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Displays Graphics Software

LCD Screens Almost Paper-thin 185

Posted by CowboyNeal from the dynamic-placemats dept.
DarklordSatin writes "Nature.com has an article up about new LCDs that are thin enough to roll up and can display black and white at 96 dpi. More coverage by Wired and Scientific American. Thanks go to Arstechnica for the heads up." Wow. Let the speculation for new uses begin! Update: 05/10 14:59 GMT by CN : Whoops, this is really a dupe of an older story that slipped through because I only searched for LCDs. Ah well, it's still cool.
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LCD Screens Almost Paper-thin More

LCD Screens Almost Paper-thin

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  • yeah coool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lexcyber ( 133454 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:32AM (#5925643) Homepage
    What is the primary appliance for this device?

    • Re:yeah coool (Score:4, Informative)

      by kingkade ( 584184 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:38AM (#5925673)
      Anywhere you would need a thin screen. e-newspapers, bathroom walls, clothes that have a display pattern, easy to move signs/signals, etc. Read the article for petes sake, lex!

    • Re:yeah coool (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:43AM (#5925696)
      How about a wireless pocket sized computer, something like that that Personal Server [slashdot.org] Intel touted a while back. You could use a thin-film flexible circuit and transceiver to "talk" to it. Super-thin touchscreens won't be too far off either. Then you can add wireless broadband 'net access to the Personal Server, and you've effective got the world in your pocket.

    • Doormats! (Score:2, Funny)

      by John3 ( 85454 )
      This would be so cool on a door mat. Set up a CCTV system that scanned a person's face when they rang your doorbell. If they're a friend the doormat LCD says "Welcome!". If it's a pair of guys in white shirts with ties and name tags then the doormat displays "Bug off!"
    • Well they would be more like terminals at that point, wireless so you can access your data from anywhere, on any unit you happen find laying around, like a sticky pad.

      And be so cheap, that if you loose it.. no big deal.

    • What is the primary appliance for this device?

      Commercial-enabled toilet paper?

  • How many electric trees (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are going to be destroyed every day for newspapers?

    Save the Electronic Rainforest!
    • Electronic, reuseable paper. I've been mentioning something like this to the people I work with for months. Not that I'm in research and development. But imagine, in you are in a place that absolutely has to have paper records, what better way to keep them then on electronic paper? Ideally the paper would have some type of port so you could dump the info into a word processor of some type. And even if the paper cost 10 times as much as regular paper, over time it would pay for it's self; fiscally and ecolog

  • Cool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hadur ( 636978 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:33AM (#5925649)
    Not a flame here, but I would rther see the price of LCD screens go down than their size.

    • Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chicane-UK ( 455253 ) <chicane-uk@@@ntlworld...com> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:35AM (#5925658) Homepage
      Agreed..

      I work in a job as a Computer Technician, and people keep saying to me they really want to get an LCD screen 'because it looks cool' - fair enough I suppose, but why pay for a 17" mid range LCD screen over a 21" Natural Flat top of the line CRT monitor? Ok, it saves on some desk space..

      Its a no brainer for me.. i'd still put my money on CRT every time.

      • Re:Cool (Score:3, Informative)

        by obsidian head ( 568045 )
        LCDs allow your working space be more changable. This is the same reasoning behind Apple making desktop computers easier to carry; you don't want to be chained to the same desk. Plus, LCDs are much better on the eyes -- if you really start using them, it's painful to go back to CRTs.

      • Re:Cool (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Eevee ( 535658 )

        Funny. I have people asking for flat panals because they want their desks back. That 'desk space' it saves is important because we don't get much of it.

        In a large organization, you often have more control over what computer equipment you buy than you do over how the office space is arranged. In a cube farm, a 21" monitor often takes up too much space--particularly if management has never heard of ergonomics so you're forced to balance the keyboard on the little strip of desk right in front of the monitor.

      • Re:Cool (Score:5, Informative)

        by targo ( 409974 ) <targo_t&hotmail,com> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @11:30AM (#5925875) Homepage
        why pay for a 17" mid range LCD screen over a 21" Natural Flat top of the line CRT monitor?

