Bonus: Blog's use in an organizational context

http://www.itechnews.net/

ITechnews is a blog that mainly discuss about new technologies. The advantages of holding a business blog is:

1. Cheap, quick, and simple to setup and run. Many sites host free and cheap blogs.
   
2. Openness. Its willingness to open to public readers allows business to gain more knowledge about the readers. Readers are free to comment and provide their feedback quickly. This way the business can establish a customer relationship.
   
3. Search engines support blogs. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN can help by providing your blog link to anyone. This can help promote your business.
   
4. Reducing calls. A blog can provide many information to customers right away. Therefore, reducing the number of calls from customers about their concerns.
   
5. Accessibility. With a computer and internet access, people can view any your blog anywhere and anytime.
   

Blogs also hold some disadvantages. Such as:

1. Constant updates. The blog must be continuously updated with information. The company must devote most of their time researching and updating to stay one step ahead of everyone else.
2. No turning back. Once you have published a post, readers can access it quickly. Therefore, if there was a mistake found in a blog, deleting it would not help much. The blog must be careful of their posts.
3. Personal Information. Many customers still have many doubts of giving away their personal information.
   

Sources:

http://www.tomrafteryit.net/the-advantages-of-blogging-for-business/
http://www.marketingtitan.com/advantages-disadvantages-blogging

Disadvantages of E-paper

Even though E-paper provides many advantages to people and the industries, it is still not perfect. E-paper is meant to replace traditional papers and other technologies, however, traditional paper can never be completely replaced by E-paper. Many people still prefer manually writing on a piece of paper as a way to better understand what they wrote. Also, most students and business people still print official documents or projects from their computers. Specifically for signing official contracts with customers. The following disadvantages are:

• Low Refresh Rate. At the moment, E-paper prevents the producers from installing sophisticated interactive applications such as high speed moving images, adding the mouse hardware, etc. Using simply a reflective can save large amount of power but it also slows down the processing speed of changing an image or text.
  

• The feeling: People still prefer paper. The number of people who subscribe for books and newspaper are in fact decreasing since many news and entertainment can be found on the net. Many offices and business still use paper for signing contracts, hard copy of documents, etc. Even majority of students still write on textbooks and notes instead of bringing their own laptops. There were people who mentioned that they did not want to lose the feeling of holding a book and the effort of writing.
  

• New crime. As technology is growing, so is crime. For example, there are new criminals such as hackers since the invention of computers and internet. If information is not deleted once viewed, then information can be easily stolen if not take care of properly. Especially since information can be transmitted wirelessly. Criminals can always find their way around new technologies. Many industries might need to enhance their securities in case if crime occurs and it can be anytime and anywhere!
  

• Ready or not? E-paper has began in 1989 by Nick Sheridon. The acceptance of E-paper might take longer than expected. Some people, but not most, are still not comfortable using new technologies. Further development is still needed for E-paper. Therefore, it might take a while before industries and offices can adapt to this major change.
  

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper
http://thefutureofthings.com/articles/1000/the-future-of-electronic-paper.html
http://www.pressmart.net/blog/labels/epaper.html

Advantages of E-paper

E-paper's characteristics allow it to be versatile. The significance of E-paper is the fact that it is low power consumption, lightweight, thin, flexible and its ability to electronically manipulate the information displayed instantly and wirelessly. Most importantly, E-paper is reusable and it is comfortable for the eyes. Therefore, it is environmental friendly, saves trees, and it is comfortable for the human eyes. Furthermore, its format makes it possible for a wide range of applications. E-paper provides greater advantages to industries. The following are advantages in greater details:

• Decrease Environmental Issues. With its low power consumption, reusability, and semipermanent memory display system which maintains images without consuming large amount of energy. E-paper saves trees and energy. It does not require paper for every new advertisement, new price tag, etc. Additional paper would be wasted. Nowadays, many offices and businesses are promoting a paperless environment. It greatly reduces paper and document storage.
  

• Low cost effectiveness. Since E-paper is reusable, it saves on production cost for industries. In addition, using electronic price tag example, if there was a mistake in the shelf pricing, then companies must reimburse the customer for their mistakes. If this mistake was discovered earlier then it only takes a few seconds to electronically change the price.

• Time saving. Saving labor time and effort for continuously changing and adding displays in different areas. Therefore, it improves information availability.
  

• Security functions. E-paper prevents information leakage. Data and information can be deleted once viewed. Therefore, leaving nothing behind for information theft.

• Improves customer services. E-paper provides accurate information anytime for customers. In addition, E-paper increases readability because it can be viewed from every possible angle.

