Electronic ink is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays. Although revolutionary in concept, electronic ink is a straightforward fusion of chemistry, physics and electronics to create this new material. The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot.

NOTE: Image not drawn to scale – for illustration purposes only.

To form an E Ink electronic display, the ink is printed onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver. These microcapsules are suspended in a liquid “carrier medium” allowing them to be printed using existing screen printing processes onto virtually any surface, including glass, plastic, fabric and even paper. Ultimately electronic ink will permit most any surface to become a display, bringing information out of the confines of traditional devices and into the world around us.

On 18 Nov, I joined more than 600 other publishing peers for an Aptara webinar on “eBook Readers and Standards…Where to Now?” The presentation looked at the rapidly unfolding eBook market, and how publishers are struggling to adapt as competitive and consumer pressures demand that their titles be compatible with the multitude of new eBook applications and eReaders coming to market. For those working on the development of a successful eBook production strategy, this presentation gave a clear position on where the market is today and will be tomorrow.

The presenters were Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester Research’s eBook Market Analyst, and Michael Smith, Director of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), which manages the EPUB standard. Here are some highlights:

From Sarah Rotman Epps on a Forrester Research survey completed in the third quarter 2009:

• Q2 2008, 37% had never heard of an electronic book device; in Q3 2009, that number dropped to 17%
• US eReader outlook:
  • Sell-through of 3 million units in 2009
    • Amazon 60%
    • Sony 35%
    • Others less than 5%
  • 40% of 2009 sales (1.2M) in Q4, with 900,000 in November/December holiday season
  • A conservative estimate for 2010 would be for sales to increase from 6M (2009) to 10M units
• What’s coming in 2010:
  • First eReaders not using E Ink screens
  • New screen sizes, color, and non-E Ink video
  • New category-bending devices: dual screens, web tablets, smartphones better optimized for reading
  • More competition: B&N, others
  • Global growth
  • 2007 is to eReaders what 2001 was to MP3 players
• US consumers:
  • 3% now use their desktop computer to reader eBooks
  • 2% use their laptop computer
  • 1% use an eReader device, such as a Kindle or Sony Reader
  • 1% use a netbook
  • 1% use a mobile phone or PDA
• Of consumers who say they are interested in eBooks, the value they saw included:
  • Take up less space: 54%
  • Can access multiple books on the go: 47%
  • Can adjust text size: 37%
  • Better for the environment than print books: 37%
  • Can read in dark/low light: 37%
  • Cheaper than print books: 35%
  • Easy to search: 26%
  • Easy to look up a word in a dictionary: 22%
• When asked how interested they would be in reading different forms of media on an eBook reader, consumers who were very interested replied:
  • Books: 29%
  • Magazines: 15%
  • Newspapers: 14%
  • Textbooks: 11%
  • Wikipedia: 9%
  • Comics: 7%
  • Blogs: 4%
• What should book publishers take away from the survey:
  • Stay “device agnostic”
  • The features that matter when it comes to content:
    • Ability to reflow content and look good on any device
    • Ability to sync up content across multiple devices
    • Ability to share content with a friend
• What will eBooks mean for a publisher’s bottom line?
  • Expect small revenues from any one channel, but expect growth over time across devices
  • Could be incremental, but much will be replacement
    • Plan for a smaller business
    • But potentially still a profitable one as you cut back print operations over time
  • New opportunities
    • Subscriptions
    • Incremental content sales
    • Advertising

From Michael Smith’s presentation:

• Industry predictions:
  • Continued growth of eBooks and eReaders as they become more mainstream
  • Younger generations (digital natives) begin to read electronically for pleasure
  • Hockey stick sales growth: 2010-2011
• eBook wholesale numbers:
  • 2009: $109,900,000 (Q1-Q3)
  • 2008: $53,500,000
  • 2007: $31,800,000
  • 2006: $20,000,000
• eBook formats: What’s right for your content?
  • Final form content vs. digital reflowable text
    • PDF vs. EPUB
  • How will content be consumed?
    • Web
    • Mobile
    • E Ink Display
• Current standards landscape
  • EPUB is an open and non-proprietary standard
    • Key to healthy eBook ecosystem
    • PDF is an ISO Standard
    • DAISY, ONIX, ISBN, XML, XHTML, CSS all important
  • Others promoting non-EPUB formats
• What’s pivotal to pervasive EPUB adoption?
  • Publisher adoption — Critical mass of content
  • Consumer adoption — EPUB prefect for small screen apps
  • Continuous evolution and improvements — EPUB Maintenance Working Group + EPUB 3.0
• Future of EPUB — Not a matter of “if,” but how fast it will become the dominant format/preferred standard
  • Continued worldwide adoption of EPUB with strong push throughout Europe, China and Japan
  • Move from primarily trade titles into Science/Technology/Math and then Higher-Ed
  • Continued growth in Library markets
  • Adoption of EPUB format to be a factor in rise of accessible titles available for Print Disabled community

Mens magazine Esquire isn’t going to just sit around and watch print die. Oh no. The people behind the scenes are working hard to come up with ideas that combine digital with the analog. Augmented Reality is what they came up with this year. Tech savvy readers will remember that Esquire pulled a similar marketing stunt last year with their e-paper covers.

