E-Paper On Cereal Boxes

coastin writes "Wired Mag has an article about electronics maker Siemens, readying a paper-thin electronic-display technology. They say it is so cheap it could replace conventional labels on disposable packaging. Imagine items on grocer's shelves that flash commercials at you as you walk by. From the article: 'When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it", said Axel Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement the technology.'"

Comments

Can you think of a better way

[Anonymous Coward]

to alienate parents?

Epilepsy?

[slavemowgli]

Flashing stuff on boxes all over the supermarket? That's got to be a nightmare for those suffering from epilepsy.

Re:Epilepsy?

[dr_dank]

Flashing stuff on boxes all over the supermarket? That's got to be a nightmare for those suffering from epilepsy.

In this age of data mining, persons afflicted with a seizure at the supermarket will quickly receive a coupon for a free shake from Baskin Robbins.

Re:Epilepsy?

[|/|/|||]

Absolutely. I can't stand animated web pages -- the last thing I want is animated packaging.

There are potential benefits here, though. For one thing, if you can add some buttons to make the display interactive, you can fit a lot more information onto the label.

Re:Epilepsy?

[commodoresloat]

That's got to be a nightmare for those suffering from epilepsy.

You misspelled "everyone."

Seriously. Pop-up ads on cereal boxes? I can't fucking wait.

The epileptics have it easy; once they go into a seizure they will be able to stop paying attention to the damn ads.

Re:Epilepsy?

[mph]

... and have my supplies shipped to me like the milk deliveries I get now

Wow... they have Slashdot in 1950?!

Re:Epilepsy?

[HTL2001]

judging by your UID I'd say you'd be far more likely to know than me.

How utterly depressing

[Toby The Economist]

> From the article: 'When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't
> expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it", said Axel
> Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement
> the technology.'

Western culture appears to have lost its vision.

New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying cereal?

We're amusing ourselves to death.

Re:How utterly depressing

[MillenneumMan]

True. But so much of advertising is already directed to children. Grocery shopping with the kids can be excruciating. At least they get a workout constantly returning items I reject back to the shelves

Re:How utterly depressing

[tomhudson]

Its illegal in my jurisdiction to have advertising (magazines, etc.) directed to children under 13.

This is over and above any broadcast requirements.

This could be a good thing if it gets parents more used to saying "Mo!" to their kids. After all, a pissed-off parent is already hostile to your product.

And I REALLY don't want to see the ads for Preparation H!

Re:How utterly depressing

[Skreems]

Exactly. This only works on the sick individuals that buy their kids things in an effort to make them happy (or shut them up). Granted, I don't have kids myself, but I like to think that my reaction would be to not take them down that aisle anymore, or else try to teach them that you don't need shiny things to be happy, rather than cave in to this twisted capitalistic crap.

Re:How utterly depressing

[guitaristx]

This could be a good thing if it gets parents more used to saying "Mo!" to their kids.

Is that anything like saying "Ni!" to old women?

Re:How utterly depressing

[LithiumX]

Vision?

Haven't a great many of the popular advances in the 19th and 20th century been driven by marketing, and the desire to draw attention for purposes of profit? The earliest visions of the phograph's uses were more oriented towards automated marketing than towards the memoranda and music they were actually used for. Color printing was exclusively for the purpose of making product packaging more appealing, and television only became possible as a mass-market item when it was married to marketing (to this day, commercials are the life blood of the networks).

Early radio broadcasts were practically commerials with a thin veil of entertainment laid over them. It took a little while for radio commercials to seperate from the actual content (when they started announcing the products during frequent breaks, rather than the programs constantly hawking a product within a poorly contrived story).

Holograms were invented simply to see it done, but the bulk of the funding came from companies who sought to apply them as the new wonder-label (which turned out to remain prohibitively expensive for some time, and just never that appealing).

Western technology has been driven by three primary needs:
* direct threats - be it war, disease, famine, etc. Death avoidance.
* misguided ambition - attempting to create something unrealistic, and ending up with something unexpected (and often unnoticed for some time)
* commerce - the inherent desire to make people give you money

Altruism is a noble thing, but it's greed that makes the world actually turn.