Sources:

http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/ECO/rep2006/2006report11-12-e.pdf
http://www.itsimaging.com/advantages-benefits.html
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/rd/200509epaper.html

The Future Potential of E-paper

The future of E-paper seems promising and has the potential to replace many older technologies and tools. With the new features of E-paper, it can be applied in wide ranges of areas that requires regular updates of information display. Such as:

• Public Transit advertisements and schedules. Since the public transit schedule changes regularly, E-paper is an ideal technology. It provides quick information and notices if there are any emergencies and traffic delays. Advertisements, on the other hand, can constantly change images if you have more than one product to promote. E-paper has the ability to rewrite and change the image indefinitely and immediately since everything is done electronically. It saves time, money, effort, and most importantly paper materials. This may also include places such as airports, train station, etc.
  

• Price tags in stores and restaurant menus. With its lightweight and thin characteristics, E-paper can be hanged on shelves or from the ceiling. The prices and descriptions for each product can be easily changed. Instead of manually changing the prices or printing out more price tags, E-paper does it electronically within seconds. It is especially useful for retail stores in case they label the wrong price for the product and must reimburse the customer according to the customer rights law. As for restaurant menus, prices and items can also be modified as desired.

• New cell phone display screen. The new Motorola F3 was the first to use E-paper display on their cellular phones. It is only available in black and white at the moment. With the characteristics of the E-paper, F3 is a low cost and energy saving mobile phone. There would be more E-paper mobile phones in production.

• In the office. E-paper could be used as operating manuals, work orders, and other short-term information displays. This method facilitates a paperless trend in offices. Information can be sent wirelessly from cell phones with bluetooth or any other devices to an E-paper. The images and texts on E-paper are larger and clearer. It is especially useful for conferences and meetings.
  

• Newspapers, magazines, and books. E-paper has the capacity to hold many pages of images and texts. Newspapers and magazines can be updated daily or even hourly with wireless technology. For example, Amazon has released an E-book called Amazon Kindle which can hold an entire book in an E-paper. It is also beneficial for students. There would be no more carrying heavy books in backpacks and also E-paper enhances information sharing with wireless.

• Publishing Companies. Many newspapers, magazines, and books could be replaced by E-paper. Leaving many publishing companies to change their way of doing business and generating revenues. They will most likely have to adapt to this new business model of publishing books and newspapers electronically.
  

With further development, E-paper has much potential and provides many advantages in the future. Many well-known E-paper vendors include Philips Electronics, Kent Displays, Niterre, E-ink, Sony, Fujitsu, etc.


Sources:

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2005/20050713-01.html
http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/ECO/rep2006/2006report11-12-e.pdf

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid40_gci535038,00.html

What is E-paper?

E-paper, also known as Electronic Paper, is a display technology that has identical characteristics as a regular paper. For example, it is thin, light, bendable, etc. Furthermore, it is reusable and portable. In addition, E-paper is environmental friendly. It is resource saving and consumes very little electricity when changing the images. Since many people are concerned about today's environment, this is ideally a great product since it does not require materials such as trees. It does not require electricity to have a continuous display since it is all based on memory functions. The images and texts can be electronically changed or written over within seconds and it is always up to date. The low power consumption allows it to be long lasting without recharging batteries. Furthermore, its thin and light characteristics allow it to be portable everywhere you go and it is more convenient than carrying a laptop.

E-paper is relatively cheap, but not as cheap as traditional paper, and it is affordable by many people. The flexibility of E-paper makes it durable. The first generation of E-paper uses glass backplanes such as LCD's. A LCD glass can easily break if dropped on the floor. The second generation of E-papers are all made with high flexibility which prevents it from easily breaking. Most importantly, E-paper improves readability. The display uses many pixels and has a very high resolution to bring stable images. It provides reflective light display to generate less eye strain and it can be viewed in every angle without seeing reflection of yourself or the room. E-paper is made to be more comfortable for the human eye. Furthermore, E-paper comes in many difference sizes for different purposes. For example, there are larger e-paper available for the purpose of advertisement.

Here is a video of the comparison between LCDs and E-paper:

How does it work?

The technology that is being used for E-paper is called Electrophoretic Display. It contains some negatively charged electronic ink, also called e-ink, between two electrodes. The electrode charges the ink and repels it to appear on the surface turning the E-paper on and off. Electrochromic Display is similar to Electrophoretic except it contains color ink. With this technology, it allows the E-paper to consume less energy and last longer.

Another method is the Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) which is an LED that contains some organic compounds that produces light when given a small amount of power. Its image quality is better than LCD display however its life span is much shorter.

As of now, E-paper is only available in black and white. Starting from 2009, Fujitsu will introduce a more high performance and colorful display into the market. Many companies have applied e-paper and e-ink into their own products. For example, Motorola F3 uses e-paper display instead of the usual LCD screen, however, it is only available in black and white. Also, Amazon has began producing Amazon Kindle. Amazon Kindle is an E-book that has E-paper display. Imagine having to read an entire book in a thin layer device.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~frk/frank/da/hci/tutorial%20-%20What%20is%20e%20paper.pdf
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2005/20050713-01.html