Displays of the future are here

Flexible displays that have been a part of many a sci-fi movie are finally here.  Plastic Logic yesterday announced that they will be revealing a flexible 150ppi SVGA active-matrix display at the Plastic Electronics 2006 conference in Frankfurt.  The display is based on E Ink technology, which is already being used in devices such as the Sony Reader.  However, unlike those devices, this display can be rolled and folded just like a thick piece of paper while still being readable.  The company’s goal is to start mass-producing these displays in 2008, which means those cool roll-up displays seen in movies could soon be seen on a beach near you.

Flashing the VoIP Community

Following on the success of Flash Player in online video sites, news has just broken today that Adobe is looking to add VoIP capabilities to Flash Player.  Om Malik has a good summary of what has been leaked from Adobe about the progress of this new project.  Some difficult technical obstacles will need to be overcome, but if Adobe can support multiple VoIP protocols while still keeping the size of the Flash Player client small, they stand a good chance of taking a huge bite out of the VoIP market and could give rise to new uses of VoIP technology.  We will be following this project closely as the NXTbook is based on Flash and it would be very easy to add VoIP capabilities to the NXTbook system if Flash Player offered full support of VoIP technology.

RSS Explained for the Masses

Many of you reading this blog are probably familiar with RSS and understand its importance and usefulness in the online world.  But, sometimes it is difficult to explain RSS to the uninitiated without causing some confusion.  Stephanie Quilao over at Back in skinny jeans has written one of the best layperson explainations on RSS that I have read, which she appropriately titled "How to explain RSS the Oprah way."  It should not be missed by anyone who wants to understand RSS better or wants a good way to explain RSS to others.

Blogger Jill Hurst-Wahl Likes Nxtbook…

From the post:

Yes, some of these features are available in e-book readers. This,
however, works without downloading a separate reader. And imagine
marrying this with a digitized book? I can! 

Boeing Connexion Heading for a Crash Landing?

A while back, I wrote about the in-flight internet service that Boeing has been testing on some of their international flights.  According to a Reuter’s article released yesterday, Boeing may be considering selling or closing the unit.  The service has yet to turn a profit and Boeing has reportedly invested around $1 billion into the service over the past 6 years.

Kevin Tofel from jkOnTheRun writes about how he got along fine without internet access on his recent 2.5 hour flight and questions the productivity gains from an in-flight internet service.  I agree that for shorter flights, it is probably not very useful, but for flights longer than 4 hours, I can see much benefit.  Whenever I take a flight across the country, I always feel a little bit behind in my email and work because I have lost most of the day.  An in-flight internet service would help me stay productive and help the time pass more quickly.  I think the main problem with the Connexion service is that it is priced too high.  Most people are used to the prices they are charged from wi-fi hotspots such as Starbucks.  If Boeing could get closer to those prices, I believe that a lot more people would use the service.

Let’s hope Boeing figures out a better way to market their internet services, price the services, and get the services on more flights that are over 4 or 5 hours.

Net Neutrality is Important for Everyone

I had been planning to write about the net neutrality debate, but than I saw a great article at washingtonpost.com that gives a clear explanation of the debate and why net neutrality is incredibly important to anyone that uses the internet. As the article states, "Congress is deciding on the fate of the Internet."

Please tell your members of Congress to save the Internet.

Update:
On June 8, the U.S. House of Representatives defeated the net neutrality amendment in a 269-152 vote that was close to party lines.  This amendment (and the bill it is attached to) will now move to the Senate. 

Please contact your senator to let them know how important net neutrality is for the future of the Internet.

Sci-fi Devices Becoming Reality

Most of you have probably read some of the many news articles that detail the new portable reading devices coming out soon which use screen technology from E Ink Corp. Such devices include the Sony Portable Reader and the iRex iLiad, both of which have grayscale screens. I have seen the E Ink technology up close, including the new full-color screens that are supposed to be available to manufacturers in less than a year. The E Ink technology is remarkable for two main reasons: the screens are reflective, so they can be easily read in all types of light, and the screens use very little power, so devices that use these screens have much longer battery life. The main drawback to these screens is that they can currently only work with static content; video and animations cannot be viewed on devices that use these screens.

Which brings us to the second contestant in screen technology for portable devices: OLED (organic light emitting diode, or device). When this technology becomes ready for consumer devices, OLED screens will look like traditional laptop screens, but could easily be paper-thin. A good example of how this might work is the portable device that Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report uses. The device in the movie has a screen that is a little bit smaller than a laptop screen, which rolls out from the side of a small box (which could house the CPU, flash memory, wireless technology, etc). The main difference between thiese screens and the E Ink technology is that OLED screens can show dynamic content like videos and animations. I have not yet found any information about whether OLED screens are able to viewed well in all types of light.

Paper-like displays built on technologies such as E Ink and OLED are expected to become a huge industry in the next 5 years. Once the portable reading devices built on these technologies start coming out for consumers, the acceleration away from content printed on paper will increase tenfold, if not more.

Hardware Failure in Content Delivery Network

The content delivery network that we use to quickly deliver NXTbook pages all over the world, has informed us of a hardware failure on their master DNS server. Their systems have redundancies in place and are quickly switching over to a backup DNS server, but the hardware failure has caused a disruption in their content delivery services. This disruption will temporarily prevent some readers from being able to load NXTbook pages. We have been assured that this problem is temporary and will be resolved quickly. We apologize for this inconvenience.

Update:
The content delivery network has just reported that all DNS servers are again active. They expect full availability to be restored in 10 to 20 minutes.

View NXTbooks on Demand During Flight

Boeing is now offering a service called Connexion by Boeing, which will provide broadband internet connections during flights. Currently, the service is only available on certain international flights, but they are planning to expand the service in the future. The price for the service is more expensive than the typical Starbucks broadband connection (starting at $9.95 for 1 hour of service), but hopefully the prices will drop in the near future.

The best thing about this service? Travellers will now be able to view NXTbooks on demand while flying! NXTbook readers were always able to download an offline version to their laptops to take on trips, but now they need not decide beforehand which NXTbooks to take on the flight. In addition, travellers will be able to view the streaming media that is available in some NXTbooks and click through to publishers’ and advertisers’ web sites. We are one step closer to ubiquitous access to the net!

For more information about Connexion, you can download this podcast interview with Terrence Scott from Boeing.

« Previous Page