Samsung Kicks Off Transparent Displays

Samsung Kicks Off Transparent Display Production

South Korean electronics giant Samsung has announced that it has kick started the production of transparent monitors on a large scale, indicating that the future of display technology is nearly ready for mass consumption.

 Samsung has already showcased see-through displays which make use of AMOLED technology, although for the time being this concept is still a pipe dream. What consumers and businesses will be able to buy is a 22 inch LCD display which is totally transparent.

Rather than relying on backlighting technology to make the onscreen image visible, the transparent display uses ambient lighting to get the job done. This obviously means that it will not be visible in a fully dark environment but the fact that it can be almost entirely flat and far more energy efficient than previous generations of monitors will surely interest many.

The 22 inch see-through display will support a native resolution of 1680x1050 and will have a solid if not quite stellar contrast ratio of 500:1. Samsung is confident that it will be able to improve the technical specifications of its new display range as production gets underway and methods improve.

HDMI inputs and USB ports will become features on the transparent displays intended for commercial use. Samsung is expecting marketing firms and teleconferencing setups to be the first to make use of the screens, implying that there will be a hefty asking price for the first batch of transparent monitors, which is hardly surprising.

The LCD panels may not be making it to the mainstream market for some time, although it is clear to see what innovations they might allow just over the temporal horizon. Experts are expecting that the screens will eventually become integrated into devices such as laptops, allowing for a frameless see-through display experience which will be truly futuristic.

A host of applications for the transparent displays are suggested by Samsung in an accompanying press release marking the launch of the mass production facilities. It suggests the obvious use as electronic billboard displays and within business expos, but also hints at the possibility of transparent devices eventually making their way into school classrooms, perhaps in the guise of tablet computers.

While many other technological improvements are incremental and difficult to describe to a broad audience without getting too dry and dull in the process, it is easy for anyone to appreciate the significance of developing transparent displays. While data recovery, quantum computing and 4G networking are not always easy to sell, a transparent display is a shoe-in for success thanks to its immediate visual impact.

Seabird - The Next Generation Phone

The Seabird project is a concept for a phone with a dramatically overhauled user interface for a more productive device.

Mozilla is showing its concept phone which combines a number of emerging technologies to add a new dimension to the Android operating system. It includes a Bluetooth earpiece, which integrates an IR sensor so you can wave it around and pan around on the phone just by moving the Bluetooth earpiece, a neat way to navigate the phone's UI. Another thing that the phone incorporates is dual pico projectors. One pico projector will display the phone's screen on a wall, to create a larger viewing screen, and the other pico projector can project out a keyboard onto a flat surface for users to type on. Or, place the phone on a flat surface and the two projectors can split up the keyboard onto either side of the phone for an even larger keyboard. 





You can learn more about the Seabird concept from Mozilla.

World’s First 3 TB Hard Drive Unveiled

October 19, 2010 saw the release of the world’s largest capacity SATA hard drive ever built to date. The 3TB (Terrabyte) drive is the first of its kind in the world, as it’s closest rival has been hard drives with a capacity of about 2.2TB until now. The new 3TB hard drives deliver a massive storage capacity in a single drive. Western Digital is reportedly the front runner in the data storage industry by using 750 GB-per-platter areal density and Advanced Format (AF) technology.

The new WD Caviar Green drives are an eco-friendly solution featuring WD GreenPower Technology™. This technology enables PC’s to run at lower operating temperatures, which increases reliability and of course also causes machines to run quieter. WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB and 3 TB hard drives have been designed to be used as secondary external storage units. However, older generation PC’s may not be able to use the these hard drives just yet, so it is best to check with your local supplier before buying one of these 2.5TB or 3Tb storage devices, as they are designed for next generation, 64-bit based systems.

“To satisfy the new set of requirements of which users must be aware to successfully integrate larger capacity drives, WD is bundling its WD Caviar Green 2.5 and 3 TB hard drives with an Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter (HBA), which will enable the operating system to use a known driver with correct support for large capacity drives.”

