I've been following Plastic Logic for quite a long time and can't wait to get my hands on their flexible E Ink displays. The company got a shot in the arm this week when venture capitalists provided another $100 million to help the company produce their products in house. Originally, the company was planning to sell licenses to use their technology, but with this massive infusion of cash, the plan has become one of manufacturing. The company will produce the basic screens and provide them to OEMs as well as sell their own branded products. CNET has a few photos of the newest prototypes, but we won't be seeing any products in stores until at least 2009.

I have to soapbox a bit to say that I'm very excited about this technology. Laptop screens that roll up are all well and good, but I'm really excited to see portable reader prototypes. I love getting books in PDF format, but reading on my laptop and PDA is awkward. Sony's Reader was a dissapointment in execution, and $350 is too much money for a single purpose device. A neat-o piece of technology like these Plastic Logic prototypes should be all that's needed to convince textbook publishers to offer digital copies; I can't count the number of times I wanted to CTRL-F my Price Theory book last year.