In what must be the most exciting conference ever (just ahead of Dewey Decimal 2008), a little feature known as epaper showed up at Display 2008 in Tokyo. It seems several companies, including Bridgestone with a full-size broadsheet e-newspaper(what do tires have to do with epaper?) and a collaboration between Seiko, E Ink and Epson (which also wins for strangest interactive website) to make epaper watches, showed off their wares at the Japanese trade show. Other offerings included epaper that can be written on with a stylus(video at the link).
Along with the obvious books and notepads we’re all thinking of, other attendants were thinking of myriad other places epaper could be useful. Those range from IC or RFID cards with PIN displays for added security, pill bottles, grocery price tags (come to think of it, I’ve seen something awfully like it in the supermarkets here), flash drives and headphones. Interestingly enough, there’s a story about a Fujitsu ebook that’s in color as well, although price seems to be a factor in why it’s not out yet. According to the guys at DWT, August is when many of these products will be available to vendors, so start looking for epaper everythings to start popping up soon after. I know I can’t wait.
Bonus display blogging: 3D displays without the paper glasses.
(via DigitalWorldTokyo, a site I apparently need to visit more often) (image also via DigitalWorldTokyo)
This is pretty fascinating. I’m interested to see how quickly something like this seeps into the reasonable price range and starts getting used more frequently.
If they’re able to get the price down enough that stores can buy dozens of them for price tags, they should be getting cheaper rather quickly. Everything I read says things should start pouring out after August.