E Ink displays have been touted as replacements for a lot of different monochrome and basic color print products, like transit schedules and posters. But now there’s a company selling a 32-inch e-paper display that shows the front pages of newspapers.
My first 20 years of working were at daily newspapers, so I do miss the format and tactile experience of reading a newspaper – but I’m not sure I’d stand up reading a front page mounted to a wall like a framed painting.
Project E Ink creator Alexander Klöpping says this was something of a maker project that took on a life of its own. “I’m a news junkie, and the power and allure of a newspaper’s front page have always fascinated me,” he writes. “So, when I stumbled upon an article written by a Google engineer who had built an e ink device with the front page of his favorite daily newspaper prominently displayed on his wall, I was jealous. So, I built one as well, using off-the-shelf hardware.”
Klöpping connected with Visionect, a Slovenian company covered quite a bit on this site for its innovations in everything from meeting room displays to bus stop signs. “It turns out that the dimensions of the screen they sell for corporate use are identical to those of an unfolded newspaper front page,” says Klöpping, who is based in Amsterdam.
The software side of this is simple and quite limited. It is set up to query and show the PDF front page of a designated newspaper, loading the URL. There’s no ability to navigate beyond that first page – with the idea that these units are as much art as they are news sources. Project Ink works with another company, Blendle, which does news aggregation.
Being a newspaper junkie who can wander into a room and see this won’t be cheap. The MSRP is just a touch over $3,000 USD.
Here’s a short promo video …
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