2006 most significant year since Gutenberg (Score 1)

Hi,

I think the new paper-like display will be the driving force behind the new revolution. If you think about reading on-line on a PC, a laptop or a PDA you'll agree that it's just not the real thing. With book-like reading experience this will change...

All the components are here: Reader devices: Sony , Phillips, Hanlin all built using the new display from E-Ink
The major search engines are digitalizing books like crazy; think about Google, Yahoo or MSN.
Payment gateways are offering (more or less) micro payments. Ebay-Paypal offers reasonable transaction fees for 1$ transactions and digital download stores on EBay. Google will probably do something similar with copyrighted books in the book-search and the Google wallet.

re: PDA like functionality -- I think these readers will be able to do more than just display text; the Illiad's (Phillips - IRex) screen for example has touch-screen capabilities that gives it more paper-like usability (i.e. write not just read) and their business model is to develop B2B solutions, so I'm looking forward to see if they provide a development platform for that device. Those looking for smaller size than paper books whatch out for the rollable display!

As a sw developer I'm wondering if this will create a dot-com-era like Eldorado...