Did I say 2009, I meant 2010....

News from CES 2009 (Consumer Electronics Show) suggests that the much anticipated PlasticLogic eBook reader will not be shipping early this year as previously announced, but is postponed until "early 2010".

Its anticipated mainly because it will have a "plastic electronics" display with no glass, providing robustness and lightness but not (yet) flexibility.

PlasticLogic and PolymerVision, with its READIUS product, are now in a slow race to market.

The READIUS's commercial availability has also been postponed multiple times in the past and it remains to be seen who will make it to market and be able to say they are the "first plastic display shipping". When it does ship READIUS will provide lightness and robustness and also flexibility with the display wrapping around the device - making it a small hand-held device with a large(r) display.

All this proves that bringing a new electronics and display technology to market is no simple task, and that the companies trying to do so either repeatedly underestimate the complexity of doing to, or overstretch themselves when announcing availability dates.

See the Engadget Post, or watch the video of the interview from CES by following the link to InfoWorld Videos.

A Tale of two eReaders

Here is a follow-up to yesterday's post about Walt Mossberg's coverage of new eBook readers for the iPhone, a short video interview with him about them and how they compare with the Amazon Kindle.

Walt Mossberg on newer eBook offers on the iPod Touch / iPhone

In previous posts I've commented on a few of the recent eBook reading software applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch (Stanza, eReader, etc).

At the Wall Street Journal on-line, personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg discusses a couple of recent additions to those offerings.

The first is "Shortcovers" from Indigo, a Canadian book selling company. It will be available soon (maybe by the time you read this) on the AppStore and will give you the first chapter free and then allow you to buy buy chapter by chapter, or specific chapters of books (for around $0.99 per chapter) or to buy the whole book in eBook format, or to buy the book in paper format. Sounds like the software has some interesting features which I'll check out and cover in a future post.

The second is call "Iceberg" now on AppStore. It has few titles at the start but they will be working hard to increase the number of titles available on it.



If you prefer to "read" about the subject (and not watch a video) then you can read Mossberg's column article on the subject.

It seems like the battle of "Convenience" vs. "Better reading experience" is served. Fight!