E Ink technology is nothing short of amazing. It recently contributed to the world's first bend-sensitive flexible smartphone, and now it's capable of something even cooler, not to mention astonishingly simpler—flashing digital displays on cloth.
E Ink's electronic paper displays have already been incorporated into devices like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. They've even hit magazine covers. But instead of unleashing the monochrome successor to Pearl this year, E Ink has decided to wait until 2012 to give the world its new electronic ink display. Maybe because it's rumored to support full-motion video, better color (see third video below), or maybe because they want to incorporate it into more than just eReaders...
In a couple of years, you just might start wearing E Ink displays. The company recently confirmed that they're working on a flexible display that can be printed on cloth, which means t-shirts are in for a treat.
They've even been playing around with it on Tyvek cloth, a flashspun high-density synthetic material made of polyethylene fibers, used for Priority and Express mailing envelopes, disc sleeves and even American Apparel shorts.
If used in the wrong hands (i.e. pranksters), this could potentially cause quite a stir for mail carriers once their flashing labels change addresses mid-shipping. But more than likely, it's going to be used to turn everybody into walking, flashing, black-and-white billboards, moving advertising concerns past the likes of Facebook Social Ads. Though it would be interesting to see E Ink incorporated into actual paper newspapers, like we've all seen in Harry Potter...
Hopefully, with such cool and simple technology, something great will come of it, like contortionist eReaders and smartphones. Any other useful ideas?
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