Slashdot Mirror
ePaper To Be Used For Newspapers and Magazines
rustbear writes "The Guardian reports that cheap, paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens. The firm says the low production costs could see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers' attention as they move along the aisle. The Siemens spokesman said that one square metre of the material costs around £30, and scientists working on the screens said they should be available by 2007."
We can generate diamonds at will. We have paper that can move, and change, and display.
Now, we just need a complete breakdown of society, to show us what those can really do, free of governmental interference.
Cant wait to see the top shelf in that newsagent
--- Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
This is, of course, after The Guardian invested 80 million quid on new, hamburger-format-oriented printing presses. Of the non-e-paper variety!
Oops...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Ok. I'll take two. To save shipping costs, please post it with my quantum computer and flying car orders.
It's about bloody time. It's hard to imagine, but newspapers will be modular, dynamic, constantly updating. Don't judge a book by it's cover: especially since it was something else five minutes ago. Some error in publication? It's been recorrected. Information becomes a wiki, constantly edited, by thousands of hands. The transition into paying for the content-makers, continues it's eclipse, while content becomes even less brick and mortarish.
is anyone else thinking wallpaper here ???
colour your livingroom to your mood, no more painting...
give room-wide slideshows...
Oh joy. Flashing ads in newspapers. I can't wait.
Oooh! Maybe they can attach a speaker so we can hear what Bill Gates and 75 other people have to say about Windows XP Media Center edition.
My question. How the hell am I going to block popups in my magazines?
...can you squash flies with it?
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
From TFA: These could be short film clips or flash animations like those found on the internet.
The internet, being the innovative medium that it is, has pioneered the annoying distracting ads amongst mediocre content. Now we will be able to get moving ads in newspapers too. Are we also going to get Bonzi Buddy, and that money tree thing too? Put a little piezo-electric device in the newspaper (think the musical birthday cards), and we could even recreate things like those Jamster ads. The possibilities are endless!
nineteen eighty-four.
Vigilance, Mr. Worf. That is the price we have to continually pay.
With such stark printing innovation, I wonder how long it will be before my magazine can read me.
How about selling blank screens to customers, then have them download content? I mean, we don't throw away our computer screens at every page update. Does anyone know why this guy seems to think completely backwards?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Making the screen paper thin doesn't solve the rest of the problem : getting images on the screen. How is a magazine going to contain the power supply en processor needed to actually display something on the screen? More detail in the article would have been helpfull, now it just sounds like some scifi hype story.
How old were you when people stopped reading and started watching?
I admit I don't read much anymore except off a monitor, but reading requires thinking. A dog can watch and listen.
On a less serious note, this was already tried on cereal boxes in Minority Report, with mixed customer acceptance.
...Fahrenheit 451.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
> scientists working on the screens said they should be available by 2007
Translation: 2025
Now my newpaper will have fucking pop-up ads for pr0n, male enhancement cream, and wieght-loss pills.
Or is the resolution/refresh rate too poor?
Let's just skip that whole part about the huge-ass video screen being also able to watch you as well, okay? Unless, it's an isight, built right in. With a new remote.
Isn't this just eInk technology repackaged by Siemens?
...just got alot more interesting
While the Harry Potter style pictures mentioned in the article sound cool, a low power, lightweight ebook reader could conceivably change publishing for the better. Maybe after high end advertising subsidizes the development of the technology enough, someone will release an environmentally conscious magazine format that can be refilled RSS style.
Since the pages only need to be powered when their updated, solar power might not be completely unrealistic. Would definitely face hurdles with the pulping industry . . .
I suspect these screens will have some sort of battery power. How long will that last, how am I supposed to m save a newspaper clip of some important peace of news? How can I be sure that the information doesn't change over time. E.g. there could be an offending but selling headline, but when I try to sue for libel a couple of days later I can't prove it as it by then have changed to something less offending.
What about historical research? Even with ordinary paper/ink based information future generations will probably have much less knowledge of our culture than we have of e.g. the culture of the ancient Rome.
With this kind of technology the historical horizon will move even closer to our own time.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
How about applying that to product packaging? Movies could have the trailer on the back, games a few seconds of gameplay footage. Instead of a TV playing those ad videos for some stuff it could be printed right on the back.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
It looks like at the moment its B&W, but colour is probably quite a quick upgrade. Resolution looks high, but with the electrode approach there will be a tradeoff I'm sure. Since it looks like the aim is a totally printed technology it should be possible to bring the cost right down.
