superceding the iPad.

This is the press release of this morning:

Eindhoven (The Netherlands) - 20 January 2011: Today, Liquavista BV., announced that it has been acquired by Samsung Electronics in a buyout of all shares from the past shareholders. Under the terms of this acquisition, Liquavista will be a fully owned affiliate of Samsung Electronics.
“We are thrilled by this event” said Johan Feenstra, Liquavista’s Founder and newly appointed CEO of Liquavista, “the outright acquisition of Liquavista by the largest electronics company in the world is the fulfilment of a strategy dating back to the original spin-out and, confirmation of the disruptive potential that our technology will have in the display market.”
The acquisition has also resulted in a number of changes in Liquavista’s management team. Johan Feenstra has succeeded Guy Demuynck as the company’s CEO .

“In the future, consumers will need products that not only support full color and video but offer readability in all lighting conditions and gives them ultimate freedom and portability.” Johan Feenstra added, “Being part of Samsung, we can all be sure that Electrowetting Display Technology will find its way to the market in the fastest possible time.”

BPN 1562

French daily Les Echos offers two e-readers

The French daily newspaper Les Echos offers their subscribers a daily electronic newspaper, news items from the French news wire agency AFP and a series of electronic books by the publishers Nathan, M21, Pearson Education. Remarkable is the fact that the newspaper offers this electronic newspaper and the goodies either as an electronic package or as an electronic package with a choice out of two e-readers (iLiad or STAReBOOK).

iLiad
The French financial daily Les Echos has a commercial offer for the reader in combination with a one year subscription to the newspaper. Users can upload an updated version of the newspaper several times a day through a wifi connection. Subscribers of Les Echos can now register for an iLiad subscription on the website of the French financial daily. For 769,00 euro (including VAT) the subscriber receives an iLiad e-reader, a one year subscription to Les Echos, to a selection of the French news wire AFP and to a selection of e-books provided by the publishers Nathan, M21, Pearson Education. It also contains Stylet for writing notes and accepts Mobipocket formatted e-books. Les Echos needs 5 to 8 weeks to deliver the iLiad.

Les Echos looks like the first commercial deal with a newspaper. The iLiad has been experimented with in Belgium with 200 subscribers to the financial daily De Tijd. But there is no concrete proposal from the management yet; a decision is expected by September. Last year cooperation was announced by the manufacturer iRex Technologies with the Yantai Daily Media Group in China. The group would use Iliads to distribute its papers electronically; the newspaper group distributes 1 million printed newspapers daily. Recently iRex Technologies announced that the Dutch newspapers NRC Handelsblad, Het Financieele Dagblad and De Telegraaf will research the e-Reader opportunities.

Not betting on one horse
Les Echos is not betting on one horse. The newspaper offers in fact another e-reader besides the iLiad: STAReBOOK. The offer is 649 euro (incl. VAT) and quite similar to the iLiad offer. So a subscriber will receive the e-reader, a selection of news from the French news wire AFP and to a selection of e-books provided by the publishers Nathan, M21, Pearson Education and MP3. There is no Wifi facility onboard.
For a comparison between the iLiad and STAeBOOK go to YouTube.

BTW My cracked iLiad (see the photograph; mark the ghost!) is now in Germany for repair. It was picked up last Friday for transport from The Netherlands to Germany. I hope that the iLiad can be repaired so that I can move on with the experiments such as blogs collections and technical manuals on the iLiad.

Blog Posting Number: 769

Tags: iliad, digital paper, e-book, e-book reader

iLiad: forthcoming research on Dutch newspapers

It has been in the air ever since the iLiad was under construction by the Philips spin-off iRex Technologies: Dutch language newspapers on e-Readers. This week the Dutch Press Fund awarded a consortium of Dutch newspapers a grant of maximally of 362.950 euro for practical research into e-Readers. Three newspapers will partake in the research: the free newspaper Spits, the financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad and the national daily de Volkskrant. The research will take two years and the results will be offered to the newspaper sector.

The practical research will not be directed towards the technology, but will focus on how e-Readers can assist the change-over from the classic, static newspaper to the digital, dynamic newspaper content.

