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New, Flexible CDs Arrive
Mortin writes "A company called Flexstorm has developed a new type of CD, dubbed flexCD, that is about 140 microns thick, 1/10th that of a normal CD, and most importantly flexible. The technical specs on this new technology are quite impressive, boasting a weight of only .6 grams on the flexCD 80. Producing a flexCD also only takes .3 seconds, less than that of a normal CD."
I was bending my new flex CD to see how far it would bend and then it broke. Can you send me a new one for free? And pay the shipping charges? I'm poor.
Avoid The Rush, Hate OU Early!!!
Now I've seen it all!
Appended to the end of comments I post? 120 chars?!
From the PDF:
The flexCD is non-toxic and may be used with food items.
Strikes me as odd. Gives a new meaning to the term, "embedded media"...
"All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of neurotics". - Norman Douglas
This would be sweet if it worked in my car.
instead of rehashing old ideas why not work on an affordable solid state recording device,but then again can they make a bendable 8-track?
They are pushing a flexable cd that plays in a standard cd drive with the use of an adapter.
So the disks must be the razor.
OTOH if these were availavle as CDR/RW it might make storage easier if you can reuse the adapters or get a drive that plays them natively.
-The Flex CD is non-toxic and may be used with food items
A little bit odd, don't you think?
4-bit adder: A snake made of 1's and 0's
uh they came out with these a long time ago. only then they were called "floppy disks"
this might be what we need to hack the gamecube's anti-piracy shit.
Being so thin, it can be easily shredded, so there's no further need to keep your financial documents on paper.
Great, it's flexible. By the way, that 0.6 g CD can only hold 200 MB. I guess using "flexCD 80" to mean 80 mm instead of 80 minutes was a bit misleading. And you have to use it with a caddy that, get this, is the same weight and size as a normal CD. Wow, what a marvelous invention!
so now its going to be that much harder to break those damn AOL CDs
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I'm old enough to remember when some books and magazines included analog records printed on sheets of plastic ... particularly music instruction books, and things of that nature. I'm looking forward to the days when you can tear a CD out of your favourite music magazine and listen to it ...
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
This was tried before ("Thindisk Flexible Media"), as a new way to stick CDs into magazines. If you thought the AOL CDs were bad before, wait until next year.
This gives all new meaning to the term "frisbee" being used for bad CDRs. All they need now is a little ridge around the edge and they could be dual purpose frisbee-cd's.
What happens when a Flex-CD gets a little dent in it, and that little dent hits my CD drive read head at 40x ?
These things look sweet! I know they wont work in most car stereos since they're too thin. How much is it for a hundred of these things and are these cdr compatible? I want to burn these suckers and try them in my cd player in my car (cd player with tape adapter).
However, if they're like the business cd ripoffs, they'll charge a obscene price (1.5 to 2 X of normal cdr's). They'll rot on the shelf.
According to the specifications, this would require an adaptor to play in existing CD drives.
If they're pushing this as a supplement to advertisements (distribution via mail, magazine, what have you), how are they going to get the adapters to people? How are they going to overcome the barrier of getting people to actually use the adapters?
Seems like there's a bit of a bottleneck in this biz plan.
goats.com: better than
This will bring a whole new meaning to the word "floppies." Funny, you will be able to fit Mandrake on just a couple of floppies, rather than a few hundred.
Who remembers CD caddies? And how much you hated them? Why would you want to go back to that?
And for non-technical people (the ones that can't set the time on their VCR), they're not going to be able to figure out how to use the adapter and will likely end up destroying their CD players, particularly if they try it with a slot-loading one.
Sure, it will be great for people who like the CD inserts in magazines, and may be the best thing in the world for them, but I've yet to find an insert that would make me want to keep around an extra caddy just so I could play it. But then again, it would be nice to be able to fold up a CD and stick in an envelope instead of buying the special CD protective packages, so it might work.
Oh, and what do those naked men have to do with CDs?
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
They are pushing this as a way to mail discs, right?