Re:How utterly depressing

[BobPaul]

When kids see [snip] cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it"

They already do this. They're kids.

Re:How utterly depressing

[SquadBoy]

All three of mine soon learned that whining was the best way *not* to get something. This remains one of the things their mother and I agree on.

Yes it takes *seriious* time and effort to do this but it is well worth it.

Re:How utterly depressing

[enjo13]

What nazi regime do you live under? I mean the entire Disney store would be out under a idiot law like that.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Seumas]

On the other hand. You, also, are full of shit.

There's nothing I hate more than sanctimonious prick parents saying things like "well, you have no children so shut your mouth and keep your opinions to yourself!" or even more drug addicts who say shit like "You've never been addicted to meth, so you don't know - shut your mouth!".

Look, I've never raised a kid (I've taken care of a number including my own siblings for great lengths of time over months or years, though) and it doesn't take a fucking rocket scientist to know certain truths . . . You know, like it's not hard to have a spine and raise your children without caving into their every want. Or... you know... you shouldn't beat your children or feed them ice cream every morning for breakfast.

In fact, parents (like drug users) are often some of the stupidest people on earth. I don't mean this as a flame or troll - but honestly, squirting out a kid is something that doesn't require any intelligence or qualification or wisdom. In fact, a lot of people might suggest that it's the least intelligent and prepared and qualified people that squirt out kids the most frequently.

Seriously - your comment is shit.

Re:How utterly depressing

[smileyy]

2 words: mediatronic chopsticks

Re:How utterly depressing

[dhanes]

'zactly. Bravo.

It only took two times of dropping to one knee in the middle of the grocery aisle, upending my son onto the other knee and a couple of quick whacks on his bottom to curtail whiny outbursts over whatever pretty shiny box with on it that he wanted. Not even hard whacks, it was the embarrassment and shame of having that done in front of strangers that did it. He's 4, and now is able to have a somewhat reasonable conversation about 'why' he can't have something. He might not like it, but he knows we have the final say.

Now, all I have to do is give a little askance look at him and ask him if he needs to be spanked in front of everyone. He'll then try to reason his way into getting it, sometimes I give in, most of the time I win. The next time he see's that particular item in the store, he'll even reiterate the reasons I gave him for not wanting to buy whatever it was, couched in language like "I can't have that because it is full of those plastic oils and high fructose corn syrup? Right Daddy?" Unfortunately, 'high fructose' comes out usually as 'high fucktoes' ;)

I love the stares from the other parents as they whip through the aisles trying to get out of there before their little one has another meltdown and they overhear these conversations.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Seumas]

Since stores are private property, managers should simply ask parents to remove their children. The problem is, we all know how uptight and huffy parents get if you even insinuate anything about their parenting or their children. If a child is destroying your store and disturbing other customers and employees and you politely and discreetly ask them to remove the child or control the child, you are definitely going to lose a family-worth of customers which could amount to quite a bit every month. And there's always the strong chance that the parent is going to go Jerry-Springer all over your store and cause an even bigger scene.

There's nothing worse than a fat bloated sweat-pant and tee-shirt wearing obese mother with a shopping cart full of twinkies, soda and sugared cereal going on a loud rampage with her four toddlers because you dared to ask her to control her brats.

The thing is parenting is honestly not that impossible of a job. It's a lot like training a dog. It's called repetative conditioning. You reward good behavior with small things and you punish bad behavior. You set expectations and you follow through with positive or negative consequences accordingly. There's nothing worse than a parent who says they'll do something if they child doesn't XYZ and rather than following through, just repeats the "threat" over and over. But hey - a lot of parents are just too lazy to be consistant. I mean, if you are too lazy to carry and roll on a rubber to prevent having the kids in the first place, what are the odds you won't be too lazy when it comes time to being a real parent?

Re:How utterly depressing

[LithiumX]

If you want to bring in a number of auxilliary driving forces, you might as well enumerate the seven deadly sins. When you think about it, these provide almost all the core reasons why we have advanced as fast as we have, compared to other cultures throughout history.