        The ratio might come down once US manufacturers also start figuring the cost of recycling into the price. In Europe it is mandatory for computer makers to take back their old stuff, and recycle it in a reasonable way, as opposed to the US where most old computers end up in basements or landfills. Of course, it makes prices higher but in the end, everybody wins.
        And recycling a CRT is much more expensive than recycling an LCD, so the price difference is smaller.

        • Re:Cool (Score:2, Informative)

          by GigsVT ( 208848 ) *
          Around here a lot of monitors get donated to goodwill, which has no idea how to price them.

          I picked up a 17 inch MAG for $5 yesterday. Even if the monitors I buy from them are bad beyond economical repair, I will usually strip the circuit boards with a torch to get the components. The HOT is a nice fast and high power transistor (assuming it isn't burned out).. Lots of nice power circuitry in the power circuits, usually a few low voltage 78XX regulators are in there too. Even if I scrap for components
        • Wow, you managed to bash the US, inflate Europe, and make a valid point all in a single post! That's worth six points.

          I see that you cower behind spam filtreing. Minus one.

          Your user ID is above 200,000. Minus one.

          You use Hotmail. Minus four.

          You include a website. Plus two.

          Your Slashdot cumulative score is +2, which will get you a 1 in 10 chance at winning a Slashdot clasic ballpoint pen (actual retail value $0.39).

          Thanks for playing!
      • Yes, it looks cool. It also runs cool. That means that it wastes less energy. Check out the power requirements. I bet you'll find that it is cheaper to run a 17" LCD (about $450 right now) than to run a 17" CRT (about $70). If you go into the TCO, it also means less energy spent on cooling your workplace, and more efective work area per desk.

        The down side is eye strain. A cheap LCD can be a real killer on the eyes.
        • That's why I'm thinking about getting an LCD monitor for home. I have a nice little mini-itx system that takes up little space and little electricty and a big freaking monitor twice it's size that sits here gulping down electricity. A good LCD would put my computers total electricty needs below that of many monitors alone.

          It'd also free up desk space and make it much easier to move the whole setup around when I feel like it. I use this system as my on-the-go server. Throw it in the car and wherever I go it
      • My tax guy, with an office with west facing window, much prefers the LCD over a CRT, because he can see what he is doing when the sun hits it.
      • The LCD will save your eyes. I've been using a high quality LCD for about a year, and I can stare at it for hours on end without my eyes getting tired. When I switch to a CRT for awhile, I can just feel the radiation burning into my retinas. Also, LCDs automatically have perfect convergence and perfect geometry, which is important for a lot of engineering applications. Throw in the space savings (and heat reduction), and it's a no brainer, if you can afford it.
      • How many people use this mythical 'extra desk space' that an LCD apparently gives them? Surely its just that empty space behind your LCD screen where the bulk of your CRT used to be? Its an invisible, hard-to-get-to space which isn't somewhere you really want to put stuff!

        The only saving is that now you can have a thinner desk and have the LCD up against the wall - but that only means the pointy-hairs can squeeze more of you into the same cubespace.

        Baz

    • Re:Cool (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Squareball ( 523165 )
      Well with advancments like this, the price will go down. One day LCDs will be paper thin high resolution color that are like $20.

      As to uses.. well thank god that I won't have to have all the pr0n mags laying around any more! ;) Soon we'll just subscribe and it'll be accessed on our paper thin LCDs! w00t ;)
      • Well with advancments like this, the price will go down. One day LCDs will be paper thin high resolution color that are like $20.

        Yes, maybe the price will go down, but these screens would be great for places like subways, or presentation displays for offices.

        As to uses.. well thank god that I won't have to have all the pr0n mags laying around any more! ;)

        Tying everything to pornography (and especially spelling it that way) get quite annoying after a while, and it is usually jsut not real funny anym

      • Re:Cool (Score:3, Insightful)

        by geeber ( 520231 )
        Advancements like this won't help LCDs at all. E-ink NOT an LCD. LCD stands for liquid crystal display. This has nothing to do with liquid crystals; it works by rotating small particles with light and dark colored sides.
      • Paper thin LCDs?

        Oh, that's right; you didn't read the article. And everyone making their lame LCD jokes didn't either. A quick glance at the article will reveal to you Slashbots that it's not LCD.

