800 Newspapers for the iRex Digital Reader

iRex Technologies announce here on their official blog (i-to-i) with pomp that the iRex Digital Reader (specifically the DR1000 model) will now be a reading platform with 800 electronic newspapers available to be read on it.

These 800 newspapers have appeared overnight "in one fell swoop" through the porting of the Newspaper Direct PressReader Software (which has until now only been available for PC, Mac and some SmartPhone/PDA platforms) to the iRex DR1000 eBook reading platform.

Here is a 2m20sec demo of the PressReader software on the DR1000 (no sound).


The general reading approach appears to be to display a full page (not two-page spread) layout on the large DR1000 display, and then have one level of zoom-in to read and article. At that zoom level you can then pan around to read the article in it's original (sometimes crazy!) article layout. All those manipulations in the video are done using the stylus (remember, no touch screen!) although I suspect keys/buttons can also be used.

Newspaper Direct, as you may suspect from their name is a company dedicated to the direct delivery of newspaper around the world using digital means.That is not necessarily restricted to electronic reading of them, as they could be printed-on-demand close to where they are to be read.

The equivalent Newspaper Direct press release can be found here http://www.newspaperdirect.com/about/news/2008/1112.aspx

If you have an iRex DR1000 device and are raring to get started, you'll have to wait until December when the reading plug-in is due to be released.