The main market they seem to be targeting is the fast moving packaging market - fast moving so that printed batteries don't wear out. I would guess that they will seriously be looking at those large billboards as well. However, if you really let your imagination go to town there are many more opportunities for a cheap, large scale, printed display technology. When paired with the other devices which can be printed (chips, antenna, batteries, solar cells, keyboards, and flat panel speakers) you have the possibility of really putting computers anywhere and everywhere for the cost of the materials and a bit of printing. Think smart environment that your PAN interacts with as you move through it.
Techie heaven
IMHO animated/flashing/moving picture magazines will be more expensive to produce that just text and static images. Though I like the idea of dynamic content, as long as it doesn't move, and more to the point... as long as it doesn't talk! and definitely if it doesn't talk back! The last thing I want is an argument with a newspaper.
What is the real reason for publishers to want to use epaper? When magazines are printed on "epaper", you can be sure they will be ruined by DRM in a desperate drive by the publishers for copy control. Yes, the content in the magazines will be able to be locked down hard, denying everybody all the previously recognized forms of fair use. After one day/week/month/whatever, the content of the magazines will be able to be automatically deleted without your permission, and on hidden DRM instructions from the publishers. There will be no software hacks to work around the problems caused by the DRM, because the DRM will be hidden deep inside complex silicon chips beyond the reach of consumers unless they happen to have a $50M sub-micron ion-beam lithography machine available to them. Artists, kids, and ordinary folks doing art or hobby projects will not be able to cut pages or pictures out of old magazines. Consumers will not be able to decide whether publishers will use DRM in epaper. Look at the tactics of the MPAA in forcing the broadcast flag and DRM stuff thru Congress.
This is just a press release rehashed by the Guardian into a 'news' article. No investigation has been done at all, and I doubt the 'journalist' spoke to the scientists she 'quotes' at the end of the article.
Nothing to see here, move along.
It has an invisible ink. re-read it after using it, and it will all make sense.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The thing I like about paper newspapers/magazines is that I can draw moustaches on the people in the pictures. If the content changes my ePaper is going to be unreadable, with my moustaches covering the text. How would you do crossword puzzles or my favourite, sudoku's? BTW if this was used for newspapers, they couldn't be called newsPAPERs anymore.
I can't wait for the first OS hack for one of these ePapers, imagine linux/bsd running on your newspaper!
You just know that we will have years worth of misery as each and every content provider implements their own DRM that demands the user purchase and use their particular brand of reader etc etc etc. Any gains in usefulness that we might get from having a cheap light easy to read electonic display will easily be offset by needing to carry around 12 different versions for each publication you want to read. I makes me really cross to see such great technology being scuppered by the petty greed of a small number of (already very rich) people. Grrrrr
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
And this link should take you to the Siemens page about it, which has a photo too.
Looks like the reason they are targeting it at packaging initially is because the images change slowly.
because of the high quality paper we use, they find they can recycle it and print their newspapers on it and it's cheaper than them making their own paper. It's a billion dollar industry for us.
r _us_r.php
Yet, the Chinese are adopting innovations faster than the western world (like the super speed trains). Will this mean that the trade deficit will tip even further in their direction?
I heard that paper tidbit on the History Channel and can't find any links that specific, but here are some related ones:
http://www.ban.org/ban_news/Junk_Bond.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/04/demand_fo
Maybe it's just me but I think that all thta will happen is we get annoying adverts in our mags and papers much liek we do on some web pages these days.
Thankfully I feel people will not put up with it like they do on the web, maybe then after seeing mags and papers lose sales though annoying people the web will follow suit and bocome a nicer place.
+----------------- | What is the question!
With "high prized" magazine, what do they mean? Playboy? Gives the brand a whole new meaning!
I find that magazines are extremely expensive right now. Thin slabs (much thinner than they used to be) with very little content, basically you are paying to look at ads - which may or may not be a bad thing but this usually correlates with how big a niche the magazine addresses.
With the printing and distribution costs going down with this, will the trend be that magazines go down a lot in price, go down moderately and pocket a higher profit margin, or become free?
The one assumption I feel to make is that many websites will become downloadable and truly start competing in the same domnain as magazines/newspapers: the john:), the airplane, lunch, in bed, etcetera.