Augmented reality is an image embedded in that digital block that you see between Robert Downey Jr’s legs. Yes, the one he’s beckoning you to scan with your webcam. Augmented reality technology allows a camera to be pointed at that little digital barcode that stores information. The camera will then translate that digital pixels into something meaningful to the viewer. So, you hold your magazine up to a webcam, and through a special program, you can see something on that digital barcode that you cannot see in reality, thus the name augmented reality.

The technology is starting to gain traction in the advertising and marketing world. The possibilities are endless, and certainly would engage the reader to connect the analog and digital limitations. Will we see a lot more augmented reality? Absolutely. Is AR going to replace traditional print advertising? Doubtful. The lazy in all of us wouldn’t invest more time into an advertisement unless the AR was polygon of a naked chick. It’s a gimmick for now, only for true tech geeks. Looks like print survives another day.

Esquire

มาร์เวลล์เทคโนโลยีกรุ้ป (Marvell Technology Group Ltd.) ผู้ผลิตชิปอิเล็กทรอนิกส์สัญชาติอเมริกันกระโดดร่วมสมรภูมิเครื่องอ่าน หนังสืออิเล็กทรอนิกส์หรือ e-book reader ที่กำลังคึกคักฉุดไม่อยู่ ด้วยการเปิดตัวแพลตฟอร์มชิปล่าสุดที่การันตีว่าจะทำให้ต้นทุนการผลิตเครื่อง อ่านอีบุ๊กสามารถลดราคาลงต่ำกว่า 100 เหรียญ

ชิปของมาร์เวลล์จะพ่วงแอปพลิเคชันไว้ภายใน โดยมาร์เวลล์ได้ร่วมมือกับบริษัทอีอิงค์ (E Ink) ผู้พัฒนาเทคโนโลยีแสดงผลกระดาษอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ (e-paper) และเฟิสต์เปเปอร์ (FirstPaper) ในการผนึกเทคโนโลยีกราฟฟิกและการแสดงคอนเทนต์ลงในชิป คาดว่าเครื่องอ่านอีบุ๊กที่ใช้ชิปของมาร์เวลล์จะเริ่มวางตลาดในช่วงไตรมาสแรกของปี 2010 ได้แก่แบรนด์ enTourage Edge, Spring Design รวมถึง Plastic Logic

มาร์เวลล์ระบุว่าชิปอีบุ๊กนี้พัฒนาบนเทคโนโลยีเดียวกับชิปตระกูล Armada ซึ่งมาร์เวลล์เพิ่งเปิดตัวเมื่อเดือนที่ผ่านมา สำหรับตลาดเครื่องอ่านอีบุ๊กนั้นคาดว่าจะมียอดขายเพิ่มขึ้น 1 เท่าตัวในปีหน้า เฉพาะในสหรัฐฯคาดว่ายอดขายจะทะลุ 3 ล้านเครื่องในปีนี้

โดย ASTVผู้จัดการออนไลน์

E Ink is good stuff.  Gone is the eyestrain of staring in to a glowing screen for hours. Gone is the battery sucking LCD display.  E Ink makes sense.

But when E Ink devices are only now starting to dip down to reach the $199 price point (unless you look at used/refurbished devices), Mobile Internet Devices (MIB) like the SmartQ are starting to make a lot more sense.  For almost the same price as an E Ink device, you can buy a device with a bigger screen that’s in color and capable of playing video, as well as supporting a variety of opening systems and third party software.

Sure, being a jack of all trades, such a device is not a master of reading e-books.  But I suspect it’d be good enough.

And for the record, I’d prefer to have a smartphone like the iPhone or Droid and carry my my e-books around in my pocket at all times, but I can’t justify the monthly charges for a fancy data plan.

It’s been three months since I fell off the e-book wagon and sold my PRS-505 Sony E-Book Reader.  I haven’t been pining over any new reader in the meantime either.  The Barnes & Noble Nook missed the boat by failing to take real advantage of its LCD touchscreen (Spring Design knows what it’s all about) or its WiFi connection (it would cost them NOTHING to let me connect to my own WiFi and look up Wikipedia entries and do Google Searches based on text in my books… why not offer that feature when the hardware is there to support it).

I had hopes for the Nook, but now that it’s failed me I’m still left with no affordable reader meeting all four of my simple standards:

• E-ink screen (this one’s easy to find)
• The ability to search within the text of a book (yet again, most devices do this)
• The ability to search on-line resources such as Wikipedia and Google over WiFi (this is the killer)
• Support for the ePub format (still, lots of devices doing this)

The Sony PRS-600 would have been perfect for me if they had included a Wi-Fi receiver and a web browser.  The first version of Amazon’s Kindle, and both versions to come out since have offered all of these features but support for the ePub format.  And frankly, the ePub support is the least impacting feature to me.

I hold out for ePub support because ePub is an open standard; anybody can make an ePub supporting device, and any store can generate ePub content.  If I buy a Kindle (which, especially with refurbished prices under $200, I’m tempted to), any DRM’d content I buy must come from Amazon (unless I buy an e-book elswhere and crack the DRM on it, which I’d rather not have to do when I’m already playing nice and being a paying customer), and won’t be able to be read on a non-Amazon device (with the current exception of PC and iPhone).

