A bit provocative, this article in PC World evokes many of the aspects that are central to the Evolution of Documents – and the disappearance of Print Media.

Encyclopedia Britannica is officially going out of the print business, yet another sign of the “Less Paper Office“. All this for very good reasons, and is good for the environment, etc… But the author points two good reasons why this might not be such a good trend.

The first point is around electronic document permanence, which is central to this blog, and I feel is still an open question – will my digital documents still be readable 5, 10 or 20 years from now? What about the old iomega zip or floppies that I don’t have a drive for anymore? Even if I still had a drive and a device driver, would the media still be readable? And if then, could I still have an application that can open those old propietary formats? But, worst of all – how can I find the document that I am looking for on one of these media?

But the second point is even more important, and although I have touched upon at times, is equally important: It has to do with “trust” in digital document content.

Paper documents (especially books), freeze facts, ideas, concepts, ideas at a given point in time, and, as such, represent our history. That allows us to learn, retrospect, avoid repeating mistakes, improve. Document 2.0  is social and collaborative, and “evergreen”. This is all great, but has risks: anyone can rewrite or edit facts, and that “snapshot” at a given point in time is usually lost.

But the truth of the matter is, paper in that historical role has mostly disappeared a long time ago: In the late 90s, Xerox researchers had observed that ““we are not headed towards offices that use less paper but rather towards offices that keep less paper”.

So we need to evolve technology in the hope that the digital media can be more long lasting. We now have open XML formats (OOXML, ODF) or PDF/A that should be more better as they are standards (although often owned and sustained by major corporations). Plus, cloud storage promises that this information can be readily available, indexed that  it remains available – but also accessible years from now.

And it’s true that for a few documents – photos, kid’s drawings, etc… nothing will replace paper.

Very interesting study from AIIM, called “The Paper Free Office – dream or reality?”, contradicting many of the beliefs we have around PDF and other electronic document formats killing the paper document.

As you know, one of my big beliefs is the Less Paper Office – we are thriving to reduce paper for many good reasons, but it is not so easy, and paper will continue to be used for many years to come. This report confirms this belief with many key points.

One of the key points is this study, based on a survey conducted to 395 AIIM, shows that the paper reduction induced by PDF usage in e-Invoicing is very minimal, if not a total illusion. Indeed, 77% of electronic invoices received… are re-printed right away, sometimes more than once (10%). And in 16% of cases, those are re-scanned as PDFs again… and potentially re-printed by others down in the business process. Only 23% of the respondents process e-invoices electronically in their capture system.

This study, which can be downloaded from the AIIM web site, lists a number of other very interesting key points. Although paper usage is decreasing,

• 45% of the documents that are scanned are 100% digital – coming straight from the printer, no human alteration – so could be processed fully electronically.
• An electronic-only filing policy would halve the storage space needed for paper in 5 years, reducing office costs by 8%.

This report  also contains many key facts about the Digital Mailroom:

• 41% of respondents are using some form of digital mailroom. 13% of respondents (21% in Europe) are planning to outsource this mailroom activity to specialists like Xerox Services.
• On average, scanning and capture is considered to improve response time by a factor 6x.
• Their Digital Mailroom has paid back over a period of 12 months or less for 42% of the respondents, 18 months for 57%.
• Mobile capture is increasingly used – 38% of respondents have equipped their employees with portable devices to capture paper documents.

Anyway, a very worthwhile read.

CES is usually a great festival for new technologies. But ePaper was not one of these technologies, unfortunately.

There has been very few announcements around eReaders… An ePaper printer from Gembird (print directly to your e-Reader), the Cybook Odyssey from Bookeen, with very high customizability, high speed screen refresh which allows some (very basic…) animation – see video below:

That is quite surprising, especially when e-Readers (but also tablet) sales have soared over the holiday period. A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, showed that the percentage of adults who owned tablet computers increased to 19 percent in early January from 10 percent in November through mid-December. The survey found the same percentage increase in the number of adults who owned e-readers.

Both devices are most popular with high-income families, but e-Readers are more popular with women. More detailed results can be found here (text in french, but results in english).

So are ePaper eReaders on a temporary pause, or will they be totally replaced by tablets and more interactive devices? My guess would be that black and white eReaders are going to disappear, but “hybrid” devices which provide both the interactivity and color of tablets and the reading comfort and power consumption of eReaders with find their spot.

Devices like the Bambook for the chinese market or its sibling Kyobo for the Korean market are the first examples of this new breed. Both are based on the Mirasol color ePaper – as you’ll see from the video below, the device looks more like a tablet than an eReader, capable of reading videos, showing animations, etc…  - except that it boasts great readability in direct sunlight and extra low power when in bistable mode (e.g. stable image, no animation).

Interesting article on how Xerox PARC is now successful at making money from innovation, e.g. through small but profitable partnerships such as the one with ThinFilm Electronics.

In the past, PARC had been famous for not being able to capitalize on great innovation. After going through various phases, it adopted Open Innovation in the 2000′s. But after a few years, PARC better understood how to make money – establishing partnerships to make innovation work – and this model is now successful, as it generated over $60 million in 2010. PARC is also filing over 150 patents per year.

A technology I’ve been envisioning as a potential game changer for the Future of Documents is just around the corner. Printed Electronics, ie being able to print circuitry onto paper or other physical devices, is not that far away. Once this is feasible, this will allow many objects – in particular documents – to remain fully traceable or even active, even throughout their ‘physical’ life.

So far, passive antennas or simple processors could be printed, but researchers at PARC, a Xerox Company and the Norwegian company Thinfilm Electronics have developed printed electronic which combine transistors with memory. These low-cost devices can read, write, or even perform some (simple) processing.

The current price of 5 cent for the 20-bit memory make it a pretty expensive storage option, but the day when you’ll be able to print a paper document with a small processor on it, e.g. to turn it into an “active” evergreen document, might not be as far as we think.

Pretty cool technology being developed by Fujitsu for augmented reality. Just a concept at this point, but the IRIS looks very promising – using a transparent OLED screen, a camera and a scanbar, this concept can be used for augmented reality – either for camera views (but then how are you sure about the user’s alignment?) or for overlaying information over traditional books, such as translation in the mock-up video.

Could be an interesting mix between the traditional paper book and e-Readers?

Anyway, probably not any close to being a product, but looks pretty cool!

Interest post from my colleague – and frequent flyer – Mark Boyt. He posted on his personal experience with e-ticketing. Sure, there are great apps out there, but there’s nothing like paper, at the end of the day, to feel more secure when comes the time of boarding.

That’s the topic of my last e-Newsletter – although documents can be readily accessed via mobile devices, users are still grappling with issues related to readability, navigation, formats, security and lack of editing/manipulation capabilities. Mobile devices are certainly going to reduce paper consumption, but there are still times when you feel better having a paper document in hand. The question therefore becomes – how do I get that paper printout at the point of need, from my mobile device, and make the best of both worlds?

If you have not received that e-newsletter, I will be trying to post it here shortly. To subscribe to my e-Newsletter, please register here.