There are all kinds of technology being displayed at CES 2013 and, of course, our main interest is digital cameras. However, sometimes a technology that you do not quite expect comes out of left field and our brain goes, Aha!
Humankind has written on cave walls, rock tablets, papyrus, parchment and our modern paper. However, using paper not only waste trees, a natural resource that takes a long time to replace, but the new generation of kids are being weaned on the tablet.
Enter PaperTab, a flexible, paper thin tablet that functions more or less like paper and a tablet. You can write and doodle on it. Navigation is by bending the display. However, where it gets interesting is when you place two or more PaperTabs beside one another: they are aware of one another, become a larger virtual window and the display expands to the other tablets for a larger view. You can also drag and drop items for one PaperTab to another.
For photographers, one PaperTab can act as a picture viewer while on another, you could have an email app or picture editing app opened. To add that photo to your email or editing app, simply pick up the photo viewer PaperTab and touch the other PaperTab and it’s done!
The only thing I did not like about PaperTab is the use of bending as navigation instead of finger and hand gestures. Bad idea, guys, PaperTab is a flexible medium and will therefore get bent inadvertently often, leading to lots of frustration. Otherwise, it’s a cool technology if they can really get all the electronics thin, powerful, and cheap enough into every sheet of PaperTab.
As the article in the link suggests, this is only at a conceptual stage and, like the early generation robots tethered to hidden powerful computers, there seems to be a computer hidden under the table and the PaperTabs all seemed tethered to it. As we have seen with all technology (and certainly with digital imaging technology), progress will be made. Let’s just hope they’ll all stick to a common set of standards.
via extremetech