CrowdSpirit

Cheap, ultra-low-power digital book. With Pages.

posted by emansipater on 7 November 2007 2:18 Go to the market place

Problem context :

There is still no effective and natural-feeling digital replacement for that oldest and simplest information medium, the book. People want something as easy to read, as easy to use, and as convenient as a simple bound stack of pages but without the limitations of the existing one-time use analog book. They want to be able to read a new copy of a magazine each week as it comes out or easily switch between any of a thousand texts stored on a tiny chip. Current electronic reading devices have poor visibility, poor battery life, are unnatural to use, and are overly expensive. Can we not just have a digital book people?

Original CrowdSpirit problem hyperlink :

http://www.crowdspirit.com/idea/ebook-reader

Proposed Solution :

Rather than attempt to model a digital book replacement after the screen sported by other modern devices, why not reinvent the actual innovation behind the popularity of the book, i.e. the printing press? Using inexpensive 'pages' which can visually display a different binary state for each pixel when run through an electronic 'printing' mechanism, a method known by some as 'electronic ink', place a simple electronic 'printing' mechanism in the spine of the digital book and feed pages from the back of the book through it to the front or vice versa as the user naturally flips through them, always maintaining a buffer of several printed pages on either side. Thus the method by which the book is advanced is literally and intuitively at the flip of a page, just like an analog book.

On the inside cover a small screen, normally off while in use, can allow the user to switch between texts on a memory card, while at the top left and top right corners of the cover of the open book are buttons to 'reset' the book to the beginning or end, or alternatively skip between chapters. Along the top are simple buttons for assigning 'bookmarks' that can also be skipped to. While all these added digital features certainly allow a functionality far surpassing that of any analog book, the basic ongoing usage of the digital book will be the experience of flipping a page, a simple and effective method of browsing that no mobile device has yet been able to best or even compete with for ease and effectiveness of function.

Add in enough batteries to fill out the weight to that of a comfortable carry and you will find a solution superior in cost, battery life, information capacity, and pure simple utility to anything currently offered in the reading world. Done.