This week’s tek news around the globe finds a pocket-sized newsfeed printer hit the global market in 2012, plus Eastman Kodak demonstrates a breakthrough in transparent conductive films at the Printed Electronics USA 2011 Show.
Pocket-sized newsfeed printer to hit the market next year
London-based design studio, BERG will release its Little Printer in 2012 to print receipt-sized bites of digital information from daily reminders to news.
According to Matt Webb, CEO of BERG, the smart phone configured printer compiles content from the web, wirelessly. “Little Printer lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf, assembling the content you care about into designed deliveries a couple of times a day.
This mini inkless thermal printer is the size of an alarm clock, and comes complete with an internal wireless server. Smartphone subscriptions to news, puzzles, calendar reminders, and to-do lists bring multiple digital feeds into printed bookmarks or Post-its.
Launch partners already on board for the release include foursquare, Google, the Guardian, Nike, and global design firm Arup.
Printers produce touch screen breakthrough
Eastman Kodak demonstrated it’s transparent conductive films integrated into a resistive touch screen panel for the first time at the Printed Electronics USA 2011 Show.
Produced using conventional printing processes, including UV-cured and heat processed inks, the polymer-based 14" touch screen panel features completely invisible conductive patterns. Kodak paired up with the conductive polymers division of Heraeus Precious Metals to develop this technology.
Mark Juba, general manager of Eastman Kodak’s industrial materials group, says the combination of technology offers a breakthrough in touch screen technology, “when compared with the sputtering required in the manufacture of ITO films.”
