Full Color Electronic Paper a Reality 202
alumniac.com writes "Good riddance to backlighting, full color electronic paper is set to take the market by storm. On another note, this will add a lot more zing to my paper airplanes." This is a little light on the technical details but it's an interesting read, especially because this isn't as far away from hitting the market as a lot of the stuff we see around here.
Re:More vapor-hype? (Score:2)
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
Formatting (Score:1)
--
I noticed
Re:No doubt, the EU will be wondering... (Score:1)
EBooks BAD! (Score:2)
No more secondhand book shops, no more giving that book to a friend when you're done with it, no more libraries. You won't buy books anymore -- you'll buy licenses to read them.
--
Um, this wasn't "Redundant" (Score:1)
Cuz it is. =-)
".sig,
Re:Only eight colors? (Score:1)
Re:Only eight colors? (Score:1)
Re:Only eight colors? (Score:1)
Re:Colorspace? (Score:1)
The reason you have yellow paint is because it is impractical to make a fine mesh of red and green paint spots every time you want yellow. But it is possible and it is additive. There's no way light from a red spot will subtract light from a separate green spot. But when you mix the two, then of course the subtraction happens.
Re:Only eight colors? (Score:1)
A very small electric field will do very little to separate them (they attract each other too strongly). A very large field will separate them totally (their mutual attraction isn't good enough to overcome it). An intermediately strong field will partially separate them. Clear?
Re:Colorspace? (Score:3)
Think of it this way: if you mix green and red paint, you'll get an ugly mess. But if you make a fine array of alternating green paint spots and red spots, you'll actually end up with something like yellow. Similarly, mixing cyan and yellow paint make green, but an alternating array of those colours will make something greyish (maybe tinged with blue or yellow, but not green).
It seems to me that the surface would need to be highly reflecting, indeed, to reproduce white; but RGB the system is, not CMYK.
Re:Colorspace? (Score:3)
When you shine light through a red filter, it absorbs everything except red.
When you shine light through a green filter, it absorbs everything except green.
If you put the filters on top of each other, it absorbs everything (or would if the filters were perfect). This is subtractive.
Similarly, if you mix red paint and green paint, the result will absorb both red and green. But if you have separated dots of both, it will emit both red and green. It's additive. There's no way a red dot can subtract light from a spatially separated green dot.
Try thinking about the physics, rather than the terminology. Whether the source of light is in front or behind is irrelevant, what matters is only what's reaching your eyes. (Incidentally, this whole RGB stuff is an approximation made possible by biology, and not perfect: eg, the blue green line of mercury light can't be reproduced by RGB.)
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
Re:My dream (Score:1)
Re:On nano-tech (Score:1)
Ohhh man.. (Score:1)
Etch-a-Sketch? Not if it holds the charge. (Score:2)
I wonder how long it holds the charge for, though?
Crumpling the paper would probably ruin it along the creases. And, it would be a whole lot more expensive than a sheet of paper, too.
Jon Acheson
Looks like it's maybe half a millimeter thick. (Score:2)
Jon Acheson
80 dpi is good enough for banners & movie posters (Score:2)
You could probably put solar cells on the top of the frame and a pager network download mechanism inside and run it without any outside connection, especially if it only has to update every 10 minutes or so.
Jon Acheson
OK: you're in design, not just production. (Score:2)
The types of jobs I see being threatened by working high-res e-paper are things like "we're the marketing staff of XYZ Corp, and we need light box transparancies made up for a convention at the very last minute, 'cause we're just not very organized." A printer nowadays makes thousands off of chumps like that, albiet at the cost of increased job pressure. With e-paper, the companies will be able to DIY at the last minute and actually save money.
Jon Acheson
About that "no need for a printer"... (Score:3)
If your dream comes true, it will wreak havoc on the printing industry, because users will be able to DIY a lot more. There will still be a need for print, but there will certainly be less need, and some types of jobs will completely go away.
