Esquire, E-Ink: Future of Print?
Kevin Maney writes: Can't wait to see what the cover of Esquire's 75th anniversary issue looks like. I'd heard about this a month or so ago from an Esquire editor: This will be the world's first magazine cover to use E-Ink's technology, so the text and images on the page can actually change, flash, animate, whatever. It's extremely expensive at this point, so only 100,000 of 720,000 issues will be made with the E-Ink cover -- only for newsstand sales. (Subscribers, like me, get cut out of this deal!)
E-Ink makes the display technology for Amazon.com's Kindle. The company, which has been around for 11 years, has longed pressed the vision of "electronic print" -- a magazine or newspaper that looks and feels much like the original paper versions, except the pages are all E-Ink pages that can change. Pick up your E-Ink newspaper off the coffee table in the morning, and it will be updated with that day's edition via wireless networks. Pick it up an hour later, and breaking news will be refreshed.
Personally, I think it's a cool-sounding vision that will never happen. It will on something like a Kindle, but not in a form factor like a 100-page broadsheet newspaper. Still, E-Ink is probably going to play an interesting role in the future of print media. The Esquire experiment will be seen as a first step.
Loading...
Thank you for registering as a Portfolio.com Insider. Your comment has been added.
Create Your Public Profile- First Bytes: SEC Eyes Tweets, Waiting on a Verizon iPhone
- Apr 27 2009 9:10AM EDT
- Last Bytes: A New MySpaceFace, Technological Necessities
- Apr 24 2009 5:22PM EDT
- What the One Billionth Downloader Won
- Apr 24 2009 2:37PM EDT
- The End of Innocence at Apple
- Apr 24 2009 11:25AM EDT
- First Bytes: Social Videos, 1 Billion Apps, Mt. Everest Calls
- Apr 24 2009 10:23AM EDT
- Last Bytes: Microsoft and Amazon, Two Tales of the Economy
- Apr 23 2009 5:40PM EDT
- Dell's Plastic Surgery
- Apr 23 2009 3:12PM EDT
- Why High Tech Needs the Wall Street Quants
- Apr 23 2009 11:20AM EDT
- First Bytes: New Blood at MySpace, Steve Jobs Testimony
- Apr 23 2009 9:05AM EDT
- Last Bytes: Apple Profit Soars; eBay Profit Falls
- Apr 22 2009 5:04PM EDT
- Earth Day Special: Gadgets to Green Your Lifestyle
- Apr 22 2009 1:52PM EDT
- First Bytes: Cyberspies and Belgian Bots
- Apr 22 2009 9:55AM EDT
- Last Bytes: Is Texting Passé? Not Yet.
- Apr 21 2009 5:52PM EDT
- Happy 20th Birthday, Game Boy
- Apr 21 2009 4:11PM EDT
- Gaming Geeks (and Curt Schilling) Unite!
- Apr 21 2009 12:43PM EDT
Categories
Links
- Kevin Maney's site

- TechCrunch

- GigaOM

- Engadget

- USA TODAY Tech

- Romenesko

- BuzzTracker Tech

- Roger McGuinn's Folk Den

- Maney's band on MySpace

- Spiedies, mmmm

- Somewhat Frank's tech conference list

- Marc Andreessen

- Mark Cuban's blog

- Tom Foremski

- Fred Wilson

- Pandora

- SciTech Daily

- Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog

- Steven Johnson

- The Long Tail

- paidContent

- John Battelle's SearchBlog







