Wednesday, December 10, 2008

HP Invented E-Paper

This caught my eye today when skimming my google alerts. I had remembered that I saw this technology somewhere, I remembered it was on a scifi movie.

Can't remember the name, however these three or four astronauts were stuck on Mars, with no food, no water, no air and a robot that went bonkers on them. The one scene in the movie shows one astronaut unrolling a scroll with two ends and in the middle was a plastic film that held and image and you could change the image.

Scifi stuff always comes true, right.

This snippet is from mobilewack:

How will the future touchscreen look like? What about the future paper? HP has an idea about that and more than that, it has a prototype. The e-paper display is said to use less power than the displays available today and, even better, it’s unbreakable. We don’t know when this screen will arrive but we’re sure anxious about using one. HP will surely continue its work with the Arizona State Flexible Display Center to improve the existing prototype.

Then I read this from SFGATE:

Nowadays, many of us read or listen to the news on computers. But there are still some things one simply cannot do with a laptop or a PC -- like stuffing it into your bag or spreading it out on the breakfast table.

That may soon change as companies close in on one of technology's holy grails: a highly flexible computer display that one can roll up the way one would a newspaper or a magazine.
A team of Hewlett-Packard scientists showed off their version of that future one recent morning at HP Labs in Palo Alto, as they stood next to a machine about the size of a large refrigerator. Ironically, it looks very much like a scaled-down version of a typical web press used to print daily newspapers.


"That kind of electric paper is something we have argued about," he said. "There is a question as to what the market is for that kind of reusable paper. We know that people are spending hundreds of dollars for laptop displays or tablet-type computers. We know that people are buying very large displays to hang on their walls or to stand up in their homes. ...

"But the electronic paper is a totally new thing. It has to compete against the economy of real paper, which is quite inexpensive. The question is how much do people need that, versus how much are they going to look at things on their tablet PCs or their laptop or their home 60-inch screen."

Maybe, just maybe, we'll have no more paper! Everyone will have a fancy scroll and be able to write, doodle, draw download and upload images from anywhere.

-=Good Selling-=

2 comments:

Greg_Walters said...

Good Snag on the article!

"Red Planet" - Val Kilmer, and "Trini"(hubba hubba)

I remember this too...

Also, I have starting seeing more and more "indications" of an generational cultural shift away from paper...well, perhaps just more awareness of the "non-paper-based-interfaces..."

As I sit among piles of hand written notes, books magazines, and journals...someday...

Unknown said...

I enjoyed the movie also!Sci fi, gotta love it