Revolutionary Plastics May See Laptops Bend

When you hear ‘plastic’ the first thing that probably comes to your mind is ‘electrical insulator’. This is perhaps because most plastics have exceptional electrical insulator properties, albeit this doesn’t necessarily mean that all plastics share the same properties. It was proven some three decades ago that certain classes of plastics may conduct electricity and could be used to create some of the most amazing electronic devices ever seen, such as flexible laptops, electronic billboards or ultra-thin displays.

Imagine an electronic device made of plastic material only. The creation of such a piece of equipment would most certainly revolutionize the electronics industry. Let’s take the humble transistor for example, the building block of every electronic device today. Although it is usually made out of silicon, a lot of semiconductor materials can be used to manufacture transistors, neither of which very flexible. However, flexibility is not the only issue with transistors. By using plastics to build transistors the manufacturing costs could also drop considerably. Read More »

How HVDs Work

HVDs, or Holographic Versatile Discs, are a type of optical digital data storing devices bearing a striking resemblance to the construction and operation of more common optical storing devices, such as CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray, relying on read/write techniques based on the principles of holography. Similar to typical optical data storing devices, the first holographic memory systems were created several decades ago; however, they did not became as popular as CDs and DVDs mostly because of the manufacturing costs involved and the complexity of the read/write processes.

Lately, holographic memory systems have started gaining more ground in relation to more common optical storing devices, as HVDs become cheaper to manufacture. After all, HVDs have both significantly superior storage capacity and read/write speeds. Read More »

Working on the Lap of Luxury

Now this really is my kind of gadget…. This is the Boom arm workstation and as you can clearly see it is the ideal gift for the gentleman, or lady, who likes to do their laptopping in bed. It’s also a boon, or should that be a boom for those who are bedridden but not by choice, and it could prove handy for wheelchair users as well. The manufacturers even see it being used by exercise nuts, whilst on a treadmill but that’s probably going a bit too far. Fully adjustable and reasonably portable, it’ll set you back around £150. UK availability has yet to be announced but if you just can’t wait you can always see if they’ll send you one at: EasyChair WorkStation Products

Build Your Own Android

If you’ve been following the goings-on in the mobile phone industry you will know that the Next Big Thing is likely to be Google and its Android operating system. Android is Open Source software and Google gunning hard for the big boys, namely Microsoft, Nokia and Apple, and actively encouraging users to contribute to its development, hence the Android Software Developer’s Kit (SDK), which you can now download and try for yourself.

Of course, it’s mostly aimed at programmers and developers, but there’s something for everyone and it contains a full Android Emulator, which basically means you can simulate the workings of an Android phone on your Windows Mac or Linux PC. Read More »

Opera 9.50 Fixes Fiesta

On its official website, Opera describes the latest version of its browser as “beautifully engineered”. However, it looks like Opera 9.50 was made available to end users before the cooking process was ready. After the release of the gold version of Opera 9.50 on June 12, 2008, the feedback starting pouring in, and it was not a pretty sight. As a direct consequence of the user input, Opera is now scrambling to make available version 9.51, designed to resolve all the issues introduced with Opera 9.50.

“Discover the new standard in Web browsing. Download Opera today to get the fastest and most powerful Web browser available and make the most of your time online,” is a message on the official Opera welcoming page. And while the evolution of version 9.5 over its predecessor is indisputable, the fact is that so are the many problems plaguing the browser. June 25, 2008 saw the offering of Opera 9.51 Build 10074 Release Candidate 1, and as of June 30 users can also grab Opera 9.51 RC2 Build 10080. Read More »

Live Your Life with PlayStation

This is certainly the day for announcements made by Sony. In addition to revealing a video rental service designed for the PlayStation 3, the company is also launching a few other initiatives that are designed to make its gaming console more attractive to other demographics than the “hardcore” gamer. The social aspect of the PlayStation Network is brought into focus in an effort to compete with the Xbox Live service from Microsoft.

While mentioning that the PlayStation 3 has so far shipped more than 12 million units all over the world, Kaz Hirai, President of Sony Computer Entertainment, revealed that this number is past the critical stage at which the company begins to focus on providing more content to its users rather than on extending the installed base at an accelerated rate. Additional content is intended to create loyalty amongst the player base. Read More »

Ebay Sniping Tool

Speaking as a regular ebay user, I am constantly being outbid in the last seconds of an auction, almost certainly by automated bidding programs, and it’s ticking me off! On the very shaky premise that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, I am now seriously considering going over to the dark side and using what’s known as a ‘sniping tool’ to do my bidding for me and based on my researches, it seems that one of the best is a freeware utility called JbidWatcher. It’s very easy to set up, you feed it your ebay details, tell it what you want to bid on, how much you are prepared to pay, and how late you want to make a bid and it gets on with it. Moments before the auction ends JBid makes it move, and if you are successful, the item is yours, assuming of course that rival bidders are not using sniping tools as well, set to place higher bids even later than you…

Kitt Car for 30-Somethings…

Oh dear oh dear… Men, or should I say big kids of a certain age may remember the US TV series Knight Rider where David Hasselhoff drove around nabbing bad guys and generally saving the world in a computerised talking car called Kitt.

I bet you can see this one coming because GPS SatNav makers Mio have developed one that uses the voice the voice of a chap called William Daniels – the voice of the original Kitt  to tell you where you are, and where you are going. If you think that you can live with a GPS with swishy red lights and which says ‘ hello Michael, where do you want to go today?’ or you really are called Michael then your prayers have just been answered.

$75 Laptop in the Pipeline?

We have spoken before about the laudable One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which aims to supply laptops costing $100 to children in poor countries and which indirectly spawned the recent influx of cheap mini laptops, like the Asus Eee PC, Elonex one et al. Well. OLPC has now unveiled a mock-up of a future model, which could sell for as little as $75.

There’s no need to get too excited, the $100 target for the OLPC XO1 still hasn’t been achieved (it’s closer to $200…), but like its predecessor the XO-2, has some interesting features. These include dual touch and haptic (pressure) sensitive screens, both daylight (and indoor) viewable. Read More »

Bird Passes The Word

I don’t know about you but I’m always struggling to think up new passwords for websites and the myriad of other things I need to gain access to these days. As we all know using simple words, such as names and places for passwords is just asking for trouble as they can be easily guessed by someone who knows you, or about you, or cracked using ‘brute force’ dictionary methods, so here’s something else to try. It’s called Password Bird and all you have to do is enter a special name, special word and a special date and from that it creates a good quality random-looking alphanumeric password, but made up from bits of your special words and numbers, which should make it a little easier to remember