Of course, you could get into the digital paper support industry...
Re:Yeah, a little light. (Score:2)
Because a pixel on your monitor can represent millions of gradations of color, whereas a dot on your LJIII can only be one of four colors. Gradations of color provide perceived resolution too.
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
Re:No doubt, the EU will be wondering... (Score:2)
I doubt it would react to a magnetic field, but it would react strongly to an electric field. Statics would be a problem.
more like a thin sheet of plastic (Score:2)
and MIT. Spin-off companies have demoed at
conventions. The display is not really paper,
but plastic about as thin as those "for sale"
signs you can buy at a hardware store. They
basically can go anywhere you'd put a thin
plastic sheet, so dynamic store window and real
bulletin board displays are an obvious use.
Any you could have notebbook/tablet/ebook portable
computers less than a millimeter thick too.
Doesn't hold up as well as paper: (Score:3)
Not nearly as well, by the sound of it.
So at present, the real value to this stuff is that it doesn't have to be backlit (and, I suspect, uses less power as a result), not that you can make paper airplanes out of it, as alumnniac writes.
Re:Yeah, a little light. (Score:2)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Yeah, a little light. (Score:2)
Sorry to reply to myself, but I just had to say that.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
On nano-tech (Score:2)
My favorite answer is the develop something analogous to cholrophyl that works on a certain (selected) wavelength of radio. Then everything is tuned so that the radio-noise that it emits is on that frequency (possibly in that set of frequencies). This would give a limited amount of free energy for nano-tech, but when you wanted them to get busy, you would need to fire up a transmitter and beam it onto the selected area. (Shouldn't need to be a very energetic beam, but it would be needed.)
Actually, this would minimize some of the potential dangers of nanotech, also. Many of the nightmares are based on chemically powered mites. Some of them on cholorophyll. Radio wave eaters have an obvious (if dismal) method of control. (And then because you nanos were designed for use in the FCC controlled air-space, you won't be able to use them in the EUC
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Colorspace? (Score:2)
Ahead of her time... (Score:2)
The next thing you'll have is screen friendly erasers.
Re:How Sturdy is it (Score:2)
So one would seem to believe that you can produce massive displays with this. What it would cost... That's probably another story.
Re:Colorspace? (Score:2)
I too think that using different colored dyes in the capsules would be an ideal solution. Probally make for brighter colors, and would definatly present the ability to use the CYMK color model.
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Yeah, a little light. (Score:4)
Does anyone have any more information? Like refresh rate. How long does it take to turn one "page" into another?
I was impressed with the 300 dpi. But for true printed work, that is a little low, I have a 1200 color laser at my house now. But for a display that would be nice. Until I saw at the end, that in color because of the filters you are limited to 80 dpi.
Oh well.
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Re:Colorspace? (Score:5)
But from how it sounds, the light passes through a filter, and is either reflected by capsule behind it, if it is white, or the light is absorbed if the capsule is black.
If the capsule is white, the light is reflected back up through the filter. By grouping the additive primaries together (RGB) you then pick what combined wave lenghts are coming back to the eyes.
So it is still pretty much color LCD, with a reflective background, but now instead of making the pixels opaque to be black, you just turn off the reflection behind a the pixel.
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Re:My dream (Score:2)
Potential pr0n problems (Score:5)
Whoa, not good. That means I can't just hit the power switch and pretend I was done for the evening when the girlfriend walks in. Might have to actually run another application and switch over to it. Not good.
On the other hand, this could mean a self-updating Hustler magazine. Hmmm. You could pull out that ten-year-old magazine and see what the chick looks like these days - see what all those years of tanning beds got her. Heh.
And just when you thought ... (Score:2)
Bob.
Get your stocks now! (Score:3)
Anyone tried to read with a flashlight in the mouth or balancing it on the ear to read in a car? Or maybe holding it with one hand while struggling to turn the pages without dropping the book or the flashlight?