Before I get a lot of "you are an idiot" replies, please realize I spend no time on the internet reading the www pages of known magazines - partly because the live versions have been shown to be so poor in content in the first place - so I don't know if they are generally cheaper or free online.
1. The concept of ePaper is not suited for moving images.
2. thin TV screens are not ePaper.
But is it biodegradable?
Seriously, I can see it now: some enterprising young hackers (in the tinkerer sense of the word) are going to hack those flat screens, add a bunch of electronics and a standard VGA/S-Video connector, improve the resolution, write an open-source driver and turn them into the largest high-res black and white screen ever seen. Think humonguous, wall-to-wall X11R6 display for 100 bucks, folks.
... And the next morning, all the newspapers concerned are going to sue the poor schmucks, invoking the DMCA and saying, in effect, that the users have a license to use these screens, but do not really own them.
The original website will be promptly slashdotted to death, 13 seconds after the project is released into the wild.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Actually, with the capability of moving images will probably come multiple *FULL PAGE* adverts on a single page. This would definitely be the way to generate more money for a publication without necessarily increasing cover prince.
If you cut some part of the paper (or black it out), he will move the ad over the remaining content :-)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
As someone who travels frequently, I can't wait for this to be a reality. I like to read the same newspapers wherever I am, but find them hard to get when I am away from home. Subscribing to the paper format when living abroad was ludicrously expensive, and not worth it to get your daily paper two days late.
Along came the internet and I have since subscribed to the web edition which is great, but not as portable as the paper version. No matter how light and small you laptop is, you can't just walk into a cafe with it under your arm, fire it up and read the paper at the counter.
This is going to be great for subscribing to foreign papers, or carrying a stack of them with you in a practical manner, to say nothing of the trees were gonna save.
Immediately in fact, I've been wanted to cover my walls with computer monitor for years. That's a pretty big screen though, might have to get a better video card if my four wall monitors are all 10mx4m.
Movies on a 10m screen would be good, and games. Get a properly positioned webcam window up over most of the wall and video-conference. It'd be like having 'em in the room with you.
30quid per meter. That's what, 1 grand or two per wall?
*plots*
Pre.........
Paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines? INCONCEIVABLE!
Ooops, sorry - wrong thread.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Wait until the words are dancing around the page. Try following that with your puny human eyes! I can just see it now, turn the page and the ad that was on the previous page is now on the next page, and the next, and the next. You cant escape it. You will conform, consume, obey, and submit to our new high tech magazine spamming overlords.
While there are a lot of things you could do with a slow-refresh display device at this price point, such as animated vehicle paint, billboards, constructing a video dance-mat 300ft wide to play pacman 'for real' and making disneyland look even more like a bad acid trip, producing a newspaper that sells for less than the price of a hardcover book isn't one of them.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Of course, who wouldn't want e-paper? However, there are several problems with it I could imagine:
1. As others have posted, flashing ads are the least I wanted to see in a physical newspaper.
2. DRM issues. I, for one, wouldn't want to pay for information on a per-minute basis without being able to store it.
3. Archivation. Digital storage standards evolve, and so, without a physical copy, archiving old content will be increasingly more expensive and difficult because of keeping up with the latest storage technology. Also, new storage technology may compete and create uncertainty which will prevail (e.g. HD-DVD vs. blu-ray)
4. Information credibility. Most people don't double-check the information they consume, either online or offline, but at least they are generally as smart as to not pay too much attention to most online content. With e-paper, your newspaper essentially becomes an extension of your computer monitor, with all credibility issues attached.
5. Information quality. If everybody can dump their printing presses or never buy them in the first place, internet journalism standards will come to a reputable newspaper near you. That doesn't have to be bad, but in many cases it will be. The internet is regarded as pearls in an ocean of shit, and when entrance barriers to creating newspapers are lowered to the point where one only needs a computer with internet access, then the relative modest creek of shit that is today's print media just might turn into the same ocean.
The upside to all this is that e-paper probably won't take off as long as it isn't as cheap as and more fragile than carbon paper (for example, can you roll up e-paper to a tight cylinder and swat flies without damaging it?), because if it tries to compete with dead trees, it has to be as expendable and durable as them.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
think of a pda/laptop that can use its case to display infomation, a gamer pc case that customs to the game your playing, you could set your case to match your background or desktop.
thermoptics comming soon to a laptop near you
[sVen]
So now I need adblock for "paper" magazines too?
