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2048x1152 DLP (front projection)
1280x720 DLP (rear projection)
Flat CRT (still under development)
Inorganic Electroluminescent (still under development)
Electrostatics & Suspension (ambient light, still working on color)
Electrostatics & Revolution (ambient light, still working on color)
Electrostatics & Interference (ambient light, no plans for larger modules!?!?)

It's too late and much water under the bridge, but I surmised that 1) your company has an all-inclusive "for cause" clause and 2) things were precarious enough with your employment (whether your fault or not) to get you canned.

Correct on #1 (Illinois is an 'at-will' state, which pretty much means an employer can fire you for anything not explicitly forbidden by anti-discrimination laws), incorrect on #2. I'd had glowing annual reviews and had been largely responsible for a product that made the company $2M in sales the year it was released. Not only did my boss come to my defense, but the VP of engineering and pretty much the entire engineering department were all fighting for me. None of that mattered. I'd "harrassed" someone, and I was out. Besides, there was a big engineering layoff a month or two before. They could have easily canned me then if they'd wanted to.

But your #2 reason ("They must have wanted me gone anyway.") is the first thing that everyone thinks when I tell them the story. A couple interviews didn't get past the question, "So, why did you leave your last job?" They heard I got fired for something ludicrous and assumed the company was looking for an excuse to get rid of me. If they bothered to check my references they'd have learned that I was well regarded by my boss, the VP, and the rest of the department. This kind of thing makes it really hard to get a new job, especially in the current economy. (This all took place in spring 2002.)

Of course, it all worked out for the best. I've got a job at a new startup doing some exciting cutting-edge stuff. I'm actually eager to go to work in the morning!

Maybe it's just me but I am still waiting for the thermal/electric re-writable digital paper.

Don't rush me. I'm working on it!

The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change.

From the Gyricon link you gave:

17. Can SmartPaper(TM) be tampered with electronically?
No. Due to the way signs are constructed, they can not be tampered with by magnets, static electricity, PDAs, cell phones, or other electronic devices.

So I suppose he rather had something like a strong coil?

Here is what the display is made of... And here is the last ./ story. Come on guys! Don't get my hopes up like that!

As a side note, I was at Epcot and got to see Xerox's Gyricon (now marketed as 'SmartPaper') up close and personal. The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change. Someday...

It uses a slightly different idea. It has two sheets of plastic forming the faces of the paper, with a sandwich of beads in the middle. The beads have two hemispheres - one white, one black.

When an electric current is passed over the beads they rotate to show one face or another - effectively each bead is a 1-bit pixel. Take away the power and the bead remains in position until another charge is applied.

It seems to be a much lower tech approach than the MIT proposal since all the electronics are in the device creating the images rather than in the paper. So I'm guessing that Gyricon could be much cheaper than E Ink's product.

Xerox spun off Gyricon as the Gyricon Media company who already have two products in the marketplace - SmartPaper and MaestroSigns. They have been used for advertising and smart signs in the US. So you can instantly update thousands of point-of-sale signs or price tags over RF.

I'd never thought of it as a big problem, but this page on the Gyricon site shows the sort of numbers involved and the market opportunity for smart signs.

Very clever.

Best wishes,
Mike.

It uses a slightly different idea. It has two sheets of plastic forming the faces of the paper, with a sandwich of beads in the middle. The beads have two hemispheres - one white, one black.

When an electric current is passed over the beads they rotate to show one face or another - effectively each bead is a 1-bit pixel. Take away the power and the bead remains in position until another charge is applied.

It seems to be a much lower tech approach than the MIT proposal since all the electronics are in the device creating the images rather than in the paper. So I'm guessing that Gyricon could be much cheaper than E Ink's product.

Xerox spun off Gyricon as the Gyricon Media company who already have two products in the marketplace - SmartPaper and MaestroSigns. They have been used for advertising and smart signs in the US. So you can instantly update thousands of point-of-sale signs or price tags over RF.

I'd never thought of it as a big problem, but this page on the Gyricon site shows the sort of numbers involved and the market opportunity for smart signs.

Very clever.

Best wishes,
Mike.

You raise good points. I sincerely hope that the idea of electronic parking tickets that they floated on the website is replaced in most cities by an entirely software solution. (Email you your parking fines. no more paper tickes on your windscreen which the local hoods can steal for pranks)

On the other hand, what if you use pressure sensative paper as the worlds's most portable scanner? Write your meeting notes on normal paper, with the smart scanner paper underneath like that old fashioned pressure activated carbon paper that people sometimes use to duplicate reciepts.

the pressure sensative paper stays blank. At the end of the meeting, file your handwritten notes and plug in your pressure sensative mat to your laptop/desktop/whatever. the dozens of pages that you stored in it are copied across, and the handwriting recognition goes through in a few minutes. presto!

(if you're really adventureous, you could get the pad to have a built in wifi antenna. then you'd never have to leave the meeting. when you run out of paper, just use an inkless stylus on the pad directly, and hope you remember where you've written... or maybe make the top layer smart colour change paper.)

Might be handy for those business people who don't want heavy laptop bags or bulge inducing pdas ruining the line of a good suit. (on the other hand, most people like that who I know just get their PAs to carry all their junk for them. oh well. maybe the new tech might still sell on early adopter chic.)

For some reasons the companies are just dumbass anal about it. They're have been flexible "e-paper" displays since 2000 as trials in federated department stores macys.

2 main companies currently lead the pack, BOTH have production facilities:

http://www.gyriconmedia.com/ Uses beads. berkeley->Xerox-parc->private. production fac. in michigan.

http://www.eink.com/ Uses organics but no where near as small as quantum dot-anything. MIT -> private. Manufacturing facility in Japan.

Check out Gyricon. It's an e-paper technology by Xerox. Though I haven't heard if they've actually released an actual product yet. It looks like they're starting with large format signs that can be easily changed (billboard advertising for example).

The problem with both E-ink and Gyricon is that it's still hard to get high resolution, pixel-addressable displays. But they have a good shot--unlike all the LCD and OLE technologies, they need no active elements per pixel, since the medium itself stores the image.