If I do got one of these in the mail, I'll need the adapter. I don't have one (like most people), so they would need to send me one in the package.
Guess what: the package is no longer thinner nor lighter than a regular disc, and it isn't flexable.
Seems like a stupid idea to me.
-twb
This isn't as great as it sounds, because you have to "sandwich" it in their plastic adapter to get your CD player to read the disk. Since no one has any of their adapters sitting around the house, anyone who wanted to mail one of thess flexCDs out (which is supposed to be one of their main applications) would also have to send out the rigid plastic pieces, reducing the weight and flexibility advantages. If it ever catches on and people start keeping plastic adapters around the house, that might become unnecessary, but I can see this tanking because people can't figure out why their CD player/drive doesn't like this flexible piece of plastic.
Now I can burn a cd in .3 seconds... THIS is progress!
prosebeforehos.com
Bet AOL is watching closely... think about it - lighter CDs mean each one they mail out weighs less, so they pay less postage, not to mention they can make one every .3 second.
Isn't technology wonderful?
Thousands of flopppy AOL CDS, folded up! They'll fall out of your newspapers, magazines, cereal boxes, plane tickets! Anywhere you can think of them they'll be there!
And people though Microsoft was scary.
I think I see war, Famine, Plague, and Death on the horizon....
The cost of CD's can't be that great if AOL can send me those goddamned "700 Free Hours" promotions every week.
-"Nice jacket, who shot the couch?."
These are just about as useful as those keyboards you can wrap around your head....
Does this mean AOL will be able to delight us with ten times as many free CDs? Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Let the fun begin!
When are we going to see scratch-proof cds ?
.. I guess no one ever tried melting CD's in their microwave.. pfft
---
you can pick your friends,
you can pick your nose,
you can't however,
pick your friends' nose.
Lets hope AOL doesn't start using these.. who knows where cd's would start poping up.
*Unrolls new pair of socks*
"Hmm.. whats this that feel out*
*New AOL Version 13.358, now with 5000 free hours!*
(This Space For Rent)
"The flexCD is non-toxic and may be used with food items."
Holy crap! You mean I should have been washing my hands after using rigid discs?
Watch out for the RIAA Flexstorm...a cheaper, easier to handle device that can play music? That doesn't sound like something the RIAA would like to have around to me. Now, if you just added a little bit of encryption to that, maybe some region encoding (DVD's do it, why not CD's), and maybe some new fangled copy protection that won't let you play it in my PC, there you might have a product they'll approve of.
But on a serious note, good luck, hope it takes off, and how soon until I can get a FlexCD-R?
Trying is the First Step to Failing --Homer Simpson
No more snapped CDs which have been left in your pocket for 3 months!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
How often have you thought "I would buy this CD if only I could bend it!" or, "I would buy this meat if only it had a flexible CD packaged with it!"
Now, if they can make one that is absorbant as well, we'll be able to save some money and use those damned AOL CDs to wipe our butts.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
now you can roll your AOL CD's and toke away!
you can pick your friends,
you can pick your nose,
you can't however,
pick your friends' nose.
I've had this problem before as a seller of such things and it is a major hassle when the CDs in book/CDs crack from bad handling. I had two such problems this month and the shipping costs of sending replacement media can kill a publisher. So, I can see the appeal, but I'm also skeptical. CDs are already quite flimsy. While these may be bendable, they're certainly not foldable. So, that's a sort of no-man's-land to be in. I can't help but flash back to little floppy vinyl albums printed in magazines in the 70s that invariably sucked on the turntable because they were all warped. Is an aging 50X CD reader with a dirty laser pickup going to be more forgiving?
And if they're primarily for promotional use, there's the question of whether the flimsy image is really a plus. It's not like conventional CDs are expesive either. Indeed, with blank CDs being what they are, it seems that the blank media has clearly become an insignificant cost compared to the cost of producing content that a normal consumer will actually take the time to look at when they've got so many movies to watch and old shows to catch up on that they've written to their incredibly cheap CDRs spilling across their desktop.