“WD remains a leader of hard drive capacity and low power innovation. With our WD Caviar Green drives, we enable energy-conscious customers to build systems with the highest capacities that deliver the optimal balance of system performance, ensured reliability and energy conservation,” said Jim Morris, executive vice president and general manager of WD’s client systems storage group.

Transparent Cell Phone Displays

If you’re a fan of the television program ‘CSI’, you must have noticed the translucent display screens the investigators always use in the labs. However impressive, it does look a little futuristic doesn’t it?

Well, it may be futurisic no more, because TDK have developed a flexible and translucent organic display that can be used in mobile phones and other gadgets, also allowing these display screens to be able to bend.

The displays use OLED technology which means very little energy is used because they are self illuminating. And get this… the displays are exremely thin – imagine this – just 0.3 mm thick.
That’s one third of a millimeter. That’s THIN. As you can imagine, because it is so thin and manufactured using a film substrate, it is also extremely lightweight.

The current flexible screens have a resolution of 256 x 64, can be up to 10 cm long and may be installed on curved surfaces. Could this possibly be an open door to manufacture cellphones that are wearable on the wrist? Obviously being flexible should increase lifespan and resistance to breakage or scratches.

The translucent display has a slightly bigger resolution at 320 x 240, and is 50 percent translucent. An interesting aspect of these displays are that although they are translucent, anyone standing behind the display is not able to see the image or text, but still be able to see through the display.

Watch the Video here 

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NASA and GM team up for Robot

After about three years of work, General Motors and NASA are showing off the next generation of an advanced robot that is said to be faster and more dexterous than previous attempts by the agency.

Robonaut2 or R2 appears to be a sleek humanoid robot and is shown writing, shaking hands and performing tasks, such as lifting weights and picking up an envelope. The two organizations say the partnership is about creating technologies that will help both the automotive and aerospace industries.

“For GM, this is about safer cars and safer plants. When it comes to future vehicles, the advancements in controls, sensors and vision technology can be used to develop advanced vehicle safety systems,” Alan Taub, GM’s vice president for global research and development, said in a statement. “The partnership’s vision is to explore advanced robots working together in harmony with people, building better, higher quality vehicles in a safer, more competitive manufacturing environment.”

GM can see using the technology in the assembly plants where it already uses robotic technology. The Detroit automaker also sees potential applications in vehicle safety systems.

Meanwhile, NASA wants to build machines that help humans work and explore space. “Working side-by-side with humans, or going where the risks are too great for people, machines like Robonaut will expand our ability for construction and discovery,” Mike Coats, NASA’s Johnson Space Center director, said in a statement.

The humanoid robot Robonaut was first designed and built by NASA in a collaborative effort with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency a decade ago.

R2 has hands that do work beyond the previous scope of the earlier version.

GM and NASA have a long history together, including working together on the development of the Lunar Rover Vehicle used on the moon.

Microsoft and NSF Enable Cloud Research

Microsoft Corp. and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced an agreement that will offer individual researchers and research groups selected through NSF’s merit review process free access to advanced cloud computing resources. By extending the capabilities of powerful, easy-to-use PC applications via Microsoft cloud services, the program is designed to help broaden researcher capabilities, foster collaborative research communities, and accelerate scientific discovery. Projects will be awarded and managed by NSF. More details about funding opportunities are available at http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=CISE.

Microsoft will provide cloud computing research projects identified by NSF with access to Windows Azure for a three-year period, along with a support team to help researchers quickly integrate cloud technology into their research. Windows Azure provides on-demand compute and storage to host, scale and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft datacenters. Microsoft researchers and developers will work with grant recipients to equip them with a set of common tools, applications and data collections that can be shared with the broad academic community, and also provide its expertise in research, science and cloud computing.

“Cloud computing can transform how research is conducted, accelerating scientific exploration, discovery and results,” said Dan Reed, corporate vice president, Technology Strategy and Policy and eXtreme Computing at Microsoft. “These grants will also help researchers explore rich and diverse multidisciplinary data on a large scale.”

Today, scientists are operating in a world dominated by data, thanks to increasingly inexpensive sensors and a growing trend toward collaborative data projects. Analyzing and synthesizing this mass of data remain a challenge. The goal of the new program is to make simple yet powerful tools available that any researcher can use to extract insights by mining and combining diverse data sets.

