Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

Sony on Wednesday unveiled a flexible OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display so thin it can wrap around a 4mm cylinder–roughly the diameter of the average pen or pencil.

The 80 micrometers-thick OLED display (about the width of a human hair) can continuously display moving images even while being rolled up, as Sony demonstrated in a video below.

The working flexibility is possible because engineers have managed to lose the rigid driver IC chips usually used in the substrate of a screen in exchange for a gate-driver circuit with OTFTs (organic thin-film transistors), according to Sony.

The 4.1-inch display, which has a resolution of 432×240 pixels (121 pixels per inch), is not for sale. It’s simply a research prototype Sony said it hopes to one day incorporate into products such as screens in mobile devices. Full demonstrations of the screen will be given this week at the SID (Society for Information Display) 2010 International Symposium in Seattle.

The consumer electronics giant has been at the forefront of this technology, showing one of the world’s first flexible OLEDs in existence at CES 2009, as CNET has reported. That screen was .2 millimeters thick.

Of course, Sony is not the only one experimenting with thin and flexible screens.

In April 2009, Dai Nippon garnered much attention with its flexible and seemingly animated posters for the Rakuten Eagles, a Japanese baseball team. The screens incorporated both energy-saving OLEDs and LEDs.

GE has also been working on ultrathin OLEDs, but in an effort to apply the technology to its lighting products. In March 2008, GE unveiled thin and flexible lighting OLEDs that can be manufactured in rolls akin to newspapers on a printing press.

Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20006000-1.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

TiVo has updated its offerings, introing two new set-top boxes, the TiVo Premiere and the TiVo Premiere XL, which will finally bring high-definition to the DVR range.

In a nutshell, the web-connected TiVo Premiere boxes offer cable TV, movies on demand (from Netflix, Amazon and Blockbuster) and web videos from YouTube (). In the coming months, they will also offer music from Pandora (), along with existing services from the likes of Rhapsody () (which will also be available to Series 2 and 3 box owners).

In addition, TiVo is not letting the demand for apps pass it by; the boxes will offer access to more than 1,000 apps from FrameChannel with widgets for news, weather, sports, social networking sites and more.

As far as the difference between the two boxes goes, the Premiere has a 320GB harddrive — said to be good for 45 hours of HD storage or 400 standard, while the Premiere XL has 1TB of storage space and boasts 150 hours for HD and more than 1,000 for SD, as well as some THX tech for all kinds of optimal audio and video reproduction claims.

The boxes cost $300 and $500, respectively, and will be on sale in April. Also due soon from TiVo is a Wireless-N Wi-Fi adapter, and an unusual, slide-out QWERTY TiVo remote that will be offered as optional extras.

The idea of bringing the Internet into the living room is becoming more common as of late. Hardware products such as the soon-to-be-released Popbox and Boxee Box are all about getting Internet content on your television, and Yahoo’s Connected TV offering for web-enabled televisions will bring web widgets to the living room. Heck, Samsung has even introduced an app store for televisions.

These products and innovations, along with TiVo’s newest venture, just serve to demonstrate how attached we are to the Internet (Case in point: 13% of viewers were surfing the web during the Olympics’ opening ceremonies).

Source :

http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/tivo-apps-premiere-dvrs/

BOSTON–Ford Motor expects to manufacture as many as 2 million all-electric and gas-electric vehicles in the next 10 years, betting that rising oil prices and consumer interest will sustain a long-term transition to new technologies.

The company has set a goal of making 10 percent to 25 percent of its fleet “electrified” by 2020, which represents somewhere between 800,000 and 2 million cars, said Nancy Gioia at a media event here on Wednesday. Ford announced on Wednesday that Gioia will hold a newly created position of director of global electrification, which covers hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-electric vehicles.

Plug-in electric vehicles promise to offer a much lower cost-per-mile than gasoline cars and deliver substantial environmental benefits. But in the near term, hybrids will likely represent the largest volume in the mix of technologies, said Gioia at the event.

“We’ve finally demonstrated the technology, the life, the durability, the safety (of hybrids)–all of that has reached a comfort zone to make it viable. Now it’s going to be affordability that will drive mass market adoption,” she said.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10375326-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

The winning design, titled ‘Gesture.’

(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)

CHIBA, Japan–Out of 2,000 design concepts for mobile phones of the future, the winning entry in Fujitsu’s Mobile Phone Design competition was not the flashiest or most forward-thinking. Instead, the grand prize was awarded to one that featured the most intuitive interface for users. What a concept.