But I definitely like the idea of keeping a CD in my sock. Now that's handy.
This is one of those 'new tech' stories that gets posted without any explanation of 'Why', or 'How does this affect me?'. According to the website, all they can come up with is putting CD's inside a magazine instead of outside them, and perhaps wrapping a CD around a Coke can!?
What the story and the site fail to mention is why *I* Mr Joe Public, Mr Regular Consumer, Mr What's Wrong with normal CD's anyway would need a flexible CD for.
I've got enough pointless disks on my desk without loosing more between papers or inside books. I don't want the three AOL CD's I get each week to become thirty just because they can get them to me easier. I don't want to find a CD on my next Pepsi/Coke/Whatever with a 5mb Macromedia advert on it. I know 'because we can' is a good reason for case mods, Pringles-wireless-lan-cans and hacking, but not for changing something most people don't have a problem with (some places call this a 'standard').
I know this is a self-rightous rant that deserves much flame, and a few sensible suggestions for uses from people who've always wanted flexible CD's, but neither the website or CmdrTaco have come up with a reason for me to care about this huge milestone in technological advances.
insignificant sig
Now what does this remind me of? The magnetic disks on the inside of floppy disks. Does this mean that we'll finally start to see caddy-style CDs pick up in popularity? I really don't see that much else of a purpose for more flexible CDs, unless you plan to fold them up and put them in your pocket.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
if they are 140 microns thick or whatever, wouldn't they be susceptible to tearing? I mean basically this is just like the foil data layer of a cd with very little protection. this would also make them more vulnerable to scratches and whatnot because you dont have a millimeter or so of plastic between the face and the data. a scratch that would not affect a normal cd may very well scratch all the way to the data layer of a thin cd.
From the website:
:)
flexMail allows you to target your markets selectively, personally, and flexibly, combining our flexible media with traditional direct mail services.
Tis spells more spam to me, so I'm not really sure I'm happy. Also, as a sysadmin I wouldn't want to go again thru "don't run magazine cds" for the people (obviously this is not the cd they were tought to handle
Uhmm, maybe I'm just oblivious, but why exactly do we need to know that? Seriously, I can understand discussing it's flexibility and non-toxic features, etc. but what does manufacturing times have to do with its "WOW" factor?
Believe it or not, I'm not trying to complain, I'm just really curious about this.
I dunno if I wasnt looking anywhere, but I couldnt see exactly how much the media can store - I am assuming it can take an identical amount to a regular CD, but I cannot find clarification anywhere..
:)
Pro'lly just not looking hard enough.
Just looking at this - reminds me of the really old 'printed' flexible vinyl records you used to get with magazines and cereal years and years ago - only the quality was awful, and they didnt last very long. What goes around comes around, eh?
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I wonder if these Flexible CD's will also be the same quality of regular CD's. Particularly, will they be able to last up to 80 years (IIRC, that's what consumer grade CD's can last up to).
I'm guessing since the CD is made of more flexible material (and a polymer, which is organic), so it may be able to break down easier/quicker.
OK. You buy a can of Coke and find a flexible CD wrapped around it. Between the Coke factory, warehouse and sitting on the grocery store shelf, that CD has proabably been wrapped around the can for at least a month.
So once you get it home, how do you get it flattened out so that it will work in a CD player?
AOLjunk goes Standard Mail, under 3.3 oz it be all the same. There's a small surcharge up to the less the 16 oz limit, like for coffee mugs.
Great... That's what I need. More crap to fold-up and put in my already-Constanza-sided wallet.
signal, noise, to me it's all the same.
Drive head?
How is a beam of light a 'drive head'? There's nothing there to hit, stupid.
Cool, If we could get AOL to send these out, I'll have a collection of jar openers to go with my coasters.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Yeah, I've always heard flexible phonograph records referred to as "Flexi-Disks." I received one in the past year with a copy of Magnet Magazine, when Matador was promoting Steven Malkmus' solo album. If I remember correctly it was about 6"x6" and played at 45 rpm. It quickly wore out (from abuse, rather than repeat listening) and the sound quality was far from great. Good swag for record geeks, tho. Magnet also distributes bi-monthly music samplers to its subscribers.
