The Consumer Electronic Show was last week while I was laid up. I missed out on most of the coverage, but one thing I did notice was that the first color ebook readers are shipping in Japan (at $1k +) and that Qualcomm announced a promising new tech for color ebooks that’s superior to the other solutions I’m aware of. They’re promising products this year using this tech at reasonable prices. We’ll see. Anyway the product is called Mirasol and truth be told I don’t quite get how this works, but the gist of it is there are two plates, one suspended above the other in a magnetic field, and the proximity of the two plates to each other controls the color of the refracted light. Or..something. Anyway you can read more about it here on betanews.com, plus check out a video of the tech in action over on engadget.

I’m pretty interested in this stuff. I’d really love an ebook, but not until they’re in full color. Those are definitely coming, and it’s not guaranteed that this Mirasol tech is what will be in the devices we buy, but in terms of price/performance/battery life, this is the most promising development I’ve seen.

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