Many cultures have risen to heights, both technological and philosophical, some of which we ourselves can't yet lay claim to. But from a historical standpoint, Eurocentric societies have rapidly moved from being quite literally the armpit of the known world, to the absolute domination of the globe (both the US and modern Russia count as eurocentrically derrived, in the long run). Only China and the middle east can claim to have had a global impact worth comparing.

Why? Simple. Europeans, back in the dark ages, identified, enumerated, and understood human nature. They knew their sins, which made them easier to pursue.

Greed - the need to make money, and to find more ways of getting as much of it as possible.

Sloth - just plain lazyness. We want our machines to do the work for us.

Gluttony - the drive to produce more plentiful food, that tastes better, regardless of nutritional content or actual need.

Wrath - newer and better ways to kill our fellow man

Envy - one nation sees what another has, and wants it for themselves, so they have to figure it out for themselves.

Pride - the need to produce something better than what's out there, to become famous for your creations, or for national pride.

Lust - I'm not sure how to articulate why this actually drives western progress, but I'm certain it's the keystone to all our social evolution.

Re:How utterly depressing

[jafuser]

Altruism is a noble thing, but it's greed that makes the world actually turn.

Actually, it's conservation of angular momentum.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Which is why my wife and I take turns shopping: one of us stays HOME with the kid. Lots less impulse buying that way.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Puff Daddy]

Yes, yes he did compare you to a drug addict, in that you refuse to consider advice on its merits. The fact that you acted like a sanctimonious prick in your response validates that part of his post, although that might not have been the best way to get his point across, especially given the prickish nature of his first post. The fact is that many parents don't know anything about anything, much less parenting. Note, I didn't say this includes you and I didn't say it includes most parents. That being said, like the grandparent poster, I don't have kids, so I have no experience raising them. What I do have is parents and a sister who is raising my nephew. If I am giving advice on raising children, rest assured I have gotten it from them. That being said, my parents taught me and both of my sisters that being obnoxious was a real fast way to not only not get what we wanted, but to get what we had taken away. That might sound strict, and it was, for a little while. Then we learned that calmly asking for the things we really wanted and not every flashy piece of crap in the store would get us what we wanted. Parents happy, kids happy. I know, I haven't raised children, so what I just said isn't true and obviously makes no sense. Here's some friendly advice that has nothing to do with raising children: Consider the advice being given as well as the person giving it. Just because someone has kids doesn't mean they know anything about raising them, ask your local 15 year old mother.

Re:How utterly depressing

[mOdQuArK!]

Actually, it's interesting - in a few kids I've observed, there is so much useless advertising hitting them all the time, they've learned how to ignore all but the "coolest" ads (and they like to watch those mainly for the artistry), and the really blatant stuff seems to annoy them.

They've also become really good at figuring out when their parents or siblings are trying to manipulate them emotionally - perhaps these skills are related.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Toby The Economist]

> It only took two times of dropping to one knee in the middle of the grocery
> aisle, upending my son onto the other knee and a couple of quick whacks on his
> bottom to curtail whiny outbursts over whatever pretty shiny box with on it that
> he wanted. Not even hard whacks, it was the embarrassment and shame of having
> that done in front of strangers that did it.

I would ask you to consider the other consequences of your actions.

I agree what's been done is completely effective at stopping him from using disruptive behaviour in an attempt to coerce his parent into buying something.

However, being physically disciplined, *excruciatingly so in public*, also tells the child that his self-respect means very little or nothing to his parent (this is the natural consequence of humiliation). Parents are THE most important factors in a child's life. Children naturally perceive what their parents do as always correct and adjust their logic accordingly. If he is "told", by his parents actions ("it's okay to beat you in public if you want something you can't have"), that he is worth very little, that *is* what he will believe; and when he grows up, he will have no self-confidence and no self-respect.