Advertisers need to learn something: ramming annoying ads down peoples throats does not make them buy your shit. It does the opposite in fact. I flick channels when the ads come on, because they piss me off by being loud, inane and generally useless to me.
And I'm sure every effort has been made to make sure that these devices decompose quickly and with no harm. Just like CD-Rs.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
I watched Minority Report and thought that this looked like a nightmare view of the future. Some idiot advertiser looks at it and thinks it is a great idea. What a maroon. The reason I block every advert I can (TiVO, Adblock, PithHelmet, flashblock) is that the constant flashing of these things make it very difficult to concentrate on the content. I can see something like this killing newspapers in an ideal world and yet in the real world we probably will end up with something like this. Advertisers.... Anyone got an ark we can stick the buggers on along with the lawyers, telephone sanitisers and other useless folk?
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
could see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers' attention as they move along the aisle.
:-)
Reminds me of the Harry Potter movie with the "Criminal Escaped" poster
bash$
They're taking orders right now.
Is it absorbent? Mostly I use my newspapers to soak up messy jobs. Changing the oil on the bike, under the kids art projects...
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
"We think that at the moment the screens will appear first in more expensive magazines in the form of high-impact adverts. But as the price sinks we expect them to appear in papers as well, possibly as a really attention-grabbing front page."
Newspapers and magazines, and any print media company for that matter, are all struggling with technology. Proprietary technology is the norm. There is rarely anything standard between one and the next. The advances in printing technology notwithstanding, no publisher could implement this without the help of a third party. It is extremely doubtful that we will ever see anything like this on a news shelf coming directly from even the "more expensive magazines." They are looking to reduce their distribution costs, which may be upwards of 50-70% of the total, not increase them.
The Admin and the Engineer
iNcredible!
Would that not be iNkredible?
A digital newspaper can be subjected to revision the same way those Soviet Party photos were doctored.
One day something is in the paper, the next day there is no mention of it in the same exact edition.
With the way government is intruding on PC hardware why would digital paper be an exception?
To broaden your point a bit: do we need more moving pictures? I'm not advocating against the technology, just saying that I see enough images moving about daily as it is.
With TV and the internet, there are plenty of videos and animations to take in with, or as part of your information diet. The permanence and patience of newspapers and magazines is a nice diversion from the visual bombardment of those other mediums.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Is it just me or is anyone else sick of the politically skewing and destruction of information from both the left and right of politics?
From TFA:
"We think that at the moment the screens will appear first in more expensive magazines in the form of high-impact adverts. But as the price sinks we expect them to appear in papers as well, possibly as a really attention-grabbing front page."
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
NT
So ePaper is taking over the role as toiletpaper?
It better not give me any shocks.
Its simple, epaper will never take over completly simply because people like the way regular paper feels in there hands. Its easy to work with and you can easily write stuff on it.
"The images are in colour, and can broadcast anything that can be shown on a regular flat screen monitor or TV, although with a slightly lower quality.
Funny how Seimens is making this stuff, as I think that is just what covered my keyboard.. eeew stttttiiiiiiiiiiiicccckk^H^H^H^y keys.
Anyway, I can't wait until 'slightly lower quality' can be judged for ourselves.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_is_Not_King
I'm ready for my trodes!!!
for epaper cuts...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Wealthy individuals used to (still do?) have servants iron their newspapers to set the ink so that the newspaper wouldn't soil their clothing. If this new technology gets used in newspapers for advertising, people will have to start microwaving their newspapers in order to shut off the annoying flash ads.
Top Headline for 2008: CLICK HERE!!!
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
There's a product which already does this for $1499.95.
http://www.see-free.com/
Although I wouldn't wear it while driving. Actually I might just go and buy some shares in them if this ePaper takes off....
It is unfortunate that this techology is being sold to us so that we can 'see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers' attention as they move along the aisle.' This to me sounds like keywords for annoying advertising.
I wish they would use this technology for anything OTHER than advertising. Ads for cars, beer and drugs are annoying enough without them 'jumping off the page' telling you about an erectile dysfunction solution.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm sure this this stuff will decompose in the landfills just as fast as regular paper.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
This is just gonna kill the scrap book industry.
What will we line our bird cages with?
I don't get it -- the technology will be used initially only on the front page? It's electronic and writable - why is there more than 1 page? And if there's only 1 page, why does it need to be paper-thin?
