I have an electronic copy of the New York Times in my Pocket (soon I hope)!

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I used to read a lot of ebooks on my HP TC1000, back when Microsoft was giving away a free ebook each week. My wife and I both got hooked until we started to have to pay for the books. Just too expensive. Now with the release of Ultra-Mobile PC’s imminent, I would really like to get back into the laying in bed in the dark reading thing! Guess we will have to wait to see what happens to prices though. On that note though, this is a really promising thing. How about a digital (albeit printed) ink newspaper? Not with a computing device, but with “electronic paper”? Here is a story in the New York Times:

…..”In the Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller “Minority Report,” a subway passenger scans an issue of USA Today that is a plastic video screen, thin, foldable and wireless, with constantly changing text. The scene is no longer science fiction. This month, De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, started testing versions of electronic paper, a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink — millions of microscopic capsules the width of a human hair made with organic material that display light or dark images in response to electrical charges. This is only one test of new e-paper devices competing to become the iPod of the newspaper business. Other e-paper trials are being undertaken by the paper Les Echos, which is based here, by the newspaper trade group IFRA in Germany and, in the United States, by The New York Times. The International Herald Tribune, which is owned by The New York Times Company, is also in discussions to make subscriptions available later this year for the same e-paper devices used by De Tijd, according to Michael Golden, the International Herald Tribune’s publisher. ” ….

Hmmm, New York Times electronically folded in my pocket? Can I do the crossword puzzle on it?

Read the full story here