Technically Speaking, March 21, 2008

By Sue Fine

First Published: March 2008

Viable electronic paper-and-ink technologies: coming sooner than you think

Will reusable, low cost electronic paper deliver the news readers want and the revenue newspapers need?

Have you ever peered into the future and found out some aspect of it is closer than you expected? Electronic paper — which many have declared The Next Big Thing — seems to belong in that category. In the context of the economic, technological and global pressures we live with, and the technological state-of-the art of e-paper, is its use on a large scale likely anytime soon?

Electronic paper and the digital ink that’s integral to it have been in the making for up to 34 years, depending on where you start counting. Real successes, both in manufacturing and application, are more recent.

Let there be billboards
Ran Poliakine, chief executive of the Israeli company, Magink, tested e-paper and digital ink to see if visually compelling ads that could be refreshed frequently (even hourly) and controlled remotely would be viable. That was in 2003. Magink tested the concept on the sides of buildings in Jersey City, New Jersey; London; Tokyo; Toronto; and Panama City. In 2006, the company tested its billboards with a new digital ink at the Cannes International Film Festival. This month, the Los Angeles Times began displaying news headlines on 10 digital billboards located around the city.

Classrooms and billboards
In classrooms in The Netherlands, students use hand-held, e-paper tablets — about 8.25” wide by 5.6” high — that store all course materials for the year. When students write on the device’s screen, their handwritten notes are automatically converted to MS Word files. On February 13, 2008, Business Standard online reported that the Chinese government will supply 165 million students with an e-reader — a significant endorsement of the technology.

End of the road for home bookcases?
Fujistu showcased an e-reader in late 2007 — the FLEPia “Ubiquitous Content Browser” — that can scan and store the equivalent of one year’s worth of newspapers or around 5000 books. Fujitsu’s e-paper is comparable to regular copy paper in brightness and thickness; it is readable even in direct sunlight. Fujitsu also unveiled a prototype content browser that’s lightweight, extremely portable and features a high-contrast, easy to read 4,096 color display with a very long (up to 50 hours) battery life.

The iLiad reader from iRex Technologies, a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, uses Fujitsu paper. The iLiad has both wired and wireless networking interfaces, a touch screen display and stylus. Right out of the box, it supports PDF, XHTML, TXT, APABI (China only), OEB (open e-Book), and MP3. It comes standard with 128MB of free flash space -- sufficient for "1 month of newspapers, 30 books, and many other documents," iRex says. The International Herald Tribune selected the iLiad for its subscriber e-reader program.

The 'future' arrives in 2012
These examples are the tip of the iceberg. When will e-paper go from futuristic to large scale usage? The father of electronic paper Nick Sheridon, credited with inventing the first generation of e-paper in the late 1980s at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, says the real e-paper revolution has already begun, “but will become a real mass market in about 2012.”  By then, he predicts, e-paper will be a “display medium that is thin, flexible, capable of storing, readable images without power consumption, highly readable in ambient light, good resolution, high whiteness and good contrast.” And cheap.

Killer-apps, e-paper and our industry
What will newspapers do when e-papers land on our doorsteps? Possibilities range from doing nothing (perhaps not a wise choice) to making it a centerpiece platform in the digital age of newspapers.

At NAA recently, the NAA Technology department met with representatives of Japan’s JBMIA Electronic Paper Consortium. In the course of discussions about monetizing electronic paper technologies for newspapers, a possible scenario emerged.

As NAA Senior Vice President Tom Croteau sees it, “A business model that might make sense for newspapers is to offer the e-paper device bundled with a long-term auto‑renewing subscription to the newspaper. The device must be multifunctional and have capabilities beyond standard readers, but the basic function should be tied to the company providing the device. Social networking tools and techniques are an active trend, especially among the younger generation, and are critical to the future of news media companies. This business model is not entirely different from what cell phone companies now offer in the U.S.: a low cost device in combination with a long term service commitment.”

But, Croteau added, “The infrastructure needed to implement such a model does not yet exist. One component that’s missing is a framework or set of protocols for integrating content management between divergent systems and platforms. Newspapers need multiple methods to engage with the local communities through a variety of media. Electronic paper could fulfill a portion of this goal.”

Is this simply pie-in-the-sky thinking?

Not a all. In fact, you can draw parallels between current electronic paper technologies and the early days of television: small screens, black and white only, problematic reception, slow adoption. But, as anyone knows who watched the Superbowl on their high definition color, wide screen plasma TV, those early deficiencies were overcome fairly rapidly. It’s likely that e-paper technologies will spread as fast or faster.