I expect we’ll eventually start seeing E Ink devices with open WiFi so I can do research while reading a book, and with everybody jumping on the ePub boat, I expect Amazon to eventually support it too (if not drop DRM entirely like Apple eventually convinced music publishers to do).

In the meantime I’m reading paper books, and getting my news from a computer screen, and that’s all working just fine.

I’ve done 10 interim CEO / interim COO gigs during the last 10 years.  In my view, there are four cases when hiring an interim CEO make sense:

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1. For The First 3 – 18 Months of a Startup: As detailed in this post (which in turn was prompted by Flybridge Capital Partners venture capitalist Michael Greeley’s recent post) there are times when hiring an interim CEO at the formation of a startup makes sense.  Adding the experience of a senior, successful entrepreneur to the passion and vision of the founding entrepreneurs can increase the likelihood of the venture’s success.  (This is the role I played at Ember Corporation.)
2. Helping a Founding CEO: Often, later in a startup’s life, a founding CEO can use help.  Rather than terminating the founder and “throwing the baby out with the bath water,” a better solution might be to bring in an interim COO to counsel the founder, and – in many cases – to actually assume some hands-on, day-to-day duties for some number of months.  When the company moves to the “next level,” then the founder can again assume full control. (This is the role I played at Eink.)
3. Clean Up to Attract an Industry-Specific CEO: Sometimes a company wants to hire an “industry-specific” CEO to have the venture really take off.  But often an executive search firm will say that – until things are “cleaned up” – top-notch CEO candidates from the industry cannot be attracted.  An interim CEO has the very clear remit of cleaning up the place for the next person.  (This is the role I played at HeartSine in the UK.)
4. Due Diligence for Further Investment: Often the investors have been asked to invest further in a company that has not met plan. For a variety of reasons, the investors often want a person of their choice placed inside the company to manage this next round of investment.  (This is what I was charged with doing at CR2 in Dublin, though the way I started the assignment was a bit unorthodox.)

Do these interim CEO / interim COO assignments always work out?  No.  Startups and turn arounds are both high-risk ventures.  Some turn out well.  Others do not.  But in all cases I’ve worked with great people; and it was these great people – and not I – who, with a bit of guidance and leadership, took the company to the next level.

My colleague Moe Kelley makes an incredibly important point in his recent post about the importance of aesthetics.

Yesterday I was teaching the E Ink case study in my New Technology Ventures program at London Business School. It involved a fascinating and lively discussion, about what were the key parameters that characterized the available technologies, and re-emphasized just how important the aesthetic of books is.

I love books. I have a house full of books. My wife worries about the load on the ceilings. There are stacks of them in our bedroom. And in lots of other places in the house. I have a clinical Amazon.com habit, going back more than 10 years to 10 September 1999 (my sister’s birthday), during which I have bought hundreds of books.

Nevertheless, the class almost unanimously recognized and embraced the elegance of the industrial design of the Kindle DX that I used to demonstrate what E Ink does. It’s a different aesthetic, but compelling nonetheless.

Kindle DX

Although technology (hard factors) matter, even in high-tech we must never lose sight of the importance of soft factors, such as aesthetics.

One of the most interesting and insightful pieces of thesis work that I supervised at MIT involved a systematic exploration of the relationship between these hard factors (functions, performance) and soft factors (ease of use, aesthetics), and how their relative importance to customers evolves over the life cycle of a particular product type.

Getting this balance wrong the other way can, however, also be disastrous; much of Motorola’s current parlous position flows from it being seduced by the soft factors success of the RAZR:

Motorola RAZR V3

It provides the user with a total sensory experience – from the innovative metallic finishes and use of materials to a truly revolutionary, chemically etched keypad created from a single sheet of nickel-plated copper alloy. The Motorola RAZR V3 is the ultimate, beautiful slim-phone.

Take time out to enjoy the feel, touch and finish of the model RAZR V3. The metal materials and finishes
create a smooth, easy-to-use phone that has real visual impact. The spun metal finish of the keypad is designed to gently reflect the light, whilst a blue electro-luminescence panel defines each character and key, creating an unmistakable RAZR V3 signature.

As a result, it lost sight of how technology was evolving, and was extremely late in responding to the transition to the app phone.

over on goodreads (effectively, facebook for book nerds) i chip in with several different reading groups – it’s nice to have the same around-the-watercooler discussion about books as last week’s football game/etc.  there’s a poll as to what we feel like reading communally the next month attached to some groups; others have a simple rotating “it’s your turn to pick next” scheme.  either way, i’m catching some stuff i might not have otherwise chosen, and that includes stuff that the county library system didn’t choose either.  one of the group picks this month was somewhat hard to find in print, but was readily available as  a free pdf file online, so i’ve been cuddled up with baby computer in my fave reading chair this evening, dipping into the world of e-books.

which, in a research frenzy reminiscent of last year’s cell phone craziness, i’ve been oddly giddy about for a while now.  i mean, i LOVE my books and my huge book collection, why would i be into the idea of an e-reader?  an otherwise useless gadget, like a handicapped computer, good for only one thing?  yet, there it is, i’m ready to be downloading books at the push of a button and sneaking them into work every day.