Jin-Gwon Go, a South Korean college student studying design won the equivalent of about $20,000 for his mobile phone concept titled “Gesture.” Of all the finalists, Go’s design was probably the one that took the form of what most people would expect of a mobile phone. Fujitsu said his design stood out because of the gesture-based commands and touchable icons used to operate the phone using only one hand.

Back in May, Fujitsu asked for some input on phone design from anyone who was interested. Roughly 2,000 submissions and four months later, the company unveiled nine finalists on Tuesday here at Ceatec 2009, including Go’s Gesture.

Ceatec is a treasure trove of mobile phone design, thanks to the sophisticated cell phone culture here in Japan. Tuesday is the first day of the show, so be sure to check back throughout the week for more. And for the rest of the finalists, click on the gallery above.

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10368240-260.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

The Latitude Z on wireless charging station, and wireless dock adapter on the right.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)

That Dell is releasing a new laptop for business customers is the opposite of surprising. But the fact that it contains notable features not seen in any other laptops certainly is.

Most everything about the new Latitude Z is expected: It’s yet another very thin notebook (a metric which PC manufacturers keep using to try to one-up each other), with a different kind of exterior finish (soft-touch, in this case), and comes in a black cherry. It measures 16 inches across, and is 14 millimeters thin at its most narrow point.

But you probably wouldn’t guess that the Latitude Z charges wirelessly. And as far as we can tell, it’s the first laptop to do so. Surprised that this is coming from Dell? You’re not alone.

The wireless charging is handled elegantly enough. An inductive pad that’s built into a laptop stand can accomplish a full recharge in “about the same amount of time” as a standard-issue cabled charger, according to Dell. While smartphone maker Palm has a similar (albeit smaller) wireless charging system for the Pre, and companies like Visteon and Wild Charge have debuted wireless charging accessories for phones, no PC maker has incorporated the idea until now.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10362968-260.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–MIT professor Daniel Nocera is a “huge centralized energy person” but when he looks at the world’s energy challenges, he thinks the key is to make energy generation cheap and distributed.

MIT last year announced that a technology developed by Nocera’s lab– a catalyst that can split water–could be used store solar energy. Earlier this year, Nocera formed a company called Sun Catalytix, backed by venture capital firm Polaris Ventures, to commercialize that discovery.

Engineers are now working on a prototype design for the system, Nocera said at the EmTech conference on emerging technology last Thursday. He added that the company has also hired Art Goldstein, the retired CEO of water desalination company Ionics which was purchased by General Electric, to be chairman.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10362614-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Intel’s Light Peak technology uses lasers and fiber optics to transfer data to and from PCs and other devices.

(Credit: Intel)

SAN FRANCISCO–You’ve probably heard about fiber optics for years–some kind of exotic technology used to carry gargantuan quantities of data across continents. But in the not-too-distant future, you might be plugging these tiny glass strands straight into your computer.

That’s if Intel gets its way. At its Intel Developer Forum last week, the chipmaker demonstrated fiber-optic technology called Light Peak for connecting many devices to PCs with fiber optic lines. Intel secured major Light Peak endorsement from Sony and now it’s has begun trying to make it into an industry standard.

But bringing optical technology to the masses will require more than Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner taking the stage to connect a thin white Light Peak cable into the back of a prototype PC. According to sources familiar with the situation, the most likely mechanism to carry Light Peak out of the R&D lab to the edge of your laptop will be the venerable Universal Serial Bus, and Intel has begun pounding the pavement to try to make that happen.

“Now all the pieces are in place,” Rattner said. “We need to get a standard established to turn on the entire ecosystem to Light Peak.”

Even technophobes are familiar with USB. The plug-and-play technology started its journey in PCs and has spread to handsets, consumer electronics devices, digital cameras, and more. And new developments from the group behind the standard, the USB Implementers Forum, could expand adoption more, with a new faster, more power-efficient version and with technology to make it better for charging devices plugged into a computer or power outlet.

The new “SuperSpeed” USB 3.0 has 5 gigabit-per-second data transfer rate, more than 10 times that of the USB 2.0 version that prevails today, and the first USB 3.0 device achieved certification last week. A separate new USB feature increases the amount of power that USB devices can use from 0.5 amps to 0.9 amps while adding another 1.5 amps specifically for charging batteries, making USB for tasks besides just transferring data.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10362246-264.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20