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Hearst's Seattle PI to Test Market E-Paper
NewsCloud writes "The Hearst Corporation plans to use the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to test market LG Philipps' recently announced flexible color E-Paper. 'The electronic P-I will carry real-time news, same as the Internet, not yesterday's news like traditional papers. Readers will turn the e-paper's pages by touching the flexible screen. And when those readers head off to work, they will roll up the electronic P-I and stuff it in their pocket, purse, or briefcase.' The announcement comes amidst the recent settlement of bitter co-operating disputes between Seattle's two newspapers and Bill Gates' recent comments on the shifting of the advertising market away from traditional media." Update: 05/18 21:51 GMT by Z : Michelle Nicolosi, Assistant Managing Editor for the PI, emailed this correction: "Someday, Seattle P-I readers may be able to carry around their news in a bendable, electronic paper device -- but not any time soon. Hearst Corp., which owns the Seattle P-I, has no plans to use the Seattle daily newspaper to test a newly announced E-paper gadget." The original site linked apparently got it wrong.
eh, more like 2fps. Slow framerate seems to be the biggest limitation for e-ink devices. Makes navigation a real pain.
I can't tell from the links if this "e-paper" will have moving images or if the images are static.
The e-paper technology is optimized to hold a static image without electricity. This is where it excels. The image refresh rate is abysmally slow compared to even the older TFT screens.
So if you're willing to keep your paper "on" to keep animating the images (which will waste far more electricity compared to when you only change pages and turn it off), and we're talking very low FPS image (2-3 frames per second) it may work.
Four reasons:
High resolution => more info/sq. inch
High contrast => more legibility in ambient light without backlighting = longer battery life
Static image (power only needed to change image) => longer battery life
Light weight (no heavy glass screen or big batteries needed to create image)
Having seen high quality e-paper on a working device, I can say that it looks like the image has been printed on a laser printer. The long battery life means that it's useful when the information changes on the order of minutes, not seconds, and you can carry it around easily because of the light weight.
No, this is not a replacement for an active screen and GIF's and movies are not realistic uses for it.
There is an umbrella that allows you to "watch slide-shows". It has a built-in camera, and allows you to transfer pictures to flickr. It's also got a GPS and a compass. I don't quite think it is as practical as a hands-free umbrella, but maybe if you combined the two, you'd have something.
Hardly, writing notes just distracts you. I found I did much better in classes when I didn't take notes, whether the prof handed out lecture notes or not. Paying attention and thinking about what's being said helps me remember a topic a lot more than playing stenographer does. When I pay attention, I come out of a class with a good understanding of the topic, when I take notes I come out of the class with a list of factoids. Besides, anything I would write down is in the book anyway.
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