If you walked by it in a bookstore or magazine stand, you probably wouldn’t even notice it was dynamic; but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t the premonitory turtlehead of something very, very cool…

Let’s back up.

I’m talking about the eInk cover of Esquire’s October issue:

Sponsored by Ford, and using the same paper as the Kindle, the cover image isn’t the jazziest thing I’ve ever seen (it’s pretty much just some basic black/white/gray text with blinky thumbnail images), but they’ve kept it simple enough so it still presents as pretty darn sleek. [To clarify, the plastic overlay contains the color thumbnails, which are then illuminated by the underlying eInk.]

The inside cover has another eInk segment – this one a devoted Ford advertisement – that is admittedly, well, totally lame. The attempt is to showcase the new Ford Flex as if it’s actually moving. Verdict? Fail. But they certainly took a valiant crack at it; for a first attempt, I’ll dole out a semi-solid B for effort.

But wait. There’s one element about this whole print-but-not experiment that is completely cool in its own right (not just cool because of what it portends): it’s completely hackable. And the Esquey (Esky?) folks are actually encouraging people to hack it. I’d love to see the mag complete the loop and publish some of the best (or cheekiest) hacks.

So, overall… A pretty decent shot at a (what number are we up to now?) fifth screen…

But is it cool?
Yes.
Well, almost.

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