Gizmodo: esquire e-ink cover

Esquire E-Ink Cover Hacked (To Death, with Knives and Fire)

John Herrman — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:05:00 EDT

When the much-hyped Esquire E-Ink cover finally shipped to newsstands a few weeks ago, we were kind of underwhelmed. Using conventional methods, the sectioned panel isn't really hackable in any meaningful way, so Phone Losers took a more proactive approach: violence.

As it turns out, E-Ink is ridiculously durable, standing up to bending, cuts, water, fire and even total punctures without ceasing to blink. The panel only died when microwaved for a few seconds, but that was just because all of its metal components (power connectors, mainly) vaporized in fantastic balls of lightning. [Phone Losers via Technabob]

Esquire's E-Ink Cover Dissected, Circuit Boards and Microcontrollers Found (Surprise!)

Adrian Covert — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:55:00 EDT

Though it's no huge shock to find out what's behind Esquire's recent E-Ink cover, it's always fun to look at the postmortem pics. Phil over at MAKE took the magazine cover apart, and in addition to the E-Ink display, found lithium cells, printed circuit boards, and flash-programmable microcontrollers, which could be partially hacked or reprogrammed.

The E-Ink panel is segmented (11 on top, 3 on bottom), which means you can't use the entire rectangle for display. While you can change the timing for each section's blinking, the potential for real customization seems limited. Instead you could only change when each section blinks or doesn't blink (not much fun, I know).

In any case, MAKE has the nitty-gritty details and plenty more beautiful photos, so be sure to check it out. I'm off to track down my own copy of this month's Esquire. [MAKE]

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]