Gizmodo: electronic ink

Are Books Doomed to Become Art Collector Items?

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:50:00 EDT

The always fascinating Dark Roasted Blend has an article on alternative uses for books. Sculptures, lamps, structures, furniture... everything made with books. It's an eerie view on book heaven or book hell, depending on your mood. Mine is a bit gloomy, so looking at the beautifully spooky gallery and knowing about the renassaince of electronic books, I can't help but wonder: Do these images represent the beginning of the end for books as we know them?

The Kindle, heralded by that Saturn who eats its own children called Jeff Bezos, seems to have marked a before and after in the world of books. Sure, books are still being sold and they are not going to disappear anytime soon, but now the possibility of switching to an electronic ink world seems very realistic and close. Experiments like the cover of Esquire or new electronic newspaper platforms only reinforce this feeling. The need to conserve resources is another force behind the push for electronic ink. What do you think? Are books doomed to become precious art collector items? Will they ever vanish from our world and become old rarities? [Dark Roasted Blend]

Esquire's E-Ink Cover Hits Newsstands, Blinking Disappointment

Kit Eaton — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:37:09 EDT

Esquire's E-Ink cover may either seem like a poor idea to you, or a taster of the way things may go in the future: whichever camp you sit in, you can check it out now as it's hit the newsstands. Over at TheDastardlyReport they've got hold of one, and show its subtle-contrasted goodness in this video. Check out that blinking! It's ~~awesome~~ vaguely disappointing... or am I the only one to think so? Now, if it were a proper dot-matrix affair then I'd be tempted to buy the mag, assuming I could find one of the limited-edition copies. But that's just me, and YMMV. Over to you in the comments. [The Dastardly Report]

Epson Creates Flexible Electronic Paper

Charlie White — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:59:47 EDT

It looks like Epson is on a roll, where the company recently introduced the first PC with the Vista-capable badge, and now it's saying it has developed a groundbreaking roll-up digital ink display. This design concept is different from Sony's upcoming Reader, where the Epson A6 QXGA Electronic Paper display is flexible, using a manufacturing process called "surface free technology by laser annealing" (SUFTLA). The company says the operation of the drivers it's written to display an image on a flexible screen is a world first.

If this is real, the 7.1 inch display has an notably high resolution of 1536x2048 pixels, otherwise known as QXGA (Quantum XGA). It's a technology demonstration that's not the first foray into e-ink tech for the company. Epson demonstrated electronic ink technology about 18 months ago at the Embedded Technology 2004 convention, showing its Electronic Ink + RFID design for electronic price tags. We're thinking it'll be a while before any of these flexible display ideas are truly practical. – Charlie White

Epson A6 QXGA Electronic Paper [Akhabara News]