If this is just like paper, there is no UI. That means there is no way to STOP the stupid flash animation from looping? That would be torture - imagine trying to read an article with a never-ending animated dancing monkey in your (not so peripheral) field of view.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Maybe you should try here.
I think this will have much less impact on publishing industry than web had; I mean, what's there about ePaper edition that you can't get by just visiting the site? When I think of it, I prefer paper edition of the stuff I do read, exactly because I don't have to waste energy avoiding all the shiny shit, animated ads, windows poping out & so on.
This is more of a gimmick. Sure it's nice to have animated papers and stuff, but once you got it, said 'cooool', what do you do? And then you start to think about more practical stuff, like - price, sensitivity, recycling issues.
Unless it becomes as cheap as ordinary paper, I don't see it growing significantly in papers/magazines department.
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
Real size porn.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Imagine a magazine reader instead. Its a two sided pallete that knows when you flip it over. Flip it one way, the page turns forward, flip it the other and the page turns back. It could be an eighth of an inch thick. Why use the material in the magazine when you can bring the magazine to the material.
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
Yet another ePaper product promised more than a year away. Ho hum. If history has a lesson, any ePaper announcement this far away should just be ignored.
First there was Philips eInk, whose technology was integrated into the underwhelming Sony LIBRIe. Then Seiko revealed a wristwatch that appears big and heavy enough to block bullets.
With their no-lighter-than-other-technology design, most of these products seem to have missed the compelling point of ePaper: it is supposed to be as big and as light as paper!
Even the eInk development kits being sold Novemeber 1st are for small 6 inch displays.
Until they announce ePaper that I can use to cover an entire wall, and it is available *next week*, I am not going to hold my breath...
Forget moving pictures for ads, and forget just having animation on the front page: a news paper would only need a front page -- with a button for flipping pages.
"Dear Diary, Today I went to the sto-"Hello, my name is Clippy, it looks like you're trying to write a letter, would you like some help?" Press 'OK'"
"Quick Description:
p ?id=427
:) Much better than going back to Google to recall stuff. (BTW, I'm not associated with the Scrapbook authors... I just love this thing!)
"ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and easily manage collections... Save Web page; Save snippet of Web page; Save Web site; Organize the collection in the same way as Bookmarks tree; Full text search and quick filtering search of the collection; Editing of the collected Web page; Text/HTML edit feature resembling Opera's Notes."
Editor's Review
"Incredible page management -- June, 2005 Editors Pick"
"Do you save a lot of webpage files to your computer, but hate how they're formatted or take up so much space in your folders? Well, ScrapBook is the solution for you. This handy sidebar integrates itself into Firefox to provide wonderful management of saved pages (all of the files are hidden nicely in your profile folder), and you can add comments and edit the saved page as much as you like. A must-have for avid offline browsers. "
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.ph
This is so much better than "Save Page..." since I get an integrated search, and can knock-out ads and superfluous text (if the original page didn't give you a Print option). Sometimes I just highlight the desired text/images, right click and choose Capture instead of getting the whole page. The archives Scrapbook creates are HTML in a mozilla sub-folder that can be easily copied. Can even handle linked pdfs, audio and video if desired and it can jump back to the original URL.
I've found it useful for news clippings, tech articles, documentation and 'keepsake' pages.
Perhaps if someone wanted to take it to the next level, they could print out the more significant articles as they are captured, and make a note in the comment field that the page exists in the paper archive.
But what about the cost/bulk of the supporting electronics? Even if the screen costs $0.10 to put on a box, the electronics to play the video would certainly add much much more. That isn't economical for disposable distribution.
MadCow
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
That's why I use Flashblock. I believe it still downloads the flash ad no matter what, but it won't play until you click on the icon.
OTOH, I won't use Adblock. I have Nuke Anything instead: If a gif ad gets really obnoxious, I just right-click and 'Remove Object' before reading the article. That way, the publication gets its chance to show me (non-obnoxious) ads.
It seems we have been on the cusp of this technology for ever. First LCD screens became cheap, then there were variants on the electronic paper as display, and now this. So all I want is an 8.5"x11" or A4 size thin display on which I can read material loaded from my key drive. I don't need any more functionality than changing pages and maybe a zoom feature.
This technology makes it sound like the only app is to make moving adverts. Why not just sell blank sheets of this stuff and, instead of buying a magazine, the seller just loads the file into your sheet? Almost like publishing on site at the newstand.
