Happy 2008 from electronrun!

Electronrun wishes you a great 2008 with health and super tech surprises!

The Tindo = solar powered bus = new hope!

We want to finish 2007 in a really positive note. It has been a year of black predictions for the environment but new forward looking people and technologies are promising to reverse that trend. The Tindo is such a wonderful project. It marries two clean technologies:

1. Electric motors driven by 11 onboard batteries.
2. Photovoltaic panels at the Adelaide central bus station that charge the bus batteries.

This translates in two equally hyperimportant benefits:

1. Zero emissions during bus operation.
2. Zero burden on the main electrical grid, all energy is generated by 100% clean means.

Tech developments I would like to see in 2008!

Now that 2008 is only a couple of days away is the right time to write about the developments I would like to see. I am not in favour of votes for the best of each category of 2007. We have all bought and used stuff this last year, we have also already done our choices for Christmas, so what’s the point? After all these things are so much down to personal taste that it is hard to announce a single product or site as the best in its category and clearly above everything else. So many CPU cycles have been devoted to Facebook vs MySpace & iPhone vs Nokia N95 type stories that I think a bit more of that would be overkill. So summarising thoughts from previous posts and by also adding some new ones, here is the things that I would love to see happening in 2008:

• Good, reliable, fast internet access, both wired and wireless. The wired part is getting better briskly. But for wireless still a lot has to be done… 
• Some compatibility between social networks. What is happening now is crazy and exhausting. Separate accounts, separate contacts, separate everything for each one of them. When for example Yahoo and MSN made their messengers compatible -even with limited inter-functionality- it was a great relief for me.

Samsung 31-inch OLED display to be revealed in CES 2008

As if the LCD alliance news of Hitachi, Canon & Matsushita wasn’t enough, now Samsung comes up with more dynamite news. It announced that it has a fully functioning 31-inch OLED display, larger than the 27-inch OLED that Sony has previously shown. OLED displays are an upcoming technology that has the following advantages over LCDs:

• Extremely thin. The Samsung display is only 4.3 mm thick, an order of magnitude less than current LCDs.
• Low power consumption. With roughly half the consumption of LCDs, OLEDs have a critical advantage in our efforts to limit energy consumption.
• Picture quality. Definition, colours, contrast, all are at pretty high quality.

Samsung’s display is going to be revealed at CES 2008 and will likely be the star of the company’s stand. Now that consumers have developed an insatiable appetite for large panel sizes, it is unlikely that anything smaller than 37 inches will be a success. And here is the catch, OLEDs are an upcoming display star technology, but are for the time being very difficult and expensive to manufacture. Whichever supplier comes up with reasonably priced models will have a serious head start. Samsung is the world’s largest LCD manufacturer so it is no wonder it is working on OLEDs really hard as it wants things to stay the same in future…

Link: Reuters

Warner Music downloads via Amazon

Welcome news! Warner Music MP3 files are now available for download from Amazon. Price is 89 cents per song compared to the 99 cents for every DRM-protected song from Apple’s iTunes. Amazon has a standard non-DRM policy for all its music downloads which means that you can enjoy on any platform as you wish. Bravo Amazon! Bravo Warner!

Link: Reuters

Hitachi, Canon, Matsushita alliance for LCD displays

Hitachi, Canon and Matsushita are teaming up on the LCD display front. Each of Canon and Matsushita are buying 24.9% of Hitachi Displays Co Ltd, while Hitachi will keep the remaining 50.2%. Global demand for LCD displays might be increasing, LCD TVs and PC monitors might be selling like hot cakes, but increased competition and low profit margins are forcing once independently acting multi-billion dollar manufacturers to form alliances.

The deal encompasses all display sizes, from large TV screens to small screens for mobile devices. Each partner will have access to high quality displays and the key here is Hitachi’s IPS (In-Plane Switching) technology. Canon needs small and medium size displays for wide product range encompassing cameras and printers. Both Hitachi and Panasonic (Matsushita) are well placed in the plasma TV market but recently LCDs are successfully challenging plasmas in black levels and transition fluency where the later are traditionally stronger. The implications are far reaching as IPS technology could be the stepping stone to OLED screens. Sony and Samsung are ahead in the OLED game and of course the three alliance partners definitely want a piece of the market that is going to be opened up.

Link: Businesswire

Twentieth Century Fox movie rentals coming through Apple iTunes store

Only yesterday we wrote about internet TV and how large players with power in the marketplace will certainly try to get in the TV and movie business in a big way. Reuters reports that Apple and Twentieth Century Fox will announce such a deal that will let consumers rent Fox’s movies via Apple’s iTunes online store. It is a significant move and if followed by other movie studios would change the $9 billion movie rental business in the US. After the news Netflix and Blockbuster shares are down 4.5% and 4.8% respectively.

Movie downloads are a natural progression for the iTunes store, especially now that Amazon and others have entered the music download arena with DRM free files. Hollywood is definitely in search for new distribution channels but I would have thought that if iTunes were successful with movies, the DVD rental middlemen would be replaced by a single more formidable one. As always, pricing and the ease of viewing the movies with mobile devices and at home theaters will be the critical factors that will tip the balance one way or another.

Link: Reuters

Nissan GT-R speed limiter removed only in Japanese tracks

The Nissan GT-R is a dream car, with a character distinguishing it completely from Italian and German exotica. Unfortunately, modern electronics come to spoil completely driving satisfaction limit the car’s top speed to a sad 180 km/h (111 mph) in Japan and 250 km/h (156 mph) in the US -and I suspect in Europe. The only consolation for Japanese users is the fact that the car’s ECU uses GPS to detect Japanese tracks and remove the speed limit. This feature is not present outside Japan…

The 180 km/h is simply unacceptable when a modern car with a 2 liter turbodiesel engine can easily surpass 200 km/h. Acceleration, deceleration and hard cornering are surely at the heart of driving pleasure but paying for a sports car means getting the full performance deal. German car manufacturers use the 250 km/h limit for years now, the result being a thriving tuning industry. So next time you go to your Nissan dealership for your new GT-R do not just calculate the cost of extras but also add the cost of your tuning specialist…

Link: Autoblog

Russia’s GLONASS again at full strength, competes with GPS and Galileo

Russia’s GLONASS is a little bit like a mirror of the country’s state. GLONASS was planned in the 70s as a military system to compete with the American GPS. The disintegration of the all powerful Soviet Union and the following lack of money and neglect in Russia in the 90s led to a system operating far from its originally planned full strength. Much needed new satellites were never launched to complete the required number of twenty four -21 plus 3 spare ones like for GPS. Coverage remained patchy and never covered the globe, it centered instead on more urgent Russian needs.

It’s the end for Sony rear-projection TVs

Rear-projection TVs were major show off tools back in the days of CRT TVs. They could offer large sizes at affordable cost. Personally I never liked their picture quality so never went anywhere near them and do not feel much sorrow now that Sony has decided to pull the plug in all related production sites. Combined with a similar move by all other rear-projection TV manufacturers, it means that now this technology is more or less display history.

Since SED displays by Canon and Toshiba don’t make it to the market, the game is LCD vs plasma vs OLED. For the time being OLED screens are too small and expensive to challenge LCD and plasma but with R&D funding from large names behind them the battle will be anything but boring. Now all that manufacturers and electronics chains have to do is unload older stock to unsuspecting and non-informed customers as we approach the 2008 Olympic Games to make room on the shelves for the new LED backlight stuff for Christmas 2008… :-)

Link 1: Engadget

Link 2: Reuters