Lets party like its, er 2009

Russell Wilcox, CEO of E Ink in the US, has made some predictions about when technology will mean we can view magazines in an "e paper" format.

Interviewed by BtoB Magazine, Wilcox noted that :

"Currently, you can see e-paper being used in trade paperbacks. It’s a small portion of the retail world, like the Internet was at first. There’s speculation that Amazon will come out with a device. By next year there will be more than 10 companies selling electronic book readers. All of these are monochrome and around six inches wide. Next year you’ll also see bigger sizes, like eight-inch and 10-inch screen sizes, and by 2009 you’ll see 11- and 12-inch screen sizes. As they get bigger and bigger, they get to be a more and more appropriate way for magazine publishers to publish. The order for us is books, newspapers, magazines. Once we get beautiful color and images, we’ll go into the magazine world. That’ll be a year or two."

Hopefully

Gamerzines launch PS3Zine

Cranberry Publishing have just launched the latest in their excellent series of free games magazines - PS3zine. Each issue will contain games reviews, previews and of course lots of interactive elements.

They are fantastic products - being free - and in a demo less world, why pay £6 for a print version when everything you want is free ?

A measure of their popularity is that they have over 50,000 subscribers signed up to their existing products, so they have obviously tapped a vein with gaming consumers.

Sony teams with Dennis for PS3 promo

Sony is promoting the launch of its PlayStation 3 console by sending a bespoke digital magazine to more than 1 million of its target consumers.

Sony's media agency, Manning Gottlieb OMD, has teamed up with Dennis Publishing to produce a Formula One Championship Edition e-zine on the Ceros platform used to produce Dennis' digital men's magazine Monkey.

The 12-page e-zine contains 360 degree views of the Playstation 3, links to additional Formula One content, behind the scenes footage and video clips of the game.

Interestingly, Sony are not doing this through the publishers of the Official Playstation Magazine, Future PLC.

Missed opportunity there chaps.