Digital Trends
It is, they claim, a “straw man” – a paper intended to provoke debate and comment rather than represent policy. The paper, published yesterday, proproses starting a Digital Rights Agency in Britain, a major step. But Lord Carter, the man behind the Digital Britain report, said that if it was torn apart, then it would mean there was no commonality in the industry, in which case the government would either leave the industry to its fate, or bring in extensive legislation.
With recycling and other green technologies turning into all the rage in the tech world, it’s no surprise that Xerox has found yet another way to cut down on paper use – although this one’s quite a leap. The company announced on Friday that it will use Wired NextFEST as a podium to debut its new erasable paper concept, which makes the “ink” on printed pages disappear in 24 hours so it can be reused.
Polaroid may not be making its famous instant-developing snapshot cameras anymore, but that doesn’t mean fans of the instant picture will be left high and dry in the digital age. The company’s new PoGo portable pocket printer aims to bring the spontaneous excitement of snapshots to the digital generation. The diminutive printer weighs just eight ounces (without paper), runs off a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and can print full-bleed 2-by-3-inch snapshots in 60 seconds using new Zink inkless printing technology. The quality isn’t as high as other photo printers on the market, but at snapshot size it seems to be just fine—and since the printer is PictBridge compatible, users can print snapshots using their PictBridge cameras and phones via USB or Bluetooth, with no need for an intervening computer.
A few years back I used to regularly survey large companies and ask them how satisfied they were with their key vendors. One of the most interesting companies to survey on was Microsoft which had the widest range of responses of any vendor. While most would group around a number, Microsoft’s responses would polarize at opposite ends of the scale a large number of the customers that hated them and a large number those that loved them; with almost nothing in the middle.
Cell phones may be a no-no on flights once a plane gets into the air, but on the ground, they may soon help save paper and improve security in the process of boarding. According to the Houston Chronicle, Continental Airlines has become the first airline to adopt paperless boarding passes for a trial run at George Bush International Airport in Houston, substituting cell phones for cellulose.
The system works using 2D barcodes, the mess of black and white squares often seen on the back of state drivers’ licenses, which can be encoded with information. Passengers receive the barcode on their phones and pull it up on the screen when they go to board. Screeners merely scan the barcode prior to letting a passenger on the flight to verify its authenticity.
It might sound a little like science fiction, but really it’s science fact. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have created a batterythat’s 90 percent cellulose; in other words, it’s made of the same plant cells used in nearly every type of paper. The battery can be twisted, rolled, even folded and cut withoutany loss of efficiency or integrity. The paper batteries can even be stacked, like a ream of paper, to increase the output. What powers it are aligned carbon nanotubes in the paper, which act aselectrodes and allow the battery to conduct electricity. The battery is described in a new paper, “Flexible Energy Storage Devices Based on Nanocomposite Paper,” which waspublished this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to Robert Linhardt, professor of biocatalysis and metabolic engineeringat RPI, the idea came from a collaboration between three different groups of students. They developed three separate devices that can be used individually or together: There’s the battery, apiece of paper a few inches across that is black on one side and gray on the other; there’s also a supercapacitor, and finally a hybrid device, which combines the two. The devices can beprinted like paper. “If we stack 500 sheets together in a ream, that’s 500 times the voltage,” explained Professor Linhardt. “If we rip the paper in half we cut power by 50%.So we can control the power and voltage issue.” Its size makes the battery ideal for portable devices, but it could easily work in a pacemaker, although bigger things, like cars, remainproblematic. But it’s all still some way from the market. The supercapacitor will likely be the first to roll out commercially, and even that will take a few years.
A new paper from Xerox won’t keep your mailbox from piling up with junk mail, but it may just make the waste generated by those glitzy wads of advertising a little less harmful for the planet. The company’s new High Yield Business Paper uses 90 percent of the fiber from the trees it is made from, versus 45 percent for traditional paper, doubling the paper yield from the same amount of trees.
Conventionally, paper is made using a chemical process to turn wood to pulp, which wastes a significant portion of the tree in the process. Xerox’s new paper uses a mechanical grinding process to minimize waste, and saves water and chemical use as well.
It might seem like fiction, but the fact is stranger: Scientists have made talking paper. It’s happened at Mid Sweden University,where researchers have created a billboard that speaks when touched. Currently just in prototype, the display uses conductive inks that respond to the pressure of speech, and printed speakers to playa recorded message. The paper itself is actually digital, with the relays sandwiched between a later of cardboard and the paper on which the design is printed. For their first display, thescientists made a travel poster. “When you approach the billboard and put your hand on a postcard that shows a picture of a beach, you can hear a very brief description of thatbeach,” explained Mikael Gulliksson, who headed up the project. Perhaps unsurprisingly, at the moment such displays are very expensive, but the scientists are looking into ways to slashproduction costs, as well as make the technology smaller, so it can eventually be used in packaging. One of their ideas is to have cigarette packets with a spoken warning. Initially, though,they expect to make displays for use in stores. Currently the boards that make up a talking display are not only costly, but complex to assemble and replace. So, in a few years, ifyou’re walking along and your child says the cereal talked to him, don’t be surprised. It probably did.
The most popular digital music player is Apple’s iPod. Aside from being a wonderful music player and having lots of great features, the iPod has a whole lineup of accessories ready to be tapped into. With everything from FM tuners to cases, we’ll make sure you know what to add on to your iPod for the most enjoyable audio experience ever! Here are the Top 10 most interesting, useful, and creative iPod accessories.
It’s long been the stuff of science fiction and technologists’ dreams: a display as thin, flexible, and portable as paper but capable of showing any information or data its user might need.
E Ink Corporation and LG.Philips LCD may be bringing that dream a little closer to reality: today, the companies jointly announced they have built a 10.1-inch “electronic paper” display, a flexible LCD panel less than 300 microns thick
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