The Display Industry News Source 11.4.11

The Next Smartphone Trend? Bendable Screens With Flexible OLED ePaper (Video Above) - via Technology Review by MIT 

Glowing E-Reader Screen Becoming Trendy - "The eBook Reader points out a newish technology being pitched as the next step in passive displays. Flex Lighting makes an extremely thin layer (0.05mm thick) that allows light from hidden LEDs to be distributed evenly over its whole surface. The light is directed towards the screen itself, it seems, which is certainly necessary for a reflective-type display. It only needs one or two LEDs, so battery draw is minimal, and the extreme thinness and flexibility make it work in practically any display stack." via TechCrunch

New Visa Credit Card Has LCD Screen (but I'd rather have a lower APR) - "The CodeSure card can be used as a regular Visa debit, credit or pre-payment card. In addition to the display, it comes with a numeric keypad and a battery that is supposed to last up to three years. After testing over the past year, the card is now commercially available in Europe. Visa says that the card "can also be used for services like eBanking, telephone banking, transactions signing and access to third party services." It can offer messages in non-Roman alphabets too, should that be an issue. Similar to an encrypted key fob, it provides a one-time PIN number that is used during the transaction to verify the owner's identity. This is done via the numeric keypad. Issuing banks can use this card to verify that they are indeed talking to their customers and not someone who has stolen their card." via Readwriteweb 

Touch Technology in Clothes or Coffee Tables? New Stretch Material Can Make it Happen - "The new touch technology relies on something called time domain reflectometry, or TDR, which has been used for decades to find damage in underwater cables. TDR is simple in theory: send a short electrical pulse down a cable and wait until a reflection of the pulse comes back. Based on the known speed of the pulse and the time it takes to come back, software can determine the position of the problem—damage in the line or some sort of change in electrical conductance." via Technology Review by MIT

The Pros and Cons of OLED Displays and Apple's New Energy-Efficient Hybrid - "According to Apple, the relative power inefficiency in displaying white spaces using an OLED display may be particularly problematic in certain contexts. For example, certain applications, such as word processing, spreadsheet design and use, database design and use, e-mail, and other business or productivity applications, typically utilize dark or black alphanumeric characters on a white background, such as to simulate writing or printing on a sheet of paper. As a result, these applications may cause the display of large expanses of white background with relatively little area devoted to the non-white alphanumeric characters. Such applications, therefore, may make the use of traditional OLED displays unsuitable or undesirably power intensive for battery powered and/or portable electronic devices, such as handheld devices." via Patently Apple