Razor-Thin, bendable screen = the death of the newspaper?

Smooth Lou · Post by **Smooth Lou** » Tue May 29, 2007 6:43 pm

This is a link to Sony's newest cyberporn, a bendable screen small enough to fit in your pocket, or roll up and stick it in your shoe, or any other fucking thing you could think of.

I remember when I was working at a newspaper company in 2000, this technology loomed on the horizon and everyone was cautiously optimistic, and now, less than a decade later, a device as small as the palm of one's hand will be able to instantly connect to the internet and let you browse the news site of your choice.

Or maybe the guys at TWiT are right and it will end up just advertising everything all the time.

Either way, this is fucking fantastic.

Can-U · Post by **Can-U** » Tue May 29, 2007 9:07 pm

what happened to that printer you showed a while back. i want one of those

Shup Diddy · Post by **Shup Diddy** » Tue May 29, 2007 9:26 pm

lol@ me thinking in the beginning "who in the world would want a watch that big"

ThaJim2 · Post by **ThaJim2** » Tue May 29, 2007 10:17 pm

Has a price been announced? Until this tech becomes a commodity on pricing par with paper the print media has no need to change over. But, it is a promising tech unfortunately sony was the developer so i can imagine a niche product that can download a few newspapers but the unit costs 400 and each paper cost twice as much like their ebook reader.

360 · Post by **360** » Tue May 29, 2007 10:43 pm

That's awsome. I can't wait to see how much it has evolved come 10 years from now.

Smooth Lou · Post by **Smooth Lou** » Tue May 29, 2007 11:27 pm

360 wrote:That's awsome. I can't wait to see how much it has evolved come 10 years from now.

Yep.

And to ThaJim, there are multiple companies working on this technology. Sony was just the first to show it.

Also, imagine if you will, New York Times says, "Sign up for 3 years of The New York Times for $12/mo and you'll get the paper, plus this great reader" and they can have it set to only check for NYT.com, or maybe have it be directed there as a homepage or whatever.

It won't be too expensive that way, but everyone will get what they want and maybe the old boys of the media can stick around for a bit longer.

ThaJim2 · Post by **ThaJim2** » Wed May 30, 2007 7:41 am

Smooth Lou wrote:
360 wrote:That's awsome. I can't wait to see how much it has evolved come 10 years from now.
Yep.

And to ThaJim, there are multiple companies working on this technology. Sony was just the first to show it.

Also, imagine if you will, New York Times says, "Sign up for 3 years of The New York Times for $12/mo and you'll get the paper, plus this great reader" and they can have it set to only check for NYT.com, or maybe have it be directed there as a homepage or whatever.

It won't be too expensive that way, but everyone will get what they want and maybe the old boys of the media can stick around for a bit longer.

I agree that the tech is promising my concern is only that Sony introduces it to market first and there is no competing product for a year or two. Sony has the Ebook reader that they are charging like 350 for and the ebooks for it are full retail that model will never work for newspapers which people are used to paying 50 cents for on there way to work.

bmurf75 · Post by **bmurf75** » Wed May 30, 2007 9:40 am

I read about this on CNN a few days ago:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/05/25/sony ... index.html

De Seven Free · Post by **De Seven Free** » Thu May 31, 2007 3:12 pm

Ehhh... It's not like the thickness of the displays is the main obstacle stopping digital media replacing printed media. That's going to happen regardless of this device.

CRASH DDZ · Post by **CRASH DDZ** » Thu May 31, 2007 3:22 pm

OLD ASS PEOPLE (like even older than say ...me) will always want the paper.

Smooth Lou · Post by **Smooth Lou** » Thu May 31, 2007 3:34 pm

De Seven Free wrote:Ehhh... It's not like the thickness of the displays is the main obstacle stopping digital media replacing printed media. That's going to happen regardless of this device.

But when it fits in your front pocket without breaking and has a decent battery life, it will make a huuuuuuge impact.

De Seven Free · Post by **De Seven Free** » Thu May 31, 2007 4:34 pm

Smooth Lou wrote:
De Seven Free wrote:Ehhh... It's not like the thickness of the displays is the main obstacle stopping digital media replacing printed media. That's going to happen regardless of this device.
But when it fits in your front pocket without breaking and has a decent battery life, it will make a huuuuuuge impact.

I don't know. It's impressive, but I think things like type clarity, stuff that makes reading on a portable device as comfortable as reading printed type are more important. So maybe something that fits in your front pocket without breaking, has a decent battery life and expands to laptop-sized, extremely high-resolution display would be a much more important breakthrough. And it's probably not that far off.

CRASH DDZ wrote:OLD ASS PEOPLE (like even older than say ...me) will always want the paper.

True, but old ass people are gonna be dead ass people. Newspapers are done for, in the long run. And I think that is potentially, politically, fantastic.

