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Philips Improves Electronic Paper
Remco writes: "BBC News ) has a story about Philips apparently improving the quality of electronic paper. What they've done is instead of using sillicon, they've discovered a polymer for use in electronic paper. This makes it cheaper to produce and has the added bonus of providing 256 grey shades of gray." Philips has been working on flexible displays for a while as well as research on using plastic instead of silicon. here's an article we posted before about OLEDs, another one of the promising leads toward thin, low-power, cheap-to-make displays.
Nice teaser article, but how cheap is cheap?
When they can put a 25-page book together what accepts some sort of floppy disk or memory chip so you can read different books with it for under $50, then that's cheap. Until then, they may be using a different definition than you and I.
df
Yes, I've read many articles about all the advancements in digital paper. I figure that one of these days they will discover how to actually make it.
-Kevin
Like most scientific endeavors, this story is about an advance in the field, not its readiness for prime time.
Let's look at some quotes that might help you next time:
This five-centimetre-square ... brings affordable electronic paper a step closer, say its developers, Philips Research.
... should be cheap to make in bulk
...
But this display
In principle, this could be a low-cost solution
It's a shame that nobody looks at this from its scientific merit -- after all, any "holy grail" technology is the culmination of a lot of baby steps.
It all goes downhill from first post
Actually this has already been implemented. This article at Scentific American Magazine from the November 2001 issue describes in detail where the technology is and how it is currently being used. P.S. I know that it is an IP address, but that is what Scientific american sends you to. If you want goto Scientific American's homepage and search for electronic paper. The first result is the article linked to above.
What good is a used up world, and how could it be worth having? --Sting
Finally, books can be printed on a medium that respects the rights of authors! Once your reading license has expired, the pages will simply erase themselves. And a retinal scan can even be sure that no unauthorized readers get access to your prose!
A new day is dawning for innovation, and the promise of the copyright system to encourage the creation of new works and the protection of the exclusive right of the rich to actually read anything that's ever been written is finally being fulfilled.
I know I'm not alone when I say "It's about time! Thanks, Phillips!"
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
as a papermaker, I have seen all of the approaches to epaper. Most recently these were presented at NIP 18 (Intnl Conf Nonimpact Printing) in Ft Lauderdale. The main problem would seem to be the approaches ALL require backplane electronics to make the stuff work. Therefore you induce a charge to get proper sphere alignment, once acheived until a new charge is induced they aintain their orientation.
So, don't charge out and invest in e paper; as right now the berst application is point of purchase displays. An interesting concept, but the economics are not there yet, except for perhaps specialty applications. Once they can make dirt cheap backplanes by printing them, then perhaps it can make inroads on paper. However, don't hold your breath. Wonder if an informed reply will bet a better score?
...one of the intelligent books from Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks?
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
This looks great, but there is deffinetly a bad side to it. Imagine the advertisements if they made video capable e-paper. It would be flashing and glitzing all over the place.
IMHO, e-paper needs to be white. From the photo in this article, it's the same color as your old LCD screen. This presents a problem when going for 256 gray-scale in games/apps because your white is already 25% gray. The real hoop to jump through is finding a way to bleach the proteins and platics while maintaining their functionallity.
History shows that digital rights management only applies to the right to profit-it has nothing to do with consumers rights. Losing the ability to do whatever you want, short of commercial republication, with your purchases will nullify many of the benefits oof digital paper. When I buy a book or newspaper, I like to know that I've actually bought it rather than licensed it for some term, and that I will always have the ability to read it whenever I desire. Anyone who believes that when electronic paper is available publishers will play by the same rules they have no choice but to follow now is naive.
Keep in mind that copy protection won't be too hard to enforce for books and magazines that choose to keep up physical distribution lines. How many people did you see pirating N64 games? Hardly anyone has the ability to write to a cartridge, so if these papers took their input from a cartridge piracy would not be easy. Companies wouldn't need to reduce our rights-but rest assured, they will anyway, I'm just pointing out why any moves on their part will necessarily be due to impure motives.
