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 Great Lakes IT Report Took a fascinating tour Tuesday at Gyricon Media Inc., whose 48,000-square-foot plant is just about ready to start manufacturing "SmartPaper (actually a thin film with a whole bunch of high tech stuff inside; more on that later). About 25 people are already working at the plant -- and if the concept takes off, there could be 500 employees there by 2004. SmartPaper consists of a thin film containing millions of tiny bubbles. Inside each bubble is a plastic ball about half the diameter of a human hair. The balls are magnetically charged and have one black side and one white side -- so when a small voltage is applied on some parts of the film, black and white patterns are formed. The voltage can be used to make the paper display text and pictures. Gyricon executives say their product has massive potential application in retailing, where store-shelf promotional campaigns and pricing could be managed with wireless computer control of SmartPaper signs. Gyricon is a spin-off of research at Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto, Calif. research center. So why is it in Ann Arbor? Because some key executives were from here -- and because, as CTO Robert Sprogue put it, "We liked the skilled technology workers we found here, and we liked the real estate prices and the help we got from the state. You wouldn't find anything like this site for the price in California, and you wouldn't get the tax breaks from the state there either." Gyricon has completed pilot tests of its signs with the Macy's division of Federated Department Stores Inc. and Dow Jones & Co. Xerox has also signed on as a marketing partner. What's really cool is the way they make the tiny plastic balls -- they spin 'em off a rapidly rotating turntable with black plastic on one side and white on the other, the tiny droplets smack together at the edge of the turntable and dry out, black on one side and white on the other, before they fall to the bottom of the machine involved. Neat stuff... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |