New Vizplex electronic paper - Ganaxa GeR2

As its conventional equivalent, electronic paper evolves. Here is (on the left) the brand-new Vizplex from E Ink, featured in the GeR2 e-reader from Ganaxa: higher clarity, better contrast (especially in low light) and noticeably higher refresh speed:

More information on www.ganaxa.com

Les Echos in Montréal

Montréal, 6 AM. At the same time, we get the Canadian press and the e-paper edition of the French daily newspaper Les Echos. Fascinating...

New, unique in the world, e-paper platform from Ganaxa

For lack of e-paper creation, publication and diffusion tools adapted to the editorial projects of its clients (publishers and advertisers), Ganaxa has created an integrated platform (GPP: Ganaxa Publishing Platform) for the press, book publishing and advertising. Unique in the world, this platform is the basis of the e-paper offer of the French daily business newspaper Les Echos, of brand magazines, of the experiment conducted by the publisher Flammarion with two of its best-selling novels, and of many other projects. It will be presented in Montreal on September 25 and at the Tebaldo Conference in Paris on October 26.
For more information, visit: www.ganaxa.com

Reflections of an “e-reader” on the usage of e-paper version of Les Echos

Since the embargo was lifted on the occasion of this morning’s announcement of its availability, we can now discuss our experience of the e-paper version of Les Echos. There is so much to say on the editorial, technological and economical aspects of this project which I have accompanied at Tebaldo, as adviser to Ganaxa. But let’s start with what is most important: usage.

For a month now, I have been “e-reading” Les Echos on a “light” e-paper device (elegant, leather cover, 174 grams). As a subscriber to Les Echos, I would almost never read its print version (although it was available at our Regus offices) and would hardly ever read its Internet version. However, someone would do a selection of articles for me, which saved me time. Thus, once every two weeks, I would have at my disposal a set of editions annotated according to my areas of interest. I would also sometimes receive a phone call urging that I consult a specific article.

Now all of this has changed. Before leaving home, I download the morning edition of Les Echos to my SD card (I prefer this method to the direct USB link which requires the e-reader device to be switched on). It has become a habit to take the e-reader with me, as I would a newspaper purchased at a kiosk. I read it whenever I have a little spare time. And the opportunity to do a little discreet reading presents itself quite often in the course of a day: time spent in public transport, waiting for appointments, between meetings, etc. I go straight to my priority categories (information technology, communication), then I browse through the other news items, and I read in-depth articles, as permitted by my spare time. With very few exceptions, this is something I would never do with the paper edition. I even discovered a section dedicated to cinema with film releases of the week.

Furthermore, searching and selecting articles will become much easier thanks to a new semantic analysis function. And alerts will no longer be necessary.
I now prefer Les Echos to free newspapers that I used to accept without thinking, because I barely have enough time to read everything of interest to me in the daily e-paper edition!
Not bad, for a start; more to follow…

e-Paper, industrial relations and development issues

A contribution on a Mobileread forum concerning the cooperation between Ganaxa and StareRead provides an opportunity to address the interesting topic of industrial relations and development issues in the new world of electronic ink. Similarities exist with relations between printers, publishers and paper manufacturers, complemented with issues related to electronics.

We are advisors to leading-edge companies in this sector, including Ganaxa and its clients, and have been involved for some time in the design of PVI’s reader base and in its interfaces. One example is the discreet button it features. This button is round and pleasant (it is often fingered as would the page of a book) and it controls navigation in four directions (to turn pages or select links) as well as validation, these functions being adjusted to the speed of ink display. We rejected the square button, for reasons of design, in the projects we are leading. The other buttons are located on the side of the device, in order to avoid visual disturbance in the reading area.

This base is used by Ganaxa’s main partners, in particular StareRead and Nuut.

Among many projects, Ganaxa is working on readers from StareRead, who have done a remarkable job not only with the reading device but above all with the community platform and general-public-content production tools. Other devices on a similar base will appear soon.

Difficulties met by all market actors in perfecting these architectures are due to numerous factors, as with any industrial project in an emerging sector (Sony’s eReader was delayed for months, reportedly because of the final development stage of Sony Connect; Amazon’s project is said to be delayed by more than a year):
- Developing for devices that lack the architecture of a conventional computer is very complex, at least when seeking to reach a level of convenience close to that of a book or newspaper. Programming such a device with such a design goal is a delicate task.
- The design, production and diffusion platform is partly new, because experience shows that providing content as on paper or on a computer is of little interest at this stage unless it is justified by intensive usage or specific content.
- And there are many more factors: the relevance of the editorial project with respect to this new medium; the appeal of the object when reading for pleasure; the cover (tear the cover off a traditional book and you’ll no longer want to read it); the support of essential features such as hyphenation and ligatures for quality publishing, etc.

As a result of mutualized processes, the first products that attempt to address these multiple issues will soon make their appearance.

e-paper and publishing: legibility is a multi-faceted issue…

The issue of matching e-paper technology with the needs of publishing has already been illustrated by the case of mathematical formulas and, recently, by that of the Aramaic alphabet in the “Testament des Siècles”. Before the case of hyphenation comes up, a further illustration of the issue is provided by ligatures, which I had observed when reading One Thousand And One Nights in the Pléiade collection.

Claude Peyriguère, of the French publisher Editions Hatier, to whom I mentioned the issue, gave the following details:
“The st and ct ligatures are indeed characteristic of the Pléiade books. They are related to the choice of the Garamond font. The features of this font partly derive from its former use, which rendered the style of handwriting. Unicode provides Latin ligatures (FB00 to FB06) as well as the st ligature. But, curiously enough, the ct ligature is missing.”

More information in Wikipedia.