        Okay, so it was a dupe and the editor points it out. But did he even read the article? The headline is completely wrong. Slashdot has been quite bad this year.

        I'll either be ignored, modded down, or the self-righteous Slashbot defenders will jump on me, declaring it a-okay for Slashdot to post incorrect h
    • "I would rather see the price of LCD screens go down than their size."

      Unfortunately, we may never get to see this.. ever. I guess we should count ourselves lucky (I'm talkin humanity here) that useful innovations such as the telephone, the CRT - TVs,the CD, the electric motor etc. happened WELL BEFORE the rank business opportunists have rushed in.

      Else we should be paying $100 for a filament bulb, and it'd be promoted over the 20c version as being beneficial to nature, bio-degradable etc. Very little innov
      • [...] the CRT - TVs,the CD, the electric motor etc. happened WELL BEFORE the rank business opportunists have rushed in.

        How about the personal computer? It's a related field, and it became popular after the "business opportunists" rushed in, as you say. A modern PC costs roughly half what a comparable PC did ten years ago. The free market (usually) insulates us against the long-term price fixing you're worried about. Even if LCD's stay at their high prices, it'll be a somewhat isolated incident in the
      • Now see this is where your basic lack of understanding capitalism shows! If Company A sells an LCD for $500 and $400 of that is pure profit, Company B is going to come along and sell an LCD for $300, thus creating a price war. The product will keep going down in price until the point at which the profit/cost ratio actually matters. This is why Coca-Cola doesn't cost $8 a case. If they charged that much, people would just buy another brand.
    • I agree as well.

      I, personally, prefer CRTs for gaming, but my wife has been begging me for a LCD for a long time to coserve desk space. I am just waiting for the prices to drop.

    • ...is that I never seem to get a good a refresh on one as I to with a standard CRT. Any games that I play that have fast moving objects (simulators, FPSers, etc.) aren't handled very well by the flat panels...

      At least that has been my experience. Has anyone else experienced something different? Any models you could recommend?

      • I recently bought an NEC LCD1760NX, which has one of those new 16ms panels. I have to say, I'm impressed by the speed. I had a Samsung 172T before, and fast games like e.g. Counter Strike were unplayable. Not so with the NEC, there's almost no difference to a CRT. The downside is, it uses a TN+film panel. Compared to high-class panels like the PVA panel in the 172T, the viewing angle isn't stellar. You get used to it, though, and the NEC has a really great foot that allows you to adjust the position of the

  • Whoa (Score:2, Funny)

    by A Proud American ( 657806 )
    One can only imagine the bragging rights you'd have smoking a 32-bit True Color blunt...

  • Uses (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brejc8 ( 223089 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:36AM (#5925662) Homepage Journal
    Let the speculation for new uses begin!
    I always wanted to wallpaper my house with something that I could change at a flick of a swich.
    At night it would turn into little moons and stars.
    In the morning it would reflect what the weather is like.
    During the day I could watch tv or browse the web on any wall in the house.
    Or even implant cameras in the other rooms so it would look like you have see through walls.

    Ah well back to the reals world.

    • Re:Uses (Score:5, Funny)

      by DJPenguin ( 17736 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:48AM (#5925725)
      At night it would turn into little moons and stars.
      In the morning it would reflect what the weather is like.

      Hmmm... that already happens in my room! OH! My mistake, I left the curtains open.

  • Two Words (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dynamic Wallpaper. And not the kind on your computer desktop either.

    Imagine being surrounded by thousands of ever-changing images of Bettie Page all the time.

    mmmm

  • That's just great. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:38AM (#5925671) Homepage Journal

    Now I'll have to wear my glasses when I go to the can or I might accidently wipe my arse with my LCD display.

  • Uses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkov ( 261309 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:38AM (#5925672)
    At a refresh rate of 4Hz, it's not much use as a monitor, I think they currently use this stuff for signage displays and the like. It might be useful for a e-book sort of thing, where it's unlikely you'll be reading faster than four pages a second.

    The big question is how much does it cost and how durable/stable is it?
    • It might be useful for a e-book sort of thing, where it's unlikely you'll be reading faster than four pages a second.