a friend has an amazon kindle and swears it’s the greatest thing since the proverbial sliced bread.  all reviews of other devices compare them to the kindle (in the same way that all other music players are compared to the ipod) – clearly, this is the definitive object of its type out there right now.  the part that’s most intriguing is book +  wikipedia capability.  yes, i know the web browser on this thing is pretty crude, but i end up routinely searching for subjects related to my novels after i’m finished, and the idea of being able to flick through reference materials mid-story while lounging on the couch is just delicious.  i’ve been kicking around the idea of the larger DX version most prominently on this shopping quest, because i’m convinced that bigger = better.

to muddy the waters, b&n announced their book reader last week.  the flashy color touch screen at the bottom is pretty (not sure i care about that, though), and the nook can handle a wider variety of formats.  not being locked into the one proprietary sort is nice, plus that opens up the possibility of e-books from the library (check your local library’s website, mine has plenty).  still, i HATE b&n, and there’s no web capabilities on this one, so no wiki-surfing midstream.

the dark horse that may or may not be awesome (awesomeness is up in the air due to the thing not even being formally introduced until early next year) is from the previously unheard-of plastic logic.  theirs is being touted as a “business device” though, so even though its bells & whistles look really cutting edge, it’ll likely be way pricey.

sony has a new one too, as does irex.  dunno who spring design or entourage are, but theirs both look promising, too.

i swear, holiday shopping for other people is way simpler than shopping for me sometimes.

Electronic books are not something completely new for the market and have existed for years. However, only recently they began to gain popularity and it looks like rather expensive Amazon Kindle is now the most accepted e-book reader. However, with the emergence of modular platforms for e-book readers from Marvell and E Ink the expensive devices may get serious competition.

Marvell, a designer of various controllers, this week announced its collaboration with E Ink, the supplier of electronic paper display (EPD) technologies for most of the world’s e-readers.  The two companies have begun to ship a highly integrated e-reader processor available in complete turnkey platforms aimed at the fast-growing e-reader market. These new platforms are expected to accelerate the rapid release of new forms of e-readers at a variety of price points.

“With this announcement, Marvell raises the technology bar and takes the lead in the e-reader market,” said Ms. Weili Dai, vice president and general manager of the company’s consumer and computing business unit at Marvell Semiconductor.

Central to this new e-reader platform is the world’s first commercially available system-on-chip that integrates a high performance processor and state of the art EPD controller on a single chip – the Marvell Armada 166E application processor. The Armada 166E is designed to offer users ultra-fast renderings of high resolution PDF documents and support for the latest ePaper technologies in new smaller, slimmer form factors with lower system cost than the competition. The Armada 166E also brings to e-readers new features that save power and extend battery life including a zero power mode. Besides, Armada 166E can be coupled with other chips by Marvell, such as 3G, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi controllers to enable e-book readers necessary connectivity.

According to the company, Marvell’s new eBook platform promises to accelerate the release of categories of e-readers, lower bill of materials costs by more than 15% and allow OEMs to speed up time to market.

“Because this is a total platform solution – including Marvell key technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G modem, and power management – the Armada e-reader has the potential to deliver the first mass market product accessible and affordable to billions of consumers around the world,” added Ms. Weili Dai.

The two companies have also joined forces with FirstPaper, to integrate technology that enables a range of display sizes and resolutions, including support for larger screens that will deliver layouts, graphics, and content choices that people normally associate with periodicals, larger-format books, and documents.

“Periodicals are the next big frontier in e-reading. To enable great newspaper and magazine reading experiences, e-reading devices need the right tools to make richer layouts and complex content come to life. We are excited to be working with Marvell to bring such tools to the market,” said Gil Fuchsberg, president of FirstPaper, which promises bring a new e-reading ecosystem to market in 2010.

Marvell’s and E Ink’s e-book platform has already scored three design wins: Plastic Logic’s QUE, Spring Design’s Alex eReader and enTourage eDGe are powered by Armada 166E.

As one of the fastest growing consumer markets, e-book readers continue to grow in popularity due to falling retail prices, improved features, and fast growing library of digital content. According to a recent iSuppli Research report, e-readers are projected to top 18 million units shipped in 2012, from 1.1 million units last year.

Marvell Technology Group revealed a new platform yesterday that may usher in a wave of faster, cheaper e-reader devices.

Marvell has partnered with E-Ink, the technology developer responsible for the e-paper technology that powers existing readers such as those manufactured by Amazon, Casio, Sony, iRex and Samsung. The two companies have developed an integrated application processor that will be featured in devices such as the Alex reader and Plastic Logic’s QUE that are slated to launch early next year.

The company claims that the technology will allow for cheaper manufacturing of e-readers—lowering the price to around $150 from the existing starting point of $199. The ARMADA application processor is designed to make high resolution PDF documents available in smaller, faster devices while also prolonging batter life. The technology upgrade, Marvell claims, will improve the reading experience for newspaper and magazine layouts and will allow faster downloads of complex content.

