Slashdot Mirror


New Uses For LCD Technology

HaggiZ writes "A design student from the University of New South Wales has developed a postcard with a built-in camera and LCD display. As the article states, you simply snap the photos and send it to your loved ones and 'they tear open the perforations, fold out a little kick stand on the back and sit it on a bench top. Then it's as simple as pressing a button and it will go through a slide show of images.' I also found these credit cards with build in LCD displays. It sounds like the perfect solution for credit card fraud, with the card generating a One Time Password for each transaction."

31 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. eink by gadzook33 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If they're not already using it, they should try this stuff.

  2. Hmmm... by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Informative
    The palm-sized camera-cum-postcard, housed in a cardboard shell with a two-megapixel lens, a 10-centimetre screen, digital memory and an internal battery, would cost about $25.
    Kudos to the kid for his invention, but FYI, when you have 'cheap' digital cameras, it means they're skimping on the lens.

    Good photographers don't need expensive cameras, they use expensive lenses.

    But since the idea includes a slideshow, I think it would be worth producing. Especially since CCDs, LCDs and RAM are dirt cheap when ordered in production quantites.
    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:Hmmm... by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Snap+Send Postcard is still just a concept, but the young inventor says the technology exists to turn the idea into a commercial reality. It's just that he, as a full-time student and casual library assistant, doesn't have the money to finance it.
      ...
      He could have sold the rights to the clean-face kebab wrapper and the Snap+Send Postcard to keen companies, but prefers to just share his ideas while he's a student.

      "I'd rather use them to show potential employers my ideas."
      Sooo... he's not going to make this and he isn't going to sell his idea to anyone.

      Even if he did, I'm sure this idea has been thrown around before and someone could argue it infringes on their patent/idea.
      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    2. Re:Hmmm... by FrenchSilk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It isn't designed to be used by professional photographers or anyone wanting a sharp, distortion-free, low chromatic abberation image. It is designed for taking snapshots and sending them to a friend or family member. It is for fun. But for what it is worth, some very serious photographers use cameras that have incredibly bad lenses. Google for Holga images to see some great examples.

    3. Re:Hmmm... by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Good photographers don't need expensive cameras, they use expensive lenses.

      And yet millions of people use their cellphone as a camera.

  3. LCD credit card fraud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    So a stolen card will display a one-time password to the thief each time he uses it?

    1. Re:LCD credit card fraud by penguin_asylum · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually, the site linked would tell you that...

      The one-time password is to protect against people knowing your credit card number etc. and using it without having the physical card (i.e. online). It wouldn't help you if someone finds the card.

  4. Re:It's not built yet by majest!k · · Score: 5, Funny

    While we're on the topic of making up uses for LCD technology, I'd like to propose the LCD Restroom Stall. Finally, something to look at besides those inane scribblings on the wall.

    Can I have some money now? Or how about some of what Zonk's smoking?

    --
    smattawichu
  5. Re:Ooooh... by MoonBuggy · · Score: 3, Informative

    The article estimates $25, but that's probably Aussie dollars which converts to ~£10 or ~US$18.

  6. cost by korgull · · Score: 2, Insightful

    this is old technology combined in one package.
    How much you want to pay for that ?

    If it's enough, I'll supply (and I can)

    Just to be clear I don't think this is really anything for /. /. shouldn't be promoting business but technology.

    1. Re:cost by StarManta.Mini · · Score: 3, Insightful

      this is old technology combined in one package.

      SURPRISE!

      All technology is just old technology combined in one package. Sometimes made smaller, or higher quality, etc, but that's all progression of technology is: combining old things in new, smarter ways.

      The Internet? Old phone lines and circuitboards and computers combined in a new package.
      PDA's? Batteries and processors and LCD's and digitizers.
      Every new software rogram that comes out? It's all made of zeroes and ones... old technology.

      Anytime something new comes out, you can break it down into its base components and claim it's nothing new.

    2. Re:cost by Bad+D.N.A. · · Score: 3, Funny

      Your kidding... Right?

      By this logic there has never, ever, been anything new, ever.

      I can see you in 1903:

      "Calm down now Orville and Wilbur, that little flying machine is nothing new, it's just a bunch of parts that are commonplace. All you have done is combine them in one package."

      Your right about one thing though...

