Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Paper Advances
ke4roh writes "Electronic paper comes a step closer," says a Reuters article today. The paper, made by E-ink bends and makes for a higher contrast display, perhaps for e-books and cell phones. It reminds me of Jim Willard's Paper Computer, but their web site is history. Slashdot previously discussed color electronic paper."
Here are some good links for those of you who want to know more...
e -i nk_for_e-books__.html
i /english/sci/tech/newsid_1 292000/1292852.stm
, 10 738,2656348,00.html
http://www.eink.com/
http://www.biblio-tech.com/BTR901/January_2001/
ink_for_e-books__.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/h
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0
I do wonder about the power supply though. Seeing that I can barely get a day's worth of stand-by on my cell phone with a tiny text screen it seems keep these things powered up might require an equally revolutionary energy store.
The thing to remember when talking about e-ink is that power will not be needed to keep information displayed. Power will be required for the wireless data reception, and for changing what is displayed, but various e-ink technologies that have been mentioned all have means of showing information that are not energy intensive.
I'm not sure offhand exactly how it works, but usually involves some sort of small particle or such with, say, black on one side, and white on the other, and they are rotated to show a particular pattern of 'pixels', and then take no energy to remain in that pattern.
This is one of the big wins of e-ink - along with the fact that done properly, it should look little different from plain old paper. (though it is definitely not there yet)
If you equipped an 'e-ink newspaper' with the ability for the user to query for updates, instead of the paper constantly checking a wireless frequency, then power consumption could be quite minimal.
I do look forward to fully interactive e-ink, so that, say, you could have a notebook with e-ink paper, you jot down notes with a stylus, the paper shows the proper marks so it feels just like regular writing, but with the options to save notes, recall them later, and memory that allows one notebook to keep the information that a whole stack of real notebooks couldn't hold. Can you imagine having an e-ink journal, for example, that could hold a lifetime's worth of data in it, so you could recall anything you've ever written/drawn on the e-ink pages?
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
http://msnbc.com/news/910466.asp?0cv=CB20
;-)
it reminds me of pictures of the first transistors bell labs- all bulky and ungainly
but in it's picture you see the future gleaming bright
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While it's a pitch for their server, Apple had a puff-piece on Trafford Publishing not too long ago. It's a brief look at how print-on-demand can be successful, at least on a small scale.
You know what?
One major drawback is binding, the binding on the Xerox publish on demand system sucked horribly. I imagine given enough time and resources someone could come up with an almost instant binding solution that would work about as well as a paperback, but I don't think the tech will ever rival a well bound hardback book. The problem with the CD's would be players that can't read from dye based cd's and the fact that dye based cds dont last as long. It would however greatly lower the distribution cost of cd's but it really doesn't matter because the real costs are in the promotions department, the physical production and distribution of a cd probably comes in around $1.50
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You'll find that most infants already come with an audible alert mechanism for that. Factory-standard equipment.