BPN 1703: Internet has caught up with Dutch pensionados

In the Netherlands we have reached a milestone: 9 out of 10 people are using internet daily, says CBS Statistics. Faster connections through broadband (cable and fiber), better access to internet, a larger offer are leading to more online activities such as listening to the radio, reading news, watching tv and e-shopping. The percentage internet users has gone up from 68 to 90 procent from 2005 till 2014. In 2005 already three quarters of youth between 12 and 25 years were on internet every day, but in 2014 they were increasingly using smart phones to connect to internet. In 2014 three quarters of the internet users between 65 and 75 years use internet daily.

It has taken twenty years for silver tsunami of pensionados to become digital natives. They were resp. between 45 and 55 years when Digital City (De Digitale Stad – DDS) started to roll out consumer internet. Now they are intensively using internet in order to find their forebears, mail, skype and transfer (photo)files with their kids, grandchildren, relatives and friend as well as electronic banking.

A real tipping point in this development is the reading habit of the pensionados as they are officially still seen as the majority of readers of printed newspaper. But this is changing rapidly. With the rise of online newspapers, the print editions of the newspapers are going down with rapid speed. Between the third quarter of 2011 and 2014 print has decreased no less tah 15 percent of the paid print newspapers, regardless of the age brackets. But the pensionados can be seen as the last wall of the print Mohikans, so print will die off more rapidly in the next ten years. This will pose the next problem of transformation for the newspapers. Now the online newspapers are divided in freesheets and registered and/or paid subscription papers. In the coming years the companies will mainly continue to land paid subscriptions. Yet the pensionados will discover as the the younger generations have already done, that they like to compose their own newspaper and buy articles instead of editions. So there is a future for article kiosks like Blendle. (But their business model will have to be finetuned so that the publishers will pay their freelance journalists for republishing on Blendle and the freelance journalist can publishedarticles for pay without publishers).

Are there now main differences between the generation born with digital tools or the pensionados finally arriving as digital natives. I recently had the opportunity as a guest lecturer of a University of Applied Sciences to make a digital X-ray of the students. The study communication and are in the second year of their bachelor of arts. They are between 19 and 25 years old. Of course you do not have to ask wether they use internet, that is like asking for the use of the holy book  (Bible, Quran, Thora) in a sanctuary. They all have a portable computer and a smart phone; only few of them had an iPad or tablet and only one an e-reader. Of course, they all bank electronically.

Interesting was to make an inventory of their reading habits. Yes there were a minority of students reading printed newspapers, freesheets as well as paid newspapers. The majority however was reading free online newspapers, the free shortened versions of paid newspapers as well as the advertsiement papers with some news bullits. Only one of the students did have an e-reader and many, many e-books! And their was one student reading one of his three e-books on a tablet.

Part of the X-ray are questions about the digital background of their parents. These parents are globally of the generation of 40 to 50 years. These parents were the digital migrants. The responses tell that most a gaming console was a digital first at home. A computer for home use was introduced from 1996 onwards; former generations bought an encyclopedia for self education and that of their children. From the answers it was clear that the parents had started to work with computers at work. But internet came into their homes after 2000 and so they also took on the habit of banking electronically.  

The results of CBS combined with the X-ray of a limited group of students clearly shows that pensionados are now joining the ranks of digital migrants and that the present group of students are the first generation of digital natives. The difference between the digital pensionados and the digital natives is the smart phone and most likely the iPad/tablet.While you would suppose that the students have been born with a smartphone, the digital pensionados still sit behind their desk computer or portable PC or they start their day with reading the news on their iPad/tablet in bed. Besides pensionados have started to read books on an e-reader But give it another five years and improved interfaces and the digital pensionados will have catched up with the smartphone and the students with the iPad and tablet.

 

BPN 1577 E-book's 40th anniversary (part 1)

July 4th is a traditional American holiday, Independence Day. Unique for that day is the 40th anniversary of the e-book. It took e-book from 1971 up to now to become an accepted medium. One can say that the introduction of the Kindle e-reader on November 19, 2007 gave e-book an official status. That is 37 years after its start. What took the e-book four waves to surface? Is it basically culture and/or technology?

To start with book culture. Books have had a long tradition of culture carriers. The education and culture of a family could be measured by the amount of books and in the 18th century even by the meter. Books have been scarce until the French revolution. The Paris based university Sorbonne had only a room full of books when the French Revolution started. Now the library is measured in kilometres. Besides printed books have become common goods. Anyone can buy them, if they want. For many people reading books has become a daily habit. Take the underground in London and you always find people not reading a newspaper, but a book. Often those people have become fanatic about reading and could be dubbed the ink tifosi. They have not lived a day without reading a print book! But a new generation of digital natives is coming on, which has known gadgets from pregnancy.