      This is unlikely. The main reason why ebooks have failed so miserably is not that current versions are too thick, but rather that they are simply uncomfortable to look at for long periods of time.

      What is needed for ebooks is very high resolutions and frequencies, or some e-ink like technology that is based on reflecting light rahter than emitting it.

      For the same reason, I don't belie

  • Obvious...? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:39AM (#5925679) Homepage
    "Let the speculation for new uses begin!"

    Isn't the first use for every new technology a new way of accessing, displaying or making pr0n?
    • Your sig is so appropriate for your banal post...it's also quite ironic it that you try for a ;funny'; mod in making fun of others who jump to using the 'porn' angle to get a 'funny' mod. This is speculation, obviously. Oh wait: ;)
    • Isn't the first use for every new technology a new way of accessing, displaying or making pr0n?

      Hmmm... I'm trying to think of how the wheel was first used for pr0n.

      ...or the cotton gin...

      ...or the internal combustion engine...

      ...or the warp engine (oops, not invented yet)...

      • The warp engine would be used to see the new Enterprise-esque horny Vulcan porn, of course.
      • Allow me:

        cotton gin : used to help collect cotton , which is used to make cloth, which is then draped suggestively over nekkid models.

        internal combustion engine: used primarily along with the wheel to propel props (eg. sports cars) which are then covered suggestively in nekkid models.

        See? No matter how you look at it, it all comes back to porn :-)

        Or maybe it's just the amazing way the human mind can turn a perfectly useful object into porn.

  • This is not LCD. (Score:5, Informative)

    by warlock ( 14079 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:42AM (#5925690) Homepage
    A quick glance at the linked article would be sufficient to figure out they're not LCD. I'd be very surprised if they made LCD displays that could be rolled like that!
    • Yes, this is why I will never pay for /.

      As much as I like /. It's editorial are a complete joke. If this was any other site, they'd atleast correct the completely false title, if not remove the dupe that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

  • Is it just me? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alwsn ( 593349 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:42AM (#5925691)
    Maybe it's just me, but I've been visiting slashdot for 3+ years now, and I keep seeing articles about new, paper thing, cheap displays that will revolutionize everything, and really small, cheap, huge(storage capacity), solid state storage devices.

    I look forward to new stuff as much as anyone, but in those 3 years, hard drive storage and monitors keep making slower (in comparison to what is mentioned in articles such as these), but steady process.

    I no longer trust articles saying 'everything will be different in a year.' From my experience, it won't be different and revolutionary, it will just be slightly better.

    • Re:Is it just me? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by roseblood ( 631824 )
      Funny didn't I see a story [slashdot.org]
      recently about how hard drives [slashdot.org]
      where leaving CPUs in dust when it comes to capacity/price ratios?

    • Re:Is it just me? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @01:23PM (#5926312) Homepage Journal
      I usually see these new tech articles and think to myself "Wow, things will be really different in 5-10 years." Asking for it to change dramaticly in even 2-3 years is asking a lot. Also as you say a lot of the changes are incremental so you fail to notice they are taking place. It's now pretty affordable for the average yokel (me) to have a terabyte of disk space at home, a tiny computer that is quiet, a nice lcd screen, and broadband. For the most part 3 years ago that stuff was available but cost a lot more. These new technologies are creeping out the door - mostly being sold to other companies - but they are emerging as real products. They still tend to cost a lot and be hard to find but they are showing up.

      Also it should be noted with development guys that they either take one of two personalities.. the cautious "It'll be ready in 30 years." guys and the gungho "Tomorrow we're all going to have jet packs." guys. Obviously the later make more interesting news sources because only ubergeeks plan 30 years into the future. I guess I'm both. I'm very gungho about what I'm doing now but am already looking into what I might be working on in 30 years. Nobody quotes me for articles though. :)

  • A cool use... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Flounder ( 42112 ) * on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:43AM (#5925699)
    Walls covered with these displays on the inside that can display anything. No need for windows, just make the displays show what's outside. The appearance of glass walls without the privacy issues. The only thing missing will be natural sunlight and opening a window for a breeze. But you can make any s**thole apartment seem to be a cabin in the woods, or beachfront property, or floating 150 miles above the planet's surface.
    • This is a rather dumb idea. Without UV radiation that comes from the sun through windows, humans would become very ill or die. I'm sure there are other health issues with not having any natural light as well, not least for the eyes.

