I’m coming to you from the floor (well, really more like a big conference hall) of the Demo 2007 conference, billed as the “Launchpad for Emerging Technology.” Historically, Demo has always been all about products, products, products — demonstrators get six minutes to pitch their little hearts out to the crowd, hoping to win VC funding, partnerships, or press coverage. Also in keeping with the tradition, much of the stuff being shown here for the first time is cool and innovative; a much smaller percentage has any real chance of commercial success. For the next day, I’ll be doing tag-team coverage with my colleague Ephraim Schwartz, who will be posting to his Reality Check blog. First up, I’ll take a shot at a few of the more intriguing consumer-ish goodies on display, starting with the ZINK printer. ZINK Imaging’s presenter kicked off his presentation by repeating the phrases “zero ink” and “printing without ink,” so many times, I feared there would be no time for an actual product demonstration or explanation of the technology. Not to worry: He ultimately got to the printer itself — a device about the size of a deck of playing cards. It has no ink cartridge or no ribbon — just some electronics, a rechargeable battery, and a ten-pack of special paper. The paper looks like regular print stock, but is embedded with dye crystals. The presenter took a picture, hit a button, and the ZINK printer did some quick processing and spit out a vivid CMY color printout. The prints themselves are waterproof and look great, and the paper is apparently protected by multiple patents. ZINK plans to sell handheld standalone mobile printers as well as embed the printer in other devices, including a soon-to-be-announced 7-megapixel camera (no names yet). The device supports bluetooth (critical for printing from phones) and has a USB connector. Paper prices will be set by distributors, but company reps say it will be cheap — likely something in the neighborhood of 20 cents per sheet. Business models and things like the channel for distributing the paper still need some ironing out. But a bigger questions is whether this will this play in a business document context, where you need full-size printouts (as opposed to snapshots, where the potential is high). A promising product for mobile printing, I wouldn’t be surprised if ZINK gets some traction. Technology Industry