Somebody please, tell this machine I'm not a machine.
cdfreaks reported this hours ago!
but it looks like they're hoping to make more out of their marketing of your pamphlets on their media..
but a few questions I have before I believe that these really do exist...
how thoroughly have these been tested? they are lighter which will lead to the ROMs being able to spin the discs faster, which could be good.
but... these look to be more flexible than floppy disks, and without the external jacket holding them flat. what if the computer is bumped in the middle of a burn?
instead of just a failed CD, will we end up having the media flop around inside the drive and cause damage?
or will the high speed of the spinning disc and the adapter help to keep them flat?
I think that if these can be produced, they will only really be usefull for marketing purposes much like the credit card sized CDs. just a gimmick.
they hold less, and for real applications this just isn't good enough. what would be more useful is trying to cram more data onto the same space.
DVD drives are a step up, but once we can fit 20gig or more onto a CD sized medium, which is accessible as CDs and relatively as cheap as CDs, then we can start making real use of them.. like backup drives.. at the moment, a decent size tape backup unit will cost up to 10's of thousands (NZ dollars anyway)... and a 110/220 gb DLT tape is $500 a piece.
we'll see how it goes
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
That reminds me...I need to go stretch my legs.
Blarf.
When are we going to see scratch-proof cds ?
With these new floppy discs, if you scratch the thing, you probably just scratch the medium, and the underlying flexible medium has not been scratched. Because producing and selling adapters costs less than producing and selling an album, you can just shell out a couple bucks for a new adapter if yours gets scratched.
Will I retire or break 10K?
CDs are already the perfect size and rigidity, in my opinion. We should concentrate on packing more data into them (DVD, blue-laser, etc.), and making them more robust. I have never needed to bend a CD (what, am I going to put it through a fax machine?), nor would I like it if my CDs were bendy.
Lovely! So now I can turn my AOL CD's into rather *aerodynamic* frisbees!
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Being flexible presents some advantage in the ad business as it becomes possible to send CD like junk mail. I (don't really) look forward to the days of getting Pre-approved credit card mail on this media. However, the format becomes quickly an inconvienience when you decide to keep and use the media. As an example, I remember when the DVD expert group was debating over as to protect the disc in the casing or not (like the Panasonic PD disk.) They decided not to, to the biggest regret of companies like Blockbuster who are irritating their customers by renting DVD with scratches and digs all over (I've got one of these DVDs with a cigarette burn in it!)
I really like the tape format, and I enjoy the mini disc (MD) style, allowing me to throw medium on the desk without caring if it will get scratched. The MD format is almost perfect for me. It's smaller than CDs and fit in backpacks. It's too bad that it hasn't become more popular with increase storage and broader adoption by computer manufacturers.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
That doesn't sound like something the RIAA would like to have around to me.
The "Products" section of the web site mentions an application remarkably similar to Circuit City DIVX:
So what do you get when you combine flexRights with video content in MPEG-4 format? You get DivX DIVX :-)
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think this is the main problem we have with CDs (and DVDs). i much prefered the floppy disks that u could just bung in ur pocket or woteva. Cds need to be put in a big Jewel Case or at least a plastic sleeve. But flexible and heart-shaped? wtf? this is a complete waste of time.
Andy
to "frizbee-net"
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
First, didn't we all *hate* the CD caddies that came with the first cdrom drives? We'll, it's back to something not unlike them with these flexible CDs. Read the "Adapter" section of the technical description paper.
Second, they are also planning to have some lame "content protection system" as a part of flexcds. See the "flexRights" section of the features page.
Summary -- it's less durable than existing CDs, requires a caddy-style adapter to use in your drive, and is tied up with nasty intellectual property cartel ambitions. Oh, and no sign of a version that's writable in our existing CDR or CDRW drives, either.
