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 Friday, January 31, 2003
 Posted by Roberto
 7:50 PM   0 comments   

EXCERPT FROM THE UCLA INTERNET REPORT

Out of the 71.1 percent of Americans who use the Internet, 61.1 percent characterized it as "very important" or "extremely important," compared with 57.8 percent for newspapers, 50.2 percent for TV and 40 percent for radio.

The report, produced at the Center for Communication Policy at the University of California-Los Angeles, also found that Internet users are online at the expense of viewing television; Internet users watched 5.4 hours less of TV a week in 2002 than non-Internet users.

The Internet has become the place you go to find things out!

 


 Posted by Roberto
 7:41 PM   0 comments   

SONY AND ERICSSON INJECT 326 MILLION DOLLARS INTO THEIR MOBILE PHONE JOINT VENTURE

The two companies have greeted the new year with a new round of funding for their struggling mobile phone joint venture.

The venture's sales are climbing, but slowly:
.: 2001: 390 million units
.: 2002: 395 million units (115 million in Q4)
.: 2003: 435 million units are expected (+10%)

 

 Tuesday, January 21, 2003
 Posted by Roberto
 11:11 AM   0 comments   

SANYO ASSAULTING HIGH-GROWTH AND POTENTIALLY HIGH-MARGIN SECTORS

:: SANYO AND KODAK = OLEDs CELLPHONE SCREENS
Sanyo announced last week that a joint venture with Eastman Kodak would spend 20 billion yen in the next business year to start making a new type of cellphone screen, using organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), that are brighter and thinner than liquid crystal displays.

:: SANYO BOOSTS CCDs PRODUCTION
Sanyo also plans to boost its production capacity for charge-coupled devices (CCDs), chips used as "electronic film" in digital cameras and photo-taking cellphones.
Sony remains today the world's largest CCD manufacturer, but most of Sony's CCDs, are higher-end chips with millions of pixels for digital still cameras and camcorders.
Camera phone makers initially preferred complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors for their low power consumption and low cost, but Sanyo's success at cutting power use spurred many to switch to CCDs, which offer better sensitivity to light and superior picture quality.
CMOS sensor manufacturers like U.S.-based Micron Technology Inc are trying to boost picture quality to match CCDs.

Full article

 

 Saturday, January 18, 2003
 Posted by Roberto
 7:36 PM   0 comments   

THE WINDOWS MEDIA DATA SESSION TOOLKIT: A NEW CD COPY-PROTECTION TECHNIQUE

Most copy-proof CDs are designed so that they cannot be played on a PC, but often this prevents playback on portable devices and car stereos too. Last year, some resourceful software enthusiasts cracked Sony Music's proprietary technology simply by scribbling a magic marker pen around the edges of the disc, thus enabling playback on any device.

Windows Media Data Session Toolkit enables music labels to lay songs onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC. The PC layer would be laid digitally on the same disc.

:: Microsoft has invested $500 million dollars in DRM for music. Full Article

 

 Sunday, January 12, 2003
 Posted by Roberto
 1:07 PM   0 comments   

SONICblue: COOL IDEAS, COOL PRODUCTS BUT A NEW LAWSUIT

:: Sharing recorded content via broadband internet

SonicBlue (NasdaqNM:SBLU) is facing a lawsuit filed by the Hollywood studios over features in its ReplayTV digital video recorder that allow people to share programs they've recorded via a broadband Internet connection with other ReplayTV owners.

:: Mobile ReplayTV recordings

In development but not expected in 2003 is a portable personal video player that the company is working on with Intel Corp. as a way to make ReplayTV recordings mobile.

In the meantime, Sharp is currently offering a portable, personal, pocket-sized video-audio player called Sharp MT-AV1. You can order it from dynamism.com.

 

 Friday, January 10, 2003
 Posted by Roberto
 2:42 PM   0 comments   

TV: THE CENTER OF BROADBAND ENTERTAINMENT

Kunitake Ando, Sony's president and COO: "Thanks to broadband, content (movies, music and games) and technology will integrate more closely than ever in the new age" The centerpiece of Ando's stage show was Sony's array of widescreen digital and high-definition TVs and a a 24-inch television no thicker than a few sheets of paper, based on a technology called Organic Electronic Luminescence.