What does this mean for the e-reader market? This technology will add another dimension to the price wars that have already broken out between e-reader sellers such as Amazon and B&N. While Amazon lowered its price in an apparent response to B&N’s cheaper soon-to-be-launched offering, a new price war may soon appear between old and new technology. If manufacturers can deliver a faster reading experience at a lower manufacturing price, the old e-readers already on the market may face no chance in competing on unit price alone. Perhaps tie ins such as free books or accessories can make up for the price difference in the short run, but manufacturers of older, slower technology may very well be fighting a losing long-term battle.

Cos’è un eBook? La fusione di electronic e di book, in italiano dunque libro elettronico. Già da anni molti produttori di hardware si sono lanciati nel mercato del libro elettronico, ma con scarso successo. Un libro elettronico, per essere letto, ha bisogno di un Reader ovvero di un dispositivo che consti di un display dove possano comporsi le parole. Tutti sappiamo quanto sia faticosa la lettura a video su uno schermo di computer o di palmare, ma nel caso dei lettori di Ebook o Ebook Reader l’approccio alla lettura è molto più simile a quello cartaceo e non è per nulla faticoso. la E-Ink Corporation  (http://www.eink.com/) ha messo a punto già da tempo un pannello senza retro illuminazione che grazie alla composizione ed alla cromia dello sfondo e all’alta risoluzione dei caratteri, rende la lettura del tutto simile a quella di una pagina stampata. Innanizitutto non dispondendo di retro illuminazione per leggere è necessaria una fonte di luce esterna e poi, la qualità dell’inchisotro elettronico non fa ripiangere agli occhi quella dei caratteri tipografici.

La Creative annuncia adesso l’immissione sul mercato di Zii un nuovo ebook Reader che rispetto ai precedenti modelli di Amazon (il Kindle) e di Sony (il PRS-700) promette funzioni innovatiove di catalogazione dei testi e di ricerca.  mLa funzione saliente del Creative, oltre all’adozione di un pratico Touch Screen, dovrebbe essere l’introduzione della tecnologia Text to Speech, ossia la conversione in voce sintetica dei testi caricati sul dispisitivo.

Tutto ciò dovrebbe rendere sempre più accativante una attività, la lettura, che seppure in crisi al giorno d’oggi, rappresenta il principale strumento di emancipazione e di acquisizione di cultura per tutti i popoli. Inoltre il libro elettronico è uno strumento ecologico che consente di evitare il taglio di migliaia di alberi per la produzione della carta. E’ uno strumento di economia che consente di ridurre al minimo, al pagamento della sola proprietà intellettuale, le spese per i libri scolastici, per i manuali tecnici, per l’istruzione.

Perché, dunque, il libro elettronico non riscuote sufficiente successo? Uno dei motivi è attribuibile al legame quasi ancestrale che unisce uomo e carta. La carta stimola quattro sensi percettivi e affascina per la sua tangibilità. Un libro cartaceo è un oggetto prezioso, a volte un feticcio, ma pur sempre qualcosa di materiale. L’estensione fisica di un libro di carta, aiuta la mente a concentrarsi sul contenuto del libro che invece è qualcosa di squisitamente astratto.

Il libro elettronico, chiede di sacrificare la rassicurante piacevolezza della carta e di uno scaffale ricolmo di trofei culturali. Ma il motivo della ancora scarsa diffusione dell’ebook è anche la scarsa disponibilità ad investire nella pubblicizzazione di questo media.

La Creative riuscirà a sopperire alle lacune di comunicazione di cui hanno sofferto gli altri produttori di Reader e delle case Editrici che insistono nel puntare ancora sulla carta stampata?

Il mio auspicio è che la carta rimanga sempre una opzione editoriale per edizioni pregiate, mentre che per la fruizione di informazioni e cultura possiamo assistere all’avvento dell’eBook.

Now here’s some yummy news to wrap our minds around. Samsung, a company with a manufacturing portfolio so wide that you wouldn’t be surprised to see it selling toothbrushes and perfume, clearly also wants a slice of that growing ebook market and has now unveiled a 10.1-inch color display with that purpose in mind. It’s still very early days, with a measly 10:1 contrast ratio and the ability to display only 7% of the NTSC color gamut, but baby steps are better than no steps, right? While Sammy is shooting at delivering this within two years, PVI – the maker of displays for Kindles and Sony Readers – is expected to ramp up production of its own color screens in the second half of 2010. Add these two heavyweights to the color e-readers already expected from Plastic Logic (spring 2010) and Bridgestone, and what you get is one hell of a thriving marketplace – as long as Pixel Qi doesn’t render them all useless when it launches later this year.

Read – Samsung Exhibits 10.1-inch Color E-paper
Read – PVI to ramp up flexible and color EPD in 2010

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Scheme of the E Ink technology.

E Ink is a type of electronic paper manufactured by E Ink Corporation, founded in 1997 based on research started at the MIT Media Lab.