No mention of the resolution possible on this stuff. Is it too poor for print?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I wonder if this is OLED technology. I have heard of nothing else resembling this technology.
If we buy one epaper display, and all walk up to the checkout at the 7-11, we could "buy" the magazines wirelessly, with nobody ever having to pay to print a million coppies of something that does not sell.
We could pick up PC Week (or whatever) for $0.50, instead of $3.95...wirelessly.
I'm sure we can do it now, with wi-fi, the 'net, etc...but having a name branded electronic-paper-tablet-thingy would make it more understandable to the average idiot.
Andy Out!
So my dog will be unemployed now :(.
Bye bye to paying shitloads of money for a big TV set. £30 for a thirty five inch diagonal (one meter) screen? That gives you a sixty inch widescreen format screen for what, a hundred US dollars?
The plasma, CRT, and LCD companies are done. I, for one, welcome my new big screen overlord!
(Wouldn't you know it, I just paid a thousand dollars two years ago for a 42 inch 215 pound flat screen trinitron. If I'd waited 5 years I could have had a bigger one for a hundred fifty and no hernia!)
Considering that Media Research Center (mrc.org) bills itself as "The Leader in Documenting, Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias", I think they may have an axe of their own to grind. The fellow running the place was also responsible for the manufactured outrage over TV indecency (y'all remember Janet Jackson's nipple, right?)
On your other link, I can't figure out what's being claimed. Is it that the soldiers were "coached" or that they were "pre-screened"? All I see is Scott McClellan denying everything. Now, the administration's habit of appearing only for military audiences or for folks who've signed loyalty oaths... well, that's a bit more troubling.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy!
E-Ink has been developing (and offering) similar technology for quite a long time now.
http://eink.com/company/index.html
I think E-Ink started as an offshoot of someone's research grant at MIT.
Playboy magazine, Penthouse magazine ... talk about a frontpage spread!
From the looks of this headline, it sounds like they only plan to use this to make disposable newsprint more attractive, rather than trying to offer it as a reusable medium for long-term use. Does this mean our old biodegradable newspapers will now contain toxic materials?
8==8 Bones 8==8
I can't believe no one has mentioned Back To The Future 2!
Whats black and white with (flashing) red all over? oh wait, still the newspaper.
Ultimately, the reason most things are printed on paper is because it's still the cheapest method of distributing the content while also remaining zero cost for the end user to read it.
... so maybe electronic paper can solve this problem?)
No matter how advanced "eBooks" get, the end user still has to have the hardware in order to read the content, not to mention potential costs for replacement batteries, etc.
Electronic paper solves the requirement of special hardware on the end-user's side, but still can't be produced as cheaply as printing text or pictures on regular paper.
Billboards are a great example of a place where electronic paper would make sense though. You're already spending a considerable amount of money to print up a color advertisement of that size, plus paying for the labor for people to climb up on the billboard and strip off the previous paper ad, replacing it with the new one you paid for. If all of this was as easy to change as someone uploading the latest data to a billboard at a particular IP address on the net, it would speed up delivery times and cut costs for both advertiser and billboard owner.
(If you think about it, billboards would have gone to gigantic LCD panels or something long ago, if it was cost-effective to build displays of the required size. But it never has been
This would be just like the magazines in and newspapers in the movie Minority Report where the headlines are showing up as the news happens and things are moving and scrolling accrossed the page.
Just think, the entire magazine could be sold with only 2 double sided pages. You would have a cover, and back...then all the insides would be displayed electronicly through a simple "touch to flip page" here.
The downside...? Right now, magazines last years for your kids, your kids kids to go back and look at. If everything is electronic then it obviously requires power which means that 50 years from now it wouldn't work and the type of batteries it used probably wouldn't be around...so you'd have no way to go back and look at something that happened.
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. Yes is the answer.
Does anyone else remember Minority Report? In it there is a sequence where people are reading ePapers and they all change to showing Tom Cruise' face. I thought I'd not only bring this up but maybe expand upon what I see as the usages for ePaper:
1. Never have to actually buy a newspaper again. If, like in Minority Report, newspapers became node points on an internet subdomain, then the data could be downloaded wirelessly to each of the nodes and your newspaper updates automatically. There could even been separate types of nodes (dailies and subscriptions). The daily newspaper is only good for that day then it offers you a chance to pay for the next day's paper.
2. Books for the handicapped. There are many handicapped people who have trouble reading fine print. With ePaper the font size could be increased to a size someone with this type of handicap could read.
