Intuitive navigation allows to "turn" pages as easily as in a print book, and allows to sort out and search documents as easily as with a tab file folder, and choose one’s own preferences for margins, paragraphs, font selection and character size. There are no buttons, only a round trackball adorned with the world map in black and white. The trackball can be replaced with a long and narrow tactile pad on either side of the frame.
The flash memory allows the downloading of thousands of hypertext pages, either previously linked before download or linked during the download. @folio provides an instant automatic reformatting of documents, for them to fit the size of the screen. For "text" files, no software is necessary. For "image" files, Pierre conceived a reformatting software called Mot@Mot (Word@Word in French) which could be used on any other device. This software received much attention from the French National Library (BNF: Bibliothèque Nationale de France), especially for its old books (published before 1812) and illustrated manuscripts.
An international patent was filed in April 2001. The French startup iCodex was created in July 2002 to develop and promote the @folio project.
To this day, @folio has stayed a prototype, because of lack of funding and because of the language barrier, with only two articles in English in 2007 — one in Project Gutenberg News and one in TeleRead about Pierre Schweitzer’s dream — for dozens of articles in French.
Even the best researchers can’t do much with no support, no funding, and no interpreter (from French to English) to help them get through the language barrier.
1997 > MULTIMEDIA CONVERGENCE
[Summary] Previously distinct information-based industries, such as printing, publishing, graphic design, media, sound recording and film making, were converging into one industry, with information as a common product. This trend was named "multimedia convergence", with a massive loss of jobs, and a serious enough issue to be tackled by the ILO (International Labor Organization). The first ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence was held in January 1997 at the ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, with employers, unionists and government representatives from all over the world. Some participants, mostly employers, demonstrated that the information society was generating or would generate jobs. Other participants, mostly unionists, demonstrated there was a rise in unemployment worldwide, that should be addressed right away through investment, innovation, vocational training, computer literacy, retraining and fair labor rights, including for teleworkers.
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Previously distinct information-based industries, such as printing, publishing, graphic design, media, sound recording and film making, were converging into one industry, with information as a common product.
This trend was named multimedia convergence, with a massive loss of jobs, and a serious enough issue to be tackled by the International Labor Organization (ILO).