All Thing's Digital D7 conference revealed more tech inside knowledge today, with the first taps on the touchscreen interface of Plastic Logic's long awaited e-newspaper reader.
CEO Richard Archuleta presented the as yet unnamed and unpriced device in a Q&A session with veteran gadget hound Walt Mossbery, claiming the A4-sized reader will be aimed at a business market rather than the students and well-heeled book-lovers targeted by the Kindle DX.
The Plastic Logic device, looking rather like a thin digital photo frame, was shown with a working e-ink screen and touchscreen interface.
Stroke to turn pages
It uses tabs to switch between documents and a horizontal swipe motion to turn the page - reducing the possibility of accidentally flipped pages that have proven common with first generation Kindles.
All you eager business users will be pleased to hear that the Plastic Logic reader will be able to display Adobe PDF files, as well standard Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel and PowerPoint).
There will also be an online e-commerce stores with books, magazines and newspapers for sale, accessed by either a 3G connection or Wi-Fi.
Like the Kindle, the Plastic Logic device will be monochrome, at least at first. Archuleta also confirmed that the reader will not be available for purchase this year. This could be a real boost for Kindle, which could enjoy yet another Christmas without serious competition.
Via ATD.
Your comments (1) Click to add a new comment
hokusai
June 5th
1. I am afraid that all the current crop of so-called 'electronic book readers' will shortly be overtaken and outdated by my own book-reading software which (for a start) shows its pages in colour rather than monochrome.
These sixteen-colour pages have sizes between 1Kb and 5Kb each and may be animated.
Some twenty or so such books already exist, with lengths of between 100 and 500 pages. These books all occupy less than a megabyte each and are 'self-reading' -- that is, every includes its own built-in reading software (which can thus never be out-dated.) All are at present readable on a 15-year-old PC running only DOS.
They will also be readable on a device of such low processing power as to need neither batteries nor access to mains electricity; such a reader will in fact easily be powered by its own inbuilt solar panel and should cost les than $20 per unit to manufacture.
You will see that all of this implies a potential market of several billions more users than such devices as the Sony, the Kindle or indeed Plastic Logic's own proposed reader. It implies, in fact, exactly what Prof. Nicholas *****ponte proposed with his One Laptop Per Child initiative --- which has got nowhere very much, for reasons which we can all see as fairly obvious.
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I dare say that all of the above will be dismissed as fantasy; but anyone with a genuine interest in educating the impoverished Third World (not to mention making a few billion dollars in the world's existing book, newspaper and magazine markets) may care to look at my own website at
www.martin-woodhouse.co.uk
Best wishes
Martin Woodhouse
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