]]>More details:
MAKE and Pixel Qi announced today the availability of a revolutionary LCD display technology from Pixel Qi–the 3Qi display. This one-of-a-kind, plug-and-play 10.1-inch display offers two modes–an easy-to-read, real color, multi-media mode or a crisp, low power e-reader mode. Indeed, the sunlight-ready, e-reader mode makes it easy to use outdoors. Best of all, the 3Qi display is on sale now at makershed.com.
Out of the box, these screens fit into a variety of 10.1-inch netbooks. These screens look like standard LCD screens in ordinary room light – but take them outside in the sunlight and see the difference! The Pixel Qi screens are bright and easy to see, even in direct sunlight. Like standard LCD displays, Pixel Qi displays show quality full-color images, full-motion video, and high screen brightness. Each pixel in the Pixel Qi screen is mainly reflective, but still has about the same efficiency as a standard LCD when backlit, enabling the user to experience a crisp image with excellent contrast and *brightness* in any light. The Pixel Qi screens consume 80% less power in the reflective mode making them a great choice for “green” applications. The screens are also ideally suited for e-reading applications, delivering better contrast ratio and similar reflectance typical of electrophoretic displays currently used by consumer e-reader tablets.
As of today these screens are available to the DIY community through O’Reilly Media’s MAKE magazine and its online DIY store Maker Shed. (www.makershed.com). A listing of known compatible netbooks and devices is available at the Maker Shed website and all sales, distribution and support to the DIY community will be centered at Make.
Pixel Qi’s Founder and CEO Mary Lou Jepsen said, “We hope that by working with MAKE and the DIY community we collectively will spur innovation in ways we can’t ourselves imagine yet.”
Dan Woods, GM of MAKE’s Ecommerce said, “We’re seeing a lot of interest in making and modding tablets, netbooks and e-readers within the maker community, and we’re always looking for innovative new ways to help inspire and support DIY enthusiasts to take on new challenges. Getting a brand new technology like Pixel Qi’s screen into the hands of developers and makers who will do something unusual, compelling and unexpected with it is tremendously exciting to us. MAKE is not only uniquely positioned to stimulate widespread experimentation within the global maker community – from educators to artists; software developers to hardware hackers – but also to organize conversation around resulting projects.”
Changing the screen of your netbook is easy, the process takes about 5-10 minutes using a small screwdriver. It’s simple: 2-4 screws have to be removed to allow unsnapping of the front plastic bezel. Once that step is done, removal of another few screws allows the screen to be unlatched and its cable disconnected. Next, the Pixel Qi screen is plugged in, screwed in, and the bezel snapped back in place. That’s it.
Although “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it” is the motto of MAKE magazine and “Void Your Warranty” is viewed more as encouragement than as an admonition – makers are nonetheless cautioned that disassembling your electronic device (e.g. netbook, tablet, etc) will likely void any warranty. Use the Pixel Qi Screen as a DIY project at your own risk. Pixel Qi, MAKE, and Maker Shed are not liable for any damage that may occur.
About Pixel Qi
Pixel Qi Corporation has pioneered a new class of screens combining an e-paper look with color and video. These screens offer dramatically lower power consumption, full sunlight readability, and stunning text rendering for reading. The screens use standard LCD manufacturing equipment and materials with a full suite of new inventions to give users real benefits they can see. Pixel Qi is a spin-off of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and was founded by its former CTO Mary Lou Jepsen. Pixel Qi believes that the future of computing is all about the screen and is dedicated to continuously delivering innovative screen technologies rapidly into high volume mass production.
About MAKE
MAKE magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. We celebrate your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.
Published as a quarterly since February 2005, MAKE is a hybrid magazine/book (known as a mook in Japan). MAKE comes from O’Reilly, the Publisher of Record for geeks and tech enthusiasts everywhere. It follows in line with the Hacks books and Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks, but it takes a highly visual and personal approach.
Our premiere issue showed you how to get involved in kite aerial photography — taking pictures with a camera suspended from a kite — and how to build an inexpensive rig to hold your camera.