It is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays, particularly for e-Readers such as the Sony Reader, the iLiad, the Cybook Gen3, the Amazon Kindle, the Readius device from Polymer Vision ^[1] and Plastic Logic’s Reader. The Motorola F3 was the first mobile phone to employ E Ink technology into its display, taking advantage of the material’s ultra-low power consumption. In addition, the Samsung Alias 2 utilizes this technology as the display on the buttons change. ^[2] The October 2008 limited edition North American issue of Esquire was the first magazine cover to integrate E Ink, and featured flashing text. The cover was manufactured in Shanghai, China, shipped refrigerated to the United States for binding and was powered by a nominal 90 day integrated battery supply.^[3][4]

According to the manufacturer, “The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule to become visible to the reader. This makes the surface appear white at that location. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that location.”^[5]

On June 1, 2009, E Ink Corporation announced an agreement to be purchased by one of its primary business partners, Prime View International, for USD$215 million.^[6] It is predicted that the purchase by Prime View will speed the development of color E Ink.^[6]

On Tuesday Barnes & Noble introduced its foray into the nascent eBook market, called the nook. Like Amazon.com’s Kindle, the nook sports technology from Cambridge, Massachusetts’ E Ink, a company that worked on its technology for a decade before it became profitable and the darling of many technology firms. The interesting thing about the nook is that it sports some industry firsts, including:

• A color touch screen for navigation purposes
• Allows owners to “digitally lend” nooks to friends and family in a feature called LendMe, free of charge for up to 14 days, to another nook, iPhone or iPod Touch, select BlackBerry and Motorola smart phones, and PCs and Macs
• Support WiFi as well as free AT&T’s mobile broadband service
• Supports instore-browsing of not just book excerpts (ala Amazaon.com) but entire books themselves via Barnesandnobles.com’s catalog of over one million eBooks, newspapers and magazines
• Allows you to read chapters on iPhones, PCs and Macs if you happen to forget your nook at home
• Based on the Android OS

Source Barnes&Noble

nook features a much more sleek and contoured design than Amazon.com’s Kindle, and is about the size and weight of a paperback book, but thin like a netbook or small ultraportable laptop. It uses E Ink’s Vizplex non-glare display and is without backlight. The secondary color display for navigation purposes allows you to browse through cover art and illustrations via touch commands. Content can also be accessed via a virtual keyboard. From a connection perspective, eBooks can be downloaded at AT&T’s complimentary WiFi hotspots, including those at B&N’s retail stores, or on the carriers’ 3G wireless network.

The nook sports enough storage for up to 1,500 eBooks with standard memory, and up to 17,500 eBooks if you use a 16GB MicroSD card. It’s software also supports native PDFs, photos, and custom screensavers. Further design features include a removable back cover, personalized in four colors, and accessories including cases from noted designers.

Barnes&Noble is pricing its eBook title bestsellers and new releases at just $9.99. This is close to the cost of hardcopy versions that are now found at retailers such as Walmart. In addition to book titles, the nook supports subscriptions to more than 20 newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the LA Times, as well as subscriptions to a wide array of magazines.

From a retail merchandising perspective, the nook will be prominently displayed at high-volume Barnes & Noble stores as well as 17 College bookstores. B&N will also have in-retail store sales staff to help demonstrate the nook, support purchases, demonstrate eReader apps, browsing and actual downloads. The nook will be available at the end of November, priced at $259.  The company is taking pre-orders now on its website as well as in its key retail stores. The first 10,000 nooks sold will be pre-ordered withAa free copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point.” I think that Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” though, would have been more of a coup for B&N and to drive more consumer sales.

Like Amazon.com’s Kindle, B&N’s nook is based on a reverse subsidization model compared to mobile phones, where the service is subsidized while the consumer pays for the hardware cost, additional content, and the service and connectivity is free. nook is also a better designed eBook reader and is clearly primed to be a key holiday shopping gift. Many electronics retailers have been anticipating a big ebook push for the upcoming holiday season from a merchandising perspective at the front of the store , as there are few other new product categories to drive consumers into stores thid holiday season. But the nook will be exclusive to B&N stores and Barnesand noble.com, while the Kindle will be exclusive to Amazon.com. This leaves Sony’s ebook reader and a few other brands to the only ones pushed at big box retail. So do your homework first!

nook clearly raises the competitive stakes among eBook readers, and I expect B&N to have a limited production run, making nook a hard to find holiday gift. The question is how big can this market grow to with two major book suppliers, a major CE brand, and a handful of Asian tier two and tier three brands in the market over the next year? Especially in a bearish market. If other major CE brands appear in this category, they will need to provide compelling content, a great UI, and also subsidize much if not all of the service cost, as well as offer an attractive hardware cost and the portability of more forms of . I can already see ebook readers at sub $200 price points, especially if they don’t sell as expected over the US holiday season. Other brands will also need to score exclusive content deals with leading authors, not only at launch, but perhaps extended over several  years, to drive converts from the printed from, as well as current and future readerships. For improved content solutions. They will also need to provide easy transport of content to multiple platforms such as Windows 7, Snow Leopard, Windows 7, OX-10, older PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPods, smart phones and feature phones (but the OSes may not be able to support the content at decent refresh speeds).

eBook readers because of a lack of standards when it comes to the various eNook readers on the market today, will have portability problems. Still, it’s another success story for local Massachusetts E Ink, which has waited for years to see its technology prosper and drive real revenues.Hopefully it will bear long awaited fruit.

GadgetLand also had a decent take on the nook.

- update as of Friday October, 23rd.

Apparently the LendMe feature only allows you to extend the lend for one 14-day period per book, and only once! And the book publisher must grant permission for the lend. During the lend period, you  are also unable to read the book yourself. So the devil is in the details I guess!

