You May be Able to Buy A Sixth Sense

A couple of years ago at TED, we heard from a young grad student named . Jeff showed off a new technology. This technology showed off a new type of interface that anyone who watched the elections on CNN is now familiar with, but at the time no one had seen - the multi-touch. It’s on your I-phone and you are going to see it more and more places. Everyone that was in the audience knew that we were among the first to see a new technology that was going to take off.

Today we got to see another such technology. MIT Media Lab researcher showed a technology that her team has been working on that allows us to integrate data with our other senses. The device that she showed us built from off the shelf parts (like a simple web cam) “sees,” and can search for information based on what it sees. For example, you can look at a book in a bookstore, and the devise will pull up an Amazon review and project it onto the book pages for you to read. If you see something you would like to take a picture of, you simply form your hands into a frame, the device “sees” it, and takes a picture of what you have in the frame. It can also project numbers onto your hand which then act as a keyboard for your cell phone.

Test Goes Software-Defined

New Technology Fuels Growth
Software-defined instrumentation uses the latest technology advancements to deliver new levels of measurement performance and to identify new areas of productivity where traditional instrumentation solutions are unable to keep up with the fast moving needs of test. Three new technology and application areas fueling rapid industry growth in software-defined instrumentation today are wireless test, FPGA-based reconfigurable I/O, and multicore processing.


Wireless Test
RF and wireless test is among the fastest growing electronic areas and is one of the most challenging for design and test engineers. In addition to learning how to design and test wireless devices, engineers often find three or more wireless standards in today’s devices. Soon

amBX Technology Coming to the PS3

amBX announced today that it has completed a Tools and Middleware License agreement to bring it's technology to the PlayStation 3. Up until now, support for amBX has been limited to the PC, and while no specific products have been announced yet for the PS3, the company is confident that users will clamor for the real world sensory experiences made possible by their amBX technology.

amBX, through the use of its peripherals, creates light, color, rumble and air flow effects designed to enhance games, music, movies, Internet and TV entertainment. Gaming content developers and publishers have already licensed the technology for use in future titles, and amBX recently launched a new, free SDK to expand the number of hardware and entertainment developers that can add the sensory technology to their products.
This is a major milestone in the development of amBX as a ubiquitous standard for entertainment sensory experiences," commented Jo Cooke, Chief Marketing Officer, amBX. "amBX has already proved incredibly popular and successful within the PC games, music, movies and apps markets and the Tools & Middleware License agreement with SCEI will allow us to bring amazing light, rumble, sound and air movement experiences to game users."

Whole room video game experiences that go beyond just the controller rumbling in our hands? Sign us up. We can't wait to pop in Killzone 2 and watch our living room turn into a rave light show. For more info on amBX products

OLED Displays

Please refer to the beginning of the article where I talk about flexible displays and defined what OLED (Organic light emitting diode displays) are. You can already experience OLED display technology. Simply walk into any electronic supply store and ask to see a Creative Zen Plus Mp3 player. The photos and videos look very vivid through the 1.5 OLED screen. The screen is viewable from any angle. You can comfortably watch a movie on your Creative Zen Plus Mp3 player while waiting for your partner to arrive for dinner at your favorite restaurant.

Here are the 3 advantages of OLED displays:

• Compared to LCD displays, the organic compound layer on a OLED which sandwich electrode layers are self illuminating which means you won't drain your cell phone battery.
• Each pixel on an OLED display can be turned on and off much faster than a LCD pane, this makes the images appear brighter and crisper. Watching a video clip on a cell phone LCD, you no doubt see blurriness or after images. This would be eliminated with OLEDs.
• The last advantage of OLED displays is it is much cheaper to manufacture. The OLED displays are printed on a substrate (glass or plastic) using high level inkjet printing technology. These displays are printed on long substrate sheets which can be chopped up in to tiny cell phone screens.

Connect Your Cell Phone to 3-D PlayStation

Portable gaming system such as: Nintendo DS life, Nokia N Gage and Sony's PSP are simply flying off the shelves. In fact, portable gaming manufacturers are reporting earnings in the millions. Statistics like this will encourage cell phone manufacturers to release 3-D accelerator technology making it affordable for consumers to experience playing games on their cell phone or smart phone screens. What is a 3-D accelerator technology?

This technology allows three-dimensional objects to be rotated and viewed from any angle.

Current gaming consoles use 3-D accelerators. 3-D accelerator technology is becoming very cheap. Many cell phones suitable for use with 3-D accelerator technology built in will be introduced. I think this is a trend that will truly help gamers.

"NVIDIA's latest mobile processor boasts arcade-quality 3D graphic rendering and up to 3 MP images. Coming soon to a phone near you. Graphics company NVIDIA has taken the wraps off what it calls the world's first "3D wireless media processor", the Go Force 3D 4500, a mobile processor designed to support 3D graphics and high-res images in handhelds and mobile phones."

Portable Pictures to Go - Smart Phone Projectors

Recently at an annual CeBit technology show in Hanover Germany, Finland upstream engineering produced a prototype pocket projector using believe it or not Star Trek sounding technology called photons vacuum. The pocket projector focuses the scattered light from LEDs (light emitting diodes) to luminous points that make up the pixels of the display.

If you happen to be a gamer, and the cell phone projector technology has a special treat to offer you. This will solve the problem for many cell phone users that are becoming nearsighted because they have to squint and decipher the small printing on a 2 x 2 inch cell phone screen. For professional and hobby photographers, cell phone projector technology allows you to show your portfolio with just a cell phone and a projector.

Keep Your Eye on Flexible Displays Coming Soon

A flexible cell phone display can be unfurled and then rolled back up into a cylinder case. An early prototype show above shows E ink technology at work, what is absolutely amazing is that the display retains its image even when the power is turned off.

An OLED consists of an emissive organic material, that when supplied with an electrical current, can produce a superior full color flat panel display. OLED stands for organic light emitting diode. OLED or flexible displays do not use crystals the way smart phone LCD screen uses crystals. OLED is much better than both the LCD and CRT technology. Organic light emitting diode is so incredibly thin; it can be placed on a substrate such as plastic film or glass. Not only is it thin, but OLED is so light weight, it is an advantage for hand-held devices, smart phones, cell phones, laptops and notebooks. Compared to traditional or old CRT displays, OLED is brighter, sharper and even has a better contrast than LCD