Hate stupid software on freshmeat? Laugh at
Years ago, when phonograph players were common, companies would often ship flexible records inside magazines. You'd remove the record from the perforated plastic sheet and play it on your stereo.
(get it? What goes around...)
Sorry..
why?
Material
Polyester foil
Vacuum Vaporized Aluminum
Polymer based lacquer
Print
The flexCD is non-toxic and may be used with food items
Dimensions
flexCD 80
flexCD 80 is ~140 microns thick (almost 1/10 the thickness of a rigid CD)
The flexCD 80 weighs ~.6 grams (less than 1/10 the weight of a rigid CD)
flexCD 80 measures 8cm in diameter
flexCD 80 holds up to 200 megabyts of multimedia information without any loss in quality
flexCD 120
flexCD 120 is ~140 microns thick (almost 1/10 the thickness of a rigid CD)
The flexCD 120 weighs ~1.3 grams
flexCD 120 measures almost 12cm in diameter
Extras
flexCDs are available in various configural variations (such as a star, heart, square)
A self-adhesive confection makes the product ready for mounting applications
Print Options include overprinting, 4c, wallpaper/pattern printing
Adapter
The flexCD adapter consists of two pieces. The top piece is made from polystyrene and can be overprinted much like a rigid CD. The bottom piece is made from transparent polycarbonate (same material used in rigid CDs).
The adapter weighs approx. 17.5 grams
The adapter is 12cm in diameter (the same diameter of a rigid CD)
The flexCD adapter is approx. 1.5mm thick
I wouldn't mind a little karma... ;-)
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
If the CD bends, wouldn't gravity have an affect on it? In which case even with an adapter the ends of the disk would be lower than the middle, especially after in the player for a while and somewhat heated. How many CD players do you know of that can play bend disks?
- Joe
...if they make interesting noises and lights when you put them in the microwave.
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
Yes, we all know AOL sends out shitloads of CDs. We also know that AOL is a successful company, which means we should all make fun of them. But you have extinguished every permutation of words that would make up an AOL flex CD joke. Therefore, any further such jokes would be considered redundant. Thank you.
Okay, so have they invented a flexible CD? Not really. All they've done is separated the data layer from the rigid plastic layer, so that people will hopefully own only a few of the rigid "adapters" and loads of the data-handling flexCDs. FlexCDs are (a) easier to break than ordinary CDs (because there's no plastic layer protecting the thin data layer, and (b) place more of the cost of playing CDs on the consumer, since producers won't have to pay for the adapters after a while.
To carry my basic software toolkit, I have a 200 CD
folio which is packed. I have to carry this 10-lb
bag with me across the country all too often. A
recordable flexible DVD folio with the same data
would come in closer to 1/2 pound, and tuck into
my laptop case. I'm hoping this progresses to
DVD recordable in short order!
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
What's Old is new...
slash dot headline: "New, Flexible CDs Arrive"
Ha! It's so great to see old tech making a comeback in this digital age!
As a reformed vinyl collector, I used to buy a music magazine in the late 70's - early 80's (?) called Flexipop which came with a flexible plastic record, that was usually a rare or otherwise different mix from the featured artist (one or two songs max).
These were really neat to trip out your friends with... "Hey, look at this new record I got...", while I'm rolling it into a tube, and then tossing it at them as it unrolls back into a record, which I would then pick up (blowing off any dust!) and place on this ancient analog device called a turntable, and play.
They worked great if you only played them a couple of times and then taped them, since playing them degraded the sound quality (goodby high end).
I did quite a search but could only find a few links to them, but here's a bit of info:
Of course, I do wonder about the archival properties of these new CD's, it does seem that they might be a bit more stable since it's digital media, vs analog. But then, CD's are pretty sensitive to scratches on their surface, so time will tell.
But my guess this is just another throw away medium for our short sighted society .