But the habit is changing. Just look for people waiting to catch a plane or people at the beach. E-readers and e-books are becoming accepted. This after all these years….

It all started with Michael Hart. He was working with a mainframe computer, one that occupied a whole room. Having spent a long time on jobs, he was given some computer time for his personal interest. The story goes that he accepted the gift of computer hours, went back to his office and came out, saying that he would like to start a series of digital books. So he started typing his first publication in capitals, which was not uncommon at that time as Teletype (TTY) was quite common in the transmission industry. Also the inventor of the @ symbol in e-mail, Roy Tomlinson, wrote his first message in capitals and again the Gettysburg Address.

For a long time Michael Hart added e-books, being non-copyrighted books in the public domain. By 1990 his project had grown and people had offered him help in retyping books. The Gutenberg project gave some body to the organisation. From that point onwards the volume of non-copyrighted  e-books in the public domain started to expand at great pace.

Reading e-books had taken a different turn from reading them from a terminal, linked to a mainframe or a minicomputer since 1977, when PC’s got introduced. After 1980 e-books could be stored in internal memory on floppy discs, usually more than one. But from 1985 CD-ROM with 600Mb storage capacity became the e-book carrier of plain text or of interactive books produced by the Voyager Interactive company.

But for publishers it was clear that they liked to have a customised e-reader for e-books. So when Akita Morito, the CEO of Sony, in 1986 proclaimed the minidisk, being able to store 200Mb, the carrier of e-books, publishers sat back and waited eagerly. It would take another five years before Sony had worked out an e-reader based on the technology of the Data Discman. It was launched in Japan in 1991, in the USA and UK in 1992 and in 1993 in the rest of Europe. The smart move of Sony was to start co-operation with committees of publishers and software developers. So every country had its Electronic Book Committee to get familiar with the product and set up a publishing program.

© Jak Boumans, 2011

But the device did not catch the fancy of book readers. Despite marketing moves like the introduction of the book Sliver, a book by Ira Levine, first as an electronic book followed by the print edition, e-books did not catch on. Actually e-readers did not catch on, as the devices were too heavy (450 grams) to carry around, the tft screen black/white and  too small, while battery life was too short and the price a hefty one of more than 1200 Dutch guilders (roughly 550 euro). By the end of 1985 356 e-books, Had originated from the USA and Western Europe, as listed in the TFPL Directory of CD-ROM.

In the meantime internet was coming up and attempts for producing tablets were in motion. Roger Fiddler of the US newspaper publisher was carrying a prototype around the world, showing the future of newspapers on a tablet. But the main change in thinking came from internet. This network should be the distribution channel for e-books. Besides delivering the files, at least in the future, it should also become a virtual cash point. And a variety of tablets, with amongst others Rocket e-Book, came on the market, while print publishers were hesitant, fearing piracy and the same fate as publishers of music. However there was more success in this second wave of e-readers than with the Sony devices. The e-readers became more portable, but they still had a tft screen and a short battery life. Their price started to get lower, very slowly.

(continues)

BPN 1577

VERSCHIJNT EIND SEPTEMBER 2011

Titel: Toen digitale media nog nieuw waren: Pre-internet in de polder (19671997)

Auteur: Jak Boumans

Isbn 97890787 3005 7
Prijs € 37,50
Omvang: 288 pagina’s

Toen digitale media nog nieuw waren is een uitgave van Media Update Vakpublicaties Wetterwille 10a | 8401 gb Gorredijk |
t 0513·466162 | www.media-update.nl |
www.toendigitalemedianognieuwwaren.nl |
info@media-update.nl

BPN 1576 The twitter of e-learning

Recently I attended a conference on micro-learning in the Austrian city of Innsbruck. It is a very intersting subject, when you get deeper into it. To me it is the twitter of e-learning; a worthwhile subject to get into. I was asked to say something about micro-learning and tablet-like devices such e-readers and tablets.

For micro learning so far mobile phones and smart phones have been used. But with the arrival of tablets the question can be posed: What does the introduction of e-readers and tablets in micro-learning mean? Just a pure replacement of mobile and smart phones?

In order to evaluate the impact properly a definition of micro-learning is needed:

"No matter if learning refers to the process of building up and organizing knowledge, to the change of behaviour, of attitudes, of values, of mental abilities, of cognitive structures, of emotional reactions, of action patterns or of societal dimensions, in all cases we have the possibility to consider micro, meso and macro aspects of the various views on more or less persisting changes and sustainable alterations of performances." (Hug 2005, p. 4).

