Color iRex iLiad in 2007 / MobiPocket reader in the works
... that's if you want to believe iRex's Peter van de Graaf who held a "confidential" presentation last year on the "Electronic Paper Display and its Impact on the Scholarly Information Chain". You can download it from here:
http://www.ticer.nl/06carte/publicat/litlist.htm
or directly here:
http://www.ticer.nl/06carte/publicat/03Graaf.ppt
On page 22 he predicts that the color iLiad would be ready in 2007. Of course that was before his company decided to delay the release of the current iLiad multiple times.
Some other interesting stuff is there.
* On page 24 he says:
Previous product:
Actual response: ~ 350 ms (determined by E Ink material)
Current product:
Actual response: ~ 250 ms (determined by E Ink material)
Writing:
Response < 100 ms (addressing skill)
What do we make out of the 0.25s response time claimed here?
* Paradoxically, on page 28 he says that content is the "crucial property".
* On pages 29, 31 and 37 he mentions the MobiPocket format next to PDF and XHTML as e-book formats. So much for the rumors that MobiPocket is working with them on a reader for the iLiad. Specifically he says: "iRex finalising adobe and mobipocket reader deals." But who knows - perhaps the Amazon buyout came in-between and now iRex is back to nowhere.
* On page 30 he shows what iDS
could be if it was done properly.
PS: You find more about Graaf
here:
Peter van de Graaf will replace Guofu Zhou and Alex Henzen for iRex. Peter van de Graaf He received his M.Sc. in Industrial Design at the University of Delft in 1989. Since then he has been working as a product developer, first for 3M company, and later as director of his own company, Kiva. Since then he has been working for a variety of customers, amongst them Lucent, ABB and again 3M. His work has led to a quantity of products, from medical to automotive and ventilation products, and acquired 7 patents overall. He got involved in libraries by performing market research for RFID applications in libraries in 4 countries. This research led to new self-issue designs and safety gates for libraries. Kiva has been working with iRex, using their new product expertise, as well as their network within libraries, to investigate applications of e-paper in the library environment.