One other issue is that of proportionality. The death sentance is not handed out for speeding offenses. If it were, the world would be a horrific place. Imagine being a child where such a terrible experience is given to you for what is, when all is said and done, a fairly trivial behaviour; and this in turn leads to another issue, whereby adults have to accept children are *children*, they lack the experience to be responsible in the way adults are. It is often the case that children behaviour obnoxiously - but the fact is, they're children and don't know any better. Adults, despite being irritated, annoyed and frustrated, are *adults*, and must therefore behave reasonably, no matter how they feel.

I was about 10 when my mother divorced and remarried badly. I had an appalling step-father while I was a teenager. I'm now almost 33; for the last six years I've been doing therapy to recover from the constant humiliation he inflicted.

I was lucky, because I had a normal life till my mother divorced, so deep down, in my core, I'd already come to think I was okay, and so I rejected and hated my step-father.

If humiliation begins from age zero, you've had it. Your very inner core believes you're not worth it. You don't *know* any different and you think and feel this is normal and you behave in the same way to your children.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[middlemen]

I envision the day when porn will be flashed on the cereal boxes and the kid's Dad goes "I want it!"

Minority Report

[non0score]

Looks awfully familiar to that cereal box in Minority Report...of course, this probably is an old idea put into a movie.

Soon

[voice_of_all_reason]

Let me know when it's legal to grab people on the street and inject them with chemicals to suggest irresistable urges to buying my company's project.

(you know it's coming...)

Harry Potter

[Deinhard]

Are we getting close to the moving photographs in the Harry Potter movies?

Seeing Nick Nolte's mug shot scowling out at me from a post office wall would be most disconcerting.

Then again, a moving poster of [insert favorite model here] would be most intriguing.

Grocery store?

[michaelmalak]

Forget the grocery store (especially these days with groceries ordered over the Interent). Why, with e-paper, I'd want my cereal box to be web enabled, because it would be a whole lot better than reading the cereal ingredients over and over again over breakfast.

Boy, did the prognisticators really miss that one -- everyone kept talking about web-enabled microwaves. Little did they know the web-enabled cereal box would come first.

Re:Grocery store?

[algodon]

Why don't you turn the box and do the maze on the back?

hmm...maybe a good use of this e-paper stuff would be better stuff to do on the back of the box? Imagine eating cereal while playing Doom 3 :)

Yeah, right

[GigsVT]

I work for a retail label printer.

Average prices for labels run about $3-$10 per thousand. The most expensive labels on metallic stock with lots of spot colors might be $30 per thousand.

That's still 3 cents per label for the most expensive ones. I doubt they could even sort out the power supply for these things that cheaply.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anti_Climax]

Well, with something like a cereal box I doubt they would need to cover the entire thing, so you could have the same old box of Frosted Flakes but with an animated Tony the Tiger hawking his wares.

By leaving most of the original printing intact the application of power becomes optional and could be done through an inductive system set on the store shelf. It probably wouldn't cost the store too much to begin with and would pay for itself after a short period. Not to mention, once the box is off the shelf, an animated label would have already served it's purpose.

So much for the value added possibility of seeing something *new* on the box when it gets ready during breakfast.

Re:Yeah, right

[YrWrstNtmr]

I doubt they could even sort out the power supply for these things that cheaply.

And TV is more expensive than newprint. Guess which one is in deep sales trouble.

Re:Yeah, right

[orasio]

I work for a retail label printer.

I feel your pain, brother. I work for a retail color laser printer. Printers are the worst bosses. This one pays me cash, the bank once said something about yellow dots in my money, and refused to accept a deposit.

Just what the environment needs

[Rhys]

Something less recyclable than paper to package all our crap with. That's flashy and annoying. And uses (and landfills) batteries.

On the bright side you'll always know if the product is fresh or not. Not fresh: no display. Of course then you won't know till you open it if you have Cheerios or Chex Mix.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[pete-classic]

I agree.

As a side comment, recycling paper is dumb. Planting (and eventually harvesting) trees is a net win for the environment. Chemically treating used paper is a net loss for the environment.

