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 the rest of this entry »
How about this for green energy? A pocket-sized device developed by a US company called M2E (Motion 2 Energy) promises to generated enough electricity to charge cellphones, media players and such, just by rattling around in your pocket or handbag. The gizmo is full of coils and magnets that convert movement into electricity, which is stored in a rechargeable battery, ready to be let loose when you need it. Apparently it generates between three and seven times as much power as rival ‘kinetic’ energy systems. The company has also developed ‘D’ cell type batteries that self charge as they are moved around, a bit like those torches that light up when you shake them. Read the rest of this entry »
Shortly after going public with the fact that the TZ series of notebooks has been shipped with some factory issues, Sony has introduced today two new notebook series that will benefit from the latest Blu-Ray Disc technology. The newly announced notebooks are part of the company’s NS and CS series, and have been designed to provide an impressive high-definition quality.
“With these new units, Sony is now offering consumers a host of multi-media PC options to choose from,” said Mike Abary, senior vice president of VAIO product marketing at Sony Electronics. “And with a starting price of around $1,000 for the NS model, we’re expecting a new audience to experience HD entertainment on their computers.” Read the rest of this entry »
Although Microsoft is not breathing a single word in relation to an event it has cooking for September 9, 2008, under the slogan “Say Goodbye to Laser,” leaks from its partners are managing to paint a more complete picture. As it has been speculated, the new technology, which will be unveiled in the second week of the coming month, has been incorporated in a mouse. The Microsoft Blue Track mouse, featured in the adjacent images, reportedly sports a LED in combination with wide angle lenses, instead of a laser diode. In this context, despite the attempt to build anticipation with consumers, the Blue Track mouse is by no means reinventing the wheel. Read the rest of this entry »
Now contain yourself! News that Intel has released the final draft specification for USB 3.0 has been sending ripples of excitement throughout the PC industry. You too will have to come to terms with a whole load of new jargon if you want to stay ahead of the game. Provisionally dubbed ‘SuperSpeed USB’ the big selling point is that data transfer speeds are up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0, which means a whopping 5 Gigabits per second. That’s really fast, quick enough to whizz a DVD from one place to another in just a few seconds and it’s going to make things like data transfer from things like MP3 players, cameras and storage devices virtually instantaneous. Plugs and sockets look superficially similar, and it should be backwards compatible but USB 3.0 sockets have an extra 5 contacts, set behind the front five contacts and these are the ones that carry the SuperSpeed data. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
