Mexico-based PERO360 developed a new solar-powered E Ink kiosk called Community HUB, that help students in schools report violence cases anonymously and safely. A 12-month trial in Mexico saw rediced abusive behavior and helped the school implement new violence prevention politics. Community HUB won the World Summit Aware for Inclusion and Empowerment.

The Community HUB uses Visionect's E Ink system. The developers say e-paper is the best fit for this kind of application due to the low power consumption and the outdoor visibility.

Kent displays, a leading Reflex LCD company launched several models of eWriters since 2010, which are now sold in around 30 countries around the world.

About the Sync 9.7 Boogie Board

The Sync 9.7 is a 9.7 inch electronic notebook launched in 2003, sporting the company's eWriting technology. It also has a microSD card slot (in addition to a built-in 2BG of on-board SD memory), USB and Bluetooth. It comes with its own stylus, micro USB charge cable and a 1-cell lithium-ion battery.

If you're a writer and an E ink enthusiast (but then again, who isn't?), you'd probably be interested in the Fusion Writer, a new crowd-funding campaign that is trying to raise $50,000 for the development of a portable E Ink word processor.

Although still in early-design stages, the Fusion Writer is meant to perform as a dedicated word processor for writers of all kinds, presenting significant advantages such as very long battery life, excellent screen for indoor and outdoor use, thin and light casing, charging via USB or solar energy and a 13" display that can be reversed to cover the keyboard and create a large e-reader.

The Earl is a rugged tablet aimed for outdoor use. It has a rugged case and a flexible 6" 1024x768 LG Display-made flexible E Ink panel with infrared touch. Other features include a built-in solar panel, Android, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS and AM/FM Radio. The device is powered by a low-power 1 Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash memory (and a microSD slot).

The Earl will hopefully be funded in crowd-funding campaign (using their own system, not kickstarter or something like that) - like several E Ink products lately. They aim to raise $250,000 and currently they have over $60,000 with 30 days to go. The price seems very low for the specifications, this one will be interesting to watch.

Plastic Logic and SERELC developed together a new low-power outdoor digital signage solution based on Plastic Logic's flexible plastic displays. Each ZED (Zero Energy Display) unit consists of two 10.7" monochrome flexible plastic displays.

Plastic Logic says that the two displays have been "seamlessly tiled together", although the photo they released shows otherwise. In any case, the final display acts like a single 15.4" diagonal (150 dpi) panel that weighs just 115 grams and is less than 1 cm in thickness.

Here's a summary of my visit to E Ink's booth at SID 2012. E Ink had a very large booth, showing dozens of E-readers and other devices that sport E Ink panels. Lot's of these used Ink-In-Motion, E Ink's segmented displays (rather then the active-matrix ones used in e-readers for example).

The largest display at the booth, and one of the most interesting ones was the hybrid EPD/LED traffic light concept. It uses a large circular e-paper panel, color filters and LEDs (in an outer ring). The hybrid traffic light provides higher visibility in direct sunlight than regular traffic lights (who need to "overpower" the sunlight). E Ink's concept uses 24 LEDs vs 200 in a regular traffic light. Great idea. Just below the traffic light E Ink built a small E Ink crosswalk - showing a nice usage of rugged shatterproof panels.

The Eton Rukus Solar is now shipping for $150. The Rukus Solar is a portable Bluetooth sound system with solar panels and a SURF (segmented) E Ink display. This is an outdoor sound system - hence the Solar and E Ink display makes sense...

 

Researchers from the University of California developed a new display based on silica-coated nanoscale iron oxide rods. Those rods align themselves when a magnetic field is applied and they diffract light into color. This display is very low power and offers great sunlight visibility. They released a short demo of the rods under magnetic influence:

This research is in early stages, but the researchers already patented the technology and licensed it to (an undisclosed) company to commercialize.

A while back we reviewed the Phosphor E Ink watch, and today we posted a review of a watch that uses an OLED display. It was interesting to compare the two displays outside. Not surprisingly, the OLED is almost useless outside, but the E Ink looks great in direct sunlight:

You can now buy a Pixel-Qi display for your netbook (10.1"). Engadget has posted a nice guide on how to actually install such a display. Beside the how-to guide, they also review the quality. They say that in a normal usage mode, it's basically just like a normal LCD in regard to brightness and colors. The viewing angle, however, is poor. Pixel Qi promises a new, better-angled display soon. Outdoor visibility is awesome.