There’s been a lot of talk about EPaper disposable LCD’s recently and how they might be the saviour of the magazine industry. Some say that being able to enmbed video into a magazine will be revolutionary, others comment that the ‘disposability’ factor and apparent wastefulness in this age is unacceptable.
What both sides have yet to comment upon is the new wave of ebooks about to hit us. Asus are getting ready to hit us with their Eee Book Reader, a genuine, double page with a spine, LCD panelled book in full colour. Now think about this…. If these things take off and there’s a viable distribution method for content such as iTunes for purchasing ebooks, emagazines and other reading & viewing material, suddenly, you don’t need ePaper LCD’s. In fact, you don’t need paper. And the Asus is predicted to have a price of around £100 GB Pounds, cheaper than a laptop or Sony’s book reader.
So if you have a double page, LCD panel with the ability to let you read your favourite car magazine on the toilet (the biggest comment against online reading), plus the ability to view video, listen to music and make Skype calls though it’s WiFi or SIM card, you have to say that buying shared in newsagents would be a Bad Thing.
Personally, I think disposable LCD’s will make great business cards, far better than those CD business cards of a couple of years back. They required too much effort for the recipient and all too often were blocked from launching on corporate PC’s.
And so to the content, the most important bit. As Rosh Sillars at New Media Photographer says, content creators will survive if they move and adapt. In fact, the ability to create striking still photography and motion content will become more important than ever.
As the new video DSLR’s like the Canon 5D and 7D arrive, so the distribution method is arriving too. It’s never been a move exciting time to be involved in photography & film making, I can’t wait for the next five years!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Definitely can’t swallow throwing away screens. You can buy a calculator for virtually nothing, but that does not mean you want to throw it away after doing your accounts. I think the Asus would be good, but question it’s place in the market. It’s almost a laptop, so why not just buy the cheap laptop that will be brought out to compete. A semi flexible single page tablet would be better.
This is a great opportunity to create new content though and I welcome the new age and commissions
. Magazines are stuck in the straight-jacket of traditional printing, and their true transition to the web and interactive e-readers is long overdue IMHO.
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