Lithium-ion battery technology is in some way revolutionary because it made possible the storage of a huge amount of energy in compact battery sizes and eliminated memory effect. These characteristics made it ideal for use in compact-sized consumer electronics. The shelf life of today’s lithium-ion batteries is typically 5 years, offering about 5,000 charge and discharge cycles. But a company from Japan named Eamex has just developed a way to increase the charge/ discharge cycle to over 10,000 and shelf life to 20 years! What Eamex did is they made the tin inside the battery sturdy by using a new alloy. This new material can withstand more the strain caused by the continuous charging and discharging cycles that the battery is subjected to. And when will this new battery be available in the market? Eamex has announced that this innovative product will hit the stores as early as end of 2010.
Smartphones are now not just accessories but are already necessity gadgets that one must have to always stay connected. Who doesn’t know of the iPhone and the BlackBerry and did nor hear about Google’s Nexus One? For sure, smartphones have made our lives easier without having to bring separate cell phones and laptop computers when we go mobile. But one company from Canada, Allerta, have pushed the technology a step further by putting some of the smartphone functions into a wrist watch. The company branded the gadget as inPulse and could be the world’s first smartwatch. Dummy models were shown at CES and features include support for displaying SMS, caller ID and yes, BlackBerry messages. The inPulse though, is not a stand-alone device but an accessory gadget that will allow you to view information from your BlackBerry smartphone. It is reasonably priced at $149 and the first batch of shipment is scheduled in February 2010.
D-Link has just introduced at CES 2010 the Boxee Box, a TV set top box powered by the popular multimedia software, the Boxee. The latter is a cross-platform application (PC, Mac and Linux) that lets users watch movies and TV shows from the Internet and get connected with peers through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. D-Link is bringing this experience to the next level by housing the application in a hardware device with additional features like HDMI, RCA and S/PDIF audio/ video ports for connection to HDTVdisplays. It also has dual USB ports, an SD card slot, 1Gb Ethernet port and built-in Wi-Fi. With the Boxee Box, consumers can now watch their favorite movies and TV shows and get connected to their friends in one platform without leaving their HDTV set. The gadget is expected to be shipped within the first half of 2010 at less than $200 retail price.
Lady Gaga, one of the most popular singers in today pop music makes her appearance at CES. She will representing Polaroid to present new imaging products. Ironically, Lady Gaga appears to be one more the more unique and interesting images of them all. Gaga designed some headphones that will be displayed.
Help out the environment as well as help yourself. Sell your personal electronics, your cell phones, laptops, computers, and other gadgets. If you are tired of your Iphone, Ipod, any old cell phone, make money getting rid of it, dont just throw it away.
The website to go to is http://www.gazelle.com/, the easiest way to recycle your gadgets.
You can also buy the used equipment as well. If you have a tight budget you may find some good deals, why pay full price if you can get a significant discount.
Staples recently updated their site. Some new elements made their site nicer, but the website still has ways to go. Today, the website was down most of the business day. This is a very bad sign that there are problems in the IT department. For a major company like Staples to have their website down more than an hour, it either means the IT department doesn’t know how host their site correctly, or there is ILL communications between the IT and business departments.
This isnt good news if you were thinking of buying their stock for 2010. This is a warning Staples is going to have a rough 2010 year.
I had to buy some paper and pens today, didnt have time for Staples to get their act together so I bought it at Office Max instead.
This issue may not be a concern at present but any benefit it would offer is a welcome development. The Blu-ray disc looks set for a boost from its present 25 GB per layer capacity to 33.4 GB per layer. Sony and Panasonic are busily working together on a new method to increase the capacity by employing a new Blu-ray media evaluation scheme called the Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation evaluation index or i-MLSE. This is a new method of estimating read error rate of discs and will still use the current Blu-ray optics. i-MSE is a complex process but recent advancements in hardware has made possible for it to be used in real time in Blu-ray discs. This development was announced at the International Symposium on Optical Memory (ISOM) 2009 held last October 2009. There was no timeline yet for the rollout but as per industry sources, Sony will lobby to the Blu-ray Disc Association, of which it is the leading member, the widespread adoption of i-MLSE.
One of the most anticipated developments in the computer industry this year is the Tablet. The tablet that we usually know is the flat surface input device where we draw images using a stylus, similar to what we do when we draw images with a pencil on a paper. The tablet PC more commonly known now is a slate-shaped portable computer with a touchscreen display that can be operated on by using a stylus or the fingertip. An external keyboard is an option and is usually connected either through USB or Bluetooth. Early applications were in specialized fields like factories, health care and restaurants. The Tablet was in recent years embraced by leading PC manufacturers such as Acer, Asus, Fujitsu, HP and Lenovo to name a few, which made it possible for the product to find its way in consumer hands. Probably the most anticipated development that brought much excitement to consumers these days is the news that Apple will be coming out with its own version of the tablet that is rumored to be called the iSlate. What worries other vendors is it is expected to somehow take a slice of the market not only from competing tablet products but also from related products like the e-book reader and netbooks.
Following the success of the Apple Iphone, Apple’s new invention is The Apple Tablet. It has a 10 inch screen, and when I saw it looked just like a giant iPhone, with a black back. The tablet is as a secondary screen/touchpad for iMacs and MacBooks.
Its coming out late January, so get your credit cards out, its right around the corner. It will cost between $700-$1000 according to rumors on the Internet.
Twitter has recently purchased Mixer Labs, a company that develops location-based applications. The micro-blogging service has purchased the company for an undisclosed sum, to make location broadcasting as an important part of its service. The service is enhanced when current location is added to tweets, resulting to new and valuable services such as finding friends and local businesses; or finding location of breaking news and many more. Twitter does not want to be left behind in offering location-based services as other providers are doing it like Google Maps and Facebook. Mixer Labs has a portfolio that includes a number geo-location products that they will be bringing along to Twitter. These include Reverse Geodecoder (use in finding a city or location with latitudes and longitudes), Media Layers (runs other media services like Twitter, into a geo-specific context) and Places Finder (used for more complex, local geo-queries). The Mixer Labs purchase can also be said as one that took consideration of its talents. Both of its founders are ex-Googlers who had major contributions in the development of Google apps like Google Mobile, Google Toolbar and Google Gears.
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February 7, 2010 6:59 am | 
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