I wonder if how long it will take before it becomes a feature of portables that they have a build in telescope arm with a halogen light on the end. And for the first half year of selling these babies the good deals will include a MagLight and an extra set of AA's.
Oh well. Not all steps forward can truly be all forward.
Re:Colorspace? (Score:2)
So how can a mixture of red and blue dots reflect yellow light, whatever the resolution? The blue dot is actually absorbing yellow light! The red dot is reflecting yellow, because red is a mixture of magenta and yellow.
I will tell you, it doesn't, and two computer graphics courses at university and normal art qualifications tell me this. Yet you got +3 Insightful. Gah.
Have you heard of primary colours? Yellow, Cyan and Magenta? These colours are subtractive.
What you are saying is correct with additive colours - lights in other words. Put a red light and a green light close enough together, and it will appear yellow.
Re:How Sturdy is it (Score:3)
The article did mention the trick that makes this work: suspend a tiny white bead in what amounts to black "ink", electrodes all through the paper will create a charge that will either make the bead come to the surface (white pixel) or push it down into the soup (black pixel). Lots of beads means lots of resolution.
I imagine that crumpling the paper would not only destroy the electrodes but give your hands an annoying ink stain.
My question - how well does the bead stick in it's programmed posistion? If I shake this like an Etch-a-Sketch, does the image fade?
GREAT (Score:5)
This will rock!!
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microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
We are at war with Eurasia.
--
Squeezably? (Score:5)
Charmin [charmin.com]
Combine it with Playboy [playboy.com] and you have a whole new protocol: PTP (Porn via TP)
HONEY?! What the *hell* were you looking at???
Along that line.... (Score:2)
I could also see companies using this for protected and trade secret documents. If you could add a small gps, you could even make it erase itself if it was ever removed from the building.
Definately some interesting and scary potentionals.
Re:Yeah, a little light. (Score:2)
When I saw your post my bullshit detector went off. "No way that a monitor is only 72dpi. My old HP LJIII was 300dpi and it was good, but not great (like the 1200dpi ones today) a monitor looks almost as good.
So, I whipped out my mad trig skills.
17in, 1024x768 ~= 75.29dpi.
Gotta' get that bullshit detector fixed.
Anyway, why is it that my monitor (20in at 1024x768, so the dpi is less than 75) looks almost as good as that old LJIII output?
-Peter
Re:DPI thinko? (Score:2)
So how does tripling the dot-count to achieve colour reduce the dpi by about a factor of 3? Shouldn't that be a factor of sqrt(3)?
The article probably just glossed over it. The pixels are 300x300/sqin, but the colored filter overlay can be 300x80/sqin. You'd think 300x100, but the filter reduces the resolution further to keep the colors separate, I would guess. Maybe they just enforce 80x80sqin for square pixel mapping.
I'm also not sure which way you'd cut the resolution, horizontal or vertical. Most LCDs pack the filter horizontally (columns of RGB), but they stick to squarish pixels. This would be an application for that Microsoft color-edge mapping algorithm that takes the hue-vs-luminance (or here, hue-vs-value since it's subtractive) tradeoff into account.
ID cards... (Score:3)
Imagine showing your id to buy beer, it being run thru like a credit card, and the card automatically updating its 'display' face to the cashier showing that indeed you who you say you are, and that you are old enough to buy beer. Hmm.
Re:Yeah, a little light. (Score:2)
Better answer: most printers never truly approach their physical resolution in terms of actual accuracy, just like all those "32 bit" soundcards that only have about 12 significant bits of audio. I think laser are generally much better because of the toner bonding process, rather than ink jets which bleed even on high quality paper.
I think the other factor is a psycological one; since the monitor looks good at 12-18" we never go in and peer at it 2" away, whereas we are often not so kind to printed paper or photos. Since they both look "good" we assume they are the same, even though different benchmarks are being applied.
