What's Happening at Pixel Qi - Mary Lou Jepsen's Blog » Displays

Content Really Matters for Tablets

mary_lou_jepsen — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:08:46 +0000

This week we announced a new tablet with a company called Shi-Zhu Technologies. Shizhi is pronounced Sher-Ju and is a clever wordplay on a character combination for Bamboo and its use for paper. The Chinese word for Bamboo is Zhu (pronouced Ju).

Shi-Zhu is closely allied with, and creating a tablet for, one of China’s leading publishing and media groups called Southern Media Group. Southern Media Group ships more paper newspapers per day than The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal combined by some counts!

The Economist describes Southern Media’s Group ability to capture new newspaper markets in the state controlled media system of China quite succinctly. They say that Southern Media is doing something novel – appealing to its readers. Southern Media has been at the forefront of investigative journalism frequently breaking news on corruption scandals, with a revolving door for its top journalists – in and out of jail in China. The group have also been busy with pioneering efforts in gossip and celebrity reporting that have many glued to coverage, and eager for the next issue. The combination of the two (gossip and investigative journalism) has proven irresistible to mainstream Chinese audiences, a content combination that is powerful everywhere.

The tablet is gorgeous with a distinctly high brow Chinese aesthetic, all the content, and runs the latest Android OS. It’s long life battery and indoor/outdoor full-function screen also reduce eye strain for long-form reading especially in bright environments.

On display NOW at GITEX in Dubai

Pixel Qi announces new partnerships.

mary_lou_jepsen — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:30:36 +0000

While this blog has been quiet for a few months, we have been creating a larger infrastructure behind the scenes and are beginning to announce some of what we have accomplished. Today we announce A Partnership with All American , one of the largest and most respected component distributors in the world. We are thrilled to join their product line-up and view our partnership with them as critical to enabling engineers everywhere to design transformative products with Pixel Qi screens.

In addition, 3 weeks ago we announced A Major Partnership with 3M which we believe will allow us to bring our technology into mass adoption worldwide.

I’m often asked how Pixel Qi is doing and when our products will be widely available. I’d like to report that over 3 million people are already using my screens, and we are now ramping into even higher volumes. Already, our screens are used by soldiers jumping out of airplanes, children in the developing world on their OLPC laptops, in a variety of tablet and netbooks, and in many applications that find desirable a combination of low power, outdoor usability and low perceived eye strain.

We are introducing two new products into mass production in the coming months. Their sizes and resolutions:

7″ Diagonal 1024×600 screen
10″ Diagonal 1280×800 screen with color even when backlight is completely off

These screens will be widely available in the market and we will be announcing more details soon.

Pixel Qi Tablet Availability, DIY Screen Success and other updates

mary_lou_jepsen — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:53:56 +0000

A few quick announcements from Pixel Qi:

User comments on DIY kits – easy to use and well worth it
Pixel Qi has completed the first tranche of its Series B funding
7 inch Pixel Qi screen in development now
Tablet availability update – with Pixel Qi Screens

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Pixel Qi DIY kits are easy to install and awesome
Go to Make Magazine and order a DIY kit for your netbook. It’s easy to replace the screen, even if you aren’t a techie – the reward is both longer battery life for your netbook and crisp readability in any light – even direct sunlight. Here are a few comments from people that have done it already:

Awesome
“Finally found a way to work at the beach. I was a little nervous about taking apart my netbook (never done anything like that before), but it was simple and the results couldn’t be better. Plus, my laptop now gets more than ten hours of use without charging. Well worth extra money of purchasing this display.
– A Happy User – August 2010

More Readable
When reading from the screen at night I prefer to take advantage of the reflective nature of the screen by shining a lamp straight one the screen as you would when reading a book. The reflection off the screen is not quite sufficient to read the screen comfortably this way so I turn on the backlighting ever so slightly, one or two notches up only. This way I read the screen in the transflective mode. I find this more comfortable than reading in the transmissive mode as I would on a traditional LCD computer screen. It gives me less eyestrain.
– A Happy User – September 2010

Funding
We have now fully completed our first tranche of series B finance.

New Screen Development: 7″
We are developing a 7” screen for tablets and ereaders that is planned for mass production in H1 2011. Samples will be available earlier, perhaps by late Q4 2010. Contact us to be an early access partner: send email to admin@pixelqi.com

Pixel Qi Tablet availability:

Tight supply chain and 100% factory usage this spring and summer coupled with Apple’s disruptive iPad effectively had a 1-2 punch impact: delaying most tablet makers from coming to market as early as they wished. The situation has eased: the supply chain is more robust and factory capacity is widely available. Many of our device makers used this downtime to refine their designs with the result being even more exciting offerings that are highly differentiated from the iPad with options well beyond ATT for carriers. These device maker partners will be making more announcements coming this fall. More information about two of our early partners is available at Innoversal and Notion Ink .
The dramatic power savings our screens offer allows much lighter devices by saving on battery weight and housing needed for battery safety. Our screens are also readable in any light even direct sunlight and are optimized for easy reading in any light and crisp text.

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Finally, we will be announcing other products carrying Pixel Qi screens here in this blog; stay tuned.

- Mary Lou Jepsen

www.pixelqi.com

DIY Pixel Qi screens – available now!

mary_lou_jepsen — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:38:39 +0000

Well, we said we would release Pixel Qi screens to the DIY community at the end of Q2 and we are announcing today (June 30th) that we have! Screens are available at here at Make Magazine.

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.

Computex Update – Pixel Qi

mary_lou_jepsen — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:12:30 +0000

We are showing about a dozen different products and prototypes at Computex 2010 this week. We are in 5 tablets, a few netbooks, and are also displaying multitouch, wide-viewing angle screens, and pen-based digitizing and all combinations thereof.

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

Pixel Qi wins top IEEE award!

mary_lou_jepsen — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 03:15:51 +0000

IEEE has given Pixel Qi one of its highest honors. (IEEE is the largest professional group in the world focused on technology advancement)

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.

OLPC and Pixel Qi sign cross license agreement for screen technology

mary_lou_jepsen — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:07:19 +0000

This press release is also posted at OLPC’s website here

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.

DIY Pixel Qi Kits

mary_lou_jepsen — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:44:44 +0000

Just a quick note to say the DIY kits from our distributor will be available towards the end of Q2. We will be announcing with them prior to distrbution. Thanks for your patience.

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.

Pilots & Production plus a Nomination

mary_lou_jepsen — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:48:29 +0000

CES went very well and we have more business because of it. Pixel Qi-ers are working hard at scaling more product more quickly. As we have said before, we have started production and are mostly working through the pilot builds with a variety of device makers right now. You will see our screens in a range of devices in stores soon, but sadly I can’t say with who and when due to non-disclosure agreements.

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

CES

mary_lou_jepsen — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:46:20 +0000

Photographs of screens really don’t do them justice, one needs to see them directly. Our screens will be around CES next week (we can’t say where – our customers the device makers are using them in their products and will reveal as they decide ). Yet, many members of the press have contacted us asking about this, and we have decided to try to help.

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