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Electronic Newspapers Get Closer: Plastic Logic E-Newspaper To Be Unveiled
Posted by Kit Eaton at 9:31 PM on September 8, 2008
Forget namby-pamby flickering e-ink displays: if Plastic Logic's upcoming electronic paper tech is any good it might actually be the way of the future for newspapers. Due to be unveiled today, Plastic Logic's unnamed device is the size of a sheet of copier paper, about two and half times the screen real-estate of Amazon's Kindle, and is actually aimed at a business environment. But "newspapers is what everyone asks for" says Plastic Logic's CEO: and this makes great sense since the size of the screen would give it a more "authentic" newspapery feel. The plastic-screened gizmo weighs 57 grams more than the Kindle, and yet is one third its thickness (as you can see from the image—it's on the left.) We'll have to see how capable the device is when it's revealed... and, more importantly, find out how much it costs. Update: some more data has surfaced.
To mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries of George Orwell they're being published online "live" as a blog, 70 years to the day he wrote them. The project started August 9th, and so far the entries are about strangely bland stuff: the weather and the antics of catching some snakes at his home. More what you'd expect from Eric Arthur Blair (his real name) rather than deep insights into the mind that created Big Brother. This is his domestic diary, though... the political one (which starts September 7th) will make for very interesting reading. I wonder what Orwell would've thought of this idea, and indeed the slightly 
Using his self-designed AI program, Philip M. Parker has "authored" 200,000 books without ever lifting his pen. While his work features some self-explanatory medical texts like The Official Patient's Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea, most of Parker's publications are 100-300 page industry analysis pieces like DAGENHAM MOTORS GROUP PLC: Labour Productivity Benchmarks and International Gap Analysis. Parker uses his automated software to do basic market research (scouring the internet to pull various facts and figures), and then to completely assemble the book (with charts, a full table of contents and plenty of text). Each can take anywhere from 13 minutes to 3 hours. Here's a clip in which Parker shows off the process:
