New weather forecaster uses E Ink

[Brian]

Here's another device to add to the growing list of recently announced products using E Ink displays. In case you're keeping score, the Sony Reader, iRex Iliad, Jinke Hanlin, and Lexar JumpDrive Mercury all use the MIT Media Lab spinout's electronic paper in their products.

Now Ambient Devices, another MIT spinout, have announced the Weather Wizard, a wireless weather station that displays a five day forecast using an E Ink display. The device gets weather information wirelessly over the Ambient Information Network, which covers over 90% of the U.S. population.

Unlike Xerox's e-paper spin-out Gyricon, who recently pulled the plug on e-paper, E Ink has found several manufacturers to utilize their electronic paper display technologies in consumer-oriented devices.

Full press release here.

[Colin Dunstan]

What amazes me is that E Ink technology isn't exactly new. E Ink has been around as a MIT spin-off since 2000, and the first E Ink products including the Librie since 2004. And now, all of a sudden, we're being flooded (not that I would mind) by E Ink-based gadgets. Perhaps the technology wasn't truly ready until now.