An Idaho-based company called Rohinni has a question for you: what if light was printable? It’s an odd question, for sure, and one that was purely hypothetical until recently. Rohinni has created a paper-thin LED light source that needs nothing more than an electrical current to light up. Appropriately, they have named it Lightpaper.

Current LED lighting requires soldering LEDs to circuit boards, a process which is expensive and time-consuming as evidenced by the relatively high cost of LED home lighting. Rohinni’s method is simple, cheap, quick, and can be produced in large quantities.

It works by mixing tiny LEDs – each no bigger than a red blood cell – with ink. The illuminating ink is then printed onto a substance that conducts electricity. The process is clever, but not yet perfected. Currently, the LEDs aren’t distributed evenly over the entire printing surface, which can create a type of “twinkling” effect. But the company says that their forthcoming second version of Lightpaper will not have this flaw.

With its low cost and an expected lifespan of 20 years, Lightpaper is on track to displace OLEDs as the future of flexible lighting. Rohinni’s ideas for potential applications are plentiful, including lighted wallpaper for hotels, glowing logos on just about anything, and even car headlights. They are working with several companies to put the cool paper-thin lighting to work, and they expect the first round of products and objects with integrated Lightpaper to go public sometime in 2015.

The post Everything is Illuminated: Paper-Thin Printed LED Lighting first appeared on Gajitz.

What if you never had to decide on a wristwatch design again? Japanese startup Fashion Entertainments teamed up with TAKT Project to produce the FES Watch, a timepiece that changes its appearance as often as you like.

Made with electronic paper, the FES Watch starts out looking completely blank, face and all. The watch’s face and wristband design only appear when you bring your arm up in the classic “checking the time” posture.

Touching the watch’s body changes the design of the face and strap. There are 24 pre-programmed designs that appear out of nowhere and then fade away, essentially creating a new watch each time.

The stated goal of Fashion Entertainments is to create new ways to enjoy digitized fashion. This watch creates a feeling of fluidity and motion that adapts to the wearer’s style rather than requiring the wearer to change accessories to match the outfit of the day.

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E-Ink and Sony’s Digital Paper technology are poised to become the next big important thing in digital communications. The Sony DPTS1 is a newly-unveiled Digital Paper tablet aimed at professionals. Sony is banking on those professionals being swamped in hundreds of physical pieces of paper and seeking a way to dig themselves out.

That goal isn’t as unattainable as it may seem. For professionals like attorneys, legislators, and anyone else who has to deal with vast amounts of hard-copy documents every day, they really can get overwhelming. The Digital Paper tablet is roughly the same size as a sheet of A4 paper and gives the feeling of writing on an actual piece of paper with an actual pen, helping make the transition easier. With a generous 4GB of internal memory and a micro SD card to accommodate even more data, the tablet has more than enough ability to store just about everything an office worker needs from day to day.

The tablet is equipped with wi-fi and a USB outlet for easy sharing. It converts Excel, MS Word, and PowerPoint documents into PDFs to make them more portable. The E-Ink technology lets you write on the documents as if they were actually sitting on your desk, resting your hand on the screen as you write. Some of Sony’s suggested uses are signing contracts, annotating scholarly articles, and making notes on legislation documents.

Sony says that the tablet will be ready to use right out of the box complete with a lithium ion battery that can operate up to three weeks on a single charge. Features like simple zooming, touchscreen page-turning, wireless sharing, and natural-feeling note taking will make the lightweight tablet an indispensable accessory in offices. At least that’s what Sony is banking on; the expected price tag for the tablets is reportedly a cool $1,100.

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The one main drawback of tablet computers – their awkward carrying size – won’t be a problem for future generations of the gadgets. That is, if a team consisting of Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab, Intel and Plastic logic has its way. These groups came together to create a super-thin, super-flexible high resolution display that will revolutionize the way we look at tablets. As thin an as flexible as paper, the technology is known as PaperTab.

PaperTab would work much like actual paper: in groups. Each “sheet” would run just a single app, but many sheets together would give you the functionality of a traditional tablet. Of course, this might mean that you would need to leaf through your apps before you leave the house and grab just the ones you might need that day, then run the risk of being without an important one. But the technology is still in its infancy, so hopefully a streamlined and sensible method of use will emerge to make these futuristic, flexible tablets just as simple to use as the bigger, heavier ones we carry around now.

The post ePaper Tablets: Future Computers Light + Flexible as Paper first appeared on Gajitz.

Electronic paper concepts keep rolling out one after another, and this time it’s Sony showing off their latest e-paper creation. At the 2010 Dealer Convention in Shinagawa, Tokyo, the electronics giant unveiled a flexible e-paper made with a revolutionary plastic substrate.

Previously, most e-paper concepts operated on a glass substrate, making them a bit impractical for carrying around due to their high potential for damage. Glass is also significantly heavier than plastic, so glass-based e-paper doesn’t exactly feel the same as traditional paper. If you’ve ever tried to carry around a Kindle, you know it’s a bit more challenging to transport than, say, a paperback book…but still easier than carrying around a whole library full of them.

Sony’s new e-paper design could be rolled up like traditional paper and easily carried around with no danger of cracking if dropped. Of course, Sony is remaining rather tight-lipped about how their new flexible paper will actually work. LG unveiled their own lightweight, rollable e-paper earlier this year which uses a flexible foil substrate, but as of yet the concept still hasn’t reached the production stage. Whichever company makes it to production first can look forward to dreaming up all kinds of new applications for this futuristic technology.

The post Fine and Flexy: Sony’s Futuristic Flexible E-Paper Display first appeared on Gajitz.