This research objective is broad. Yet one can ask whether another research has to be started up. Internationally there is an IFRA eNews research project going on. Closer to home, Wegener and Philips have done research into the usage of e-Readers by regional newspaper readers. The use of the e-Reader was tested over against other information devices. Especially the difference in usage between internet services and e-readers was tested. Very extensive research was performed with the Belgian newspaper De Tijd. This newspaper is a Flemish financial newspaper. I reported on the results of the research project extensively in my postings. But so far there is no decision has been made public that De Tijd will continue will the service.

The research in The Netherlands will be interesting as Het Financieele Dagblad will be the Dutch language partner in it. So it will be possible to compare the results between De Tijd and Het Financieele Dagblad as language and subject are the same.

New for the Dutch/Flemish language will be the research into the free daily and the paid national newspaper. De Spits is the counterpart by de Telegraaf of the Metro. It aims at the young commuters in urban areas. For de Telegraaf the newspaper the newspaper is an ad vehicle. The national newspaper de Volkskrant direct itself towards young audience with a good education and good job; a substantial part of the audience consists of singles.

The interesting part of the research will be the comparison between professional usage, usage for paid news and usage for free news. From my experience with the introduction of new devices such as CD-ROM players and electronic books, I expect that professional usage will be the leader of the three.

Interesting will also be the content question. Will the newspaper editorial staffs just transmit the newspaper as the pdf files on internet once a day or will they provide an iLiad edition once a day, in a day parting mood (morning, midday, late afternoon editions) or continuously changing news. From the internet experience it is clear that pdf is not a favourite type of edition and that continuously changing news is much appreciated. Given the wireless facility of the iLiad e-Reader a continuously changing news feed can be transmitted.

Personally I would also include the Readius in the project. The two e-Readers could be tested over against each other. The iLiad would be a single functional information device with an A5 screen, while the Readius would be a multi-functional communication and information device with a mobile telephone and a small screen, dedicated to information.

I look forwards to participating in tests of this research project. Of course I should get my iLiad to the repair service first.

Blog Posting Number: 732

Tags: iLiad, e-Reader, electronic book, digital paper, electronic newspaper

iLiad rented out by library

The public library in my home town Almere offers her members a new service: iLiad. The handheld e-reader, which can hold the texts of 50 books, can be rented against a surity. The library advertises the eReader as a light weight screen of 400 grams, which prevents carrying heavy book loads. It is promoted as more than just a gadget as the gadget has a leafing mechanism and the screen can be manipulated with a stylus. Parts of the text can be underscored and enlarged. It is also possible to make annotations. The library itself does not have e-books, but they can be downloaded from internet sites such as the Dutch ebook.nl. In the future newspapers and magazines can be downloaded on the eReader.

The library has one copy for rent in order to test the market. However, if there is more interest than the library will order more copies. The library has a special instruction. People who want to rent the iLiad will pay 50 euro for surety.
It was funny to see that the library tries to promote the iLiad in the framework of books and specifically of text books. In the local newspaper article no mention is made of the graphic capabilities or the audio capabilities. (Come to think of it that it is a perfect electronic storytelling machine for the visually impaired). On the other hand, it is a library with books as main resource.

It is not a surprise that this library will test the iLiad. The library is rather progressive. In the past it was the first library to adopt the Moving Image Cyclopaedia of the Digital Film Center Europe in Nijmegen. Besides the library has fast links with the school libraries and documentation centres in Almere, offering pupils a wide range of resources such as books, but also digital resources such as movies, music and newspapers as well as magazines.

The announcement did remind me about my broken copy of the iLiad. I put it away in my display cupboard where I keep my copy of the first series of Sony’s e-Book and the Rocket Book from the second e-book wave. In principle I had the iLiad retired, pre-supposing that it could not be mended. But I found out that iRex Technologies has now a technical support service. So I gave them a phone call and told them about my broken iLiad. The technical desk operator told me that it could be fixed, if it was only the screen. A new screen would cost 250 euro. But of course, nothing of the print circuit should be damaged. I had to fill out a form and send it to the technical service department and I would hear about this. So this week I will start up the procedure and see whether we can give my iLiad a second lease of life.