Re:Links (Score:2)
Personally, I'd like a bit more resolution, at least for reading. But maybe they'll make b/w versions for that?
It would sure be nicer than reading on my ipaq.
Oh, sure (Score:3)
No more Silly Putty... (Score:4)
Many of these troubled children will go on to live lives in a state of confusion and will take careers as politicians.
Can they get a decent white? (Score:2)
Re:Questions I Have (Score:2)
It did suffer from some image ghosting which meant that every 4 images are so it had to go to all blue and then all white to get rid of this problem. This took about 1 sec which made me believe that the max update was about 2Hz. Not really suitable for connecting to your laptop but then this was over a year ago and they may have been able to improve on this since then.
The E-ink site is at www.eink.com [eink.com] but I guess you guessed that.
Re:Colorspace? (Score:3)
Why do people think eInk leads to books? (Score:2)
Why on earth would I want a 300 page novel where one page could contain the whole book. I supposed that I can imagine a magazine where pages contain video, not just words and photos but I already have a couple of versions of that - my computer and my television. The TV picture is still a bit better but the laptop with wireless modem is closer to truly asynchronous.
I didn't see anything about size restrictions. I could see using this to wallpaper my room -- a 10 square meter screen might come close to what I want, once they get the resolution up there.
What are the real applications? Live video display on id- and credit-cards? Blueprints that can display and calculate? Smart x-rays (once resolution jumps 3 orders of magnitude or more)?
Almost anything makes sense except books!
Money (Score:2)
Re:even better (Score:3)
Imagine the metaphysical and psychological ramiffications on the above metioned idea...
even better (Score:4)
Customisable, full-colour Magic 8-Ball! (Score:3)
The Magic 8-Ball technology is similar to "electronic paper" - the ball is filled with an oily blue/black fluid, and contains a plastic icosahedron (polyhedron with 20 triangular sides.) The message appears when the plastic icosahedron floats to the top and a side (usually) presses against the "window" to reveal the message.
In "electronic paper", an electric charge controls the display instead of gravity; I suspect gravity may cause the image to fade over time as it pulls the microcapsules back to the inky depths.
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
Re:Colorspace? (Score:2)
However, that's not how you made the decision, it's much more simple: is the base color black or white? In this instance, it's black, and then bits of white are activated and then filtered, much like a CRT, which is RGB, and thus, additive. Paper defaults to white, where bits of color are added to bring it closer to black, hence subtractive. So this is additive technology and thus, appropriately RGB. Hence them using it.
Re:How Sturdy is it (Score:3)
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
John
Re:Potential pr0n problems (Score:2)
That is an interesting point, though. I got lazy and didn't notice what the refresh rate was, unfortunately, but it's pretty interesting anyway.
The big question: will it replace Dead Trees? I don't really think so -- I suspect it will always be a bit too expensive for most purposes, but the idea of making recyclable newsprint out of it isn't such a bad one. (Though the day they start printing newspapers on this stuff is the day I start buying shitloads of Xerox stock...)
/Brian
Re:So we know the resolution, but what is the dept (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
I'll give it 15 years before corporate sponsored 'wildlife' starts showing up -- and they'll be tasty too! :)
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
Xerox's system is perhaps better/cheaper (Score:2)
That way it separates the paper from the drive circuitry. And the drive circuitry is expensive in fact because it needs relatively high voltages, and you need a lot of hardware around the edges of the paper to get all those pixels to do the right things.
Putting the drive circuitry inside a laser printer box means that the paper moves past it and hence the paper is much cheaper. However color is probably harder that way. Still, how often do you NEED color?
Where I work, we have a lot of B&W printouts of things that aren't needed to be kept for long; and the reusable paper would be ideal in that case.
Enable Rambling Mode! (Score:2)
My clients will still need me, yes. The web was supposed to make them stop using paper, they were supposed to start self-designing/self-publishing everything electronically with fabulously easy desktop tools -- and if they didn't want to self-design, they could always hire one of those $10/page "designers" that proliferated in the 90's.
