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Russ Wilcox Steps Down at E Ink?Smart Energy Venture Next?
IT, people, e-books Wade Roush wrote:

[Updated 9:55 a.m. and 1:35 p.m., see below] Russell Wilcox, until recently the president and CEO at Cambridge, MA-based display technology pioneer E Ink, has left the company, Xconomy has learned.

In his 13 years with E Ink, Wilcox rose from the level of vice president of business development to the leadership helm, and engineered the sale of E Ink to Taiwan-based Prime View International (PVI) for $450 million last December.

As of this morning, E Ink?s website still lists Wilcox as president. However, e-mails to Wilcox?s E Ink address elicit an auto-reply stating that ?as of February 26, 2010, Mr. Wilcox is no longer with E Ink.? Wilcox?s LinkedIn profile states that his work at E Ink ended in February.

[Update] E Ink spokesman Sri Peruvemba, reached by phone today, confirmed Wilcox?s departure. In reply to an e-mail inquiry, Wilcox told Xconomy this morning: ?Yes I left E Ink at the end of last week after completing a transition and hand-off to PVI. It was the right moment to complete a super adventure for me, and E Ink will be in good hands under PVI CEO Scott Liu.?

Wilcox was the last member of the team that founded E Ink in 1997?which also included Joe Jacobson, Jerry Rubin, Barrett Comiskey, and J.D. Albert?to retain a senior management position. It is not known whether his departure is related to the PVI sale, although it is not unusual for a startup CEO to give up his or her role within the first year after an acquisition.

Named a New England Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young in 2009, Wilcox is credited with helping to raise $150 million in venture and strategic financing for E Ink and leading the company through a much-longer-than-expected period of technology and business development. As Wilcox explained in a lengthy interview with Xconomy in February 2009, it took about six years to create the first workable versions of E Ink?s signature electrophoretic displays, then to make them durable and robust under different operation conditions, and finally to make them affordable. It wasn?t until 2004, when Sony launched its Librié e-reader in Japan, that E Ink?s technology found a major outlet.

Wilcox became president and CEO of the company that year, and under his direction the company went on to become the leading supplier of monochrome displays to e-reader manufacturers, including Sony, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Plastic Logic. In fact, the publicity around the growth of Amazon?s Kindle e-reading platform brought so much attention to E Ink that many investors and other observers felt that PVI?s initial $215 million offer for the company was too low. A group of shareholders threatened to block the sale, and the Taiwanese firm eventually made a sweetened offer that included additional PVI stock. That stock subsequently increased in value much faster than expected, bringing the total value of the acquisition to roughly $450 million.

Wilcox earned a degree in applied mathematics from Harvard College in 1989, spent four years in the management consulting business with Corporate Decisions Inc., and returned to Harvard in 1993 to pursue an MBA, which he received in 1995. There is no indication so far about Wilcox?s plans for the future, but the motto in his LinkedIn page reads ?you live to your fullest potential when you pursue a challenging dream that builds lasting value for others,? and a status update on the same page from last week states, ?wondering how much energy could be saved if all plug outlets were intelligent.?

A couple of weeks ago, Paul reported on self-e-publishing site Scribd?s plans to add direct mobile download capability.

CNet reports that Scribd has now done so: Scribd-hosted documents can be sent to any of a dozen different e-book devices (including Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Palm, EZReader, and others) with two mouse clicks.

The documents are sent as PDF files via e-mail or SMS message link. At present, only DRM-free titles are supported, but Scribd CEO Trip Adler has plans to expand to copy-protected versions in the future.

Another part of Scribd?s mobile strategy is creating device-specific Scribd reader applications, which will be released later this year. Much as Amazon does with its Kindle Reader app, these will allow readers to download Scribd documents into their device and keep track of where they stopped reading.

Copia is a new social reading platform and I had it explained to me by Anthony Antolino, their senior vice president. At the outset I must say that I was skeptical, after all another social platform? But I ended up being very impressed.

Copia is first and foremost a software experience that is designed to be interoperable and platform independent. It will run on your PC or Mac and on your smartphone or tablet. To the extent possible the UI will be the same across all platforms. Copia is a mixture of three things ? content, community and a bookstore.

Copia will be selling ebooks, in Epub with or without Adobe DRM, and PDF. The platform will also work with movies, music or any digital content. The community portion of the platform will also interact directly with Twitter and Facebook. This isn?t the easiest thing to explain if a few words, but here is the website and it will be going into beta soon.

Along with the social website, which will not require any book purchases to use, Copia will be releasing a series of e-ink readers which will have WiFi and 3G and will interact directly with the site. The user will be able to purchase books directly from the site with the readers and the readers will interact with the site in a number of ways.For example, using the site you can organize your collection of ebooks any way you want (whether the books were purchased from Copia or not) and then the reader will connect with the site and organize its books exactly the same way. Or you can do a note on the reader and then automatically have the site syndicate the note to members of your group, or just store the note for your own use. The ereader now becomes a collaborative real-time tool. A color TFT ereader will be available by Christmas.

Although not open to the public yet, Copia gave me a demo of the site?s capabilities and GUI. I have to say that I was absolutely blown away. It is one of the most clever GUI designs I have seen in years, and maybe one of the most clever designs I have ever seen, period.

Keep your eyes out for this guy. It?s going to be a big play in the future.

Great news for Blackberry owners. According to this Amazon news release the Kindle ereading software is now available on the Blackberry platform. It has the same Whispersync technology that is used in the Kindle and iPhone and so can keep your ebook in sync between your Kindle and your Blackberry device. Interestingly, the website lists the software as beta.

It can be downloaded here, and supports the Bold 9000, Bold 9700, Curve 8520, Curve 8900, Storm 9530, Storm 9550 and Tour 9630. You can download a link to install the program from the link above, or you can type amazon.com/kindlebb into your Blackberry browser.

Today, we are introducing a new addition to our Kindle family of wireless reading devices: Kindle with international wireless.

With this new Kindle, you can get your books, newspapers, and magazines delivered wirelessly while at home or abroad in over 100 countries. Whether you're in New York, Paris, Mumbai, Beijing, Tokyo, or Sydney, you can think of a book and be reading it in less than 60 seconds.

Kindle with U.S. and international wireless can be preordered today for delivery in two weeks.

Thank you for making Kindle the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items we sell on Amazon.com. It is also the most wished for and the most gifted item on our site.  Your response to Kindle has exceeded our expectations, and energizes us. We are truly grateful. 

Sincerely,The Kindle Team

Continue reading Neolux badges bring e-ink technology to trade show vendors, sweaty rock dudes

Filed under: Displays

Neolux badges bring e-ink technology to trade show vendors, sweaty rock dudes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.