2a. Deaf people can benefit from this also in ways not yet thought of. The paper could be made to vibrate for alerts.
3. Instant mail. Someone sends you e-mail from somewhere. Now you can read it in private by making the inside area not the same as the outside area. Just hold the paper up and read. The angle of view would allow the person on the inside of the fold to see the information but not the people outside of it.
4. Always wanted that big screen to show movies on? Now you have it and at a fraction of the cost.
5. Always wanted that big screen to do your programming on so you don't strain your eyes? Now you can get it at a fraction of what it currently costs.
6. Hanging pictures or entire walls can now be set up to change colors, murals, etc....
7. Need to light an area? Replace normal lights with one of these. Because they are flexible you could now have a light that is in the shape of a spiral. One color on one side and another color on the other. Or you could have funky lights like in StarTrek where bands of color move along a wall without having to have hundreds of little lights behind a screen to create the effect.
8. If the screens are transparent, then they can be used as coatings on windows thus allowing you to set the tone of the sun. Too dark and depressing outside? Brighten up the room with a sunny day. Too bright for that solid black decor? Tone it down to a more dismal look. Or maybe mix reds or grey levels or blazing orange.
Just a few thoughts.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
ePaper is STILL just "a couple of years away"!!
Newspapers and magazines already have moving images, even video streaming if they want to use it. It's called the internet. As the cyber culture evolves, paper media will become more of a thing of the past, or the same thing, totally unrecoginzable as it literally adoubts to cyber culture. I can see this new technology being quite prevelant in novels and other books. The expansion of the media experience will make the current version of books and other print literally antique. It will be McLuanns model of a merging of the old technique into the new, and something totally unrecognizable from the old. And with that a total paradigm change in how we view the world, hence think, therefore a new mindset. Yeah, I think I sound kind of silly too. But sometimes I get these flashes. And dont ask me what kind of flashes.
Just because we've had the technology to bind magazines cheaply in aluminum foil for decades doesn't mean we should've been filling our landfills with them. Just because we've had the means to cheaply publish hundreds of millions of fat phonebooks every year, that didn't mean we had to fill all our landfills to capacity with them. But we did. Now we're going to start filling our landfills with "disposable" electronic paper? If we're so clever, how about we don't make them "disposable" until we make them out of something that can quickly degrade back into simple chemicals that our ecosystem reabsorbs, rather than choking ourselves with yet more, and more poisonous, crap?
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make install -not war
I don't care if the ink is edible. If it's been anywhere near your ass, I'm not touching it.
will everyone calm down about the 1984, 'oh no, they're gonna rewrite history' bullcrap? if something in the paper gets corrected, there will definitely be a revision history. why? because that's what people would want.
Note the line "To date, the engineers have been using silicon switching elements to control the device. The objective now is to use a printing process to manufacture the entire display, including the appropriate control electronics, from conductive and semiconducting plastics." The idea of making semiconductor arrays in a printing press has been around for years, but nobody has done it successfullyin production. Siemens hasn't done it either. They're still making the substrate for this in a wafer fab, and it's a big chip. So this is still an expensive technology. It might get cheap, but we've heard that claim before about "e-paper" type technologies.
The "printing semiconductors" idea has been applied to solar cells. There are plenty of announcements of breakthroughs in this area, but somehow, nobody actually seems to be shipping product.
So this requires another breakthrough, and in an area where there have been few successes. It's not here yet.
Oh joy. Flashing ads in newspapers. I can't wait.
Could be worse! Imagine PAPERCLIP packages made with this stuff!
"Looks like you're looking for Aisle 2! Do you need more info on... buying, saving, paperclips...?"
You muggles get excited over the oddest things...
Lets say 1 page of standard newsprint is about 2 square feet. 30 * 2/9 = about 6.7 pounds for one page. Any newspaper using that material would have to be re-usable in order for it to be cost-effective.
Think of the possibilities...get a bunch of these, with some cameras and processing power, wallpaper a tank with them...and presto...instant chameleon
When I read this, I immediately got the image of the Hogswart paintings in the Harry Potter movies.
Obligatory:
In future, newspapers read you!
act now and save 10% off your yearly subscription to the ny times, only 500 bucks!!!
:D
i just want to see the first issue of playboy on the newstands and mothers grabbing their daughters and screaming lawsuit
Does anyone know why this guy seems to think completely backwards?