Cool retro idea though.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
Damm! Now i'm going to have to replace all my old flexible records :(
Since they're less rigid and have less total mass to 'average out' any irregularities, what happens when there's a small variation that slightly unbalances the disc? This wouldn't affect audio players, but I wonder if their stability would be insufficient to handle much higher speeds. I didn't see any specs on average maximum read speed.
that record for years. Every copy of that book that I've seen hasn't had the record insert (any chances of any mp3?)
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
(BTW- This story is a quasi-dup from December 2000)
How will people get the hard adapters that are necessary to use the discs? This might be a legitimate good use for AOL CD distribution: If FlexStorm could convince AOL to distribute the latest AOL software on FlexStorm CDs, including the adapters, a large chunk of the population would instantly be FlexStorm aware, and, more importantly, able to use FlexStorm discs. AOL CDs are available virtually everywhere for free, so even the more technically-inclined would have a ready source of FlexStorm adapters.
Taking your milelong roll of paper analogy, but rather than cutting the paper horizontally, cut it vertically and it would more accurately describe the data you would find on a shredded cd. Since cd tracks are like that of a record, you would find a few bits from one file, a few bits from another file and so on until you run to the end of the piece.
you're right. however, you are thinking 'today' when they are thinking 'tomorrow' ... this isn't something we'll see for a while (unless the adapter is simply a case or a flash program).
...and let's not forget DVD players and CD audio systems -- great for the car!
when cdrw came out, no cdroms could read them. soon after, ALL cdroms could read them. similarly with this (if it flies, and it should); cdrom/dvdrom and writers released after some date in the future will all be able to read this new technology, and at that point, you'll see flexible cds in the mail and in your cereal boxes.
problem is getting this standardized and implemented into future drives.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Tithe! Tithe!
Go to church! Go to church!
The Flex CD is non-toxic and may be used with food items
does this mean that we can microwave these new disks and upon opening the microwave door we won't have that horrid stench?
if you don't know what i'm talking about, obviously you've never owned a microwave. (tips for newbies: only a few seconds are needed, do it atop a paper towel, and watch out for the fumes.)
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
... can be found here.
Say no to software patents.
Is this what the author in the previous Slashdot article meant when he talked about how flexable and liquid digital music was?
homoerotic imagery of their logo?
They reinvented the floppy disk, but it is called something different.
They reinvent the "mainframe", but instead call it a "big e-commerce server".
They reinvent block-mode terminals, but call it a "web browser" instead.
They reinvent "write once, run everywhere" of the COBOL sales pitches, and call it new to Java.
At this pace, I expect to see vacuum tubes in vogue again soon, but with a different look and name. Probably with an aqua tint to make it look 'cool'.
Table-ized A.I.
The idea of flexible cd's sounds cool as a novelty item, but not very useful. Now, if they could make a scratch resistant cd, that would be extremely useful and, I'm willing to bet, extremely profitable. I don't think the flexible cd's would work in my cd carrying case, I'd go to slide it into the slot and it would probably bend in half and scratch.
What a way to hide your pr0n collection from you mom, just put these CDs in old 5.25" floppies.
- Pimp
I like computers, women and computers... in that order...
I can see it now, cdrom and audio magazine inserts. I remember a long time ago getting magazine inserts in the form of records. You rip them out and play them on your turntable. The one I remember most was a recording of whale songs that came in a National Geographic.
...get a clue folks.
I remember a c-source project called homeCD that would print a postscript image of data sent to it as an ISO image, so you could literally print a REALLY low-data CD on anything, even paper... a few meg at best... you could print on transparency and back with foil for the same affect. Hope they haven't tried to patent the idea.
meh
According to the specs, this only stores 200 megabytes. To me, that kind of seems useless. I'd rather have "rigid" cds with 650 megabytes.
This refers to the commercial process of making CD's, which involves stamping liquid plastic. It has nothing to do with CD-R/RW. These are two very different processes.