      Also, can you imagine what would happen if there was a power cut? "Oh shit, the sky went out again!"

      • Re:A cool use... (Score:3, Informative)

        by grahamlee ( 522375 )
        Without UV radiation that comes from the sun through windows, humans would become very ill or die

        I can assure you, having done practicals in Atmospheric Physics involving UV spectroscopy, that glass is opaque to UV light, by and large. Hint to anyone taking a Physics degree: you're not too lazy to throw the detector out the window, then pull it back in when the spectrograph is complete...

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Once they get to true color high-res steroscopic electronic wallpaper I plan on making my walls look like I'm swirling through space around planet sized naked women. Maybe I'll give my house voice commands like something off Star Trek so I can tell the house how to fly around these ladies. "House, 'Fly closer to Katie.. up, up, stop and hold orbital pattern around the left breast. Okay, take us to the Betty-quandrant - speed alpha warp.'" Why browse porn when you can float in space amongst it. Just don't g

  • Just what the spamsters were waiting for (Score:3, Funny)

    by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:44AM (#5925705)
    Similar technology could even make clothes that double as video screens

    New! Look bigger in jeans!

  • finally...technology in the bathroom (Score:4, Funny)

    by thomas_klopf ( 672359 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:47AM (#5925721)
    We know we're finally in an information age when we can start leaving technology in the bathroom...

  • Why not an electronic newspaper? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Oculus Habent ( 562837 ) * <oculus.habent@gma i l . c om> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:48AM (#5925728) Journal
    Sure, you can't fold it, but you could roll it up in to a 1" tube that contains batteries, communications, etc. Carry a 1-foot long 1" diameter tube that rolls out into a 19" screen. And it could be much smaller if you wanted.

    This would be perfect for "paperback" e-books. Even with the quarter-second refresh time on the screen it would acceptable for "turning the page". Or you could produce a book of the screens, and have the pages fill in with whatever you are reading.

    How about electronic blueprints? Dynamic wall art that you can move around easily? Status displays on pillars in the airport?

    If they can reduce the refresh time it would be incredible. Imagine a roll-up 19" screen for crowded server closets.

  • Uses (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This would need a display that refreshed itself every 15 milliseconds. The new screen currently takes around a quarter of a second.

    The best use I can think of is to give these out to all my competitors at the next LAN party. Then I will reign supreme despite my limited skillz and total lack of eye-hand coordination.

  • My Use for This... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by naelurec ( 552384 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:51AM (#5925742) Homepage
    I am a musician (pianist) ... Currently I play at a church and for each service, I have to pull music from 5 different books + sheet music, etc..etc..

    Needless to say, first, its a pain to carry around those books with me, flipping through them during a service, finding particular songs, etc...

    So back in 1999 when I bought my Visor Deluxe PDA, I thought it would be cool to scan in all of that sheet music and have the PDA hooked up to some e-paper sheets (probably two of them) and then use a foot switch to "turn the pages" ..

    The setup would be very cool, small and portable. Before a service, I'd simply download the lineup into the system and everything would be ready to go. No carrying around the books, no page flipping, etc.. Heck .. given the way I play the piano (music laying flat on top of the piano), it could possibly make it look like I memorized all the music to the congregation :-)

    Of course, I heard about e-paper back then as well.. and so far, no products.. so by the time it *IS* released, i might already use something like a tablet PC ....

  • Dupe (Score:5, Informative)

    by x mani x ( 21412 ) <mghase.cs@mcgill@ca> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:51AM (#5925744) Homepage
    This is a dupe of a recent story [slashdot.org]. At least the articles it points to are different. Same product, though.

    -Mani
    • I also know another source that I will submit tomorrow. The only reason it might get rejected is that it is on a Microsoft owned site.

  • Clothes as displays? (Score:5, Funny)

    by vidnet ( 580068 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:52AM (#5925749) Homepage
    Similar technology could even make clothes that double as video screens.

    I hope they add an alpha channel to those!