-Peter

Re:Just what the environment needs

[r5t8i6y3]

and prior to recycling there is the impact of resource consumption.

i wonder how many more resources go into the production of e-paper over tree/hemp/etc. paper? anyone feel like doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations?

i feel very concerned when i notice so much focus on recycling and very little focus on consumption. if you are concerned about the earth/your home/"your back yard" ask yourself "how can i consume *less*?" because by consuming less we make the recycling problem smaller.

if this site http://www.weeeman.org/ is at all accurate, we geeks are using quite a bit of our share of the earth's resources with each new computer we purchase. according to this site, if we divide the earth's resources evenly amongst the current population, our individual "earthshare" is equal to ~two football fields. purchasing *one* computer uses ~4.25% of your earthshare. if you purchase six computers you consume 25% of your earthshare. and this doesn't include _any_ of the other things you are consuming (car, house, other electronic devices, etc.).

here's a couple more sites for more information about e-waste:

Basel Action Network - BAN
http://www.ban.org/

Computer TakeBack Campaign
http://www.computertakeback.com/

btw, here's where you can get the most eco-friendly paper i know of: http://www.livingtreepaper.com/products.html

peace

Re:Just what the environment needs

[geekoid]

You could minimize that buy requiring a deposite.

However, our problem with trash is not volume of space, it's how we manage it.
We could dig a hole in the middle of the US 3x3x3 miles in size, double the estimated amount of trash we will create in the next 1000 years, and it wouldn't be half full.

Putting tiny dumps near places where people live is not the best way to manage it anymore.
Truck it out of neighborhood, swap the trashholder with an empty one, trainf the garbage to a nation wide cetral location.

I would create 10 smaller one it different locations, depending on major train stops.
10 smaller one would be easier to create and manage.

It's abig project, but so was Golden Gate, the Empire state Building, and the Hover Dam.

It's much worse than that...

[hackwrench]

New technology being though in terms of not how to inform consumers but how to bypass the most informed and target the least informed, depending on them to persuade the better informed. Note: the child frequently doesn't actually want the cereal itself in this particular situation, but just the pretty box.

I can't tell you how many boxes of Frosted Flakes I ate for the primary goal of getting the Disney Afternoon figurine inside. There were also numerous times I thought I wanted something, but didn't actually know what it was.

Re:It's much worse than that...

[lrucker]

That's nothing new. When I was in high school I had a job for 1 day as an annoying mall survey person - not the one who accosts you in the mall, but the one who asks the questions once you've been captured.

Had to ask a woman (mid 20's, high school drop out, and quite frankly couldn't even approach pretty without plastic surgery) if, after looking at an ad, she thought some shampoo that cost more than she made in an hour would make her "beautiful". Was totally shocked when she said yes, and decided I couldn't do a job where the point was to find people's misconceptions and exploit them.

First things first

[mean pun]

Before we get all the useless and annoying applications of e-paper, could we please get something useful first: a comfortable e-book reader?

Pretty please?

Oh, and make it uncrippled. Yes, I'm looking at you, Sony.

Re:First things first

[Castar]

Exciting developments on that front, actually!

Two e-ink based readers are supposed to be released soon: The Hanlin V8/V2 and a device from iRex. The iRex reader is supposed to support Linux and be released in "early 2006" in Europe. The Hanlin V8 with a proprietary OS is supposed to be released "by the end of this year" in China for around $300, with the Linux-based V2 being released in May worldwide at about $320.

My money is on iRex, since they're backed by Philips and have a larger screen, but they might be more expensive than the Hanlin device. We'll see!

I can see it now...

[Dan Morenus]

A disgruntled cereal packaging company employee quits, and a few weeks later at 5:00pm some fine Sunday all the boxes on the supermarket shelf simultaneously and inexplicably start flashing goatse...

Curse or Blessing?

[BeBoxer]

Part of me thinks e-paper is going to be really cool and will allow us to make some neat gadgets. But at the same time, I'm terrified of what the marketing folks are going to do with it. We are already at a point where advertising pervades our environment everywhere we go. When it all starts flashing and jumping and pointing and demanding our attention at all times I think I'm going to go totally insane. I really think I might just snap and actually go crazy. And I suspect I'm not alone.