“We’ve entered a new era of science — one based on data-driven exploration — and each new generation of computing technology, such as cloud computing, creates unprecedented opportunities for discovery,” said Jeannette M. Wing, assistant director for the NSF Computer and Information Science directorate. “We are working with Microsoft to provide the academic community a novel cloud computing service with which to experiment and explore, with the grander goal of advancing the frontiers of science and engineering as we tackle societal grand challenges.”

Solid State Hard Drive

A computer, though it uses numerous parts in order to function, definitely needs an internal hard drive to function at all. A hard drive being probably the most crucial of all computer accessories is the device where the computer stores all its data as well as the most important operating system, applications and boot log.

Once upon a time, there were computers so old they didn't have any hard drives, in that age, men used to insert special disks encoded to run a program whenever they needed it. Now however, times have changed.

Every computer comes equipped with a hard drive that not only puts the operating system at the beck and call of the user, but also eliminates any necessity of doing unnecessary work by individually inserting a diskette for every application you want to run.

Although in ancient times, a hard drive diskette was actually a piece of paper with holes punched in it, the concept and technology of the hard drive has changed radically. Now a hard drive is actually a number of magnetic diskettes able to store almost 2 terra bytes of data, whereas once it was able to store only 1 MB's worth of data. That's 2,000,000 times more than previously possible.

Even nowadays, there are three different types of internal hard drives available, the older version, commonly known as the IDE drive, the relatively newer version, the SATA drive, and the cutting edge new technology the solid state hard drive. The maximum storage capacity of IDE being 80gb for commoners consumers, 2tb of SATA drive and 80 GB for solid state drives.

For those who do not know what a solid state drive is, solid state drive is the next generation of hard drive storage technologies, as different to SATA and IDE storage as they were to paper diskettes. Finally, by completely eliminating any and all moving parts in a hard drive, the powers that be have introduced a solid state hard drive, amply named because there are no moving parts like cog and wheels in this kind of hard drive.

A solid state hard drive has thus radically reduced any possibility of data being lost or read slowly or anything of that sort. However the technology is very much in its infancy, starting off as the USB's and now coming to full time internal hard drives, the technology is still new, hence the higher prices and the relatively lower disk space, but wait a few and soon you will have the very best of internal hard drives to use as your own.

3D Television : How does it work ?

With the worldwide release and success of James Cameron's 'Avatar', it seems 3D technology may be opening up a whole new dimension in home entertainment.

If you have been following the news, you'll know that 3D TV development is coming big this year. Several main manufactures are aiming at the 3D TV market. And what is really exiting is that they are not using the same technology. Different producers cme up with different ideas and solutions!

Coming to its working, It employs stereoscopic technology by using 3D active shutter glasses. These glasses allow you to see through only one lens at a time and create an image for each of your eyes. Your mind merges these two images and allows you to perceive depth, making the picture on the screen appear 3D.

The 3D experience is made possible by the LG Electronics special lenticular 3D-filter, which gives the viewers auto-stereotopic images and a real dynamic 3D experience! The filter works the same way that the holograms visible on modern passports and ID's. The 3D flter breaks the image and lets the eye watch several pictures at the same time. In the Flatron M4200D is every image actually a composition of 25 images overlapping eachother. When viewing the 3D TV screen at 3 to 7 meters the 3 dimesional perspective seems to be about 50 cm.

One thing is clear though, 3D television seems to be set as the future of home entertainment. The two big hurdles to overcome seem to be pricing of these 3D television sets (estimates roughly in the same region of high-end HD television sets - initially, at least) and secondly, getting the market audience to embrace 3D in their homes. Now judging by the success of the above mentioned movie 'Avatar', it seems consumers are hungry for this new entertainment medium.

It does also seem as if the content producing industry (the film and program makers) will eventually be leaning towards producing programming in 3D, with the announcement of Sony's 3D camera, capable of capturing high quality images at 240fps (that's frames per second) in early October 2009.

Interestingly enough though, as with all new technologies, 3D will be expensive at first, but will most likely become more affordable over time