The end of newsprint

BY: BRADY GILCHRIST  |  Uncategorized

If you believe that 10 years from now you will read a paperback or a daily paper, best think again. Useful ebook technology is actually on the horizon. There are a number of new players building prototypes looking at cool features and, of course, thinking about the impact connectivity could have on a beautifully crafted digital reading device. The market will rapidly gravitate to these devices when the price is below 100 Euros.

The problem with most ebook technology is that people called them ebooks which always brought forward the ire of many people. The future of the ebook is really a sort of digital view pad.

These viewpads will be wireless, weigh less than a typical paperback, will visible to the world via RFID (and Wifi, Wimax, GSM and its high bandwidth derivatives), will read and display many formats both stored and live, have an extremely long battery life along with wireless charging, have an inspired UI, won’t sacrifice the fact that designers want to be designers, be usable everywhere including airplanes and of course have a brilliant high resolution screen. Based on what we see in development I can tell you it’s closer than most people think.

These viewpads will accept a wide range of content types. We will purchase traditional ebooks texts, we will download web aggregates which are really customized news letters - take a look at google reader coupled with gears if you want a look a that future. These devices will be our partners in the shopping experience. The screens will integrate many new approaches from OLEDs to eInk and the memory will be solid state and these things will be build a part of a network perpetually. They will act as information stores and in many cases thin clients, validating the Google model of putting application on the server and not the device.

The viewpad is really another form of ubiquitous computer and a continuation of a dream that came out of the Xerox park (they invented the mouse and the GUI) . These new computers will be nothing short of massively disruptive. The smart device that auto updates will put an end to the daily newspaper in its traditional form. The smart device which can be whatever we want may also change the retail content business. The viewpad will be the gateway to a million new magazines. The book shop will change to become something entirely new and different. They will not be computers as much as dedicated content devices. It’s an are that is just starting now to evolve.

The truth is that viewpads are going to eventually be a part of all of our lives. The idea that web content will only be consumed on a PC or a laptop is absurd. The iPhone soon will qualify an viewpad. PocketPC, smart phones, UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PCs) will all be evolving to fit the bill. The viewpad will become part of the technology set that starts to define new opportunities from the web.

What will define the viewpad are two distinct types of getting content. The use, surf, and select model which is similar to what we have now and the autofill model which will push our most desired content to the device without our active involvement. Viewpads will evolve to become our window into the world of digital content.

What is really at stake here is a fundamental new way to interact with content. All these new handheld computers will travel around with us, get tossed around like paperbacks will give us instant access to a tremendous range of new content. They will redefine the nature of media and in the process create new and interesting possibilities for evolution of content industries. The question is - will these old-media companies resist the evolution or embrace it, making information more accessible than ever.

Only time will tell…