E Ink & Esquire

Had breakfast on Friday at Henrietta's with a really interesting bunch of tech company founders....including Wendy Caswell from Zink, Antonio Rodriguez from Tabblo (now an exec at HP), Gregg Favalora from Actuality, Nabeel Hyatt from Conduit Labs, and Sim Simeonov from Polaris/Plinky.

We talked about a lot of stuff, but one thing everyone was interested in (well, at least Gregg and I) was how we can get our hands on a copy of the October issue of 'Esquire,' which will have a front cover and inside cover featuring E Ink displays.

E Ink CEO Russ Wilcox said he's even having trouble getting his hands on a hundred or so of the magazines for his employees. (Not all of the copies of the October issue will have the E Ink displays affixed to them.) Subscribers won't get them... they'll be at newsstands only. (Perhaps mailing the mags posed too big a risk of damage.) Russ said he didn't know which newsstands will get them, so there's no use camping out at Out of Town News in Harvard Square.

Though you could get lucky...

First Digital Magazine Cover Will be Powered by E Ink

Esquire Magazine and Cambridge's E Ink Corp. are partnering on an electronic paper cover for the magazine's September October issue, according to the New York Times.

The display will read, "The 21st Century Begins Now." Inside the front cover will be an ad for Ford's Flex SUV, also using an E Ink display. The thin battery powering both should last about 90 days. Esquire's parent, Hearst Corp., is an investor in E Ink, and Esquire has an exclusive on use of the technology in the magazine biz through 2009.

The Times reports, "The electronic cover will be used in only 100,000 copies that go to newsstands — its overall circulation is about 720,000." That ought to make these hot among collectors and technophiles.