I think that the CD has to be quite flat for the laser to stay focused. So I assume that their adapter sandwiches the flex disk between two sheets of plastic. (This should also settle the questions about weight and balance -- the adapter is going to be the same thickness and very nearly same weight as a normal CD.) But get a little dust on it, and the disk is no longer flat inside the sandwich...
in case you hate pdfs that could easily be done in html, adobe has a pdf->html page.
here's the specs in html.
basically, there are two flexCDs, named 80 and 120 for their sizes in milimeters. The 8cm disk holds 200mb and the 12cm disk holds an unspecified amount (hopefully 702mb). each disk is 1/10th the thickness of a cd. standard minicd is 8cm and standard cd is 12cm. a 3.5" floppy is 9cm x 9.4cm.
the adapter has two parts which sandwich the flexCD and go in the non-supporting cdrom drive.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
"The flexCD is non-toxic and may be used with food items"
Cool - now instead of getting sent free coasters, I get sent free small plates. Now if only there was a new sort of CD that didn't need the holes in the middle.
Thing is, are rigid CDs toxic - because I use them for toast and stuff sometimes....
Uh, and this differs how from standard CDs? Before anyone calls this "cool", lets look at it a little deeper. Why was this technology created? CDs really dont present a storage problem so thats not it. There isn't any additional capacity so thats not it. They are cheeper and faster to produce but I've not heard too many people whining about the price of blank CDs.
They can be sent as junk mail. Bingo, thats it. If these things take off, AOL could have more bandwidth in the postal service with all these little floppy 650 Meg gems floating around the mail system than their own network.
Yep, Eva-Tone made them, they stopped making them about a year ago...
A year ago?
Jeez, who was buying them a year ago?
That's incredible. I'd assumed they were as far back in the past as the double-chamber McDLT styrofoam box (keeps the hot side hot and the cold side cold...).
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
What are the real benifits of a flexible cd? we dont need jewel cases to keep them straight? they surely cant take up any less space, roll a bit of cardboard up, does it now take up less space? i thought not.
aside from frisbee related injuries, i cant see any benifit, just as i couldnt see any point to flexible keyboards (i never had a wobbly desk, and if i did, id take a power sander to it)
And it has nothing to do with a desktop 'writer', 14.8kX or 148kX, etc., you 'll never use this at home/office. In fact, there is no 'writing' involved at all.
The process involves mass produced CD's, where there is a stamper and hot/liquid plastic...not a CD-R/RW...again, get a clue.
Is this going to be like those old floppy, square records that would come in kid's books?
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Could they make these disks expand in water(like those little purple thingys) or make emm expand like when they hit the oxygen from there tiny lil plastic sliver into a full cd? i mean this is starting to get ridiculous(some guy probably said the same thing when high density floppys came out) he ofcourse was wrong and maybe its not ridicualous after all... are u confused? i am.
AC, you are mistaken.
It's a line from the song "Fish", by the late, great, Throwing Muses, it's off of the "Lonely is an Eyesore" 4AD compilation record/CD.
DCD is a great band as well though.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
I mean i read the page and the company was really interested in one thing: ADVERTSISNG. You can print your picrture on the CD, then you cam print one on the caddy, ad then put one on the slot adapter...Ok ok it does have its + sides (such as less polution on lanfills and faster productioon times) but in my opinion we are better off with another, better standard (AKA DVD or dwd+RW or...), than an improvement to the old one, whose sole purpose is to advertise even more (now you will see AOL on everything, from caddy, to CD, to case?)
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
Finally smaller cd's my cd collection is about 2500 pirate copies of audio cd's and pirated dvd movies. so i am super happy now i can fit 10000 pirated cd's in to the same amount of space. awsome keep up the good work. ps is it illegal to give away backup copies of audio cd's or drop about 500 of them in front of sanity music front door.? --microsoft hater--
Yeah, and CueCats changed how I use the Internet forever.
(OTOH, CueCats were marginally neat. I'll be interested in knowing if these are any fun, as well.)
Because.
I can see it now. The first time someone puts this in a magazine, it will come infected with a virus. Figuring a first run of 500K copies, some
could get into machines otherwise firewalled off or just not connected to the net.