Current trends are not in the hacks' favor. Rather it would seem that people (business-people) recognize the need for well-trained (and well-paid) communications professionals (like me). The curve seems to peak early ("Hey, if I can use a mouse, I must know what I'm doing!"), but it doesn't last at that level for long. Those that don't recognize the difference between professional work and $10 work deserve what they get.
Not to mention the fact that half my job entails explaining options... I know those options, because I'm an expert -- the client doesn't know what they can do, or how to accomplish it. I consult to their ignorance, and there will always be ignorance.
So I'm not worried about my own job security, and since we're in my dreamland, people will come to treasure real ink and paper, they'll clamor for it, and compensate the specialists accordingly.
As for the printing industry...
When I said "printer" I really meant the office machine, not the printshop, which might be your reading here. The death of the printshop is a long way off... an evolutionary time scale, rather than a revolutionary one.
I can make very good proofs in my home studio right now for very little money -- and so can my clients, if they choose to not be clients -- but the quality is nothing compared to what my printshop can output, and of course in terms of mass quantity there's no way client or I can take care of production ourselves. So... In the mystical and hazy future (where my cheap and ubiquitous reflective displays live) issues of quality and quantity may be solved for the DIYers, but at that point I doubt it will be wreaking any havoc on an industry that won't exist in today's form anymore, and will have plenty of time to adapt, to adjust the target of their manufacture (at which the designer can always aim), or to phase themselves out of our ability to mourn their loss, like a blacksmith or something.
My dream (Score:5)
I could then unplug that display, slip it into an envelope, overnight it to a client and plug in a new display, because they were so cheap and ubiquitous (I'd buy 500 "sheets" at a time at the local office supply superstore).
No need for a printer. No need for an inaccurate CRT to calibrate. No need to worry that the color on-screen and on-proof wouldn't match, because they'd use the same model, and our eyes would see them the same.
It sounds like this "electronic paper" is nothing even remotely like my dream (low resolution, an RGB color model, prolly expensive...). And it doesn't address the fact that ink is tactile and three-dimensional, or that it reacts differently to different surfaces.
What I need is a surface that could rearrange itself molecule-by-molecule to create something indistinguishable from printed output, but that's probably not going to happen anytime soon.
Links (Score:5)
Wallpaper? (Score:3)
--// Hartsock
Only eight colors? (Score:2)
It sounds like a dot is either on or off. That means you can only have eight colors, unless they can somehow do shading of the pixels. It doesn't seem to imply that, based on how the article was written.
That would suck. They shouldn't even bother with color, unless they can either increase the dot density to simulate decent color, or fix this problem.
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Re:Only eight colors? (Score:2)
It looks like one color particles are negatively charged, and the other type is positively charged. Two problems that I see: 1) since both types are oppositely charged, they might not want to be mixed, and 2) they use an electrical field to move them around. How do get only part of the particles to move?
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Re:Only eight colors? (Score:2)
According to their technology page [eink.com], there are both white and black particles, oppositely charged. Given that just an electric field is applied, how do you only move some of the particles?
Given that they have white particles, I wonder why they can't have particles of different colors, rather than using filters.
As to your other post, it's a good point that the particles will attract each other, so that's not an issue.
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Re:Only eight colors? (Score:2)
An intermediately strong field will partially separate them. Clear?
Well, that's the obvious answer, but it's not obvious that it will work. Remember that particles are moving around. Their position is not proportional to the field strength. The field strength probably only determines how fast they move. Also, all the particles will probably move in unison, not just some of them in proportion to the field strength.
Even if you tried to move them "half way" to try and get gray scales (and that actually showed gray scales), it's not clear that you could accurately position them. You would have to know the viscosity of the suspending fluid and run the electrical field for a certain amount of time. I'm not sure the process would be accurate enough to give you smooth color.