Blog Posting Number: 725

Tags: iliad, eReader, electronic book, digital paper

Cross country for cross-media (10)

I had not expected anyone busy with print in cross-media. Coming from print publishing, I was eager to hear what could be said about print and digital media. At CMID07 Mikael Malanin of the Helsinki University of Technology presented a paper named New paradigms of print.

In his paper Mikael observes that traditionally digital media have been associated with print media. A new reverse paradigm is to associate print media to digital. Another paradigm in media products is the community generated content.

The paradigms are not really new. In the nineties we have particularly seen the publishers coming up with extensions of their existing print products such newspapers and magazines. It was basically for marketing purposes that publishers went into internet. Usually they saw internet as a potential cannibalism mechanism for their print title. By now publishers have changed this narrow view and exploring editorial concepts as well as marketing concepts. Not all concepts are successful; for example, internet is not becoming the newspaper boy who delivers the pdf newspaper file in great numbers. But most newspapers and magazine publishers have digital extensions to their print product.

So far one cannot speak either of a replacement of the print product by a digital product. Only in a few cases magazine publishers had to change from print into digital edition; the Dutch publisher of Elle magazine changed over from a print to a digital product. So far the great revolution from print to digital has not come around. And given cross-media, analogue products like newspapers and magazines might stay in place until digital paper can compete with analogue paper.

Print products in association with digital products or services have been around since the end of the nineties. I saw as a Europrix2001 jury member one of the Finnish entries of 2001, www.sooda.com, which was definitely a cross-media product. Sooda is a dynamic and innovative online community for young people about 12 to 19 years old. Sooda is full of interactive services, new visual experiences and unconventional content. In summer 2000 Sooda grew into a cross-media product, when a printed school diary was published and turned out to be a hit. The other Finnish hit Habbo Hotel publishes in Finland a diary. In the meantime is it not uncommon that internet sites get printed products. Books are produced from blogs. Magazines are created around a website like recently the magazine RTL GP was created for the fans of Formula 1 in The Netherlands, who follow closely the race website of the broadcasting station RTL.

While the digital counterparts of printed products can usually be categorised as extensions, the printed products yielded from digital sites are often serving a community. This can be Grand Prix Formula 1 lovers (like me), but also a community of bird watchers. Internet, Mikael remarks, has proved to be an effective medium for creating and maintaining of online communities, which operate in the virtual space and are not dependent on geographical boundaries.

These virtual communities are often the proper environment to start new services with community generated content. In an enthusiastic community there are always community members to generate content, given that they have proper online facilities. The mechanics of such a community are most likely that there are 100 percent unique visitors of which 10 percent regular lurkers and 1 percent participating members, who will be part of a community generating content such as blog contributions and video and articles for the printed edition.

The conclusion can be that print is not yet dead.

Blog Posting Number: 715

Tags: cross-media, print, digital paper, community generated content

Never a dull moment at PCM

Hardly has the private equity company Apax closed the door to the premises of the publishing company PCM and made off with their financial spoils or the new owner, who was the owner before Apax, let the world know that they are in charge again.

Apax is out now. And the other shareholders, foundations, are in charge again just like they were before Apax was invited in. Those shareholders will look back at the Apax era and most likely shake their heads. What did it do for the newspaper and book publishing company?
- NRC.next is only tangible product, which just celebrated its first anniversary;
- One board member went out during the Apax regime: Mr Theo Bouwman;
- Two new board members came in during the Apax regime: Ton aan de Stegge and Philip Alberdingk Thijm;
- A free daily was announced in cooperation with a free daily which has been published in the meantime; PCM is now working on its own free publication;
- For the rest, Apax has financially reshaped PCM, but the company will have to pay off the loans for a long time.

So now the foundations are in charge again and they let it know to the world. They sent off Mr Alberdingk Thijm immediately. He had successfully operated at the Dutch financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad, where he shaped a cross-media operation, with print, radio and internet. According to the foundations he was unable to pull off the same trick for PCM. But he walks off at least 2 million euro richer, but of course his name in tatters. And also Mr Aan de Stegge will be slaughtered. He has been asked to stay on for another half year until a new chairman has been found.