Let me know when this matters.

[Guspaz]

They've been talking about ePaper like this for years, along with a ton of other technologies. ePaper doesn't seem to be any closer to their claims now than it was years ago.

OLED too. Considering they keep showing off larger and larger displays, and the stuff is supposed to be dirt cheap to manufacture, I sure haven't seen any OLED displays bigger than a few inches across. If they are truely as cheap as they claim they are, lifespan isn't an issue as you could buy frequent replacements. Make a 17" OLED display with a modular capability to easily swap out the display itself. If it only cost $50 for the display itself, replacing it a few times during the lifetime of the product could still be cheaper than existing technology.

This is a disaster.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool - Lets replace biodegradable*, recyclable paper boxes with a mix of paper plastic and metals that can't be recycled and will leech nasty stuff (think batteries) into the environment.

*OK, the inks involved can be fairly nasty, but there are less nasty options used by some.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[AKAImBatman]

There still has to be a digital input to the ePaper. Like an LCD, it will always be possible to hack it to display something else.

You mean, in the same way it's possible to "hack" the FPU out of a CPU into another unit? THINK about it. If they print all the circuitry as a single device, you'd have to have fab-quality tools to directly interface with the ePaper. That is NOT my idea of a "hackable" piece of ePaper. (Especially since it would be cheaper and easier just to purchase a generic ePaper display.) And that's assuming that they don't further cut corners with tricks like not adding eInk to areas that don't change in the animation.

Vi4g7a

[uberjoe]

Does this mean that I will get 'organ enlargement' spam flashing on my condoms?

Medicine vials?

[mypalmike]

Miniature displays in color could appear on consumer-goods packaging, including medicine vials, in 2007, with a resolution of 80 dpi, Gerlt said.

"You say the defendant, Local Pharmacy Inc., failed to warn your late husband about possible side effects of the drug?"

"Yes, sir."

"Show me the bottle. Let's see here. 'Not to be taken with alcohol. May cause dizziness, blindness, and death.' Clearly, if he had read the bottle, he would have known about the 'death' side-effect."

"Sure, but the label didn't say 'death' until just an hour ago. It said 'headaches'."

Grassroots Press Story ca. 2099

[Zordak]

Grassroots Press
For Immediate Release.

A recent conference of historians meeting in the bombed-out shell of a Hyatt hotel held a panel discussion on the cause of the downfall of human civilization as it was once known. The group uanimously traced the downfall of civilization to the following statement from the early part of this century:

Imagine items on grocer's shelves that flash commercials at you as you walk by.

"What were they friggin' thiking!" exclaimed noted historian Dulcinea Bumkis. "I mean seriously -- wasn't there anybody who looked at this and thought, 'That's the most idiotic idea I've ever heard.'" Another historian noted that a little-known insurrectionist going by the handle "Zordak" on a popular message board advocated just such a position, but he was quickly drowned out by a chorus of six-year-olds chanting for Cocoa Puffs.

Re:It's coming

[Gabe Garza]

> Soon we'll have advertising on every inanimate surface.

Why would we limit ourselves to inanimate surfaces? I envision a day when I go to a seafood restaurant and the oysters have a self-updating "I've been out of water DD HH.MI.SS" display attached to their shells; the lobsters have a "My claws currently weight WW ounces each, and I was harvested only HH hours ago" display on their carapaces; and the waiters have dazzling, dynamic pieces of flair attached to their uniforms that vibrantly inform me how much they love their job.

And that is how western civilization crumbled...

[The Famous Druid]

... in the Supermarket Riots of 2008.

Pathetic parents?

[Nutria]

When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it"

And I expect good parents to whack them upside the head until they say please.

And then whack them upside the head until they politely shut up after the parent says "No".

If Google has taught us anything...

[Trip Ericson]

...it's that in a world where all the advertisements are flashly, the plain one stands out.

Adult?

[Sv-Manowar]

I can see there being huge money in this for the first adult publication company to make moving porn magazines, or moving porn images on paper. The hype alone would eat up the initial cost in sales, and they could build up a huge brand on being the only one to offer it.

