As someone looking to strike my niche in technology and eventually becoming a venture capitalist, DEMO is one event I never ‘miss.’ Yeah, I’ve never been physically at the event before, but I hope to — someday — either to present my startup, or to look for cool startups to invest in.

DEMO is organized twice a year, and each event showcases over 60 of the hottest startups with the most outstanding technology. The first of this year’s DEMO has already come and gone … and one startup that really caught my attention was Zink, a company that promises to make your life easier by eliminating ink from your printing jobs.

Yes, that’s right … print, but without ink — no cartridges, ribbons or toners!

The company’s name, ZINK, stands for “Zero Ink” and the key to ZINK’s zero-ink printing process is a special “ZINK paper” … a composite material with dye crystals embedded inside and a protective polymer overcoat layer outside.

Before printing, the embedded dye crystals are colorless, so ZINK paper looks like regular white photo paper. During printing, the ZINK printer uses heat to activate and colorize these dye crystals to create the image.

But ZINK is doing something more interesting, besides the promise of zero-ink printing. Current printers are bulky mainly due to the delicate housing for the cartridges, ribbons or toners, and the mechanical components needed to move them to and fro to inject ink onto the paper. But with the ink out of the way, all these components are not needed anymore, and interesting things can begin to happen.

And ZINK is taking full advantage of this. A mobile printer that will connect wirelessly or via USB cable to any camera phone or digital camera is on it’s way to the market later this year. But why end there? ZINK is also coming up with an integrated digital camera/printer — a full featured digital camera with a built-in full color printer!

Both devices will support full-color 2″ x 3″ digital photos, the size of regular business cards. Currently, a 2-by-3-inch picture comes out dry in 30 seconds, a just little slower than the ink jet printer.

So yeah, no ink, toner or ribbon to print. But, so far, the Zink printer can’t print on regular paper. And this special Zink paper doesn’t come cheap. According to Mercury News (free subscription may be required), at the moment, a 4-by-6-inch print costs Zink about 80 cents to print, roughly three to 10 times as expensive as inkjet prints.

So the question on my mind now is if and when ZINK can bring down the cost of their ZINK Paper so that we’re not simply transferring the cost of ink to paper.

ZINK is not really your typical two-friends-in-a-garage style startup. The company was formed in October 2005 as a spin-off from Polaroid, company that is no stranger in the image processing industry. The company already has 65 employees, and is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.

This is one product I’m keenly waiting to buy. What about you?