Esquire seems very earnestly convinced that their flashing e-Ink cover this October will revolutionize the print industry with awesome shifting pixels. There are only a few things holding back the revolutionary technology: it's thick as hell, it's not entirely flexible, the color on the e-paper is so bad that the magazine had to overlay a tinted sheet of plastic on the cover, and the magazine has to be delivered on refrigerated trucks. After these minor glitches are worked out, here comes the future! And while magazine readers might not like it, at least the new Esquire will be tailor-made for tech nerds:

But on to the question most of the geeks have been asking: Can you rip out the cover and use it for your own projects? Griffin says it should be possible - "We look forward to seeing what people do it" - although there isn't any discrete input on the custom-designed circuit board that will control the e-paper. The data will be baked into the circuitry. Figuring out how to reprogram the e-paper controller or installing an entirely new one will be up to the hackers.

It's a good thing that geeks are the target audience for Esquire magazine. [BoingBoing]