The adult industry was the original driving force behind the internet progressing, so who knows what will happen next. If theres money in it, you can guarantee that the big adult companies will come knocking on the door after a while.

ugh

[slashdotnickname]

Imagine items on grocer's shelves that flash commercials at you as you walk by

And imagine me walking to the nearest competitor that will not annoy me with real life pop-up adds.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[BlueSteel]

Great, someone pwn3d my Lucky Charms!

Cerealblock?

[dg13]

Grocery stores will be like the web prior to adblock, but then google will find some cool way to integrate relevant ads by scanning what is in your cart. "Hey you can make manicotti with what you have in your cart plus ricotta cheese and this box." All text, of course.

Phillip K Dick got it right

[nycroft]

It seems that Phillip K. Dick's vision of a future where no one can escape annoying advertising is coming true. If we're not careful, Orwell's prediction of government controlled speech will come true. Oh wait...it already has.

I dont think so...

[mustafap]

E-Paper or not, these displays will need power. From batteries. What an environmental nightmare.

Underrated

[guaigean]

This post is underrated. The quote When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it" is absolutely disgusting. They are breeding mindless consumerism, and making the life of any parent that has to take their children shopping with them hell. It's bad enough when kids try and grab boxes as you push by, but having the boxes TELLING the children to pick them up is even worse.

Re:Underrated

[cagle_.25]

I'm sorry; that's unbelievably simplistic. Or perhaps trollsome.

We're talking about advertisers intentionally making it *more* difficult for parents to instill discipline in their children, and you're blaming the parents?!

Reality check: being a parent of a two-year-old and a six-month-old means that you are devoting approximately 30% of your processor time already to making sure that the kids aren't (a) harming themselves, (b) harming others, (c) making a mess, (e) being properly fed and clothed, and (f) learning how to interact like reasonable human beings. That's the involved parents; the loser parents just ignore the kids until they scream.

Walking down the grocery store aisle with one kid in the seat and one kid walking means that *if* you want to actually choose a product and place it in the cart, you will have to stop holding the two-year-old's hand and focus on the products.

Your two-year-old, being smart like her daddy, might just decide that now is the optimal moment to go for something interesting, like flashing cereal boxes. Now what, Dr. Spock? I suppose you're going to "instill discipline" right there and she'll just straighten right up for you.

News flash: unless you want to make every infraction a capital [1] offense, your kid will buck your will on a regular basis. The smart parent will decide which battles are worth fighting and which ones are worth reasoning through ... and reasoning through with them takes time.

In short, getting a kid to the point where he or she has self-discipline requires ... um ... time and patience [2]. You have to have self-discipline yourself to pull it off, which means that you can't expect to press the magical "discipline" button and have them behave. Have fun raising your own kids.

[1] Nothing short of the death penalty will guarantee compliance. My daughter responds pretty well to time-outs, but I spent part of my childhood proving that my dad couldn't spank me hard enough to make me obey him.

[2] As in, I haven't had time for any hobby coding projects since my first daughter was born.

Re:Underrated

[Yartrebo]

Liberally dishing of spankings isn't without its drawbacks either. Plenty of psychological studies have shown that it can lead to serious issues (self esteem, depression, socialability) later in life.

Artificially creating conflict like marketing does should not be allowed. If it wasn't for the marketing, you (as a parent) wouldn't have to be forced to decide between spoiling the brat (which is even worse for his/her long term social and mental health, no less your pocketbook) and having to be the 'no' and punitive person (which leads to another set of problems mostly manifesting in teenagers/young adults).

Personally, I will not allow my kids to come with me food shopping if I ever have any, and cold cereals (or other crap) will not be on my list. Combined with strict commercial filtering I hope to keep the temptation to a minimum. This would mean no live TV, but my experience with kids is that recorded or P2P'ed material is far prefered by them anyway, and recorded material offers me more control over their viewing habits with far less intrusiveness than having to ban TV channels or TV altogether - and the wider selection available on P2P generally balances out the crap unavailable due to censorship. (I don't intend on buying stuff in stores as finding anything that isn't mainstream is extremely hard, and even the stuff that I can find will have to be ripped [since backups are a must for kids] and generally comes as a handful of assorted episodes instead of the full 65 episodes])

interesting development....