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Re:No doubt, the EU will be wondering... (Score:3)
I believe that's merely a subquestion of the larger issue -- "What is the net environmental impact?"
For example, things to consider include the lifespan of paper vs. the lifespan of electronic paper, the environmental impacts of the ink used on both, the recyclability of both (including the inks), the fact that paper comes from a renewable resource (no clue on how renewable the electronic paper components are), and the environmental issues involved in the printing process itself (I believe normal printing involves harsh solvents, while electronic paper "printing" would just involve moving the little things inside the paper around). Overall, I doubt it's something Slashdot could do more than offer wild ass guesses on (although if anyone has any insight on some of the issues, the data's always welcome -- it's just that it'd never be enough to draw a final conclusion), but I think a formal investigation, with access to lots and lots of information covering both paper and electronic paper technologies, would probably be able to cook up some results.
Also relevant is the end-user application. Newspaper and books, I think, would be your big winners, best exploiting the reusability of the electronic paper. Also interesting would be using it, in conjunction with a digital camera, as a poor man's version of a digital picture frame. On the other hand, printing out webpages (which I do when I want to carry information with me to the store, which means the paper will get folded up) and class notes (and similar applications where you want to scribble in the margin) just ain't gonna cut it, short of a few more nifty advances (namely, the ability for the paper to be folded without being permanently affected and the ability for a pen-like device to non-permanently "write" on the paper, with the writing capable of being read back by the printing device, for storage with the original page).
As for the book issue, I can see having a single "book" as a major potential win. I generally only actively carry one book around with me to read, unless I'm near the end of the current book. However, with this technology, as I'm nearing the end of the current book, I could just reprint it as page 200+ of the current book and then as much of the next book as will fit. That way, if I finish the current book when there's no printer accessible, I can just keep going. On the plus side (tying back in to the environmental issues above), if we compare an electronic paper book to the current digital book machines (which have all kinds of nasty chemicals in the battery and such), I suspect it'd be a clear win.
However, I am worried on how well electronic book technologies will do. Unlike music and movies, books can much more easily protect themselves from Napster-esque piracy by simply refusing to embrace electronic distribution. It takes almost no effort to rip a CD. It takes only a little more work to DivX encode a movie. It's a major pain-in-the-ass to scan an entire book and then OCR it (although I suppose you could skip the OCR bit, especially since you'd be printing it back out in this case). That's not to say it isn't done, but if the results in the movie and music industry are any indication, I doubt electronic distribution would be in the best interest of book publishers.
(Wow -- I think I managed to hit 3 different and only marginally related topics in this comment. I need to cut back on my coffee intake.)
Re:GREAT (Score:3)
We should ban *ALL* advertising to children. No toys, no shampoo, no music, no food. Nothing.
Re:How Sturdy is it (Score:2)
An Analogy: Like a Magna Doodle.... (Score:2)
Sturdy? How about one-handed reading test (Score:2)
--
"Linux is a cancer" -- Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft.
A different dream (Score:2)
Technologies like this e-ink become commonplace. Eventualy, they can "tatoo" a PDA onto your skin. It really just "floats" on the surface of your skin, and washes off after about a month. So you have to keep getting it re-applied. But this also allows you to get the latest model.
Next in the dream, this becomes commonplace. Everyone now has a PDA tatooed right on their hand, just like a wristwatch used to be. But some people can't afford this.
So good ol' corporate greed steps in to save the day. They'll tatoo a PDA on your hand in exchange for you also allowing them to tatoo a color animated advertising banner on your forehead.
Now as you walk down the street, and glance across a sea of foreheads, you see zillions of ads. Among teens, it becomes a status symbol of who's ad is on your forehead.
I posted this on slashdot some months back when a similar type article ran. All things repeat on slashdot.
--
"Linux is a cancer" -- Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft.