All this turmoil normally leads to a period with no strategy or a strategy recalled. Mr Aan de Stegge had already announced that newspapers and education were the spearpoints of the strategy. The book division, except the educational section, could be sold, he said. But surprise, surprise PCM (read the foundations) are negotiating a merger with NDC/VBK, a newspaper and book publisher. Their profiles are quite similar. Both are in the newspaper and book business. PCM is in the national newspapers, while NDC/VBK is in the business of regional newspapers. Both companies have a book publishing division. PCM is heavily mortgaged, while NDC/VBK is well financed. The company have been in talks already for months and are already talking about board members. Rumour has it that the chairman of NDC/VBK, Jan de Roos, will be named the new chairman.

But these merger talks could take some time. Discussions about the cross-ownership in the media are certainly coming up. The competition watchdog will have look into the matter. It might be that the watchdog will ask to sell particular parts. In this way the company would become a conglomerate of national newspapers, with regional newspapers in the North of the Netherlands. But the book divisions would be a problem. Putting the two book divisions together would produce the largest book publishing conglomerate in The Netherlands. There will be two reactions to this. The competition watchdog might ask to sell some companies or some book publishers might step out of the conglomerate and start their own company, as happened with the PCM book publishing companies.

For the immediate future there are two operational projects. PCM will finally launch their own free newspaper, named Dag (translated Day or Goodbye). There are high expectations about the project as PCM is working together with the incumbent telco KPN. PCM will produce the paper and be involved in the internet site; KPN will be involved in the internet site, but mainly work on the exploitation of the mobile/PDA and interactive television side. Another project will be the digital paper project by de Volkskrant and by NRC Handelsblad. As I remarked in the flash item of yesterday: this has been on the drawing boards for long. But now it seems to become reality. I personally would have combined it with the launch of the free newspaper Dag and experimented with day-parting. We will wait and see. I am eager to hear the price PCM is going to ask for the e-Reader and the subscription to the newspaper. Besides, with the merger of PCM and NDC/VBK, an expert company on e-Books and digital paper would be included: Pinion.

For the next half year there will not be a dull moment at PCM.

Blog Posting Number 709

Tags: newspapers, digital paper, e-Reader

Flash: Two Dutch dailies to test iLiad

The Dutch PCM-newspapers de Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad, both national dailies, will start testing the iLiad reader with digital paper. This rumour has been going around since the end of 2005, but it has now been confirmed by Mr Hans Brons, managing director of iRex Technologies.



Blog Posting Number 708

Tags: digital paper

Cellular eReader

Telecom Italia and Polymer Vision today announced an agreement which will see the leading operator of the Italian mobile industry and the pioneers of the rollable display industry join to develop and launch the world’s first rollable display enabled mobile device to market in 2007.












Today the innovative terminal will be presented to the mobile industry as a world first at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona from February 12th (booth in Hall 2, D 06). The device uses the unique Polymer Vision rollable display technology which enables mobile devices to incorporate a display larger than the handset itself and offers a readability similar to printed paper. The product follows up on the rollable display technology based concept device Readius® presented by Polymer Vision less than 18 months ago at the IFA Consumer Electronics Trade Fair in Berlin.

While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device features a display which extends up to 5-inches and may simply be stored away after use by folding it, thanks to the flexibility of the polymer based display material. The device features the largest display available in the industry for the same form factor, the 16 grey levels combined with a high contrast and high reflectivity display for paper like reading experience enables comfortable reading, even in bright sunlight. Future developments include colour and moving image capable display.

The rollable display enables reading entire newspapers as well as books that can be delivered and bought through TIM’s mobile network via a regular SIM Card within the device - and then stored in the terminal’s memory which will be extremely large (starting from 4 Gigabytes available in the first models). Combined with TIM’s mobile services, the device will permit instant access to personalised data, e-mail, news, information feeds and location sensitive maps wherever and whenever. The always-on user experience is made possible through an optimised combination of cellular (EDGE/UMTS) and broadcast (DVB-H IP data-casting) mobile functionalities as well as a mini-USB slot for PC and wired/wireless broadband data connection.

Together with superior text and graphic content, the new device will also download and play music, audiobooks and audio podcasts. Featuring single-handed navigation and control via an innovative touch sensitive LED user interface, as well as intuitively simple software, users will enjoy a new unique experience in managing, accessing relevant and personalized high value content. With the extremely low power consumption of the display, the new device will deliver an exceptional 10 days of average usage time between battery charges.