We’ve also shown you how to make a video camera stabilizer, a do-it-yourself alternative to an expensive Steadicam® and how to create a five-in-one cable adapter for connecting to networks. Some projects are strictly for fun, others are very practical, and still others are absolutely astounding.
About O’Reilly Media, Inc.
O’Reilly Media is the premier information resource for technology innovation. Since 1978, business leaders and geeks alike have relied on the company’s books, conferences, and web sites to illuminate new computer technologies around the globe. The O’Reilly Radar has consistently proven reliable in predicting successful industry growth areas, leading to the widespread adoption of many emerging technologies. O’Reilly has been instrumental in putting the coolness in Geek.
]]>A customer asked to compare our screen with an ipad screen in sunlight and while en route outside I ran into Charbax and asked him if he wished to video tape it – which he did – the result is here . Various Apple fans are crying foul which is bizarre to us. Let me say right here and right now – we will take the best ipad vs pixel qi screen test proposed and face off with them. (and to add – we have great respect for the Apple display team and their accomplishments – but have gone a different path to create innovative screens of our own).
- Mary Lou
]]>We are quite honored to receive this prestigious award. Pixel Qi’s Multimode LCD technology offers a truly different screen from everything else available and solves the limitations of existing LCDs for mobile devices. Consumers are looking for products that render excellent images under all conditions, indoors and out, while enabling long battery life, and we are grateful to SID for recognizing Pixel Qi’s leadership in this field.
]]>Today Pixel Qi received the 2010 IEEE ACE Award for “Emerging Technology offering the greatest potential for financial success” at the IEEE Awards Banquet (held in San Jose during the Embedded System Conference)
We won this award amidst a dazzling array of other emerging technologies and an extraordinary group of other short-listed top nominees including Google Chrome, NanoGaN, Intrinsity, and the IBM/Russian Railways collaboration.
We are somewhat stunned and deeply honored.
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Other progress to report:
Our screens are for sale and have been for sale for several months now in products, but in specialized products that aren’t sold in stores yet. These products are for professional use and bundled with, for example, monthly services; they might not ever be sold in stores. Our initial manufacturing partner did get slowed down in the midst of the economic crises and that did effect our ability to ramp to the schedule our higher volume customers wanted. We are beyond this now thanks to strong pull from these customers: some of the largest computer companies in the world and also from the broader community who want our screens now! We are scaling to multiple manufacturers (and beginning to ramp production) to the meet the strong demand. (added note: this will still take some time to work through the system to get into stores.)
Look for our DIY partner announcement shortly. We have been working on the details of this and are excited about it.
Also: we have wider viewing angle technology working and will bring that into high volume production as soon as this fall. We have been working with a variety of touch screen suppliers and touch integration/assembly houses. Touch integration with our screens is already working via a variety of solutions including projected capacitance touch and is available now in our products.
]]>One Laptop per Child and Pixel Qi Sign Cross License Agreement for Screen Technology
Partnership to yield the world’s most advanced and lowest power laptop screens
Cambridge, Mass. and San Bruno, Calif., March 30, 2010 – The One Laptop per Child Foundation (OLPC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help provide every child in the world access to a modern education, and Pixel Qi Corporation, an innovator in high-performance, low-power displays, have signed a permanent and royalty-free cross-licensing agreement that will allow both organizations to deliver products incorporating the world’s most advanced screen technology.
As a result of the agreement, OLPC receives full license to all Pixel Qi “3qi” screen technology, including 70+ patents in process and all current and future IP developed by Pixel Qi for multi-mode screens. Pixel Qi is leading the design of new screens for OLPC’s next-generation XO laptops. The agreement also calls for Pixel Qi to receive full license to the dual-mode (indoor and outdoor) display technology used in the XO.
“A huge barrier to getting computers to mass use in the developing world is limited access to electricity. Pixel Qi is designing new screens for OLPC that will keep laptops going even longer between recharges and excel in long-form reading while providing color and video,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child. “Furthermore, we are not aware of any blanket technology license of this scale of current and future inventions by a commercial firm to a non-profit humanitarian effort and hope to set an example for other corporations to follow.”