For comparison purposes, here are the other two eReader platforms:

Sony eBook- Courtesy Sony

The Kindle- Source Amazon.com

Disclaimer-

My wife is a Barnes & Noble customer club member until November 30, 2009

I do start ups and turn arounds, both high-risk ventures. Some turn out well; others do not.  Everypoint — a turn around — did not.  Here’s why.

In the spring of 2008, I joined Everypoint as interim COO, after nearly 85% of the original VC investment had been spent by the previous two CEOs.  During my first weeks people at our target customers — mobile phone makers like RIM and Nokia — told us they did not believe that Allan MacKinnon could invent what he claimed; an entirely new platform for developing apps for mobile phones that (a) were stunningly beautiful, (b) consumed virtually no battery, and (c) ran on 92% of the phones in people’s pockets, i.e., “feature” phones.

“Write once, run anywhere” had been promised for years and never delivered.  It was clear the only way to prove we could do what others could not do was to

hunker down and get the product finished.

By the winter we had done just that; and we were then able to create stunning apps in a matter of days.  The doubters were now believers; they were impressed that Allan had done what no one else had been able to do.

But, though they were impressed, they no longer cared.

Why?  Because their world had dramatically changed with the overnight success of the Apple App Store.  The senior execs of our target customers had instructed their troops to come up with their own app store on their own “smart” phones.  Suddenly no one cared about feature phones anymore.

For example, Motorola was a natural to buy Everypoint; their fledgling mobile unit could have leap-frogged their competition by rapidly adding the Everypoint software onto their entire line of feature phones.  But their new CEO, Sanjay Jha, faced a huge cultural challenge and he rapidly decided on major surgery, basically killing their entire feature phone line, and “betting the farm” on the Android smart phone technology, packaged as Droid.

Yes, Everypoint delivered on the product promise we made.  But by the time we delivered, it was simply too late.  The feature phone market had passed us by.

Everypoint is working on selling its core underlying technology.  Who should buy it?  Any company that wants to compete with RIM / Blackberry’s hugely successful “push / synch” capabilities without violating RIM’s patents.

I regret Everypoint did not turn out as we had hoped.  I prefer turn around gigs that eventually have nice exits; like my first interim assignment, at Eink.  And I prefer start up gigs that eventually grow into industry-leading companies, like my second interim assignment at Ember.  But I met some great people on the Everypoint assignment; people I hope to work with again down the road.

So it looks like some of the first pictures of Barnes & Nobles infamous E-Reader have surfaced. From the looks of it we’ve got an interesting announcment to look forward to next week when this is rumored to be announced officially. Accoriding to the post from Gizmodo the only other information we have at the time is that it has a “freaking terrible” name.<img class="alignnone" title="Barnes & Nobles E-Reader"
[via Gizmodo]

SSBD är tillbaka i bloggosfären – välkommen tillbaka! Nu har jag ännu en måste-blogg varje dag.

Ett av de första inläggen har rubriken “Varför läsplattor inte är tidningarnas framtid”, skrivet av Pelle Sten. Tyvärr gör han samma misstag som så många andra när det gäller ny teknik och nya kanaler. Han ser inte nyanserna i sammanhanget, hans resonemang går i svart/vitt.
Här är några punkter som visar att Pelle Sten har fel:

1. Att jämföra e-läsare med nätet är helt fel. I våra fokusgrupper och testläsare av e-papper så pratar man om helt annorlunda läsupplevelser. E-läsaren erbjuder en mer tillbakalutad läsning, mer som att läsa tidningen och inte som framför en dator.

2. Pelle ger e-papperstekniken ett visst godkännande och pratar om att det finns långt gångna planer på att bygga in den tekniken i mobiltelefoner. Faktum är att den första mobilen med E-inks teknik redan lanserades för 2-3 år sedan. Jag har i alla fall haft min Motophone i minst två år.

3. Pelle Sten tror också att läsplattorna kommer att konservera utvecklingen för tidningarna. Han är rädd för att de kommer “…att fixera ett beteende som måste få fortsätta att förändras.” Det är som att tro att musiken skulle sluta utvecklas för att vi fick CD-skivan.

Det felaktiga i hela Pelle Steens resonemang är fokuseringen på tekniken.

Nu lanseras den ena läsplattan efter den andra. En del med den mest använda från E-ink, andra med liknande teknik eller med helt andra tekniska lösningar men med samma energisnåla och slimmade displayer. En del t.o.m med nya varianter av lcd-skärmar.

Framtiden kommer att ge oss produkter för läsning och kommunikation i en mängd olika formet, som läsplattor, inbyggda som en “rullgardin” i mobiler, inbyggda i armbandsur eller andra bärbara prylar.

Det är detta vi som mediehus måste förhålla oss till. Att skapa distributionskanaler och affärsmodeller för en mängd nya produkter. Det minsta användarna bryr sig om är vilken teknik som används, bara det fungerar snabbt, smidigt och mobilt.

Ett citat av Pelle Sten kommer jag att spara:

“Läsplattorna är en nischprodukt, en historisk parantes.”

Om fem år kommer det med stor sannolikhet att kunna kvala in i samma grupp av felbedömningar som en viss ministers uttalande om Internet som en fluga.