Smooth Lou · Post by **Smooth Lou** » Thu May 31, 2007 4:48 pm

De Seven Free wrote:
Smooth Lou wrote:
De Seven Free wrote:Ehhh... It's not like the thickness of the displays is the main obstacle stopping digital media replacing printed media. That's going to happen regardless of this device.
But when it fits in your front pocket without breaking and has a decent battery life, it will make a huuuuuuge impact.
I don't know. It's impressive, but I think things like type clarity, stuff that makes reading on a portable device as comfortable as reading printed type are more important. So maybe something that fits in your front pocket without breaking, has a decent battery life and expands to laptop-sized, extremely high-resolution display would be a much more important breakthrough. And it's probably not that far off.

CRASH DDZ wrote:OLD ASS PEOPLE (like even older than say ...me) will always want the paper.
True, but old ass people are gonna be dead ass people. Newspapers are done for, in the long run. And I think that is potentially, politically, fantastic.

Yep. Newspapers, Magazines, the Opera, high fidelity stereo equipment. broadcast TV, ... It sucks because I enjoy all of these things to some extent, but they are being taken over by new technology that makes them obsolete, unfortunately.

ThaJim2 · Post by **ThaJim2** » Thu May 31, 2007 6:46 pm

De Seven Free wrote:
Smooth Lou wrote:
De Seven Free wrote:Ehhh... It's not like the thickness of the displays is the main obstacle stopping digital media replacing printed media. That's going to happen regardless of this device.
But when it fits in your front pocket without breaking and has a decent battery life, it will make a huuuuuuge impact.
I don't know. It's impressive, but I think things like type clarity, stuff that makes reading on a portable device as comfortable as reading printed type are more important. So maybe something that fits in your front pocket without breaking, has a decent battery life and expands to laptop-sized, extremely high-resolution display would be a much more important breakthrough. And it's probably not that far off.

CRASH DDZ wrote:OLD ASS PEOPLE (like even older than say ...me) will always want the paper.
True, but old ass people are gonna be dead ass people. Newspapers are done for, in the long run. And I think that is potentially, politically, fantastic.

I have to disagree with your last statement. Newspapers will never really die as they will always be the actual news content drivers. The large newspapers such as Tribune, Wall street Journal, WP, NYT will eventually thrive once they have younger leadership that can leverage the branding and make smarter stratigic partnership and local papers will always make money. It is the midsize papers that will die. In america that will be your Atlanta Constituiton or Miami Hearld who are too big to be considered local papers but dont have a national or international reach. Well, that is only if they continue to be public companies if they go private they will be much better off like the St Pete Times.

Smooth Lou · Post by **Smooth Lou** » Thu May 31, 2007 7:02 pm

You steam a good ham, ThaJim2. Leo LaPorte had mentioned back in a March podcast of TWiT that the former CEO of the company that owned The New York Times said that if he was still running it, he would immediately dismantle their print edition and work on aggressive subscription based and ad based revenue for their online edition. Not sure what to make of it, but I know that all newspapers are being heavily affected by the internet's steely grip.

ric · Post by **ric** » Thu May 31, 2007 7:54 pm

CRASH DDZ wrote:OLD ASS PEOPLE (like even older than say ...me) will always want the paper.

me too. i dont want to read a screen i want to read a book

ThaJim2 · Post by **ThaJim2** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:29 am

Smooth Lou wrote:You steam a good ham, ThaJim2. Leo LaPorte had mentioned back in a March podcast of TWiT that the former CEO of the company that owned The New York Times said that if he was still running it, he would immediately dismantle their print edition and work on aggressive subscription based and ad based revenue for their online edition. Not sure what to make of it, but I know that all newspapers are being heavily affected by the internet's steely grip.

The NYT is already doing a great job using the internet. If you have a Tablet PC you can subscribe to a version that allows you to basically read it like a regular paper but if you want to know mroe about the background of a story you can click a link and that kind of thing. I played around with it using a mouse and it was nice but a Tablet version would be outstanding.

De Seven Free · Post by **De Seven Free** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:04 am

ric wrote:
CRASH DDZ wrote:OLD ASS PEOPLE (like even older than say ...me) will always want the paper.
me too. i dont want to read a screen i want to read a book

Why?

It's just more comfortable to read printed pages, right? Because that's what I'm saying - they need to make a device that makes it as comfortable to read digital content as it is to read printed content, and this thin, bendy screen isn't it.

Y@k Bollocks · Post by **Y@k Bollocks** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 9:23 am

De Seven Free wrote:
ric wrote:
CRASH DDZ wrote:OLD ASS PEOPLE (like even older than say ...me) will always want the paper.
me too. i dont want to read a screen i want to read a book
Why?

It's just more comfortable to read printed pages, right? Because that's what I'm saying - they need to make a device that makes it as comfortable to read digital content as it is to read printed content, and this thin, bendy screen isn't it.

People read print differently too - more thoroughly. The Economist did a study on it a while back, and its true - hence advertising costing more in, say, The Guardian newspaper than the Guardian Unlimited website.

Print isn't going anywhere for a long, long time - especially when papers are investing millions on reformatting their print editions.