On E-Readers

Isn’t the e-reader market kind of hot right now? Just how it happened is amazing, thanks to the Amazon Kindle that old vision of ‘the paperless office’ has been drawn up from the ashes, smouldering, to present itself once more.

Last week I got my hands on the iRex Digital Reader 1000 to try out some features and get a feel for what value this device could offer for firms in the UK and Europe.  Business entrants have to differentiate themselves from the Kindle, they need to do this by putting in new features such as notes / annotations and they have to offer the kind of flexibility required by organisations today.  The key is not so much in the physics of the devices (most use e-ink developed by Philips and Philips spinoffs) it’s more about the way people can use them to acquire content very easily, consume and use that content quickly and share their output with colleagues to get work done accurately.

The iRex builds on previous features offered through their iLiad range; I like the screen, the clarity and USB / Ethernet connection; WiFi would be great and is coming soon.  For lawyers and business professionals who read and mark-up large documents the iRex provides annotation features to with the stylus to allow users to mark-up sections for later work by document production teams.  This is, at present, limited to PDF format but it does represent a good improvement on work process out there today involving, as many will know, a liberal use of coloured post-its, riders, pencil mark-up and then scanning/faxing to oneself before running through OCR or a colleague to produce the next version.  Menu icons on the iRex are tiny, but at least, using an e-Reader like this, one or two messy steps are removed and the mark-ups kept in a digital system as a record, potentially mitigating legal and regulatory risks around provision of client service.

Alternative devices from Sony, Netronix, PlasticLogic and FirstPaper are making ground in the market, expect to see support for animation soon and colour with full video by 2011 or so, particularly on the Sony.  Social networking and book-sharing features will also become widely offered as content publishers start fighting for revenue share.  It’s too early to tell who will build the biggest slice in the legal market but I expect to see a client for iRex amongst UK law firms soon.