The Future of Paper?

Much has been said and written about the future of paper publications with the arrival of downloadable  books, Kindles and a whole world of other hardware, but maybe a company from Cambridge (UK for a change now I am back in Europe) may be about to cause another revolution.

Many people are not drawn to reading books in digital, they like to thumb the pages etc, but a private company is putting what they describe as the ‘future of paper’ into mass production.

The company called Plastic Logic have designed what we could describe as the closest thing to paper that can show video.

An example of Plastic Logic’s invention

As the name suggests we are talking about a plastic paper-thin sheet that has the ability to display video, It can be used as a Wi-Fi fed screen, with the advantages of being flat, thin, flexible and bigger than your standard reader.

This video on the BBC website describes the product in greater detail, including the production process, and states that it should be in full production next year. The CEO of the company also explains the problems that this technology has faced during development as well as explaining why we might need a screen that we can roll up and carry around. He also describes how the computer and receiver part of the structure could be attached in the form of a handle.

All very interesting stuff, but I think the most important part of this application involves telephones. I have a so-called smart phone but I very rarely use it for internet work because the screen is too small. I cannot read an article on a screen that size. But if I had an A4 size screen rolled up in my bag that could show me the screen on a much larger scale (via Bluetooth) I would be happy to use it. And then I could leave my laptop at home.

Others see it as the future for glossy magazines, or the death of them, but the death of newspapers, radio, books, recorded music and commercial TV has been on the cards for a long time, and they are all still alive and kicking.

I look forward to this new product going into full production and appearing in the shops anyway, and the obvious question…. would you have a use for it?

RingSkin Android App Review

For the past few days I had been busy looking for an app that could help me do away with that old, boring Android robot from my HTC, yes I own a android too along with my iPhone. I found a new app, running in its first version and I got my hands on it. So lets have a look at it here.

RingSkin can customize the Android call screen and put an end to those annoying spam calls. It lets users make full use of the image galleries and the camera, so that they can receive calls in the way they want. With some impressive images and animation skins, this app allows users to spice things up by adding decorations to them.

Ringskin Android App opening screen
Apart from these default animations and decorations, users can set their favorite clips – movie or music videos as their call screens for video ringtones. This app assigns screens in two methods – for groups and for individuals. Therefore, users can assign different individual images for each caller or they can go with assigning a common image to a group, like say a one for mates from school, one for colleagues, family and so on. You get the idea, right?

In my opinion, the customization RingSkin offers for call screens should be default in Android, so as to speak as it also helps users deal with spam callers as it has block-call capability. The UI is well designed and easy-to-use. This app really adds a vibrant touch to the screen while making and receiving calls. However, the ‘Skins’ area would have been a great one if the developers had included some interesting video clips.

The best part is that RingSkin is available for free and requires Android 2.1 or up. There is a pro version for the app, which you can get without coughing up anything additional, by just clicking on the ads and earning 400 points! You can see the ads in the ‘Settings’ option and if you want to check out the pro version of RingSkin click the ads!

You can download RingSkin from the Android Market for free.

EDITOR NOTE: This app no longer exists, so links to it have been removed – note by Christopher

How to show more screen options in WordPress

I have noticed that most of the other authors on this blog have failed to write a short excerpt for their article. It’s usually really easy and takes seconds to think of a short phrase to sum up, or entice people into reading your article.

When Marc (from the 360 Blog) wrote his most recent article, I emailed him to ask him why he never filled in the excerpt field, as he is now eligible to apply for author status, but that requires each article to have an excerpt.

Marc emailed back and told me

“You mentioned that you would like a short excerpt written, but there wasn’t a place to do that.”

Out came my thinking cap!

I then realised that when I had started Technology Bloggers, when creating a new post, the excerpt field wasn’t showing ether. The trackback field didn’t show, nor did the discussion field etc.


Do you have problems with

  • Excerpt field not showing when creating a new WordPress post
  • Trackback field not showing when creating a new WordPress post
  • Discussion field not showing when creating a new WordPress post
  • As well as other custom fields not showing

well if so I have your solution!

Screen Options.

The 'Screen Options' button in the WordPress admin consoleYou see at the top right of the admin console there is your name, log out etc. well just below that you should see a tab that says help, and next to that a tab that says ‘Screen Options’.

Click ‘Screen Options’ and it will pull the tab down to revile loads of new fields which you can choose to show or not.

The WordPress 'Screen Options' for creating a post in the admin consoleLike to work light? You may just want the publish box and the article writing area. Prefer to go into detail? Tick/check the ‘Categories’, ‘Post Tags’, ‘Custom Fields’, ‘Send Trackbacks’ etc. boxes for a more advanced view!


Under ‘Screen Options’ you also have the option or changing the screen layout. You can decide how many columns your dashboard uses, to display your selected widgets. On the homepage of the dashboard you can split it down in 1,2,3 or even 4 (if you have a very wide screen) columns. On posts pages you can choose to split the view down to two columns, or just the one.

Ever asked yourself ‘how can I show more comments in the WordPress admin console?’, if so, ‘Screen Options’ could help here too. Just click it and you can show as many or as few comments as you like. I have it set so that the WordPress comments page shows 50 comments per page, although I sometimes change it 🙂

Good luck bloggers with using WordPress the way you like it!