So long, paper and ink

Phillips electronics is betting you'll be reading these words on a screen before long. A flexible screen.

The Dutch electronics firm has developed a display system that uses a flexible display screen and pulls out from a cylinder roughly the size of a small flashlight. The source cylinder could contain a cell phone, a PDA, an Internet browser, a camera-virtually anything electronic.

The five-inch display screen can show detailed images, but Phillips says early models might best be used to store portable paperback book contents. Next it sees magazines and newspapers migrating contents to small screens.

The first model shown by Phillips is monochrome, fine for text but having limited appeal in today's multicolor, multimedia world. Indeed, paperback novels seem the only ideal application at the moment.

The screen uses circuits made of plastics and is extremely thin. It doesn't bend, but it can curl up into a small cylinder. The Holy Grail is a flexible, reusable screen that can be made in different sizes and can download contents from wired or wireless sources.

FLORIDA SNOW

LightFlurries is a cool new product that sold out in a hurry when it was introduced last year. Placed behind shrubbery, it's a projector that throws a pattern of light resembling snow flurries drifting down atop and in front of your Florida home. It weighs less than 10 pounds and takes less than five minutes to set up, the manufacturer says. You just place the unit a few feet from the house, open the case, remove and position the light and plug it in. You can even adjust the size and the speed of the flurries. LightFlurries is $89.95, when it's not sold out. On the Web: www.lightflurries.com.

THE LAZY DRINKER

It began as the contraption of a tailgater fond of Iowa State football games. At first, he built a gizmo that dispensed beer-no big deal. Then some of his tailgate buddies asked if maybe they could get it to mix drinks. So, using parts from an old toy train set and a remote-control device, Jay Lueck built a computer-controlled, fully automatic drink dispenser that now contains recipes for 2,000 different mixed drinks. The whole thing cost about $400 in parts, not counting the laptop computer that stores the recipes. Interest in the Lazy Drinker, as it's called, has been so high that it could be on the market as soon as this fall's football gets serious.

TINIEST DIGITAL CAMERA YET

There are those in Sarasota who remember resident Joe Marx, whose passion for photographic art produced from the tiniest of cameras made him famous as "The Master of the Minox" back in the '60s. The Minox was no bigger than a cigarette lighter and used special small movie film to take film negatives. Marx did his own printing in his Sarasota home. Now, a Minox-sized digital camera has been introduced by Sony-the Qualia 016. Images are stored on a Memory Stick Duo. It comes with a variety of attachments, from wide-angle lenses to a flash unit. Price? $3,200.