It’s a good time to be alive if you’re a tree. Digitally delivered news is gaining momentum and as we turn the corner to 2009 it’s gotten a rocket boost from the Dutch firm iRex Technologies, which announced it has made a deal with NewspaperDirect to deliver 800 newspapers on iRex’s Digital Reader 1000. As an added Christmas gift you’ll get one month’s subscription free if you’re an existing or new customer from the launch date of Thursday 11th December 2008, according to Loeki van der Lee, Office Manager for the iRex. Ms. van der Lee points out that it’s also a Christmas present for trees:

“With the world consuming over 300 million tonnes of paper annually, the potential implications of receiving and reading newspaper electronically are huge, but until now devices such as the Amazon Kindle have only offered around 30 titles and the restrictions of their small screen size have caused headaches for publishers wishing to replicate the newspaper experience for the digital consumer. The iRex DR1000 developed with the business market in mind offers the world’s largest display allowing full page pdf files and now e‐newspapers to retain their original look and feel and layout thereby offering the reader an unparalleled digital reading experience.”

The iRex/NewspaperDirect partnership will undoubtedly cause some headaches for Amazon.com, too. A visit to Amazon’s Kindle newspaper web page shows 28 listings. The 800 titles to be carried on the iRex 1000, dubbed “Kindle Killer” by some, will obviously dwarf Kindle’s offering. Of course, many of them are foreign language papers like Le Figaro and Die Welt. But 800 is 800 and that’s good news for the environment. According to one stat it takes 12 mature trees to make one tonne of newsprint, which makes 14,000 copies of your daily tabloid. A “tonne” is a little over a US “ton” of 2000 pounds.

Now, do a tree a favor: forward this blog, but don’t print it out.

RC