iliad-bronte.jpgSources close to Irex Technologies tell me the following about their E Ink based e-book reader, the Iliad:

  • The devices are currently being mass-produced in the Phillipines. (Here?)
  • Adobe is working on a plug-in that allows a user to make on-screen corrections.
  • Soduko.

These are all unconfirmed rumours. I am not sure what the Adobe plug-in is really supposed to do, because on-screen annotations are already a low-level feature of the Iliad; you can write on any page, regardless of the viewer you are using. Perhaps they are working on handwriting recognition? But the good news, if true, is of course that Adobe is working on software for the Iliad.

Meanwhile, in our comments section Roland Rohde tells us that “there is talk of some sort of delay … something to do with one of iRexs’ suppliers”. Over at Mobileread this, combined with the delay of the Sony Reader until July, ballooned into an E Ink shortage panic frenzy. I am not sure if that is a logical conclusion though, considering that Jinke is already shipping its V8.

One thing that apparently has been confirmed is that Irex will be presenting its Iliad in Portugal at the Artec art and technology conference on April 27. Via Mobileread.

Anyway, don’t put too much stock in rumours, because that is just what they are. Once the device hits the market, all BS will be called, and only the facts will remain. But, as they say over at Mobileread, it certainly is fun to speculate.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. Oh please not Sudoku on the Iliad…that way I’ll never get to read anything on it because my girlfriend will be playing with it all the time…^^

    About the delay…I don’t know more than you do, but I think an eink shortage is possible. Jinke is selling v8, sony is preparing to launch the Reader and iRex is ready to go with the Iliad. I don’t know how many devices each of these companies are planning to launch right on Day One, but I alos don’t know how good eink production works at the moment…

    Let’s hope that his is all just rumour…

    Oh…talking about roumour…

    the guy from ebookmedia.de told me that he thinks Mobipocket Reader could be “preinstalled” on the Iliad (I don’t know if it’ll be on the very first devices to hit market) and that Osoft will be making/is making a reader for the Iliad platform (he told me to chekc his list of available titles for that reader).
    I don’t know how well informed he is, but past experience has told me taught me that he is in close contact with iRex and seems to be well informed.

    hmm…maybe I should ask him about the possible delay…

  3. […] iRex iLiad rumor mill continues to spin David over at Teleread received a little info tidbit which claims that the iRex iLiad e-book reader is currently being mass-produced in the Phillipines. What’s more, Adobe is said to be working on a plugin allowing "to make on-screen corrections" on the iLiad. And best of all, and this is certainly the reason for all the delays, meant to convince the few still in doubt to shell out those 700 bucks, is the rumored implementation of the game Soduko. […]

  6. Well…hold your breath!

    I have definite information!!!

    The rumour about the delay due to hardware supplier problems is not true.

    There is however some kind of problem with the “shopping baskedt” feature of the iRex webshop that is causing some delay. iRex believes that they will be able to fix it fast and taht the April release is still possible.

    this information comes directly from Jörg Wrobel (www.ebookmedia.de) who seems to be well informed and was always right before. It’s rather “fresh” info too, he sent the information to me at 17:33 (german time) and said it was “10 minutes old” (I guess he just called iRex that time).

    I apologize for taking so long to bringt this info here, but I only got home at 21:30 and so had no chance to do so earlier. the person from iRex who said this was Mr. Ancin.

    Here is the entire message from Jörg (I hope he doesn’t mind if I post this…)

    >

    It’s in German, i’m too tired right now to translate, but I already pointed the relevant bit out.

  7. If I were iRex, I’d probably opt for blaming hardware suppliers than using something as imminently fixable as a electronic shopping cart. That should take hours, not weeks to fix, even if they can barely write a “Hello World” script in Perl. Are they really saying their shopping cart implementation might prevent the iLiad’s release this month, which has a week and a half left? Wow. Maybe something got lost in translation after all.

  8. No they are not saying that…they are saying it will launch this month…^^

    The way i understand this is, that they are putting the webshop together at the moment and hit a rock with the shoppin basket thingy…and as soon as that is fixed and everything else is working we’ll be able to order…it could happen tomorrow, but I don’t think they’ll launch on a friday…and I don’t know how many other webshop features are still incomplete so it could take another couple of days to finsih everythign to their satisfaction.

  9. They should have had the shop software ready long ago, IMHO. But at least they are honest about their problem, and I guess they are into lots of software development already (all the readers and firmware in general). When you develop lots of software with tight deadlines, well, shit happens…
    I wish they let us know the final price, though. They must have it decided by now, so why keep the mistery?.

  10. the final price is decided.
    I already posted it here somewhere
    I think…

    it’ll be 549 Euro excluding VAT and shipping.
    I asked them twice and that was the answer I received…semms to be final.

  12. If you’ll remember, they had trouble launching the site back in December, because the company they hired (http://www.prime-icon.com) was late. There was a delay of a couple of days. Now, if you look at the site you see that is so small that it wouldn’t take more than a few days to build it, let alone that you need that time to catch up.

    At the time I assumed that the delay was because of the delivery of the webshop–even though it wasn’t active, it could be that the site’s developers had wanted to deliver the entire site in one go.

  13. No need to apologize Little Talker…:-)

    I got rather confused about all those numbers too, especially because many of them were “official” numbers coming from iRex. They have now apparently decided to stick to one number…let’s hope it stays that way…or rather let’s hope it doesn’t and the price becomes lower…^^

  14. Branko, I’m a web developer myself. Saying you can build such a site (even if it is apparently simple) in a few days… well, I guess if you had very experienced developers and the design was already made before you started implementing it, the you could possibly do it. Of course, there is plenty of companies selling smoke around, which have semi-amateurs coding (still charged as gurus, of course).
    On the other hand, I checked the iRex site’s source code (and also the prime-icon homepage’s). It is awful. It uses obsolete techniques (abuse of tables, etc). It definitely looks these guys are more designers than they are programmers (the icons are cool, overall look is well designed IMHO, but the whole implementation is amateurish). I’d let these guys design whatever, but I’d have some other people actually do the coding…
    just my 2 cents.

  17. ah, a few days … ok, not as bad … but yeah, our sentiments concur on the view software part! —m->0-m—

    Hey, so did I miss it, or is there general availability worldwide, especially Asia side? Or are they releasing the Chinese iLiad through the Chinese partners?

    Besides the lower price (for Hanlin), the other reason I would end up with a Hanlin would be availability.

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