Time Inc. is planning in e-reader to help magazines—but can you really enjoy Sports Illustrated in E Ink?
Time Inc. wants to offer e-readers with some subscriptions.
E Ink is among the options considered. But can you really enjoy Sports Illustrated in monochrome? In Time’s place I’d go for iPhone apps and investigate color hardware only.
I do think it’s cool that Time would like to bypass Amazon, given the degree of corporate rapacity at the latter company (not that Time is Francis of Assisi).
The scuttlebutt is that Time is talking to a bunch of possible hardware partners—as well as other magazine publishers—and would like to launch in just a few months.
Meanwhile here’s another idea to improve Time Inc.’s cashflow: sell off the palatial headquarters building (shown in CC-licensed photo from Jason Kuffer/Digiart2001).
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September 11th, 2009 at 9:06 am
C’mon, Time Warner… don’t be stupid.
Of course they need color for their digital material. And if they do things right, they could help kick off the digital magazine revolution that I expect will pull e-books along with it into full development.
Digital mag development has been dragging behind e-books, mired in even worse e-babel and conflicting presentation/intent models than e-books have ever had to deal with. What the industry needs is a major player to start to make coherent decisions and form things up. TW could be that player.
September 11th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Excellent points, Steve. By the way, let’s hope that any Time initiative will indeed be big on e-books, too, not just mags. Thanks. David
September 11th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Sooner or later somebody will realize that if you take netbook electronics and screens and ditch the keyboard and HDD you’ll have a fine slate-format color platform for digital content that can profitable sell for US$300-400. (Won’t even need a touch screen if they do the UI right.)
I mean, they can’t *possibly* be that clueless, right?
There’s only 50 million netbooks out there, after all…
September 11th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Pixel Qi! Pixel Qi! Pixel Qi!
Does anybody doubt that the Asus biscreen/single screen ebook device, in color, will feature a Pixel Qi screen(s)?
Therefore, what seems likely to me is that Time will be rebadging some of those Asus gems.
September 11th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Great hunch, Pond! Certainly Pixel Qi would offer color AND more text-background contrast than E Ink. Furthermore, for those who didn’t mind the contrast reduction, it would offer an E Ink-style mode.
Thanks,
David