The woman behind the design of the innovative One Laptop Per Child computer has a new project: a screen that combines a TV, computer display and electronic paper. Dr Jepsen has a new venture, Pixel Qi, which spun out of OLPC as an attempt to try and commercialise the innovative screen technology sported by the organisation's XO computer. And it's first major product is certainly ambitious: a computer screen that can switch between a traditional display and electronic paper. Speaking at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in San Jose, Dr Jepsen confirmed that the company's new 3T system will be a screen that can switch between three different modes.
First, it has a full colour screen equivalent to current computer displays; at the other extreme, it acts as an extremely low-power, higher-definition 'paper' that's readable in sunlight and similar to Amazon's Kindle. As well as these two modes, it also has an in-between state that is low power but able to cope with video.
The real motivation behind the scheme is to reduce the amount of power that the screen uses – allowing people to use the smallest amounts of power when they are simply reading on their screen. This vision, she said, drove her work at One Laptop Per Child and could be crucial for lowering the overall energy footprint of computers.
As a result of that pioneering work, OLPC helped open up the netbook market – small, low-cost, low power laptop computers which have now become one of the fastest-growing areas of the under-fire computer industry.
"Last year, before the economic crisis started to happen, the analysts predicted we'd ship about 8 million netbooks."
"That didn't happen because of the crisis, but we rounded out the year selling not 8 million, but 17 million units. And netbooks are predicted to shift about 50 million units this year." She also hinted at another innovative – a low powered television set that can display high definition video but can run without being plugged in. "We've had a lot of pull," she said. "People want TV even if they don't have power.. an HDTV that's under 10W and can be human-powered. We've figured out a way to do that."
First, it has a full colour screen equivalent to current computer displays; at the other extreme, it acts as an extremely low-power, higher-definition 'paper' that's readable in sunlight and similar to Amazon's Kindle. As well as these two modes, it also has an in-between state that is low power but able to cope with video.
The real motivation behind the scheme is to reduce the amount of power that the screen uses – allowing people to use the smallest amounts of power when they are simply reading on their screen. This vision, she said, drove her work at One Laptop Per Child and could be crucial for lowering the overall energy footprint of computers.
As a result of that pioneering work, OLPC helped open up the netbook market – small, low-cost, low power laptop computers which have now become one of the fastest-growing areas of the under-fire computer industry.
"Last year, before the economic crisis started to happen, the analysts predicted we'd ship about 8 million netbooks."
"That didn't happen because of the crisis, but we rounded out the year selling not 8 million, but 17 million units. And netbooks are predicted to shift about 50 million units this year." She also hinted at another innovative – a low powered television set that can display high definition video but can run without being plugged in. "We've had a lot of pull," she said. "People want TV even if they don't have power.. an HDTV that's under 10W and can be human-powered. We've figured out a way to do that."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment