As vice president of CNI Ventures, I was charged with looking for and understanding new technologies that might impact the newspaper industry and, more important, Central Newspapers, Inc. I gave a presentation to the Interactive Newspaper Conference in early 2000 that explored a few of these new tools, including:

• Brightstreet, a coupon site
• NexTag, a shopping comparison site
• Everstream, an audio streaming service
• Kabango, an Internet radio
• Palm Pics, a device from Kodak to allow the Palm Pilot to take pictures
• Webphones, a Nokia device [way before the iPhone]
• E-Ink, electronic ‘ink’ display [think Kindle, which used that technology]

Of all of the technologies discussed, E-Ink has proven the most successful.