On the other hand, there are tradeoffs for the rest of the world. Even with all the recycling of paper (and most of it still gets thrown out), trees still need to get cut, and paper has a limit to how many times it can be recycled (eventually the fibres break down). Not to mention the fact that rather nasty chemicals are used in its production, have you ever smelled the air around a paper plant?. Digital paper will last far longer and one sheet can display a variety of content; this will dramatically reduce the usage of wood based paper. Expect to see environmentalists and civil rights advocates at each others' throats over this issue.
"Cheatsheet? Er, no, ma'am -- look, it's blank paper..."
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Why not simply get an LCD projector and project geiss onto a wall? Unless, of course, you're not serious...
Immagine the paper airplane I could make out of tihs.... It would be the most hi-tech paper plane... It could have an inflight video!
And now just imagine a toilet paper roll of these!
How many people did you see pirating N64 games? Hardly anyone has the ability to write to a cartridge, so if these papers took their input from a cartridge piracy would not be easy.
Nintendo 64 piracy was hard because every official cartridge in a territory had an identical "key" chip. The mechanism by which the Nintendo cartridge lock/key system (used on NES, Super NES, and N64) works is patented (until about 2005), and it relies on a program that's copyrighted (effectively forever), letting Nintendo go after backup devices.
Game Boy Advance, on the other hand, has no encryption and no lockout. The only checks its BIOS does are checks for the Nintendo logo (legal to reproduce under Sega v. Accolade) and a simple checksum on the ROM header. Its cartridge interface (multiplexed address bus and data bus) has the Intellivision's system as prior art. And you can get a development kit with a cartridge writer and a flash cartridge that holds 256 megabits (enough for four to eight official ROMs or even more independently produced ROMs) for under $200. Go to gbadev.org for details.
Don't steal games. Just because piracy is easy doesn't mean you should do it. Instead, download games released under a free software (or even just free-beer) license. In the future, I will be releasing some free GBA games here.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"providing 256 grey shades of gray."
shit i wanted 256 BLUE shades of gray.
& which is it grey or gray? are you canadian or what eh?
Please see Thursday's article.
...and has the added bonus of providing 256 grey shades of gray.
In related news, researches in Zurich have been making inroads into using flamingo enzymes to make e-paper. Currently the technique allows only for 256 grey shades of fleurescent pink, but Chief Scientist Dr Fandango promises - "It grows on you".
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
Can't we require that people with access to post front page articles actually have to semi-regularly read Slashdot themselves so we can avoid continually duplicating stories?
They do have this
-Kraft
Live and let live
How are you going to watch porn without the paper burning up?
Papermaker? You make the substrates or the content? Big difference.
I work for a content publisher, and let me tell you that the people who manage my place of employment would love nothing better that to get a leg up on companies that make the paper we produce our content on. Our share price is tied to the price of a roll of paper. As such, cheap, easy to produce e-paper would provide an effective bargaining tool to keep the price of wood based paper cheap and our stock price up.
I'm not sure they would even consider the hacker angle of e-paper. You know - I get The Daily News, and use my hacked e-paper reciever to transmit that content to all my friends. That would do wonders for the stock price, eh?
The scariest part of e-paper is the fact that unless you had some control over it, the content provider could actually change the content on you without your knowlege. When it's printed in ink on real paper, you have to print a retraction or correction, not just edit the content already out there. Same thing as money - I'll use e-commerce as long as real paper money exists. The virtual world is too un-trustworthy to use as anything other than a convenience.
IOW, your assertion is correct - that paper and ink will be around for some time to come, but your reasons for that being the case are, IMHO, incorrect.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Nice and familiar yes, but, probably not worth making the e-book thingy N times more expensive (where N is the number of pages in the e-book). Especially since IMHO people would end up using the "next page button" anyway, as it's easier than turning a page once you get used to it.
