Building A More Nyan Planet

Video

In an effort to give salespeople something impressive to hand out, IBM recently had a bunch of very cool promotional materials printed up. It’s basically a greeting card-sized cardboard folder with a bit of text, an LCD screen, buttons, battery and display controller. This video in print device is meant to display how IBM is building a smarter planet, but [Cookie] and [Stitch] over at the Hack42 hackerspace in The Netherlands decided Nyan Cat would be a much better use of this free, portable video player. (Google translationUPDATE: Site has gone down. Here’s the Google Cache but you’ll need a browser like Chrome that can do the translation for you (we can’t figure out how to link a translation of cache).

This video card uses tech licensed from Americhip, a company that has been putting video in magazines for a few years now. By connecting the USB charging port up to his computer, the guys were able to switch the device over to USB mode where the actual video files could be read and rewritten.

By encoding a few videos to match the format of what was on the card – including some old IBM promotional material by [Jim Henson] – the team were able to get videos playing on a hackable flyer. Very cool, and if you can get your hands on some sales brochures, a free source of tiny displays.

CBS To Advertise Using Video-in-Print Technology

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgJ6DA50thw]
In what seems like another move to blur the line between digital and print media, CBS has announced that they will be introducing something called Video-in-Print technology in next month’s issue of Entertainment Weekly. Video-in-Print, or ViP, technology consists of a small LCD screen and circuit board that can be inserted into print media and play video and audio content. CBS is using the ViP technology to promote their fall prime-time television lineup. Video-in-Print technology is the brainchild of Americhip, a company that claims to specialize in multisensory marketing. The ViP player in next month’s issue of Entertainment Weekly incorporates a 320×240 resolution TFT LCD screen and a rechargeable battery lasting 50-60 hours. The battery can be recharged via the player’s on-board mini USB port. While this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a magazine do something like this, as far as we know this is the first time that anyone has put a video player into a magazine. That being said, there seems to be no indication whether or not CBS will make it easy for us to modify the ViP player’s software like Esquire did with their e-ink display. We’re not entirely sure what we’re going to do with the ViP player, but the fact that it has a mini USB port gives us some interesting ideas. Juicebox, anyone?