The definition is rather broad. In practice micro-learning has found a place between e-learning and social media, in particular twitter and tweets. One could say that micro-learning is the twitter of e-learning: the content is compact and short and sent by SMS through a mobile phone or by text through the small window of a smart phone.

By introducing a 3G or wi-fi e-reader or a 3G or wi-fi tablet into the range of devices, these devices can perform the same tasks as a mobile phone and a smart phone do now, which is micro-chunking the learning material. But as these tablet-like devices have communication tools and also e-mail tools, it offers a new possibility: the coincidence of time and context. In the online daily newspaper business, especially from the business newspapers this is called day-parting. It means that the content of news follows the rhythm of the day and the use of devices. So at daybreak one is presented with an overview of the news headlines on the PC at home. On the way to the office the smart phone will produce bullets of news. In the office the user will get longer articles in between the activities. During lunch the smart phone takes over again and in the afternoon the PC, while on the way home the smart phone functions again as communication device. In online business newspapers this means that items are longer for PC and are short bullets for the mobile phone.

Presently, micro-learning is restricted to short messages and reminders. With smart e-readers and tablets micro-learning can expand its strategy of feeding content to the student. Depending on the supposed day rhythm of the student, a mix of usual short messages and longer messages with explanation can be offered.

BPN 1576

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

BPN 1555 Bol.com messes up e-reader primer (2)

At the beginning of this month November the Dutch branch of Bol.com announced that by buying 10 electronic books you would get an e-reader for free. But the campaign did not start well. In the weekend of the launch, ordering was impossible as the price logarithm was not correct. In several instances the candidate buyer would get a different calculation and a different amount. It should be 99 euro, but I have seen at least three different and incorrect amounts, while it is a simple calculation: 10 books for the amount of 149,00 euro less 49,99 euro for the free gift (!) of the e-ereader. But on the Monday the potential buyer could place his order for 99,99 euro plus transport. Yet this was only the beginning of the mess.

As soon as the potential buyer had ordered the bundle of e-books and the e-reader, the likely delivery date of November 11 was shown. When the day was there, no package was delivered, while the delivery message had not changed nor did the buyer get a notification of delay. Some days after that there was a mail strike in The Netherlands. And eventually on November the package was delivered on November 16 (no apologies by e-mail). So at last the e-reader was there.

The package contained also the invoice, or better two invoices. A simple deduction sum showed the correct amount, but the way the two invoices were composed was different from the correct logarithm at the time of ordering. So much for the ordering.

Unwrapping the e-reader was interesting. Bol.com had said nothing about the screen and the screen resolution in the technical specifications, which had made me suspicious. And in the Hiteker HDB 107 user’s manual, which was delivered with the e-reader, it said: 7 inch colour LCD screen, resolution 800x480. I think that Bol.com should have been clear about the type of screen. For the brand e-readers has been so far reserved for digital paper screens, produced according to the e-Ink technology. And the resolution of the Hiteker is rather low and rather coarse in terms of present computer screen standards.

Another real e-reader feature has been the long battery life. As this is an LCD screen the battery life is low. It takes an hour to load the device using the AC adaptor and 5 hours to load it with the USB cable from a computer. It is said to have a battery life of 10 hours. Forget it. If you want to use it on a train ride from Amsterdam to Metz in France, you will be out of energy after Brussels.

Looking at the Hiteker, it is in MHO a cheap pad. The pad has a unrefined lay-out. The knobs are rudimentary and hard to press. But, it can sing and dance. You can play music, but the sound is not stereo. You can watch video. You can use it as an electronic photograph case, changing pictures after 5, 10 or 20 seconds. You can record sound. And you can use it as an e-reader, so the first screen says.

Well, as for the screen it is not an e-reader. And for its functioning, it is not an e-reader for the bundle of 10 e-books delivered with it, at least for the time being. Of the 10 e-books only three book are readable. You can see all the 10 coloured covers, but only the text of three books. For the rest of the books a system message appears Failure at opening. Here you are with an imposter of an e-reader and a bundle of 10 e-books, of which you can only read three books. In terms of the Bol.com’s marketing the three readable books now costs 33,33 euro each with a free e-reader! (Happily I have a BeBook mini and can read all the 10 book on a real e-reader)

Bol.com you have rendered a bad service to Dutch e-reader market by delivering a fake e-reader with a bundle of e-books that can not be read on pad delivered.

Update

30/11/2010: Bol.com has forwarded a software patch in the meantime and the patch works. I can read now the other 7 books.
I ordered the books and pad on November 3, 2010. I can read the books now on December 3, 2010.

BPN 1555

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

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

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