The book is an incredible device. Compact, durable, cheap, easy-to-use interface.
Books are nice, but not really cheap when you have to keep buying new ones all the time. That is, it's cheaper in the long run to pay a one-time $150 up-front fee for the e-book hardware than it is to pay $5-$45 every single time you want to read a new story.
As for e-book content charges, you'll have your choice of downloading for-pay content, downloading free content, or just browsing the web using the snazzy wireless networking..
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I wish we could rate the articles.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
In the newspaper industry, you can hear the nervous talk about e-paper. The only real barrier to entry in publishing a paper is either access to a press or owning one, and for a daily paper you basically need to own your own press. The other pieces involved in making a newspaper cost next to nothing compared to the press, ink, paper, film, plates, typesetters, benders, and employing skilled pressmen. Journalists, pre-press staff, workstations, DTP software, wire feeds, photo development (digital now), etc. are all widely available and don't take millions in capital or the help of a vendor or consultant to put in place. The high cost of owning and running a press is what keeps competition between newspapers limited to the paper(s) owned by the city's local plutocrats, papers from media conglomerates (USA Today, Tribune-owned papers, etc.) and the local weeklies that earn their living criticizing the mistakes of first two. The local weeklies usually rent the use of a commercial press, which is why they're stuck coming out only once a week. The cost of starting your own paper is so high, they say you're better off to just bury your millions in your back yard and wait to see it goes up in value. It can be done, but it's a very expensive business to try to start from scratch.
Once you've got e-paper, all that is gone. Newspaper publication becomes no more expensive than web site publication, and may actually be cheaper as you may not have the "slashdot penalty", depending on how you offer your epaper over the internet: micropayments, free, suscriber only, etc.
- Newspapers can be distributed by a vending machine equipped with USB, irDA, 802.11, maybe bluetooth, maybe a CompactFlash card writer. Pay via your cell-phone, magnetic card swipe, or plain old coins.
- The vending machine will be the barrier to entry, i.e. the equivelent of owning a press. Consequently, the rich will try their best to corner all the vending machines, especially in airports, schools, and restaurants.
- However, someone will figure out they can make more money with less risk if they just charge a commision on each paper sold and then just offer more titles to choose from (out-of-town newspapers, typical newstand magazines, snap-shots of popular web sites, e-text novels, indy and alternative papers, adult material, mail-order catalogs, maybe interactive games or puzzles).
- The idea that each e-paper reader will only hold 1 title is just stupid. The free market will tear that fantasy to shreds. To just read 60-80 dpi grayscale books, the guts of a PDA from 2 or 3 years ago would be enough to hold a week or two of issues and a half-dozen full-length novels and still be cheap. It might also double as a PDA, especially if they power consumption is better and you can fold it up to fit your pockets. The media outlets will give away crappy ones, but the aftermarket and PDA vendors will take it from there, offering models that give you more freedom (more storage, ports) for just a little more money.
- DRM is going to vary. Big media outlets will definately use it, but your indy papers may let it go, and some pubs may deliberately shun including DRM in their issues as a nod to their customers. FE, if Project Gutenberg or Ibiblio can get in the game, it's reasonably certain those docs won't expire on you. You're probably going to see what's already happened with DVD players and region encoding. DMCA or not, word will get out which models can be made to bypass the DRM. The black market will not let this slide by them.
Personally, I'm more interested in when they will develop table-top displays with biometrics. Imagine an epaper screen covering the entire dining table that can distinguish between finger taps, a stylus, and irrelevant pressure to ignore, like a coffee cup or elbows set on the table. A little handwriting recognition, a PC rackmounted underneath, and you've got a nice desk to work on (or play StarCraft...).
Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Pick any two.
I mean: 256 grey shades of gray! Way cool!
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Saw this over on yahoo news the other day also. The article is here.
Looks like a great idea! Ever since I read the Diamond Age (by Neal Stephenson) I've wanted to carry all my books in one sheet of paper.
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