Everything that siemens does is backwards (I know, I've been forced to use their industrial automation products and their pityful software for the last 15 years, because my company's main client is one of siemes stakeholders).
Ok. This is a fabulous concept to use this for. I mean... to replace the newspapers and magazines print editions with these... Wow. marvelous!
Only thing is;
Why are we inventing and researching all this cool stuff, and then using this to do something we do every day;... a little differently? Why doesn't someone come up with something new and imaginative to use these for that doesn't re-invent the wheel??
Yea; I'll admit it's a tiche on the philosophical side...
Cheers;
Jeff
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In America we have USA Today, which has been color for years (since the early 80s?). It's very flashy, but sucks as a newspaper. The articles are very short and fail to give much detail. I'd rather buy one of the national single color papers any time, such as The New York Times.
I agree, their view of the new technology is more narrow than its potential. I mean, why would you have paper at all if you could just have the single screen update with each page of the news paper or anything else. With the continuingly increasing power of cell phone technology the real application will be a single bluetooth enabled page that is controled by the phones buttons. You would be able to navigate page by page and content provider to content provider with the phone and just update the display over bluetooth. The tech is there right now and would be the best way to do it because the phone is connected to the internet. Bye bye paper! Cheers
Give them the illusion of choice and they will blindly follow for they choose not to make one.
What SHOULD happen:
In future, when you buy a subscription, either they send you a book full of this ePaper with a embedded cpu/EVDO radio, or you have only one device. You give them the address of your device and once a month or once a day the magazine or newpaper gets downloaded to your device. You could also have it just accessable through the EVDO. Somethng smaller, yet similar couild also be used for shelf tags in the grocery store.
What will happen:
You will get a new device every month and many of these will stackup just like they used when we had paper mags except the images will move instead of be static. At first, the eInk pages will just be for adverts, but eventually the whole magazine will be full of ePaper.
Gorkman
Instead of magazines, how about wallpaper, cheap big screen tvs, I like that idea.
Julian
I go out of my way to complicate the simple things, so that I can simplify the complicated things.
Anyone else want to wallpaper at least one wall in thier house with this? Couple of questions. The article was pretty vague, which does not lend it creedance. Is it flexable? What kind of resolution does it have? Is it color? What is the pixel response time? Pixel density? Does it put off light, or require ambient or back lighting? Contrast ratio? Viewing angle? What technology is behind it?
Trusted Computing/DRM requires that vendors have control of the hardware if it's to be at all effective. Many critics recognize that TC/DRM is essentially taking ownership of such hardware away from the consumer and putting it in the hands of the vendor, even after the purchase has been made.
What better way to retain control of the hardware than to integrate it with the content it's intended to display, and then make it so cheap that it's disposable?
Imagine the comeback p0rn magazines would make if they adopted this technology. It'd be a revolution in 'printed' media!~ ^-
You can check out the images and the details on Siemens site
"We are no longer content to stimulated only by flashing internet and TV ads," said Mark Vinciento, president of the World Association of Epileptics. "With this new technology, we step into a brave new world where merely walking past a news stand can induce fantastic, life-threatening seizures."
The flurry of flash photography following Vinciento's statements caused him to collapse twitching from his podium, to the enthusiastic applause from the onlooking crowd.
"He likes it," said Jane Fitzgerol, association secretary, "why do you think he took the job?"
You're average (large-ish) software box could use 1/4 sq meter of card.
If you converted that to this material, you'd be paying £7.50 ($13 US) just in packaging.
Even if they used 50% of the packaging surface area for moving-picture advertising, it would be adding several pounds sterling to each purchase.
Put mildly; Stuff That.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I don't see how he can talk about things like that, according to him we don't have right-to-live yet... and computers have more rights than us (by his reckoning!!).
Strange world, no justices for the average guy.
please type the word in this image: justices
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
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"The images are in colour, and can broadcast anything that can be shown on a regular flat screen monitor or TV, although with a slightly lower quality. These could be short film clips or flash animations like those found on the internet."
As far as I know there is no epaper available to the public today, so there has not been a crap version of the technology for early adopters.
I think I'll wait for 2G epaper, thanks.
Bedsides, this sounds like just an advert delivery device, not a replacememnt for paper.
What I want is my own epaper I can fold and put in my pocket, I want to download documents to it, be that news, journals, blogs, novels, catalogues, whatever.
I don't want a replacement for tv, I want the new book.