[ChrisGilliard]

ink-printed images of today to a digital medium of flashing graphics and text that displays prices, special offers or alluring photos, all blinking on miniature flat screens.

This means that as people check out, the cash register could swipe the RFID tag on the umbrella that was just sold and tell all the other umbrellas to raise their price on this e-paper by $1.00 because it might be raining.

Re:interesting development....

[Segway Ninja]

I went to a supermarket a while ago, and was greeted with a digital display for the price of everything on every shelf. Things that were on special had a larger, paper sign in addition to the little display.

Exactly what you're describing can be done even with technology available (and in use) right now.

Will it REALLY make you buy the item?

[Ipeunipig]

I know it mentions children, who are extremely impressionable, but how many of you are actually influenced by advertisment. Especially of existing items that have not and probably will not change. If you already know what the item is, what it tastes like/does, will repetitiveness really make you more suseptable(sp) to buy that item? The only point I have ever seen in any advertisement is for new products or changes to existing products. Pretty much, If I want something, I know what I want and go and get it. Flashy pictures will not persuade me to get Frosted Flakes over Capt Crunch.

What in the name of ....

[dotdevin]

This is the LAST thing we need. Now I will have to purchase "AdSubtract - Supermarket Edition" just to buy bread and eggs without excessive cr*p. -D

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

The cost of the food, as you point out, is only a small portion of the true cost of a product.

You have to account for that "everything else" BEFORE you can think about the extra cost of the digital display. Just because you have put ePaper on a cereal box doesn't mean you don't have to market it or ship it. The cost of that display is above and beyond everything else, and must directly eat in to the profit margin.

E-paper. E-Ink. E-cheap. NOT

[Animats]

The E-Ink/E-Paper crowd is always talking about how they'll have displays that are really cheap, really big, really soon. Yet they're not trying to break into the laptop or TV markets. What's wrong with this picture?

You can buy an E-Ink Prototyping Kit for $3000. This is a sheet of "E-ink" material, with the little balls that rotate, mounted on top of an 6 inch LCD panel, attached to a little computer. Runs Linux, even. This gets you a little black and white display. Since there's an LCD panel behind it, this can't be cheaper than an LCD panel. It is sunlight-readable, though.

There are some E-Ink point of purchase displays, but they're fixed signs where sections can be turned on and off, much like the special LCD displays that are used in control panels. These are still a few hundred dollars. Along the same line are the various "E-Ink clocks".

If you want a display that holds its image with power off and is sunlight readable, try Kent Displays. It's not "E-Ink", but it actually works.

Which is why there will always be two classes...

[hackwrench]

and why the proletariat will never be the ruling class or indeed revolt. The smart ones will move out of the proletariat, and it's the smart people that are disaffected in society that will rebel, both the rulers and the rebels using the proletariat as cannon fodder. It's a waste to prey on the misconceptions of the proletariat when there are more effective and economical ways to decrease their purchasing power and increase their utilizability.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[onwardknave]

Great. Hacked cereal boxes. I can just see "Goatse Cereal." Hey, it even sounds like "oats," so it's got to be good. GAHHH! My eyes!

Engineer?

[WoOS]

said Axel Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement the technology

I started to wonder once I read that sentence, as it's normally not the engineers who say such things. (They would more probable say "It's sooo cool. Next thing I'll try is to have my name rotating on it in 3D even though it can only do 3 frames/sec"). And lo and behold, a german article on the same topic reveals the guy is the project leader. Uff, engineer honor saved ;-)

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[jnelson4765]

But if you use RFID and an inductive grid in the store shelf to give the box power, you wouldn't need to worry about that. It is also the likely way to have them controllable - have a central server dump commands to individual boxes.

That would be cool - imagine hacking the store server to have "You're the man!" appear on every box in the store when you walk by... :)

pornflakes

[EmbeddedJanitor]

RDA 100%