Few would accuse the iPad or any of its fellow tablets and e-readers of being bulky monstrosities; a large part of their appeal is, after all, that they resemble the form factor of the magazines that some are attempting to replace. HP might not agree with that sentiment, as the company just demoed a new screen technology it's working on, so thin that it can be printed on flexible strips of plastic.

The idea of a flexible screen sounds like something out of science fiction. Screens are notoriously fragile devices and most of probably know someone who's ruined at least one. Nevertheless, the manufacturing process HP is using prints the circuitry for a screen directly on a plastic roll, allowing it to bend without breaking. While this adds a lot of resilience to the displays, they're still far from indestructible. Don't expect to roll one up and stow it in your coat pocket, as HP reports that the screens begin to degrade after being bent around six times.

So, the point of the flexible displays isn't to purposefully bend them up, but to enable thinner gadgets that are built around them. That's not such a big disappointment, if only because even with a perfect flexible screen, any device using it would still have plenty of parts - CPU, flash memory, batteries, and whatnot - that would be as rigid and bulky as ever. These screens, and the new, thinner products built around them, should start showing up three-to-five years down the line.

[Image courtesy Hardware.info]

One of the examples given for how it could integrate a cell transceiver into an existing product is to add remote tracking capabilities to a dog collar. The collar could send you a text message when your dog strays from a pre-defined zone, and continue to update you with its location as you track down your pet. Other ideas include automated notification systems, like a medicine case that rings your phone to remind you to take your pills.

AT&T; won't be able to push expensive voice and unlimited data plans on simple products like these, but the company hopes it can find a pricing scheme that makes up for low-data-rate, intermittent nature of these communications by simply selling so many to win with volume. What do you think? Is a world where your car calls you to let you know you left your headlights on the wave of the future, or do we really not need everything we own networked together?