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Esquire’s E Ink cover stirs eco controversy
July 22, 2008 | 8:59 am
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By David Rothman
E Ink will be used on the cover of Esquire, the famous American men’s magazine (no, not the cover shown here).
But the Huffington Post isn’t so enthusiastic: Esquire demonstrates how to make green technology really wasteful.
Why the HuffPo is grouchy
As mentioned in a different context in the Times: "First Esquire had to make a six-figure investment to hire an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover. The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine. The issues will then be shipped via trucks, which will be refrigerated to preserve the batteries, to the magazine’s distributor in Glazer, Ky." And guess what? The E Ink display will run out of power in 90 days.
Still a plus, as I see it
That said, I’m glad Esquire is diong the Ford-sponsored cover, for the September issue, if it calls attention to the technology. Hearst, by the way, owns Esquire and has a stake in E Ink.
Related: New York Times story here, Google roundup here. Also see an earlier TeleRead post, FirstPaper’s e-book machine: Kindle rival said to be on the way, backed by Hearst Interactive, arm of media giant.
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Comments:
The Esquire device is begging to be hacked. And as soon as possible, Esquire should dispense with the print version and the dinosaur distribution and sales system it requires, and publish the whole magazine through portable and open-standard, E-ink based periodical and book reader devices.
When will newspaper and magazine publishers, advertisers and retailers put their considerable resources toward developing the hardware and software platforms they will need to survive?
Esquire’s deputy editor Peter Griffin told Boing Boing Gadgets that he’ll be interested in seeing what hackers can do with it, although figuring out how to change the display won’t be a trivial matter, since the cover data will be baked into the circuit board. Of course, he promises that replacing the battery won’t be as hard as all that (“The batteries are pretty standard, small batteries,” even though they’re soldered-in).
I definitely agree with Buzz…it’ll be fascinating to see what kind of homebrew devices will be cooked up from this. And if they can look any weirder than the Kindle.