h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've seen the odd reference from time to time about electronic books which will have the ability to store several books/magazines/why which can be downloaded with new material when required. There is a report in one of todays papers that B.A. are about to start supplying them on flights. It always seemed a brilliant idea to me to be able to get rid of the piles of paperbacks and mags I seem to accumulate and never throw away and store what I want electronically in the space of one book. This also seems to me to be right up h2g2s street. What was THE GUIDE if it wasn't just that. The forums aside, would it be possible to download just,say user pages to such a device? Is the e-book actually on the market at present ? Unfortunately B A seem to want theirs back at the end of the flight which seems to defeat the purpose.

We're looking at ways we can produce a handheld version of h2g2, so you'll definitely be seeing one someday.

From the point of view of storing books and magazines I cant wait. The house is cluttered up with these things that I rarely ever read again but dont have the moral fibre to throw away. Or will the 'handheld' version be exclusively for H2G2 ?

To throw in some background, two research groups (one at Xerox and one at MIT) are currently working on E-paper, which is floppy and white and somewhat card-like (you can roll it up or hang it on the wall or whatever), but you can load it up with novels, encyclopaedias, or indeed HTML documents, and the text cleverly appears as black letters on a white background. There is a company in Boston (E-Ink) that has attracted a lot of investors and has demonstrated a commercial version (albeit a 2mm thick advertising poster). With regard to the e-book itself, current estimates are that with today's technology, they could knock out A4 sheets capable of storing 250 novels, for around $10 per sheet.
I want one. Now.

I recently came across ANOTHER company dealing with electronic books: SoftBook Press, Inc, in California. They have a web-site and a rather solid-looking book. I'm still waiting to hear back from them about technical specification, although the beastie costs $600.00 US.

Actually, right now I'm looking for funding to get my own e-book going, except I'm doing the CONTENT, not the delivery system.

(Eric the) Fruitbat

Psion seem to be producing something called the netbook or webbook or something. It loooks like a series 5 but with a larger colour screen. I think it's some kind of mobile net terminal but knowing the stuff Psion produces (I own a series 5) it will be much more. But imagine if the home page defaulted to h2g2. Surely Douglas's vision would be reality (Except he never envisioned Cellnet call charges )