The Mesmerising Blob of Infinity
Quite frankly, these days’ screensavers are a waste of time. LCD monitors do not suffer from the ‘screen burn’ effect that affected old style CRT monitors when left to display the same image for hours on end. That said, a blank or simple floating logo screensaver on a black background can provide a small power saving when a PC is left idle (though there are much better ways to achieve it). On the other hand password protecting a screensaver is a handy way of keeping prying eyes off your PC when it is left unattended for any length of time. Well, that’s my excuse for mentioning Zoom Mania. It’s a wacky, trance-inducing fractal blob thingy that floats around the screen giving off streams of smaller blobs that appear to disappear into infinity. You can move it around, zoom in and out and do all kinds of weird and wonderful things to the image. Try it after a couple of pints and I guarantee you won’t get any work done. It’s freeware but when you install it watch out for very kind offers to load browser toolbars and change your home page, unless of course you want it to…
40-Hour Laptop in Pipeline
Remember the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project? As you may recall the idea was to develop a laptop, costing less than $100, which would be given away to children in undeveloped countries. One unexpected spin-offs was the creation of a consumer market for compact low-cost mini laptops, or ‘netbooks’ typified by the Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire One.
One of the brains behind OLPC was Mary Lou Jepsen (pictured right) who is the former head of display technologies at Intel, and she was responsible for the OLPC’s super low power, sunlight readable display. Now she has a new startup company, called Pixel Qi, with plans to start shipping a highly efficient screen, similar to the one in the OLPC, but for more conventional laptops. Read more
Kodak OLEDing the Way Again
Kodak, once the leading light in the photography biz were famously caught by surprise by the speed at which digital photography took. Despite launching some useful digicams, it has never really come close to regaining its former status. Now, however, they’re leading the way once again, this time with the world’s first consumer photo frame using OLED or Organic Light Emitting Diode technology.
OLEDs, in case you didn’t know, are super thin, and unlike LCDs, do not rely on a backlight. They also offer superior contrast ratios and although not a factor in this application, can be made to be flexible. The display used in this frame is 7.6 inches (measured diagonally); it’s a widescreen format with 800 x 480 pixel resolution and it boasts a contrast ratio of 30,000:1. The viewing angle – another OLED advantage – is 180 degrees. Read more
What makes LCDs shine light
Unlike typical cathode ray displays that produce images on a screen by bombarding electrons into a layer of phosphorous, liquid crystal displays can’t actually produce their light while functioning. This is because the pixels on an LCD are basically like little shutters that vary their opacity accordingly to the amount of electric current they receive.
This disadvantage is especially visible in the case of old-fashioned monochrome liquid crystal displays, which can be read only when they are lit with light coming from the environment, and become totally useless in the absence of it. In this case, light coming from the Sun or reflected by the environment enters the LCD, passes through all the layers of the display before encountering a reflective surface that sends the light back to the viewer. Read more
Is My LCD OK? Well, Is it?
Here’s one way to find out, a small freeware program called, you guessed it, IsMylcdOK. It’s a simple LCD monitor checker program that displays a series of solid colours, gradients and horizontal and vertical lines that will show up most of the common faults on flat screen monitors. These include dead or ‘hot’ (always on) pixels, faulty backlights and incorrect video phase setting. The program download is tiny, around 15kb, and it doesn’t even need to be installed, it runs from the zip/exe file, or from a pen drive. It is really easy to use; though watch out for the intro screen, it’s in German, so click the English button to continue (unless you are, or speak German, of course). Read more
Canon Prints on the Move
It might look like something you would use to keep your sandwiches and a cold drink in, but what you are looking at here is the new Canon Selphy CP770 ‘home photo lab’ dye sublimation colour printer. The integrated carry-pack makes it easy to transport and it also provides storage space for paper and consumables, and an optional battery pack. Features include a bright, angled 2.5-inch LCD, it has a memory card reader for direct printing, there’s auto image correction with face brightness compensation, auto red eye correction, infrared data link and big, easy to use controls. Prints take around 52 seconds and Canon reckons they should last upwards of 100 years, we shall see…
Top Ten Notebooks You Couldn’t Do Without
Mobile computing has conquered both the high-end and the mainstream markets and analysts claim that the number of sold notebooks will outpace desktop systems by 2010. Mobile gaming is still a niche market, dominated by bulky notebooks with significant price tags, but most of the general-purpose laptops deliver optimal performance at a reasonable price tag.
The first entry in the mainstream notebook line-up is the Acer Aspire 5920 model, that comes rigged with an Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 chip running at 1.6 GHz. The system also packs 2 GB of DDR2 memory and runs Windows Vista Home Premium. The 15.4-inch LCD display sports anti-glare technology that boosts the video output and offers a comfortable computer experience. The system sells for about $910 via the company’s retail outlets. Read more
Get Free PS3 With Bravia HDTV Purchase
It’s one of those super-pricey deals that makes every consumer drool- for our lucky Aussie friends, Sony will be giving away a 40GB PS3 with every purchase of a Bravia full-HD 1080 LCD TV. This promotion runs between December 21 and January 28, and applies to the current XBR, X, and W Bravia series models. How’s that for a package?
“Our Full HD BRAVIA range shows the phenomenal detail possible with high definition, and what better way to experience this than through the Blu-ray-enabled PS3,” said Sony Australia senior product manager, Graham Keogh. “Sony is as much about content as we are about hardware. Now, consumers will get the best of both worlds with this Full High Definition combination.” (source- Smarthouse) Read more
End of the Line for Back Projectors
Once, not so long ago, the only way to pack a really big TV screen into your living room was a back-projection TV. In their heyday there were some real monsters from the likes of Toshiba and Sony, but now it looks as though their days are numbered, with the announcement from Seiko Epson that it is to stop production of the projection gubbins that many manufacturers used to use.
You don’t have to look far to see why it has happened, these huge boxes, which were mostly filled with air, have been killed off by big screen plasmas and LCD flat screens. Read more
Sharp and Thin
Congrats to Sharp for producing what is claimed to be the world’s thinnest liquid crystal display. Most of us are blissfully unaware that there’s a right old battle going on in the world of LCD panel manufacturing, to see who can make the thinnest screens, and until last week that honour belonged to AU Optronics, with a screen just 0.69mm thick. But now Sharp have taken back the lead with a 2.2–inch panel that measures, wait for it, only 0.68mm. Now this is clearly a big deal for those involved and probably came about as a result of all sorts of clever technical developments but it’s unlikely that 0.01mm is going to make a lot of difference to the rest of us, but it’s nice to know it can be done…
