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Roll-Up Monitors A Step Closer To Reality
gwernol writes "CNN are covering the merger of two of the leading companies in the field of OLEDs. This brings the dream of flexible plastic monitors and TVs a step closer to fruition.
You can find out more at Cambridge Display Technology who have acquired Opsys. CDT's technology paper on light emitting polymers (in the Research & Technology section of their site) is interesting reading."
I can't wait until this stuff can be put like wall paper and connected to the house backbone. Just a quick calibration so it can map images to it properly and presto. Just imagine all the cool stuff you could do with it. I still think having a camera pointed at the sky out in the middle of the pacific so you could have a truely starry night on your ceiling would be amazing!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I can't believe this - my 3rd post to /. in one day. Must be a slow Monday...
:-)
Back in 1994, I attended a demo of the newest Apple hardware: the PowerMac 6100, 7100, and 8100. Those PowerPC 601 processors just blew me away!
As part of the demo, the Apple guys showed us a video of upcoming technology, including a computer that folded like a book. The computer used an "avatar" that the user controlled by speaking naturally, as if to a person.
The Apple guys then asked us what was the missing link preventing anyone from producing the contraption. The answer: "folding glass." Of course, we know now (and probably did then, just we didn't want to admit it) that the CPU's and graphics processors of the time would have choked on the OS needed to pull off the magic.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
Reuters has an article regarding this technology as well:
Reuters Link
Color-changing clothes would be cool, but what do you do when your battery pack dies and your clothes go off? :)
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Check out the image at the lower left.
They used to have a movie of this screen being flexed while an animation played on it. Really awesome. Clicking on the link now leads to a much less impressive movie...
http://www.universaldisplay.com/foled.php
Fold up and edible! I could watch Beverly Hillbillies reruns on a bean burrito! Play Quake on a Hot Pocket! Quick -- somebody get me a DARPA grant...
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
No, really! The OLEDs are supposedly nontoxic, and capable of being printed onto edible substrates, like rice
paper or fruit leather. Edible gold foil could be used for the wiring. The battery and control chips would of course need to be in a separate module, clearly labelled "Do Not Eat."
<;K
>;k
How soon before Tommy Hilfiger makes a shirt that has a spinning or flaming logo on it?
How long before Tommy lets you download your own images to the shirt?
How soon before that system is cracked and you're walking down the street with a picture of a guy f%^king a chicken on your back?
It should be an interesting ride on the subway in a few years.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I notice that the /. crowd has already taken up the call for wall-sized monitors. I hasten to direct anyone with such notions to the Ray Bradbury classic "Fahrenheit 451". It is a disturbing work on many levels, and you can Google a lot of analytical treatments of the themes in the book.
Particular to the current thread, in the book there are wall-sized display devices used in the predictable fashion; not to view above the sky full of live stars or weather a la Hogwarts in Harry Potter (which sounds delightful) but to take a small room and create a large, totally synthetic environment with an extended synthespian family, all via subscription service. And there you sit all day, listening to their dramatic, interesting lives while your own dull, wasted existance drains away. So if you like, views into a crafted world with fake people, custom made for unneeded people. Homeowners in the book measure themselves successful based on how many walls they own; four walls is just enough.
Entertainment is emmersive enough. Do we really want to be flood with non-reality? Or Unreal Tourny, for that matter? The stars overhead sound good, and so does an "invisible wall" that projects an outside view of your backyard, or anywhere else in the world for that matter (the crater of an active volacanoe sounds nice!) But that's NOT where this is headed, you know. People historically ignore nature and real people and embrace entertainment instead.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
The article has pretty much 0 content, but I suspect this is an important step because one combined company with no cash struggling to survive while developing a product that is really far off can last twice as long as two seperate ones. Maybe even long enough to see the product come to fruition, or more likely long enough for some major electronic component maker to buy them and really bring the products mainstream.