The rollable display is based on the e-Ink technology. Part of the screen-substrate technology and the wireless technology has been developed by Philips and has been spun out to iRex Technologies, which produces the eReader iLiad, and to Polymer Vision.

Blog Posting Number: 662

Tags: 3G, UMTS, eReader, iliad, iliad, digital paper

Flash: Mobile book cover to be presented

Telecom Italia is joining with Dutch Polymer Vision to develop and introduce what the companies called the world's first "cellular book" sometime in 2007. The mobile device will use Polymer Vision's display technology, which allows mobile phones to incorporate a large screen that rolls and is as easy to read as printed paper even in bright sunlight. The device will be introduced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on February 12, 2007.











Blog Posting Number: 657

Tags: e-book, digital paper, ereader

Digital paper tested in a school

Pupils of the Bonnefanten College in Maastricht, in the South of The Netherlands, will start testing digital paper next month. The eReader will be used to store the books; the pupils can also make their homework on the tablet with digital paper. The tablet is the iLiad of iRex Technologies and the project has been initiated by the Edupaper.nl company and the school.

The school thinks that the tablet will replace the heavy book load. Edupaper has negotiated copyright arrangements with educational publishers. The pupils will also hand in their homework wirelessly.

Edupaper.nl focuses on M-learning or Mobile learning and considers digital papers as one of the tools in the application. The company also delivers services for government, health care and trainings; for the present they deliver these services in the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg). The company indicates that it knows about the Sony Librie, but that it did not select this device as Sony obliges users to buy content via the Sony servers. Besides the company considers the iLiad as more technologically advanced. The screen is beautiful and offers a fine contrast. The device offers more freedom. The device is robust and eyes professional. The weight is interesting with its 390 grams; there is a touch screen and other actions can be started by using the navigation knobs and icons. Starting the reader is easier than starting up a laptop. The battery holds for 20 hours. As disadvantages the company notes the presence of a virtual keyboard and the ambiguity of the icons.

The company believes that with the development of the Open Educational Resources more free e-books will hit the market. However the company also signals that the present iLiad is not fit to surf on internet. The Web pages need to be adapted as not everything can be shown; but the web browser Opera will solve this, the company believes. Movies can not be played on the reader, as the screen is too slow to play out 18 images per second; but animations are possible.

The reader is seen as a real device in the electronic educational environment. All documents will be loaded in the reader. Dokeos Nederland, an open source company for the Dutch market will execute the pilot. The Open University has been asked to evaluate this pilot.

So far for the jubilant press release and site information from Edupaper.nl. It is interesting to see a commercial company and a school picking up on such an experiment with such expensive machines. It needs a lot of courage to do so. But I am wondering how much background study the company performed. Did they check the Austrian e-book experiment in schools, of which we never heard again? Why did not we hear the results and why has this Edupaper experiment a better chance?

I personally think that the company is too optimistic about the experiment. The company has taken the technical specifications such as battery hours for granted and I am wondering whether the team has tested the machine themselves thoroughly. Yes the experiment will undoubtedly show that kids do not have to lug their books back and forth to school. Yet how many books will they be able to store? And I do not mean the quantity, for I know that the reader will be able to store some 20 books, depending on size and illustrations. But the reader will only be able to store black and white books; this means that some colour printed books will have to be converted to black/white or be dropped. And, of course the copyright will have to be negotiated. For the experiment it looks like that has been done and of course all the publishers were willing to partake in this experiment as long as they would hear about the results first hand. The publishers will only start thinking about their copyright policies after the experiment.
As the company itself indicated, there are problems in surfing internet. This is of course a blessing as the pupils will be unable to surf during classes. On the other hand the kids will have to go to computers in school or at home in order to pick up information and to transfer it to the reader.

And last but not least, I am eager to hear what educationalists think of it: the use in classes, the versioning of the software (Madam, my machine works differently), and the reliability of the batteries (Sir, I can not deliver my paper as my batteries have gone flat!). For in the end the question is: did the pupils get better grades using an electronic reader with digital paper than with books?

Blog Posting Number: 648

Tags: digital paper, iliad, education, e-book, ereader