There's been some buzz this week around Pixel Qi's 3qi display technology, which integrates e-paper attributes with LCD to create a versatile and potentially very energy-efficient screen. The idea is that with a flip of a button you can go from a traditional high-resolution color LCD experience to a low-power black and white mode to an even more energy-efficient e-paper mode that allows you to easily view text in bright sunlight.
This week the technology was demonstrated at Computex in Taiwan, and it seems very impressive. If these types of displays can be produced cost-efficiently, they may revolutionize the notebook and e-reader market. We're probably at least a year away from seeing devices with Pixel Qi's 3qi displays, but at least the company has some promising prototypes to show off and John Ryan, Pixel Qi's COO and vice president of sales of marketing, claims the technology is more mature than you'd think.
Check out the video and feel free to comment on how revolutionary you think this is--or isn't.
Additional reading: PixelQi puts three displays in one
(Source: Techvideoblog.com via Engadget)
(Credit:
Sequoia Design)
Does the world really need Post-it 2.0? Ask those of us with Post-its habitually plastered on our monitors, walls, backs, and foreheads, and we'd probably be hard-pressed to come up with suggestions for improving the classic attachable notes.
Still, the designers at Sequoia Studio have come up with an inventive concept product called E-notes. The notes use tactile and flexible electronic paper technology and are powered by a solar captor. They can be stuck and unstuck to surfaces easily using a glue inspired by the adhesive that keeps the gravity-defying gecko in place. The best part? They can be reused, thus saving paper.
E-notes even have a visual alarm/organizing function that changes colors. That we like.
Watch a more detailed explanation of the product here. But as Yanko Design cautions in its post on the subject: whatever you do, don't call it a digital Post-it!
Telecom Italia and Philips Electronics spinoff Polymer Vision have announced plans to develop what they say is the first mobile device with a rollable display. Yes, the gadget clearly rolls, but we'll have to wait 'til launch later this year to see if it rocks.
(Credit:
Polymer Vision)
While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device, dubbed the Cellular-book, has a display that extends up to 5 inches and can be folded and stored away when not in use. It features 16 gray levels combined with a high-contrast and high-reflectivity display to enable comfortable paperlike reading of newspapers and books, even in bright sunlight. Early models will start at 4GB. Future additions, Polymer Vision says, will include the ability to view color and moving images.
The product, which also downloads and plays music, audio books and podcasts, will make its official debut at the 3GSM World Congress, which kicks off February 12 in Barcelona.
The Cellular-book follows Polymer Vision's Readius, a prototype of a functional electronic-document reader shown off at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 2005 consumer electronics show. E-paper has gained increasing attention for its flexibility, light weight and low power consumption.
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