At last, the literary iPod

The interactive pocket WiFi library has arrived, says
linton chiswick

According to my notes, it's four years since a US-based technology company announced it was "very close" to commercially releasing an electronic paper - a flexible VDU you could use to read books and journals, and then roll up and put in your pocket (as long as you weren't planning on sitting down - rolling was okay, folding expensive).

The flexible VDU hasn't materialised, but in the meantime we've become accustomed to receiving our music down the broadband "pipes" and taking it with us on

MP3 players. Films and TV, too, are commonly downloadable, and viewable on-the-move via pocket-friendly portable media players.

Isn't it strange that - while text files are the simplest and
Motorstorm image

smallest of files - books remain quaintly, stubbornly low-tech?

Enter... the iLiad Reader: a slim, light, A5-sized device designed for squeezing library-scale quantities of reading material into your pocket, and allowing you to flick (one-handed) from page to page in almost any situation. In other words... an iPod for literature.

It will hold more than 100