Fujitsu Debuts Bendable Electronic Paper 304
An anonymous reader writes "Fujitsu today announced their joint development of the world's first film substrate-based bendable color electronic paper with an image memory function. The new electronic paper features vivid color images that are unaffected even when the screen is bent, and features an image memory function that enables continuous display of the same image without the need for electricity. The thin and flexible electronic paper uses very low power to change screen images, thereby making it ideal for displaying information or advertisements in public areas as a type of new electronic media that can be handled as easily as paper. The jointly developed electronic paper will be showcased at Fujitsu Forum 2005, to be held July 14 and 15 at Tokyo International Forum."
Paperless office? (Score:5, Interesting)
Real World Applications (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Paperless office? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are possibilities (Score:3, Interesting)
would this work for customizable clothing? (Score:2, Interesting)
What's the curve (Score:2, Interesting)
The electronic paper would therefore always be a secondary display, for static information. Obvious usage examples are to extend the display area of mobile devices such as phones or PDA's. The interesting thing is that for such applications the curvature of the bend of the electronic paper is a key issue. You see, if the curvature is not big enough, the paper will not roll-up into the device whilst keeping the device size small.
By the looks of the photo in the article, the curvature is nowhere near good enough to allow the paper to be rolled into a small radius roll of paper that would comfortably fit in a hand-held device design.
Re:Help...(useful) ideas needed. (Score:2, Interesting)
Instant home redecoration (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Help...(useful) ideas needed. (Score:3, Interesting)
The one interesting application is in cheap portable computers, but the oligopy in place knows very well that serving the low-end market would be suicide for the high-end.
What are the chances geeks will be able to get individual screens with an open interface? Pretty slim for now, but if it happens I'll put one on a waysmall [gumstix.com] and build my own cheaper, smaller, energy-efficient laptop.
Re:Real World Applications (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Constitution (Score:1, Interesting)
A friend of mine played a trick on me with an electronic paper prototype. He was able to get a hold of a prototype (he works in the industry, and is very wealthy) and had someone use it on me when I signed a contract. It felt enough like real paper that I didn't notice, I read the contract, it was sitting on a metal clipboard type thing, and I signed and initialed in the appropriate places. A second later, when the contract was in the other person's hand, I saw the wording and the numbers change.
Needless to say, I flipped out. Things like $1,000 changed to $1,000,000 among other things. Assuming that wasn't a totally different technology, the bastard refused to tell me how it was done, but did come out and say it was just a joke, this stuff has some very serious potential to be misused in a major way. In retrospect, I hadn't slept for close to 48 hours due to an unrelated matter, so that may have dulled my ability to recognize that it wasn't a standard piece of paper.
Re:Help...(useful) ideas needed. (Score:4, Interesting)
A screen isn't as useful for that. Because really only one or two people can go up to it and point things out, whereas large digital paper can get 8+ people around it. A screen, a projector, or an electronic white board, aren't as portable and if they aren't in the facility where you are meeting then you're out of luck.
Also digital paper will probably have a much, much higher resolution then a projection screen. We're talking DPI here of at least 75 (hopefully 600x600 at least in the future), where as a projection screen capable of 1024 pixels over 10 feet wide you have 10. So you can get much more detail to where more people can get close to it.
But what I would really like it for is for my gaming table. If it takes 2 seconds to update the entire page that covers the table (E sized would be perfect), that would make my just as a DM much better. When I set up a fight I have to get out there with the spray bottle to clean off the battle map, then spend a few minutes to draw the map. Compare it to what you have before, find that you screwed up something specifically needed that the entire scenario is about and redraw that section, find you have over spray on the water bottle, and redraw that section. It often takes about 10 minutes of game time.
Heck if it takes a minute to update a page that size I still wouldn't mind. It saves me a great deal of time, all I have to do is scan the maps into the laptop, and then have it display things. It especially gets rid of the smart ass player syndrom who gets handed the pen to draw the parts of the map that you can't reach easily.
Re:Not Minority Report (Score:2, Interesting)
Sharon Stone is old anyway.