Saturday, December 22, 2007

Electronic ink ebook reader

Preetam shares his first impressions of the Bookeen's Cybook Gen 3 eBook reader that uses Electronic Ink technology.
Cybook Box
["Cybook Box". Photo credit: Preetam Rai]

Cybook in Bright Sunlight
["Cybook in Bright Sunlight". Photo credit: Preetam Rai]

Read his full post here.

Which reminded me of my earlier blog post (Jun 2005) about the Seiko Epson's flexible E-paper.

From my brief search in Google, the last mention about the Seiko Epson prototype seemed to be from InfoWorld.com on 12 June 2006. Maybe another year before we see it being offered commercially?

On the other hand, non-flexible electronic ink products were widely available. I found this recent Gizmag.com article (Oct 2007) about Fujitsu's electronic paper products. I'm sure there's more than a few companies out there offering similar products.

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Aside:

A few days ago, I saw my colleague reading a book, about the fall of societies and civilisations in human history's recent past (can't remember the title, sorry).

We both agreed that while digital technology was great, whole generations of information, knowledge and know-how might be wiped out the day society collapses. We might be busted back to the level of printed information.

I joked that if our human society was wiped out by a comet today and rediscovered eons later, future archaeologists might wrongly assume that we've only progressed to the state of paper-technology. Chances might be higher that they could retrieve our recorded information on physical materials like paper, than from digital devices.

They might refer to our eras as "BP" and "AP" -- "Before Print" and "After Print".

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:16 am

    You all might be interested in being able to read books with your cell phone. It's hyper portable - you are carrying it already. People tend to think the small screen size is an issue but I have found that it is fine and gives you 'that reading feeling'.

    I get my books free from http://www.booksinmyphone.com I can download direct to the phone.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting thoughts about possibly having eras such as BP" and "AP". ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10:32 pm

    I can't seem to find any ebook reader for sale at all in singapore. major :-( !

    any help? anyone?

    ReplyDelete

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