Mens mag debuts e-ink cover
Kindle display used in print publication
Sony wants everyone to ditch paperbacks in favour of its Reader electronic book, but man-mag Esquire is keeping the printed world alive with an e-ink magazine.
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The 75th anniversary issue of the US edition of Esquire features a small e-ink display on the front cover which flashes between a “The 21st Century Begins Now” headline and a collage of images.
The screen uses technology from E Ink, the firm that supplied the e-ink screens for both Sony’s Reader and Amazon’s rival e-book, Kindle.
The magazine isn’t wirelessly connected and so can’t be updated – ah, the drawbacks of print... - but the magazine’s editor-in-chief, David Granger told the Associated Press that if the concept’s used in future then, hopefully, the screens could be linked to the web, allowing content to be updated post-sale.
Each e-ink Esquire runs on six batteries, which are said to last for between three and six months.
It’s not known how much it cost Esquire’s publisher to produce the October issue, but 100,000 copies of the e-ink edition go on sale today in the US at $6 (£3.40/€4.21) a pop - $2 more than usual.
COMMENTS
eh?
So they have the brilliant new technology, and the best they came up with to use it in a marvellous new way was.... a fucking blink tag???
Shoot them. Shoot the bastards NOW before they breed more.
*actual resolution may be crappier than Youtube can show
Seriously, this is a total non-event. Come back to me when the first wholly e-ink magazine launches: a single sheet of e-paper with enough memory to hold a whole magazine. Should fit nicely in the glovebox of my flying car.
Do we need Adblock Plus for magazines now?
Flashing ads in magazines, that's what we all have waited for...
@John, another thing I noticed
The text never changes, either - it's also just on/off. Reminds me of those old LCD games (Nintendo Game & Watch et al).
Not at fancy as it looks
I quite like the way they've done this - they've clearly used a (relatively) cheap monochromatic e-ink display and overprinted it (or possibly underprinted it) with a colour picture. The result is that it looks like a colour display, but it's not.
Notice that the colour parts (the photos on the front and the car on the inside ad) don't move - they just flash as the display moves from dark to light. The grey text appears and disappears, but the colour parts stay.
Still, as I say, it's a nice use of the technique. But I have to agree with some of the above comments: permanent publishing has definite advantages over electronic. I can't imagine much worse a fate than books and magazines becoming as full of popups and flashing ads as the Internet. At least on the net we have NoScript and AdBlock!
