Newspaper Publishing Without the Paper

this looks pretty great acutally. I admit, its much easier reading the NYTimes in printed paper than on a computer screen...theres just something about the organization of the articles and ads thats lost on a website...this looks like the best of both.

LimeWire or SoulSeek for newspapers? I think not, you’d be surprised how few early adopters, mostly the youth, actually read the newspaper. Information is a constant stream of gibberish, not well investigated and well thought out pieces on pertinent issues. Ipod’s destroy the concept of an album much the same as this device will destroy the notion of a newspaper.

it took them long enough.. I've been wondering when this would happen I would much rather use this then carry a newspaper but the battery life is whats important.

I don't think this will be very good. The iPod doesn't download music or rip CDs. It just plays the songs (among other things). And it does this well.

Putting WiFi and audio playback into an eBook reader is just feature creep and battery life wasters.

How about we skip the extraneous stuff and make it really good at reading text, and put the software to manage everything on the computer? We could even trim it down enough to where solar power is an option.

wait it has wi-fi? I agree with icelander there is a lot of feature creep all we need is a good reader. also definately no audio I'm afraid with the audio they'll be trying to throw audio ad's into newspapers.

What about all the jobs that will be cut and business that will have to close down in the printing industry? What about those families? How do we balance our ecology without sacrificing needs of others?

One thing to mention is the extremely low power consumption. I see several posts about battery life. One implementation uses little micro beads suspended in oil. One side is black and one white. When changing the page power is applied to turn the ball in the appropriate direction. Once the page is changed no more power is consumed. Your typical hand held pc consumes a lot of power because it has backlighting where as this technology is passive and only reflects light.

"What about all the jobs that will be cut and business that will have to close down in the printing industry?"

What about the jobs created in the high-tech industry?

I'm not saying that losing jobs is fun, but it's irrational to keep them around when they are not needed. Otherwise we'd have a bunch of blacksmiths around.

In any case, I doubt that paper-publishing will go away for a while. Decline might be faster in newspapers, but I think books will stick around.

Ricky,

Jobs are lost and made everytime industry changes - and it constantly changes. When fashion changes, consumer interest changes, technology changes, health and safety concerns change, jobs are lost, and new ones made. What about all those thousands of workers worldwide that made typewriters for over a century? What about the legions of draftsmen and blueprint makers who lost their jobs to the efficiency of CAD software and PC hard-drives?

The manufacture of solar and wind equipment is booming, Bicycle sales are through the roof, They can't make hybrid vehicles fast enough. Job replacements are in the works, just as they always have been.

A lot of those jobs are being exported away, but that is not new, either. Why do you think the old empire-nations set up colonies ? Cheap labor and materials was our greatest asset at one time. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

You make guys make good points. My perspective is coming from working at a print shop last year with several guys who only knew printing as a career. If they had that pulled from them, I just wonder what'd happen to them. But progress continues...as always.

This might be a great idea if it weren't for the planned obsolesence that seems to be tied to every single new-and-exciting-electronics gadget. How many people do you think would buy one of these to use for the next decade? And how many would buy one and then upgrade in a couple of years, adding to the mountains of electronic junk out there?

At least paper composts...

One small epaper reader each year vs. thousands of pounds of paper, filled with nasty chemicals and using millions of gallons of water.

Sure, paper composts, but most people don't, and recycling paper is one of the most energy intensive forms of recycling there is.

Imagine this thing with solar cells, an aluminum chassis, flash memory and an epaper screen. It wouldn't be difficult to recycle the whole thing, or even replace parts. Upgradeable flash memory is probably the only thing that would ever need replaced, especially if it's durable and solar powered.

Going through these recent TH posts, I ended up checking out the Earth Policy Institute site and reading a Lester Brown post regarding forest depletion. As we all know, forests are being destroyed and wood is a renewable resource. However, he makes it clear using available credible information that mankind is using up the forests faster than they can regrow. World wide forest cover is slowly shrinking everywhere except for Europe. That is not sustainable even if wood is a renewable resource. We consume more wood than grows back. We are not at balance with the forests. Mankind simply has to stop using so much wood. Something has to give, whether it be the elimination of paper communication mediums or wooden housing or wood burning in the Third World or some ideal combination of things. I hate Western society's consumerism addiction, but every time that I can buy a product that helps me to stop consuming more and more resources, such as an electronic 'reader' which helps me eliminate the number of magazines and books that I get regularly and therefore saves paper, wood and forests, I will seriously consider getting it. One might say that I am substituting one resource, wood, for another, energy, and that would be true. But I have plenty of energy - I have a wind generator and PV panels that produce all the energy I need, and that is completely renewable and sustainable.

As for people losing their livelihoods, I recently saw a documentary on Finnish television and a related article on TH about the indigenous Baku tribes of Cameroon fighting to stop the massive logging of their forests which they depend on for their way of living and for their livelihood. These people will not only lose their 'income' (to put it simply), they will lose their culture and traditions and identity. All so that others can make a living off of their destruction, from the loggers who cut the wood, to the people who transport the wood, those who process it and those who use it as paper to publish newspapers. I kind of feel sorry for those losing jobs in the publishing industry; I wonder if they even know about the Baku and others in their situation.

Ricky Irvine:
"What about all the jobs that will be cut and business that will have to close down in the printing industry? What about those families? How do we balance our ecology without sacrificing needs of others?"

What about the smithying industry? Or the bow and arrow industry? Or the horse and buggy industry? What about the telegraph industry, or the Pony Express?

New media channels have changed the rules of the media game forever. What took a newspaper or magazine decades to build is being done by new media companies in a matter of months and years. Online Portals, Blogs, Social Networks, RSS, Mobiles and Podcasts are booming now and readers have addicted to such interactive and rich media.

Here’s few useful links on digital publishing / delivery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01SrlU41RJk
http://www.pressmart.net