HP's digital imaging department is also working an e-book viewer that attempts to match as closely as possible the benefits of a physical book -- right down to the act of flipping the pages. The device, lightweight and slightly smaller than A4 in size, uses a TFT screen and uses ASCII text source data to create an image that looks like a photograph of an opened book. The screen is slightly higher-resolution than a computer monitor, at 100dpi, and uses modern anti-aliasing techniques to create a crisp image. However, project manager Anthony Sowden admitted that there is a trade-off between battery life and screen clarity: the screen needs a bright backlight to compete with natural daylight, but this saps battery power. "With the backlight on full, you can really feel the heat coming off the back," he said. The prototype e-book viewer has a minimum battery life of just three hours. One solution to this problem could be the use of bi-stable displays, which retain their state even when power is removed, requiring power only for turning the page. Sowden said that no such technology is ready for use yet, but if it could be employed, "battery life could be measured in months". The viewer does not use a touch-screen, as these are more reflective, but has touch-strips on the sides and bottom, which can be used to virtually flick or riffle pages. Users can replicate the experience of holding their place with one finger whilst riffling through pages with the other hand. "I have a great attachment to traditional books. But books will change, and I expect we will see multimedia and interactive books emerge," said Sowden. Hold the front page
HP researchers also showed off a way of formatting published pages in an XML language that allows the same document to contain information for Web, print, PDA and other versions -- something which could ultimately speed up so-called "multi-channel" publishing. "We are not capturing a document but a logical representation of it," said project manager Anthony Wiley. The Bristol lab is also working on HP's version of on-demand computing in the form of the Utility Data Centre (UDC). On-demand computing is designed to replace the current computing model, in which different parts of an organisation have their own specialised resources, with a general-purpose model that could reduce unused computing power. Under the on-demand model, a service automatically finds the resources it needs when it starts up. When the service is no longer needed, the resources are freed up to be used by other services. Services are configured and kept secure by a utility controller. Sun, IBM and other companies are working on their own on-demand computing projects.
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