Hot wired: Portable screens are on a roll

PHILIPS READIUS

Let's talk about the future of laptops for a moment.

Laptops, or "notebooks" if you want to get all 1996 on us, haven't changed much since they first appeared. The screen lifts up off the keyboard, and you know the rest. So far, so blah. Not for much longer though.

For years Toshiba has been discussing the possibility of a screen that rolls up, reducing laptop weight and giving users a roller-blind capability.

Well it's finally arrived, only it's not from Toshiba, it's from those clever folk at Philips, which will launch the "roller display" this week at a German technology show. The Readius, from Philips' Polymer Vision division isn't much to look at, but it does represent the first step towards commercialisation and a new world of portable devices. The Readius has a 5in (12.7cm) greyscale screen and can't change its images very quickly but that's okay. The future offers far more.

Cellphones and MP3 music players could have screens that slide from the side, making them smaller and less bulky. Laptops could halve in size as manufacturers fold the unit in half across the keyboard instead of adding a lid. Satellite navigation units, game devices, watches, literally anything that has a screen today could be changed by this kind of development.

Best of all the material is flexible, so Philips is thinking of electronic paper that could mean you need to buy only one more book and it will be your daily paper, a blockbuster paperback, a text book, your policies and procedures manual - you name it.

Price: to be announced

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APPLE AND MOTOROLA'S IPOD PHONE

By the time you read this, Apple should have launched its iPod-based cellphone with Motorola.

Apple turned the entire music industry on its head with the iPod and the iTunes Music Stores. Customers could buy legitimate digital music at a reasonable price and download it to the 21st century's equivalent of the walkman.

There was only one problem: customers had to have a computer, Apple or Microsoft, to download the music to. Without a computer, the iPod sat there like an expensive paperweight.

Not any longer. The merger of two of the biggest technological revolutions to hit the world since the PC means customers no longer need that big box in the corner to get to the music.

With cellphone-capable iPods, customers can buy music directly on the iPod. They can transfer it later to their computer if they want, but it's there on the device ready to use immediately.

Music marketing companies will go berserk. Suddenly they'll be able to sell songs directly to the consumer at concerts, or to people listening to radio stations ("To buy this song send a text message to ... ") without having to wait for them even to get home.

The iPod phone is likely to have far less memory capacity than the full-size iPods - only 500MB instead of gigabytes of storage - but being able to carry more than 100 songs on your cellphone is just plain cool. Of course, all this could just be an Apple rumour, in which case you'll have to wait a little longer for the Next Big Thing.

Price: to be announced