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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.

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.

- Mary Lou

If you want to see it: contact: vivek@pixelqi.com

- Mary Lou

The answer is: both.

We are making screens that are more readable than regular laptop screens, and our studies show they are as comfortable to read as electrophoretics in existing ebook readers. But these screens also update quickly, show video, are sunlight readable and (with the backlight on) show full color. In addition, our display screens integrate with touchscreens of many different varieties (an analyst I know is aware of over 200 different efforts by various companies in new and improved touchscreens).

We have now completed our first full round of funding (series-A) and are putting our full attention to getting our products completed and out to our customers.

- Mary Lou

We have been feverishly working on designing our first screen product We will be sampling our 10″ screens this spring and plan to be in high volume mass production this summer. These screens have an epaper state that rivals the best epaper on the market today. What’s different: unlike the other epaper products where one must wait a second or so to change the screen – we provide video rate refresh. Also, while we have a high resolution paper-white black and white, we also provide, in the same screen fully saturated color fidelity – the same as a standard laptop screen – same color, contrast resolution, field of view etc. Our screens consumer 25%-50% of the power of a regular notebook screen in their power savings modes and will be in available at comparable price points and volumes to standard LCD screens this summer. In addition, by integrating the screen with the electronics driving the screen a 5-fold increase in battery life between charges can be achieved.

Pixel Qi is here at the most important display conference of the year, the Annual Meeting of the Society for Informational Display (www.sid.org). I delivered the opening Keynote Address yesterday, discussing the role that display most play in the future of portable computing, discussing the OLPC project and what it means for display makers, and showing the images of the new OLPC XO2.

In essence, the future of computing is all about the screens.

Pixel Qi will be creating the screens for the next generation OLPC laptop, and we will be making some announcement in the upcoming months about other screens we are creating for other exciting products.

When asked about the Intel/OLPC break-up by Charlie Rose on his January 23 2008 broadcast, Ken Auletta of the New Yorker Magazine responds:

Link to video webcast of Charlie Rose 1/23/08 broadcast

Did Ken Auletta get it right?

We now have more data from the first quarter of 2008: The new batch of low-cost compact laptops initially were announced in January 2008 with price targets of around $300. This is 60% higher in cost than the XO laptop price from last year (2007) at $188. In electronics, prices are supposed to go down from year to year – not up. More recent announcements this month from large laptop makers move price estimates higher: drifting upwards to $400 and $500 per compact laptop. HP recently announced a compact notebook product with a $500 target pricetag. This comes as several 14″ or 15″ laptops are already being sold below the $500. Could it be that compact laptops will be a premium product and afford better margins than current conventional size laptops? Is Ken right?

Laptop makers are in a bit of a bind.

When they introduce a new product, they don’t know how many they will sell initially. The direct variable costs of laptop production can drastically increase the per unit price if the laptop doesn’t become a hot product. Essentially, the laptop makers have seen an emerging product category birthed by OLPC (and also Asus’s EEE PC) and want to get in on it. Paradoxically this may raise the price by diluting the field while everyone tries their hand at a little, cute, compact laptop: but at the prices the manufacturers are bantering about this month I wonder if any will move off the shelves.

At Pixel Qi we are focused on the working with the high volume customers that are interested in bringing the price of computers down and delivering laptops to all, and if Ken is right, there are still many other companies that would like to see the cost of laptops drop. It’s already happened with DVD players, calculators and many other consumer electronics, why are laptop prices staying high and how long can it continue?

Just back from Peru last weekend where we finally saw the children with their laptops and were amazed. We visited the famous Arahuay pilot school. These kids 6 months ago where at the failing levels of reading comprehension. Now, most of them are in the highest or next-to-highest level for their grade. They love to read on their laptops. They use them outside and don’t even realize it’s special or unique to do so. And, of course, they love the camera.

Arahuay, the remote town in the Peruvian Andes, is a word in Quechua. Quechua is the language the Inca spoke and it is still widely spoken in the Andes today. Arahuay means “End of the Corn”. Without corn life couldn’t be sustained in the Incan way of life. They developed special high-altitude corn that we saw growing at 3400 meters in Cuzco, but Arahuay is much drier and, at 2600 meters, it’s the end of the corn, and thus, quite literally, the end of the road. There are well-built 4-floor-high pre-Incan (pre-Columbian) ruins nearby, with petroglyphs. From Arahuay, it’s a day’s walk to the nearest village; these kids were isolated. The laptops brought these children – and the entire town – a window to the world. They now think about life, the world, and their role in it quite differently than before where there life, their dreams, their thoughts were limited to the village. We encouraged them to participate in the two-way discussion on this and to tell the world more about Arahuay.