För övrigt händer det en del på e-pappersmarknaden.

• Microsofts nya e-läsare Courier finns snart på marknaden.

• iRex Tochnologies, lanserar en ny liten och smidig e-läsare med 3G, med start i USA och i samarbete med bland annat Best Buy, Barnes och Noble and Verizon Wireless.

• PC Word om den nya läsplattan från iRex.

• Local Players Building Taiwan Into Global E-paper Production Center.

Bra bevakning kring e-papper finns på epapercentral.com

With circulation for print media outlets plummeting along with ad revenues, ideas abound on how to “save” the industry.

• Charge for content
• Go hyperlocal
• Cut staff
• Blog more
• Pretend you “get” Twitter

Here’s the latest idea: replace ink with pixels.

This week Entertainment Weekly is debuting a new chip that embeds video into the a page of the print edition. It’s an ad for CBS’ new fall lineup, with around 40 minutes of video clips on upcoming shows, kicked off with a comical intro from the stars of The Big Bang Theory. Right now the cost of the chip is keeping the ad only running in major markets, but the technology is widely available and could very well pop up in other magazines in the near future.

The instant association (well, at least for Harry Potter fans) is the moving pictures of the fictional Daily Prophet, a seemingly magical version of the newspaper that also mirrors what the movie Minority Report envisioned as the future of “print” journalism.

We’re not that far off from such a possibility, with innovations rapidly developing with e-ink that can transpose digital images onto screens that have the size and flexibility of paper. If you’re a fan of Esquire Magazine, you’re probably already familiar with this technology, as that publication used e-ink for the cover of its 75th anniversary issue last year.

All these developments have a “wow” factor at first and attract immediate attention. But beyond the novelty, whether video in print succeeds depends in large part on how closely it will mirror the website experience. In the case of a video chip touting CBS’s shows, the end result is a low-quality version of something that can be just as easily accessed at a number of web sites. Why watch standard video in a magazine when we all have multiple options for high quality video at our fingertips.

The e-ink developments have more long-term potential in that they provide multimedia content while maintaining the thin, foldable format that is the one advantage print media now has going for it over websites. Then again, as smart phones become more advanced and wi-fi networks ubiquitous, online multimedia is almost as portable as a rolled up magazine. We may have to change our entire definition of “print,” because there will soon be no reason to consume news and entertainment through old fashioned ink on paper. But if we can go digital with a material that’s just as easy to stuff into your carry-on bag, perhaps what we know as “print” can live on in the age of interactive media.

Estamos de volta com a série mais famosa do GuanaCast e dessa vez reunimos Gustavo Guanabara e Rafael Guanabara para explicar Como Funcionam o Teclado, a Tinta Eletrônica, a tecnologia de Realidade Aumentada e o Touchscreen /Touchpad. Esse é um episódio especial para quem gosta dos nossos casts mais técnicos.

.: OUTROS EPISÓDIOS DA SÉRIE

• Episódio 23: Como Funciona Mouse Ótico, Câmera Digital, DVD e GPS
• Episódio 26 : Como Funciona Leitor Biométrico, HD, Pendrive e LCD
• Episódio 32: Como Funcionam as Impressoras
• Episódio 37: Como Funciona código de barras, USB, MP3 e impressão 3D

.: RESULTADO DA PROMOÇÃO

Nesse podcast,vocês vão conhecer o resultado final da promoção dos DVDs. Se você foi um dos ganhadores, mande um e-mail para podcast@guanabara.info com seu nome completo, endereço incluindo CEP e o DVD escolhido.

• O MXMasters está oferecendo uma coleção completa com 4 DVDs com vídeo aulas exclusivas que vão te ensinar a criar sites e a utilizar as ferramentas mais famosas do mercado. Para concorrer, grave e publique um vídeo mostrando uma forma criativa de quebrar um CD ou DVD, explicando porque você não precisa desse disco, mas que PRECISA dos cursos do MXMasters

.: NOVO FORMATO AAC

O GuanaCast agora também é distribuído em formato AAC, especial para quem ouve o podcast em iPod, iPhone ou diretamente no iTunes. Nesse formato, todos os links e imagens estão incorporados ao arquivo. Assim, quando você ouvir uma notícia interessante, basta olhar para a tela do seu aparelho e ver a imagem imagem relativa ao assunto, inclusive com um link para você visitar o site comentado no áudio.

Para assinar o podcast no formato AAC, basta adicionar o novo endereço do feed no seu iTunes ou clicar aqui:

http://www.guanabara.info/guanacast-aac.xml

.: LINKS DO FEED RSS

Estamos com novos endereços para o Feed do podcast, visando facilitar a vida de todos aquieles que usam alimentadores. O novo endereço é http://feeds.feedburner.com/guanacast. Para quem usa o iTunes, basta clicar aqui para assinar.

.: COMENTEM

Mais do que nunca, estamos precisando dos seus comentários, críticas e sugestões. Se você gostou ou detestou, COMENTE! Queremos saber se estamos no caminho correto. Envie suas mensagens por aqui, pelo e-mail podcast@guanabara.info ou ligando para (21) 3717-3219! Sua opinião é a mais importante!

.: OUÇA O EPISÓDIO

Ouça o podcast no Site Guanabara.info