    • An alpha channel could be done by using a slanted cell with an opaque front slope (except for a transparent "window" where you want the pixel to be) and a transparent back slope, and using a mixture of transparent and opaque particles. When the pixel is on, the opaque particles move to the front surface at the top of the slant and block the transparent area. When the pixel is off, the opaque particles move down the slant to an "alcove" off to the side and light can pass through the transparent particles and

  • Cheap enough to use as? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unfortunateson ( 527551 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:52AM (#5925752) Journal
    The two goals, which in my mind are separate directions, are speed and independence from wires.

    If I can 'print' an e-book, I don't care about refresh rate. But is a 300-page e-paperback cheaper than buying, say 50 paperbacks? 20 paperbacks? Or is it silly to even think of having 300 pages of this stuff, and I'd just 'leaf' through pages like I do on my PDA currently? Maybe I'm old, but I still like the page-flipping aspect of books, especially if I want to flip back to find when a character that just stepped out of the wings first showed up.

    If this stuff is as durable, and as cheap, power-friendly and fast as LCDs, I'd be happy to drop a fair chunk of my PDA's weight. Cell-phone screens sound like another perfect application.

    Now for the more far-out stuff:
    How about rewritable MTG cards?
    Medical 'patches' that tell you when they need replacing, or can monitor glucose or other body functions.
    Devices when you need to measure bend
    • I still like the page-flipping aspect of books, especially if I want to flip back to find when a character that just stepped out of the wings first showed up.
      I think that's a really good point. Getting a good, intuitive, interface is going to be really important to getting e-books adopted, IMO. With a paperback, you can mark a page with a finger, and flip back to find something earlier. If you have an idea of where something was earlier in the book, you can flip through and find it pretty quickly, just by
    • > Or is it silly to even think of having 300 pages of this stuff

      PAGE CAPACITY OVERFLOW - download aborted.

      Your book doesn't support more than 504 pages.
    • I think you would have multiple pages but less than in a book, certainly. For one thing it is unlikely we will have e-paper the thickness of ordinary paper in the next few years, so you simply won't be able to put as many leaves in the book. I suspect what we'll end up with is a book with some 10-50 pages in it (the more the merrier, I expect them to come in varying sizes) and you'll treat it more or less like a real book. It'll have some kind of gesture recognition, if in no other way than to provide you a

  • Not LCD.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by WareW01f ( 18905 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @10:59AM (#5925780)
    Here [eink.com] is what the display is made of... And here [slashdot.org] is the last ./ story. Come on guys! Don't get my hopes up like that!

    As a side note, I was at Epcot and got to see Xerox's Gyricon [gyriconmedia.com] (now marketed as 'SmartPaper') up close and personal. The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change. Someday...

    • Re:Not LCD.... (Score:3, Informative)

      by mindriot ( 96208 )

      The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change.

      From the Gyricon link [gyriconmedia.com] you gave:

      17. Can SmartPaper(TM) be tampered with electronically?
      No. Due to the way signs are constructed, they can not be tampered with by magnets, static electricity, PDAs, cell phones, or other electronic devices.

      So I suppose he rather had something like a strong coil?

  • Folding, bending. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by j1mmy ( 43634 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @11:06AM (#5925809) Journal
    The point of these displays (as stated in the article) is to create a one-page newspaper. They can currently roll it up pretty well, but it can't be folded. What I want to know is why you would fold it.

    If it's a one-page newspaper, you've only got one page. It can be the size of an 8.5x11 piece of paper. It's an entirely different presentation medium and they're still thinking in terms of traditional papers. The biggest failure of the traditional newspaper (as an interface) is that you have to do all the folding and whatnot. Most papers can't be held with one hand without folding them up a bit. It's a hassle, plain and simple.

    If you've got one sheet of electronic paper, of a reasonable size, you can hold it in one hand and just read it.

    I can see how folding would be useful for storing the paper, but I don't see that as a critical issue.

    • i would hate this if it couldn't be forlded. it' would be too easy to break. what if someone sits on the roll, or bumps in to it. I think it's more of a durability thing. would you want to carry something that fragile on the subway?
  • in that iLoo (or whatever the hell that portapottie with connection to the net was called). cruise the net, look at pr0n and then fold it up and wipe your ass.

