I wanted to take a minute to remind folks that the Battery Replacement Program will expire on Thursday, November 1.

This means that all customers who want to participate in the program must submit their requests on or before 11:59pm Central European Time on Thursday, November 1.

As a reminder, the link for the Battery Replacement Program is:

http://www.irextechnologies.com/support/battery_replacement

The Dutch bookstore chain, Selexyz will start with the sales of e-books and the iLiad from November onward. The iLiad will be on display and for sale at the Selexyz bookstores in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. As a promotion the first iLiads will be provided with an e-book edition of Max Westermans new book ‘In alle staten‘.

On Selexyz.nl are currently more than 100 free e-books available for download, in near future this will be extended with the commercial titles also available at the stores.

**Update**

The Dutch NOS Journal made a short report last night on the iLiad. You can view it here (skip to 06:38).

Earlier this week a nice article about the future of e-books appeared in The Independent: The end of the page-turner

In just a few short years, MP3 downloads and the iPod changed the face of the music industry. CDs are going the way of the dodo, and high-street music stores fear for the future. Now there’s a revolution on the horizon; this time in the realm of books.

Read more …

It still remains to be seen how and if the printed industry will follow the same path as the music industry but we can’t deny the fact that there has been a growing interest in e-books over the last year. More important is the noticeable positive attitude toward e-books and for more and more people the future of digital reading seems to be a bright one and I count myself as one of those.

What do you think? Do you think print is dead?

This year iRex Technologies will be attending the BrightLive event held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The event is organized by the Dutch innovative lifestyle magazine: Bright and will be host to many cool innovative products. We look forward to meet you there and in case you can’t make it, make sure to check out the i-to-i blog as I’ll be covering the highlights here.

**update** BrightLive has been delayed until 4 & 5 April.

Yesterday was the first day on the Frankfurt Book Fair and there was quite some interest in digital reading by the media this year. We even made it into the ZDF 19.00 Heute. You can watch the fragment here.

Last month iRex Technologies attended the IFA, one of the world’s largest consumer electronic trade show, held in Berlin, Germany. It already became a little bit of a tradition over the last several years that the IFA is promoted by Miss IFA, a model with very red hair.

This year was no different and we have a few shots of her showing off the iLiad. You can view them here and here.

The Frankfurt Book Fair will take place from 10 to 14 October this year and it is considered to be the meeting place for everybody who is anybody in the industry and will be host to authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, art dealers, illustrators, agents, journalists and of course readers.

iRex Technologies will be attending the fair and you can find us at the digital market place in Hall 4.2 Stand J 442. I will also be present at the fair and if you are interested to have a chat with us or have a look at the iLiad and hear about latest developments than we are more than happy to welcome you there.

For those not coming to the fair, I will cover the highlights of the fair here on the i-to-i blog. One of the things I am certainly gonna check out is a presentation from Amazon: The Future of Books: digital text at Amazon. During which Genevieve Kunst, the Head of Business development for Digital Media will introduce Amazon’s current digital offerings and latest developments.

With the recent events that seem to indicate that the launch of the Kindle is imminent, will this be the event where they will unveil the Kindle?

On the 2nd of March we made an announcement on our forum to address the concerns that were voiced by the community in regard to expectations set on battery life and the state of the battery.

In this announcement we made a commitment to all the existing iLiad owners that we would offer them a free battery replacement that would extend the battery life up to 15 hours of battery life*.

At the same time we have corrected the technical specification of the iLiad in our communication and documentation to reflect the existing state of the battery life in order to avoid any further misinterpretation in regard to the expectations of the battery life.

To address the different requests we received over the coming months and weeks in respect to this topic we have decided to offer 3 comprehensive options:

Battery Replacement

All customers that purchased their iLiad prior to the 15th of March are eligible for an optional free battery replacement. We have decided to extend to sign up period until the 1st of November. So customers that have missed this offer previously can still sign up. To sign up go here. Those who signed up earlier do not need to sign up again.

Battery Upgrade

All customers that purchased their iLiad after the 15th of March can still request a battery upgrade at the iRex Service Center but at a cost (€75 Euro). iRex Technologies will make sure your old battery is disposed off in an environmentally-friendly manner.

Upgrade Option

All customers that sign(ed) up for the Battery Replacement or Battery Upgrade will be presented with an additional option to upgrade the casing of their iLiad with the iLiad 2nd edition casing for an additional cost of €50 Euro or $70 USD.

The iLiad 2nd edition casing features a fully redesigned backside that looks more elegant and also provides more stability. On the inside the new casing offers better support to the display and electronics.

This Upgrade Option is a temporary promotion and available until the 1st of November.

So, how to proceed?

If you haven’t signed up yet make sure you do so here before the 1st of November. If you did sign up earlier, you will receive an e-mail in the coming days with the option to also upgrade the casing of your iLiad with the second edition casing.

Please do note that it can take 4 to 5 weeks to process your request. Due to the high demand of the iLiad 2nd edition we are currently suffering a shortage of the new battery at our service centers. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

For more information on the battery and battery life go here and if you have any further questions or remarks do let us know.