While there are quite a few e-readers on the market right now, printed books still have a totally different “feel” to them. Enter the “Paranga”, a device that’s supposed to add tactile feedback to the experience when reading e-books.
To be more concrete, the Paranga simulates the sensation of turning pages or skipping ahead when reading printed books by rotating a roller with your fingers.
I am not sure if this a good or bad idea, but the Paranga, in its current form, looks super-hacky and needs some work. Its makers, a group of students at Osaka University, want to boost the accuracy of their device and also think of an add-on solution to existing e-reading devices, i.e the iPad.
Here’s a video (in English, provided by Diginfonews in Tokyo):
This video shows an earlier version of the Paranga (from last year):
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