iRex Digital Reader Coming Monday

Device an acceptable substitute for daily newspaper?
The new model, available in three different configurations and prices, features a 10.1-inch diagonal screen, big enough, says Hans Brons, iRex chief executive, to replicate the look of a newspaper’s layout. That’s still smaller than Plastic Logic’s prototype e-reader, which features a screen more than 13 inches in diagonal, but it is bigger than iRex’s current iLiad model, with its 8.1-inch diagonal screen. The Plastic Logic device won’t be available until next year. Both use E Ink’s screen technology, which is also behind the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader.
The New York Times

A No-Paper Newspaper

Will readers pay to subscribe and advertisers sign on?
"You'll see, in the next 12 to 18 months, a wave of electronic-newspaper devices," says Russell Wilcox, chief executive of E Ink, the MIT spinoff whose technology powers the Kindle, Sony's Reader and other competitors. Roger Fidler, a former newspaper executive who now researches and consults on e-readers at the University of Missouri, cites three requirements for e-newspapers to really catch on with consumers: the devices require larger screens (to allow room for better display of stories, photos and ads), color screens (a must for advertisers) and lower prices (the Kindle currently sells for $359).
Newsweek

Plastic Logic to Introduce Electronic Newspaper

Lightweight screen mimics look of a printed newspaper
The device, which is unnamed, uses the same technology as the Sony eReader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E Ink Corporation. While both of those devices are intended primarily as book readers, Plastic Logic’s device, which will be shown at an emerging technology trade show in San Diego, has a screen more than twice as large. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents.
New York Times

Advance in Printing Flexible Displays

A step toward roll-to-roll printing of newspapers
Researchers have overcome a major obstacle in producing transistors from networks of carbon nanotubes, a technology that could make it possible to print circuits on plastic sheets for applications including flexible displays and an electronic skin to cover an entire aircraft to monitor crack formation. The advance may allow researchers to use carbon nanotube transistors to create high-performance, shock-resistant, lightweight and flexible integrated circuits at low cost. A key advantage of the nanonet technology is that it can be produced at low temperatures, enabling the transistors to be placed on flexible plastic sheets that would melt under the high temperatures required to manufacture silicon-based transistors. Manufacturers might literally print, or stamp, circuits onto plastic sheets, like the roll-to-roll printing used to print newspapers."
Nanotechnology Today

Plastic Logic Plans Thin, Flexible Display

Semi-transparent electronic sheet coming in 2009
Plastic Logic, spun off from Cambridge University in 2000 and now based in Mountain View, Calif., has been working to produce paper that can create and erase static images. The company has taken more than $200 million in funding to date. An obvious application is newspapers and magazines, though the economic feasibility of ‘printing’ with this new generation of e-ink displays is still an open question. Watch a demonstration here.
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