TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Smarter Newspaper E-Reader Folds Up Broadsheet Style

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 01-14-10 | Comments

NewsFlex aims to make printed newspapers obsolete with an e-reader that has the look of a newspaper but cuts down on paper costs and can be updated in real time.

By mimicking the ways a broadsheet newspaper's front page can be folded to make it easier to read, NewsFlex's "green" fold-up display aims to save the trees by obsoleting printed newspapers.

"Today you have a bunch of e-reader vendors with almost identical products, like the early days of PCs, where every computer looked like a box," said Edward Laves, founder and CEO of NewsFlex, in Golden, Colo. "All these 'me-too' e-readers have yet to supply what the market needs."

What the market needs, according to NewsFlex, are e-readers that mimic the form factor of the paper product they are replacing. For its part, NewsFlex is aiming to replace the traditional daily newspaper with a green alternative by next year's Consumer Electronics Show�namely, four bistable electronic displays that fold up the same way that a paper newspaper folds up.

NewsFlex emulates the front page of a newspaper by hinging together four 8-inch wide by 12-inch tall display panels so they fold down the middle in both vertical and horizontal directions. As a result, the display can be folded in four ways: all the way out to show the entire 16-by-24-inch front page: folded in half horizontally to show the 16-by-12-inch top half (which you flip upside down to see the bottom half); folded in half vertically to show the 8-by-24-inch-tall left-hand columns (which you flip upside down to see the right-hand columns); or folded both horizontally and vertically to just show any one of a page's 8-by-12-inch quadrants. A page-turn button allows you to flip through page-by-page, and patented hinges keep the separation between quadrants under 2 millimeters.

NewsFlex is currently negotiating with newspapers to supply them an e-reader that costs about the same as their paper printing costs for a year�about $300. NewsFlex's green business model calls for publishers to trade off paper printing costs for the cost of an e-reader by charging subscribers the same amount per month as they are currently paying for home delivery, but shipping them a free NewsFlex e-reader if they sign up for a two-year subscription. After two years, the subscriber's monthly rate can be reduced while the publisher's profits simultaneously soar.

Delivery of news stories to the NewsFlex e-reader will also be more timely, and on par with CNN's Headline News channel, by updating the stories on the front page in real time as the news occurs. Electronic delivery of news today is limited to once a day using expensive 3G bandwidth. NewsFlex e-readers, on the other hand, will constantly update their front-page news stories in real time using inexpensive radio-frequency bandwidth on the SCA (subsidiary communications authorization) subcarriers that are available for rent from nearly every FM channel in the United States.