Would someone make a movie with dot matrix business cards?

This unnervingly large dot matrix panel is clearly the logical upgrade path for that emblem of the old ways, business cards. One imagines a scene from an early 1990s straight-to-video movie in which the hero, perhaps Rutger Hauer or Christopher Lambert, hands his futuristic dot matrix business card to the villain, doubtless played by Michael Ironside. Ironside raises his eyebrow, impressed. Then everyone waits three minutes while he reads it. Creepy henchman Brad Dourif glares from the shadows.

[via CrunchGear]

[#1 posted by Jake0748 , August 29, 2008 6:56 PM]

Sorry, but this "business card" is SO crappy. If you can't make a "business card" type thingie that doesn't use the entire area of the "business card", well that right there makes it a fail.

Ugly and stupid, IMHO.

[#2 posted by Dezro , August 29, 2008 8:05 PM]

What'd be excellent is a multilayered, old-school Tiger Toys-style LCD screen on a business card. I think they can do that with e-ink, too? Anyway, you could fit a lot more on at one time and you wouldn't have to scroll. It'd cost more, and you couldn't reprogram it for other messages, but man it'd be so much better than this.

[#3 posted by kaiza , August 30, 2008 7:00 AM]

PB: Look at that. Picked them up from the fabbers yesterday.

PA: Good coloring.

PB: That's full RGB. And the lettering is something called System.

[#4 posted by Viadd , August 30, 2008 10:12 AM]

Sparkfun has $1 color QVGA LCDs, meant for cell phones.

E-paper is cheap enough that a $4 magazine will use it for the cover next month.

It's not 1978. We are 1/13 of the way through the 21st century. Why go discrete LED matrix?

[#5 posted by Maurik , August 30, 2008 4:43 PM]

Not EVEN Patrick Bateman would be jealous of that.

@VIADD probably not -_-

[#6 posted by BassTooth , August 30, 2008 11:46 PM]

what a horrible ugly idea.

i don't even have the energy to care enough to read that stupid, scrolling letters, hurting my eyes piece of shit.

[#7 posted by Anonymous , August 31, 2008 9:08 AM]

This would sell better as name tags at tech conventions.

What I might buy is a Led Scroll for my cars back window, to load prewritten comments to other drivers.

[#8 posted by The Hungry Ghost , September 1, 2008 1:09 PM]

I think I owned that movie on VHS

[#9 posted by loganbouchard , September 2, 2008 8:23 AM]

why not make a business card type thing involving sd or flash drive, where you plug it in and an app shows a link to a web page, email info, etc. or where it uses an app that connects to the web itself.

and if you have no more use for the business card, you have a free, relatively low-memory sd card to use for whatever.

i guess it would be a waste of money, until sd cards are literally a dime a dozen.

[#10 posted by SamSam , September 2, 2008 10:28 AM]

If your the inventor of a business card that displays your website slowly along a long dot-matrix screen and you're trying to advertise your work... invest in a shorter domain name.

[#11 posted by Bugs , September 2, 2008 11:10 AM]

Why all the hate? It wouldn't make a practical, mass market product but it's not intended to be that. It's just some guy who had a fun idea and decided to build it. Then he posted the full schematics and instrucitons for other makers to follow and modify.

I think it's a skillfully built result of someone's interesting hobby. I think that's pretty awesome.