      "Anytime something new comes out, you can break it down into its base components and claim it's nothing new."

      It's called the periodic table.

      --
      "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
  7. cc fraud by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I also found these credit cards with build in LCD displays. It sounds like the perfect solution for credit card fraud, with the card generating a One Time Password for each transaction.

    Or clerks could stick to credit card processing policies. I walked into an Apple store today and asked an employee if it was OK to use a client's card, with a letter of authorization (in hand, signed by him, matching the sig on the back of the card.) The employee managed to finally get the attention of the manager, and the manager, who could barely be bothered, grunted "no". "Even with a signed authorization letter naming me, listing contact info that matches his account, and a signature that matches the card?" "NO." Oooookay.

    So I collected my $500 in items for the client, went to the cash register, swiped the guy's card, and when asked for a photo ID, handed the dude the letter- the manager was distracted and working elsewhere. "This okay?" "Mmm...yeah." "Want to keep it for proof the charge is authorized?" "Nope, you're good."

    Credit card companies establish merchant rates based on risk of fraud on the transaction. Some simply require "card presence", ie, a physical card MUST be swiped. Apple seems to require a photo ID, which probably knocks a couple tenths of a percent off their merchant fee or somesuch. Apple may transmit the signature or store it, and if the charge is contested, they can ask my client "is this your signature, or the signature of someone authorized to use it?" That's all the CC company cares about- that it was SOMEONE authorized to use it.

    Then there are the retailers where they NEVER actually see the card- I swipe it, and they never need to look for a valid signature or see whose name is on the card; it could be an old CC with fraudulent info encoded, for example. Or the places that take the card, but the cashier never flips it over to look for a signature. Nobody's compared my signature the card in years, and it used to be everyone did (then again, I'm also older.)

    1. Re:cc fraud by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      my boss sells tshirts (thefurryworm.com) and he keeps getting nigerian delivery addresses for big orders, with american billing addresses.

      the cc processing company doesn't care because they get paid for the transaction, and they get paid again for the refund.

    2. Re:cc fraud by dougjm · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can have the best sig in the world on paper but when you try and wite it on that wee strip of writable plastic on the card it never comes out right, so your signature is always a bit different on card versus paper. At the checkout the last thing that the person on the till is going to do is question you if the way you crossed the T looks a bit out of place - especialy, as you say, for £4.50/$8 an hour.

      Thats why when my bank started to offer their cash cards with the signature laser printed on under the protective plastic i was very impressed - not only because the box you had to sign in on the form was large enough to write in but because they also lasered on my photograph too. So if you don't look like me it doesn't matter how well you forge my signature!

      --
      Reinventing the wheel since 1979
  8. Re:It's not built yet by Dunbal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The industrial designs student has only came up with the idea of a disposable camera that can be used as a post-card.

          Sounds great in theory but wait until the various postal services of the world get their hands on it...crunch, snap, hmm what's all that dribbly stuff?

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  9. Seen this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card/index.html

    Just goes to show that almost nobody bothers checking cards.

  10. Re:It's not built yet by iamhassi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "a disposable camera that can be used as a post-card."

    and the pics can't be deleted, once you take them they're there forever. It also can't be charged, or new batteries added, "the slide show could be watched a few hundred times and the camera could be taken to a developer to get the photos printed."

    How's this any better than the digital camera walgreens already sells for $11? Least photos can be deleted and has a flash, and you simply bring them to walgreens and they print them immediately and you can mail them to whoever you want.

    ok his idea removes the need to bring it to walgreens but still, it's double the price, doesnt have a delete button, and when the batteries die it becomes completely worthless, you really do have to trash the entire camera.

    The reason walgreen's idea works is because they're hoping to recoup the price of the camera because you have to return it to get your photos and then they can resell it. This guy's idea will never work because he cuts out the middle man and since the batteries can't be replaced it really does become disposable, for the same price it costs to make this camera a company could make a camera with replaceable batteries and sell it.

    you know what it'd take to make this work? Make the camera like it is, but when you're done you drop it in a pre-paid envelope that came with a camera with a list of who you want to get photos from it to mail it back to whoever you bought it from, they take it and send prints to whoever you want. That way they get their camera back to resell to someone else and your friends/family still get their "postcards".

    good thing he's a industrial designs student cuz he'd make a crappy business man.