  • Feh. (Score:3, Funny)

    by dynayellow ( 106690 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @11:20AM (#5925849)
    I've invented a paper-thin material than can support an INFINITE number of dots per inch! It's dirt cheap and uses exisiting technology!

    Oh wait, that's just some paper I had lying around...
  • Maybe the newspapers in Back To The Future : Part II don't seem so far fetched now.. remeber the headlines & articles used to change and you used to get embedded video and stuff? Might not be quite paper thin, but I guess the technology will continue to evolve.

    Couple that with some kind of inbuilt WiFi reciever (complete with city wide WiFi network) and there it is.
    • Remember the newspapers from 1984? Whenever they had to disappear someone, they had to go around and recover any newspaper articles (amongst other things) that referred to them, and then re-issue the articles w/ someone else's name (or not at all).

  • Farewell Horizontal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by handy_vandal ( 606174 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @11:40AM (#5925910) Homepage Journal
    How about programmable animated tattoos using skin-mountable biofoil?

    The idea appears in K.W. Jeter's Farewell Horizontal [google.com], an engaging novel about motorcycle gang warfare on the outer face of a miles-high cylinder.
    • Actually, a couple years ago somebody did that. They had a calculator embeded in their skin as a tat.. and it really functioned. Boy would I have liked to have that in school. No more of my professors lame remarks "You won't always have a calculator with you so work the problems out by hand." If I remember right it used a similar kind of ink and had some method of implanting circuits under the skin. I was very impressed with the idea at the time but I haven't really heard anything more about it since.
      • They had a calculator embeded in their skin as a tat.. and it really functioned.

        Far out! This would be a great SlashDot item ... anyone got details?
        • Actually, I think it was a Slashdot item -- a really long time ago. Google turned up a couple projects but they don't look like what I remember. I'm not sure if it's my memory that is foggy or just that the project isn't indexed by any of my search terms. :)

  • Forget the LCDs (Score:5, Funny)

    by ryanvm ( 247662 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @12:28PM (#5926109)
    Forget the LCDs - the real story here is that a Slashdot editor made an attempt to prevent dupes. ;-)

  • e-book reader from Matsushita (Score:3, Informative)

    by soramimicake ( 593421 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @01:13PM (#5926271)
    How about an application like this e-book reader [matsushita.co.jp] (Japanese news release and pictures). Here is a CNET article [com.com] that talks about it.

    Basically, it is 2 XGA displays at 180dpi that doesn't require refresh, so can last a few months on 2 AA batteries. It reads contents stored on an SD card. The weight is only 500 gram. I like physical books compared to bulky PDAs with small screens, but something like this could become serious competition to them.

  • http://msnbc.com/news/910466.asp?0cv=CB20 [msnbc.com]

    it reminds me of pictures of the first transistors at bell labs- all bulky and ungainly

    but in it's picture you see the future gleaming bright ;-)

    oops! my post is a karma-whoring dupe! [slashdot.org] sorry! ;-P
  • As I was re-reading the article, this line struck me:
    They also hope to boost the speed at which the screen switches to a new "page" of text, from the current quarter of a second to at least 10 times as fast, so it can display video.
    With that, the animated photo albums from Harry Potter would become a reality... As Clarke always said about magic and technology... ;-)
  • Before we postulate on the sci-fi products that will be available in a decade, why not implement this technology into current portable units? A laptop computer with a screen that actually folds out or extends horizontally when the lid is opened would make for great, expansive portable computing. It seems this is imminently more immediate than a producing auto-updating newspapers and the like. Imagine a 12-inch Powerbook G4 with a wide-screen cinema display based on this paper-thin technology. I understa
  • Ok, for one, this isnt LCD. It is E-Ink that everyone has probably heard about. LCD doesnt work by brirng black or white particles to the fore.

    For two, instead of some 4Hz, two color rollable (not foldable) thing, why wouldnt you want to look at full color, super thin, high refresh rate OLEDs ?

    Here [pocketpcthoughts.com] is a picture of a OLED monitor..kind of makes lcd look chunkey hey?

    Oleds are of course also flexible [universaldisplay.com].
  • So this is cowboyneal admitting he doesn't read slashdot?

    M@

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