Anyone who has watched Harry Potter movies has seen The Daily Prophet – the newspaper that keeps everyone updated on what’s going on in the wizarding world. What’s really intriguing about the Daily Prophet is the moving images, literally updated by the second.

Well, let’s cut from magic to reality because that vision is now to become realized into what I believe is a seismic glimpse of the future of publishing. Esquire Magazine turns 75 and wants to celebrate in a proper manner by looking into the future. This is nothing new. All magazines and papers do this at least once a year, typically around New Years. But what’s really interesting in the Esquire case, is that they’re not only writing about the future, they’re creating it by releasing the first magazine ever with an electronic-ink-display cover. Only 100,000 copies of the high-tech October issue are heading to newstands, since the technology is still new and expensive.

The flashy cover, which uses the same technology as the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, is powered by a special battery that will keep the display on for at least 90 days. David Granger, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, told The New York Times that the magazine has been playing with the idea of using electronic paper since 2000 until it finally became possible and hired an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover.

This little stunt will cost the magazine a pretty penny, which is why Ford will co-sponsor the issue by running a double-page e-ink advertisement on the back of the magazine featuring the new Ford Flex crossover vehicle.

Another thing spot on is that Boing Boing reports how Esquire hopes the geeks will hack the display. As deputy editor Peter Griffin says: “We look forward to seeing what people will do with 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.

As someone who has worked quite a lot with E-ink and flexible display – both what regards forecasting as well as mockup and prototyping – I find this development extremely exciting. More than half of the cost of any publication is the printing it self. It doesn’t take a Harry Potter wizard to figure out how much money is saved by cancelling the print edition in favour of the e-ink edition.

If you’re interested in e-ink and the future of magazines/papers, Anders Mogensen and I will be doing a presentation on the subject at The Danish International Media Festival 2008 – The largest Danish media event taking place every other year. At the event we will merge the most interesting social media trends with cutting-edge technologies and present our vision of the future of the Newspaper.