Ando also demonstrated a number of new upcoming products, including a new personal digital assistant in the CLIE line that features a built-in, 2-megapixel digital camera and wireless connectivity via both Bluetooth and high-speed WiFi networks. He also showed off a media server, called CoCoon, that was introduced last year in Japan and will reach the rest of the world this year. The company described CoCoon as a broadband jukebox for audio and video. A similar device, RoomLink, acts as a wireless server for pulling media recorded on a PC to a television.

Those devices, like many of Sony's products, feature security designed to protect digital media from being copied or shared beyond the uses intended by movie studios and major record labels, a key protection sought by entertainment companies.

Full article

 


 Posted by Roberto
 2:30 PM   0 comments   

SPOT: SMART PERSONAL OBJECTS TECHNOLOGY

Bill Gates announced on Wednesday that Microsoft is mounting a new push to move beyond personal computers into everyday objects using a technology Microsoft calls SPOT. SPOT-enabled watches and everyday objects such as refrigerator magnets will carry software that will allow them to display snippets of information, such as an upcoming appointment, phone numbers and weather forecasts.

The market potential is there: The global watchmaking industry churns out about a billion watches a year, or one for every six people on earth. "If we get five percent or 10 percent of people who have watches, it's a huge, huge number," Microsoft's Gates told Reuters in an interview. Middlebury, Connecticut-based Timex already sells a watch called Data Link that works with Microsoft software to retrieve scheduling and contacts information from a personal computer. Data Link works by having a special sensor on the watch read flashing bars of light on a computer monitor, much like Morse code transmitted at a distance with light signals. Microsoft announced that it was developing watches with Japan's Citizen Watch Co. Ltd. -- one of only three large global timepiece makers already selling radio-controlled clocks -- and U.S. watchmaker Fossil Inc. Microsoft plans to have its watches receive data over FM radio spectrum that it leases, a system it calls DirectBand. The watches could start at $150 and would also have features such as automatic updating from an atomic clock.

Casio's view on the MSFT announcement: Japan's Casio Computer Co Ltd., the world's top maker of digital timepieces, said "smart" watches are nothing new. The maker of the shock-resistant "G-Shock" watch and its fashionable, younger sibling the "Baby-G" said it first introduced the radio-controlled wrist watch in 1996 and plans to sell over one million "Wave-ceptor" watches this year.

Full article

 

 Thursday, January 09, 2003
 Posted by Roberto
 1:45 AM   0 comments   

XBOX CHALLENGE:
FIND A SOFTWARE SOLUTION, TO ADAPT MICROSOFT'S XBOX SO THAT IT WOULD RUN ON THE LINUX OS

Neo Project has published on its Web site that it was back and preparing new software to win the Xbox challenge, a $200,000 prize offered by Microsoft opponent Michael Robertson, now chief executive of Lindows.com.

Neo Project has set up a program that lets multiple participants donate their computer's processing power to break into the Xbox machine's 2,048-bit private encryption key that authenticates authorized software.

 

 Thursday, January 02, 2003
 Posted by Nickz#
 10:58 AM   0 comments   

NEW SMARTPHONES IN 2003

:: Compal Communications announced it's new AR-11 smartphone using Microsoft Smartphone OS. It is expected to be available in the 1stQ 2003.

:: Asustek (a PC motherboard manufacturer) announced it's first smartphone for the 2nd Q 2003 and new version of it's own-branded PDA based on Microsoft's PocketPC OS. The PDA will support both GPRS and 811.2b wireless connectivity.

:: HTC (HTC Corporation) the maker of the Orange SPV Samartphone is preparing the launch of a new smartphone for T-Mobile in 1stQ 2003. The new smartphone will be based on the first SPV design and it will also rely on Microsoft's Smartphone OS.

 
NERO wearing the Adidog shirt
 
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