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
genitics + advertising + fishing = Pepsi Fish
I'll give it 15 years before corporate sponsored 'wildlife' starts showing up -- and they'll be tasty too!
This is hilarious! The images it brings to my head are great.. things like "We've engineered our fish to desire the taste of plastic, so they will be much easier to catch with artificial lures", and we'll finally be able to go out to the woods and kill animals to eat that have NO nutritional value, just like the food we buy from these companies everyday! I just can't wait until Boca comes out with a genetically engineered vegitarian cow! Finally I can get REAL MEAT and still be vegan!
Re:Colorspace? (Score:2)
They would still have the 1/3 of the resolution problem, though that seems pretty unavoidable with this kind of approach. But at least they'd have a truly CMYK reflective electronic display.
I suppose the really good techincal reason not to use CMY pixels has to do with the problem of assembly. Would keeping track of which pixels were which color be much harder than producing the filter they use in the current setup?
This was my first thought too, but in reading the article it sounds like a time to market thing. They decided the filtered approach would put them in the market very soon (the technology is already there) and other approaches were off in the distance. Even the company was complaining about the filtered approach in the article, so I would imagine we will see a better implimentation later, after they make a bit of money off the filtered idea.
Is this for real? (Score:2)
I am a bit skeptical of these hypeflashes though, because of all the articles I've read about electronic paper, not a single one has discussed printing speed, cost, quality (not just dpi, but does it look 'good') or anything else in detail.
If they really believe these will be in market in two years, why have we yet to see an extensive demonstration of a prototype and how it works? My guess is there are hidden problems about these screens, that will make them less of a super invention than they sound like today.
I hope I am wrong. Reading an e-book without getting dizzy would be nice.
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
There's nothing stoping them from doing this already, product placement is on the rise. I'm more concerned with receiving junk mail, buying packaging, anything else which has a short life span, packaged thusly.
Probably in the short term the costs will make this prohibitive, but who knows where theses costs will be in a few years, after all, we've had musical greetings cards (only slighly more annoying that a mosquito flying around your ear) which aren't terribly expensive.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
No doubt, the EU will be wondering... (Score:5)
There's a great push in the EU to make PC's recyclable, reducing hazardous waste and sparing landfill space for truly non-recyclable garbage. IMHO, one of the worst materials for recycling is composites, i.e. Drink Boxes, which can be aluminum, plastic and paper.
Defined as an unusually high concentration of any substance, which may threaten the environment. e.g. Honey is not, in small quantities hazardous, but 50,000 gallons in your backyard would be.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
How Sturdy is it (Score:5)
DPI thinko? (Score:2)
So how does tripling the dot-count to achieve colour reduce the dpi by about a factor of 3? Shouldn't that be a factor of sqrt(3)?
Better than "good" resolution... (Score:5)
If we can patch together segments of "digital paper", it could be a crucial step in making affordable the wall display panels from Arnold's apartment in Total Recall....
Re:How Sturdy is it (Score:2)
For now though, it sounds like the rigity of the display is something that is engineered in so as to avoid the breakage previous posters hypothesized, would occur. With that in mind, give me a display that is 50% lighter and 50% thinner than standard and organic LCDs and I'm happy. It's certainly a big step in the right direction.
--CTH
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Great... more setbacks for Mitnick (Score:2)
liB
Re:GREAT (Score:2)
.kb
If you're interested in the technical details... (Score:5)
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/98/9/4835 [pnas.org]
It describes the methods used to create the paper (authored by people from Bell Labs and by E Ink corp).
Re:How Sturdy is it (Score:2)
Citation and a wish (Score:2)
You can read a somewhat longer, though not much more technical, article written by Charles Mann in Technology Review [technologyreview.com]'s March 2001 issue.
I'm hoping they make display units you can put your vehicle, so that one has more choices for imparting information than honking, flashing your lights, or flipping the bird. I want a to be able to display the following message on a big sign, in reversed characters, on the front of my car:
Wow... (Score:5)