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...

Bluetooth goodbye? Welcome GiFi

The australian magazine "The Age" talks about a new chip created by an Australian company that would allow short-range connections (10 meters max) with speeds up to 5Gb/s !!!

The presentation was given a few days ago in Melbourne in the national information and communications technology research centre (NICTA), the chip was reported to be extremely small and cheap costing less than $10.00 (it uses CMOS) and measuring 5x5 mm.
It transfers data in the 60Ghz "millimeter wave"spectrum, which is mainly unused limiting the eventuality of interferences to a minimum.

So, recap is: faster, cheaper and reliable... If you add to this that Bluetooth 3 (which is at the moment just a theoretical project) is 20 times slower, I think we should say goodbye to bluetooth and welcome this new technology: GiFi

Considerations on how to use this technology are left to the reader...

Sony and OLED... yet again. I feel almost like saying: "I told you so!"

Yahoo news reports that Sony is about to invest 200 million dollars (that is: circa £100.000.000 !!!) to "develop technology to make medium to large organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels".

No word on how big will medium and large be exactly... but they would be too expensive now anyway to be real consumer products.

One thing is sure. We seem to be getting there.

I'm hoping to get rid of this annoying LCDs asap! Guys hurry up!!!

HD-DVD almost dead. Next victim: Blu-ray?

The useless, stupid (if you allow me) format war as seen a winner in the end.
Can we really call Sony a winner though?

Consider:
1. increasing downloads opportunity, easy and cheap film rental from your couch
2. Data storage cheap and fast thanks to Flash memory
3. DVDs will not go down until the prices of High def TVs will allow it (If you don't have an HDTV why would you buy a player?)

I guess the only reasons why I would consider buying a Blu-ray disc is to burn a PS3 game when the mod chips will allow me to do so... until then I don't really know if Blu-ray will survive.

Meanwhile despite all this, many people have wasted their money buying a product that will be good for nothing... Engadget reports the number of casualties here


Toshiba and Sony both are not coming out of this story looking good...

Nokia N96 and SE's Xperia X1 - Geeky gadgets CAN look good !!!

Nokia N96 loads of features as always, better looking than he's predecessor... if battery life has increased this will be a great handset, but no more...

If you're looking for more, Sony Ericsson's new Experia X1 seems to be the new gadget on every geek's wish list.
Features pretty much everything you may want from a qwerty Wmobile 6.1 smartphone and it looks just great.

personally I would go for a N82 (5mpix camera and GPS with longer battery life and sleek!)

Nokia N96

Experia X1

Universal Power Supply. For real this time.

Aren't we all annoyed with the quantity of power supplies we have to carry around when moving or even more with the ones sitting under our desks at home?

Well, that is what Green Plug we'll hopefully help us with. A solution to an everyday problem with an eye on energy saving, in other words high efficiency finally brought to the weakest link of the electronics chain.

Weird name I find but great idea behind it. I don't know why this is the only company out there trying to change the way power is delivered to our electronic gadgets. Check out the video of the presentation of this product... (link available on their site).

I have to say, I'm not sure there way is the best way to do it, but it is going in the right direction. Software based recognition sounds like a good idea for existing products, but if they are thinking of being more appealing to the bigs that sell gadgetry I think hardware should be the way to go.
No troubles for the user automatic recognition of the necessary quantity of power and off you go!

What? I make it sound to easy? No way man! I'll start my own company and show you all!!!