E-Media Tidbits

On a recent trip to Beijing, I had a chance to take a close look at Sony's new e-book device, the Librié, the first commercial product to use Philips' breakthrough "e-ink" technology. It makes the old RCA/GemStar e-book (no longer in production) look like a primitive Etch-A-Sketch. The Librié seems thin and delicate (only half an inch thick), and provides a display about the size of a paperback book at a very high (170 dots per inch) resolution.

Photo by Steve Yelvington

With a full set of tiny QWERTY keys, it could function as a general-purpose planner/scheduler. No one in the room could read Japanese, so we could not plumb the full depths of the device's functionality, but reading seemed easy with an intuitive interface derived from Sony's "jog-dial" device. There is no touchscreen, as you would find in a PalmOS device. The Librié has audio jacks, so it could function for voice notes or as an MP3 player. Memory stick expansion means storage is practically unlimited, and the device could hold an entire library.

The "newspaper quality" display is sharp, monochromatic, and very slow (forget about video). There is no backlighting. It consumes no power unless you're changing the information on the screen, so Sony says a set of batteries will last 10,000 page-views.

Should newspapers be excited about publishing to this format? Not yet. It's available only in Japan, at a price point near US$400. I think the first real market will be students who now have to carry heavy backpacks loaded with textbooks.

Whether this evolves into a viable news platform will depend not only on the overall price dropping substantially, but also on whether Sony opens up the device for periodical publishers without charging painful licensing fees for the digital rights management software.