I'm not a pessimist, really, I'm not...
Great...
BlackGriffen
So.......um.....help me out here. Why the hell should I care about a thin flexible cd?
Before you develop a neat but useless technology, ask yourself: "why would anyone use it?" The flexible CDs are just about as practical as CueCat was. And they will hardly be as reliable as the regular CDs are. So much for one more useless technology...
No more drugs for this Guy ... !
...
American Cheese.
Why not Russian Bourbon, or Japanese Caviar
Oh, you mean the thing in the can...
well, you had too much anyhow.
Would a flexible CD be a good idea for having different shapes (such as squares, hearts, etc)??? Im worried about it being unbalanced because it would be played in high RPMs.
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
A regular CD consists of a reflective data layer (aluminium in the case of a "pressed" CD) protected on the top by 10-20 microns of lacquer and on the bottom, by 1.2mm of polycarbonate. CD drives are therefore designed so that the laser focussing system takes the refractive index of polycarbonate into account: the laser is only in focus if the CD has an optical depth of 1.2mm*1.55 (the refractive index, N, of polycarbonate) = 1.86mm.
If these FlexCDs are 1/10 of the thickness of a regular CD, then either they have to be made of a material with a refractive index ten times larger than that of polycarbonate (show me one!) or they need to use an adaptor (a "spacer" of some kind, perhaps just a disc of transparent plastic!) to keep the data layer at the laser's nominal focus.
I've broken more cds by stepping on them accidentally than I care to admit. These oughtta be more durable.
Eat at Joe's.
I remember cutting out 45 RPM flimsy records from the back of my cereal boxes in the 70's. Does this mean my kids will have a similar experience?
:)
Also, how will the CD player handle the penny that needs to be placed on the special spot to allow the media to spin properly
Now I reckon that if you put the "foil" in a tray CD player and just put a normal CD on top, it would spinup just fine most of the time.
One wonders the extent to which they will try and engineer the requirement for the addapter into the system, if homebrew adapters (even if the above idea wont work) are frowned upon then we know for which side of that fence the system is designed.
Personally I reckon they'ed be happy if they could get it to work adapter free, we shall have to wait and see.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Be cautious:
flexRights
An innovative solution that allows content owners to offer a "test drive" of their premium content to the market for a limited time. New markets will benefit greatly from this service. A music company can "give" a customer an entire CD of a chart- topping artist for a week. After that week, the digital encryption technology "locks" the music, leaving the consumer with the choice of going online to pay and "unlock" the music, or purchasing the rigid CD from the store. flexRights can also be used with Video and software content.
Boy, comes full circle. Put this in a round case like the old 5 1/4" floppies and you can put them in magazines! Or, create a CD Floppy drive ;). I do miss the days of the 5 1/4" floppies - they were called "Floppies" for a reason. People who only know 3.5" "Floppies" probably don't understand why they're called Floppies. Have I said Floppies enough? floppy, floppy floppy...
Hey, anyone remember RCA's Dynaflex LP's?
RCA introduced these briefly in the sixties. The word "floppy disk" hadn't been invented then, but it should have been. These monstrosities were floppy, also flabby, flimsy, flim-flams, etc.
According to RCA it was all in the interest of fidelity--even if it did give some misguided consumer the impression they were cheapening the product. (Oddly enough, the reduced costs in vinyl were not reflected in the price of the Dynaflex disks).
As it happened, Dynaflex was flayed in both the consumer and audiophile press, and in the marketplace, just as it did in one's hands, it flopped.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Hi,
this CD-slides will only lead in even more advertisment mailings.
What I'm still waiting for is the 'data crystal':
Storage-Tape
darkcookie
It would be interesting to know how this technology compares in terms of
- $/GB
- GB/kg
- GB/cm3
as an archive media versus magnetic disks and DLT.Perhaps the biggest drawback may be sheer capacity. I swear that a 600 MB CD is getting to be as useless as a 1.44 MB floppy relative to how much data needs to be archived.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Back to Floppies we go....
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life