Mary Lou Jepsen, founder and CEO of Pixel Qi, added, “OLPC’s focus on the need for low-cost, low-power devices led me to invent power-efficient LCD screens that are optimized for reading. Commercial tablets, notebook computers and smart phones have precisely the same needs. This is one of the few examples in which cutting-edge computer technology first deployed for developing nations benefits the developed world as well.”
About the One Laptop per Child Foundation
The One Laptop per Child Foundation (OLPC at http://www.laptop.org) is a nonprofit organization created by Nicholas Negroponte and others from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are inexpensive enough to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. OLPC and MIT have at all times been and remain separate institutions.
About Pixel Qi Corporation
Pixel Qi Corporation (http://www.pixelqi.com) has started production of a new class of screens combining an e-paper look with color and video. These screens offer dramatically lower power consumption, full sunlight readability, and stunning text rendering for reading. The screens are ramping into high-volume mass production in 2010, use standard LCD manufacturing equipment and materials with a full suite of new inventions to give users real benefits they can see. Two years ago, Mary Lou Jepsen left OLPC to found Pixel Qi and advance screen technology she initially developed while she was the founding Chief Technology Officer at OLPC.
One of the reasons I’m personally committed to doing this goes back to my One Laptop per Child experience and girls in a poor rural part of Nigeria who helped us test the early beta-laptop builds. In their school they had slanted desks bolted to benches with 4-5 kids per desk/bench combo. When any kid fidgeted or bumped all the laptops would fall on the concrete floors. The laptops were designed to be rugged and didn’t break usually, but in this early build one of the cables to the touchpad/keyboard was 1mm too short and could become “unseated”. This meant the keyboard and the touchpad would no longer work unless something was done.
Luckily: An 11 year old girl decided to open a laptop hospital. Unfortunately the boys really missed out here, because in this part of Nigeria “everyone knows” only girls work at hospitals, she eventually recruited girls as young as 5 to help out in the hospital. This group of girls armed with screwdrivers starting taking apart the laptops and reseating the cables. Sometimes they’d change out a screen, or a speaker. They learned about the hardware of their laptops. They got to see what was inside. They got better and better at fixing things by learning as they went.
Ministers of Education had a tough time believing that these girls could fix the hardware, so they would visit – to see it with their own eyes – and start thinking differently about maintenance of hardware. We kept preaching that ownership was the best way to assure maintenance.
Yet, most people are scared to change their laptop screen. It’s only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbuld: it’s basically 6 screws, pulling off a bezel, unconnecting the old screen and plugging this one in. That’s it. It’s a 5 minute operation.
]]>Additionally: There is major consolidation of the LCD industry underway right now and the ramp for new products are sometimes getting slowed down – not us so much – but we do see other projects slowing down dramatically. We are concerned because this slows innovation in our field and keeps it commodity based (and very predictable) during the consolidation – easier for the bankers, but worse for the people wanting innovative screens.
Meanwhile: I got news from IEEE/EETimes that the Pixel Qi screen has been nominated for an award: “the most creative electronics design of the year”. We are completely amazed by this, delighted that IEEE and EETimes are watching us and most honored to be nominated.
- Mary Lou
]]>We will open our suite in the Venetian to the press from 7-9AM on Friday January 8th to show you our latest screens. If you are a member of the press and would like to see these screens please rsvp with Courtney Wang (courtneywang@pixelqi.com).
We regret that we are unable to host the general public at this time, but we will make an announcement on how the public can get our screens soon.
- Mary Lou
]]>We can now announce that the first units are going into specialized tablet devices with multi-touch. Increasingly these screens will be super-slim, but some customers prefer the standard thickness.
During Q1 2010 we will make every attempt to allow a small number of our screens to be available to the DIY community. If possible please hold your individual requests until we post information on how to do this. We do hear you, but we are flat-out starting production this month. Individual requests will not be answered until we post information on how to do DIY orders.
Pixel Qi will be at CES in Las Vegas in early January supporting our customers. We can’t yet announce with whom we will be showing but hope to shortly.
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