    --
    my karma will be here long after I'm gone
  11. Coming soon to court rooms, etc? by Travoltus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "No post cards allowed".

    Heck, at this point, people at all sensitive places will be stripping visitors and workers down naked and only letting them in with special jump suits.

    You could feasibly now graft this camera technology into shirts, gloves, baseball caps, glasses, etc. And even James Bond himself will be bug eyed with amazement when the nanotech factor finally comes into play in this industry.

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
  12. Re:It's not built yet by welcher · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's a completely different idea. As you describe it, Walgreens is just selling the digital equivalent of the "disposable" camera that has been around for years. (as you point out, there is nothing disposable about these cameras - you want the photos, you've got to return it and it gets reused. the Kodak "disposable" film camera is returned to a processsor more than 95% of the time and gets reused many times with replacement lens etc). This guy's idea is more like a polaroid postcard - take the snap, put a stamp on it, write on the back and send it off. Instant, dude. And techy. What a waste, I agree, but I could see people buying it.

  13. Re:Ooooh... by RESPAWN · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here's the link to the patent: http://hrmpf.com/wordpress/38/apple-integrated-sen sing-display

    Sounds like an interesting technology that I would one day like to see developed.

    --

    If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

  14. Re:It's not built yet by PaulBu · · Score: 2, Informative

    As a matter of fact, after I moved from LA to Vancouver, Canada I was quite impressed by the fact that half of the urinals in the city are outfitted with a color LCD panel showing ads... So yes, that one IS available!

    Paul B.

  15. Re:It's not built yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Does anyone else view the disposableness of this invention with disapproval? We generate enough waste as it is, we don't need more disposable stuff. It might be cool if you could erase what the person sent you and then use it yourself though.

  16. Re:It's not built yet by nairb774 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I always thought it would be intresting to put a LCD touch panel in a urnal. Then you could put games on it that are controled with your urine.

  17. New urban myth variant! by AndroidCat · · Score: 2, Funny
    Your friends simply snap the photos and send it to you and you tear open the perforations, fold out a little kick stand on the back and sit it on a bench top .. and look at the last dozen pictures where some bandits entered their room and made .. inventive .. use of the toothbrushes.

    First it was the future possibility of mythical bright green circles on cliff-sides from JATO-equiped flying green pigs, and now this. Today is a good day to myth!

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  18. multimedia postcard by Jacek+Poplawski · · Score: 2, Funny

    Postcard with builtin LCD and camera?
    Imagine postcard with bultin modern CPU, 1GB memory, large hdd, fast video card, 21'' LCD display, dolby stereo sound and laser printer (to print more postcards).
    Will it run Linux?

  19. OLED! by boingyzain · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Tiny screens that shouldn't use too much power? Sounds like a job for OLEDs.

  20. Re:It's not built yet by cheier · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes. In some of the washrooms at the Pengrowth Saddledome in Calgary, they have these LCDs above the urinals. Advertising displayed on these things is operated by Flush Media. I've seen things from movie trailers to home leisure advertisements on them.

  21. Re:Let me get this straight there is no password? by John+Meacham · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, but with a credit card, the law guarentees you don't have liability. the thief is stealing from the bank. not you. With a debit card, the bank may have a policy of limiting your liability, but that is purely part of their policy and who knows how they interpret it and I bet they have clauses in their policy making appeal of their decision quite difficult. With a debit card the law says the money was stolen from you, so it is ultimately your responsibility to recover your money. with a credit card, the money was stolen from the bank so it is the banks responsibility.

    --
    http://notanumber.net/
  22. Re:It's not built yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh, good. I was worried that I might have to go 30 seconds without being advertised to. Phew!

  23. Re:It's not built yet (Thinking Out Of The Box) by UpLateDrinkingCoffee · · Score: 2, Informative
    good thing he's a industrial designs student cuz he'd make a crappy business man.
    There can be a lot of value in exploring ideas that on the surface seem unworkable... for example, someone like you comes along, tweaks it a little bit, and builds the next big thing. Just ask yourself: Would you have come up with the idea above without this student's idea to build on? His "crappy business idea" was your spark and my guess is you never would have given post cards a second thought without it as a catalyst. He deserves praise, not belittlement.

    Innovation is not an act, it's a process.