g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
Steven Den Beste
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog
Cartago Delenda Est




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Tuesday, February 7, 2006
15:35 - Technology self-censorship
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=020606D

(top) link
It's one thing to make a giant PDA and call it an "e-book reader".

But it's entirely something else to eschew the obvious technologies of LCD touchscreens and dockable nightly recharging stands and general PDA features, and adhere to some of the metaphors of old, in the interest of making a User Interface decision that users will appreciate.

Arguably it's how the iPod succeeded so well: it could have been extremely PDA-y, but they kept the device focused around the core feature set, much to its benefit. Sony seems to have learned from the example.

The Sony Reader, in case you haven't heard about it yet, is a device about the size and shape of an average book. Weighing a little over 8 ounces, it's basically a hand-held screen on which you can read a book page by page. The device, which will go on sale this April, uses a technology called "E ink" to display book pages in a form which Sony claims comes closer than ever to the experience of actually reading off the paper page.

Those who saw it at the big gadget fest in Las Vegas recently marveled at the readability of the device and seemed to agree with Sony's claim. There are no electronic jitters, no backlit screen (you need light to see the Sony Reader, just like any book) and therefore, such is the claim, none of the tired eyes and headaches common to staring at PC screens and other devices.

E-ink is a cool bit of micro-technology -- microscopic white and black ink capsules suspended in a thin layer of clear fluid beneath the surface of the device's screen, which is in effect a blank page until electrically charged. A negative (black) or positive (white) electric charge brings the proper capsules to the surface of the "paper" to print the page you are reading. When you have finished that page, you press a button and "turn" to the next. It's kind of like "Etch-A-Sketch goes to MIT."

The device uses minimal power because once those ink capsules have been electronically goaded into their proper letter shapes, no more power is needed. The page will hold until you decide to go to the next one. The Reader boasts "7,500 page turns" before its battery needs a recharge.

Now that's cool. And precisely because it's so ostensibly "low-tech". Not that it is, mind you... but that's how it feels.

I'd love to get a look at one of these things. Something about me just loves the idea of a computer screen that you can't read if you keep staring at it while the sun goes down and you don't bother turning on any lights because you're too busy reading to get out of your chair.

Via JMH.


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