That annoying: "Beep Beep"

It is still only a prototype. That said though, wouldn't you buy one too?
I can't wait to finally roast that road-runner! Nice gadgetry.

Toshiba and Panasonic to Join OLED market soon?

Samsung 40 inch OLED tv as presented at the CES 2008, early this year.


Around the 25th of January "Engadget" brought us the last great news we were waiting for: the last limit of OLEDs TVs had just been made history by "Toshasonic" (yes them two above), the lifespan of an OLED tv, previously stuck at 30.000 hours (Sony's Xel1) has been increased to reach and pass that of an LCD (50.000 hours)!
Now the only thing that separates us from a mass production of this technology by all the major players in this market (Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Panasonic, etc...) is, well yes, money.

The production cost of a large OLED display is still too high. This is bound to change though now that there are no more excuses to wait, after all Sony has already taken the first step, the others I don't think will want to compete for a "second place" in that market.

Stay tuned.

ATOM - "The next Big thing" is Tiny, by Intel

At the beginning of this month Intel introduced ATOM (and ATOM Centrino), a new line of processors aimed at portable devices.

Intel is usual to introduce "One new processor a day" that usually represents a small step forward in terms of performance if compared to the predecessors, thus loosing the interest of the end-users.

Of course though, the reason why I'm writing this post is clear, what Intel has done this time deserves some of our attention.

To understand better what we are talking about, here are some specs:

Dimension: less than 25mm²
Transistors: more than 47 millions.
Idle power: 30mW
TDP: 0.6 - 2.5 W
Speed: up to 1.8Ghz

This sounds extremely interesting if considered that today's lowest consumption processors run at 1.2 Ghz max, with a TDP of 10W (4 times more power!). A comparison of the two products done this way of course doesn't tell us all about the real differences, but it helps getting a clear idea of what a big step this was.

if you want to know more: Intel's ATOM

WhyMax?

"WiMax and LTE: Unwelcome Guests" ?

This is the title of a very interesting article appeared on this months' newsletter of "The Basestation" presenting operators' point of view on these two technologies.

Much has been said so far, many technical aspects discussed, possibilities of use and much hype around them has been raised, but not much has been said about the main problem: Investments.
Operators are struggling to keep up with the speed rate at which new technologies are becoming available "The Basestation" reports:

"In a period when operators are paring back capacity investments (after reaching sufficient coverage or negotiating network sharing deals), it seems odd that vendors are pursuing two new systems: WiMax and LTE."

Vendors of course will not go a long way without Operators making technologies available and while this was already evident with 3G, not everyone has learned the lesson. This means that WiMax especially (it has already been discussed for years) will very unlikely meet the expectations of the bandwidth-hungry consumers.

Skepticism is another factor to take into consideration. Among operators only Ericsson is investing in LTE at the moment and many others (NEC, Motorola, NSN etc...) struggle to see profit margins in a very expensive move like the migration to 4G.

There would be a lot to say on this. For further interesting details here is the full article

In my opinion, Operators will in the end drive the decision of a market, that risks otherwise to be flooded with gadgets with enormous possibilities but no service to allow the users to take advantage of them.

Digital divide might only get worse. Maybe investing on cheaper technologies making them available to everyone would be a better way to go, but I wouldn't dare suggesting this to either Vendors not consumers... Good luck then.

Future or SciFi? Meet MORPH, by Nokia

Nokia decided to show us what they are working on, a little to make apple envious (it was about time some device stole the scene from apple's Iphone), a little to show us that there is a reason why they are the first company in the world for number of mobile phones sold, but more than anything probably to say that they still will be up there for a long time, no matter how many other products will come out.

If you don't believe it, see it for yourself. Enjoy MORPH:

P.S. : Let me know what you think after you've seen this video...