Eideard

 
I want to replace a couple of our window with these. Wow!

Thanks, Ursarodinia

When it comes to display technologies nothing says “cool” like a transparent display. While we’ve seen a number of prototypes, such as TDK’s flexible OLED display, pop up at trade shows in the last couple of years, Samsung has announced it has already started mass production of a 22-inch transparent LCD panel.

Because they rely on ambient light instead of the usual back lighting, the transparent panels consume 90 percent less electricity than conventional LCD panels. But despite the fact the new panels are starting to roll off the Samsung production lines, it will probably still be a while before transparent panels make it onto our desktops…

No doubt reflecting the expected high price of the transparent panels – and possibly while the boffins at Samsung rack their brains for possible everyday home and office applications – Samsung is touting the possibilities for the panels for use in advertising in shop windows and outdoor billboards. It also says corporations and schools could put the panels to use as an interactive communication device…

Just the kind of tech that I believe will be easy to commercialize. Americans aren’t especially familiar with the ubiquitous LCD screen/panels facing every form of transportation around the world – from foot traffic to underground waiting platforms – but, it seems an obvious step to replace fully transparent glass with nothing more than a single painted or glowing sign with something that offers the capacity for motion and slide shows.

Even with the much publicized release of the Galaxy Tab this week, it looks like the real battle to upend the iPad won’t happen until next year. Lenovo’s chief executive confirmed that its LePad tablet won’t hit the market until 2011. LG also pushed back the release of its tablet until next year. Both are waiting to launch their tablets with Android Honeycomb, the upcoming release that is designed for tablets. Meanwhile, those who want RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook or a webOS-based tablet will also have to wait until early next year.

This isn’t to say that competitors aren’t lining up offerings right now. Samsung is predicting it can sell 1 million Galaxy Tab devices running Android 2.2 by the end of this year. Acer is expected to unveil new tablets running Android later this month. And Dell has released the 5-inch Streak, which runs an older version of Android.

But Google has said that, currently, Android isn’t designed for tablets. And it looks like Gingerbread, the update that is scheduled to be released any day now, won’t be optimized for tablets. So Android tablets, even if they’re released this year, probably won’t hit their stride until Google releases Honeycomb.

Right now, manufacturers are torn between moving forward and trying to get some traction like Samsung is attempting to do, or waiting until the platform matures, but risk Apple zooming ahead again with the iPad 2. That some like LG and Lenovo are sitting it out suggests they’d rather nail it the first time with the right software rather than put out something that initially disappoints…

The iPad will surely get serious competition and will undoubtedly lose its 95 percent share of the tablet market. But it looks like we’ll need to wait for next year when Android tablets, along with a BlackBerry PlayBook and a webOS tablet from HP, can make a real run at the iPad.

Many of these firms make it sound like they’re getting better at responding to Apple’s R&D opening new marketplaces. I’m not as convinced. It takes a great deal of process management to accomplishment a complete rollout for a breakthrough product like the iPad. It also helps to have an infrastructure like the App Store + apps + designers ready and willing to design for the new platform.

The only product I see stealing market share from the iPad is this. My wife’s arrives Monday.

Nine chip makers have been fined 331 million euros by European Union regulators for illegally fixing prices.

The companies involved are Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya.

A 10th chip maker, Micron, was also part of the price-fixing cartel but escaped a fine in return for alerting the competition authorities.

The chips – DRAMS – are used in popular items such as personal computers.

Samsung received the biggest single fine of 146m euros. The second biggest was 57m euros, which was levied on Germany’s Infineon…

The cartel, in operation between 1998 and 2002, involved a “network of contacts” who shared secret information. They colluded to set prices for DRAM chips sold to major PC makers and server manufacturers…

All but one of the companies, Germany’s Infineon, are non-EU businesses.

But, they surely were making a bundle from their sales into the European Union.

The next obvious question? What’s happening with these firms in the United States?

Being a retired and cranky old geek, TV tends to be a significant but smallish portion of my life. I’ve been with DirecTV as source since about the 3rd month of their retail existence back in 1994 – done the occasional bit of beta-testing – and have always appreciated easy access to movies and sports. The latter, in recent years, consumed with proper football, mostly the Premier League in England.

So, number 1 on my hit parade was the launch of D12, last night. I posted a neat short video the other day; but, last night was the big event with final separation of the broadcast satellite happening at 2:32:00 AM MST, this morning.

Number 2 on my hit parade was a service call from the sole remaining TV repair service in Santa Fe County – the nearest in 50 miles. Coca TV is near and dear to me – not because I’ve ever needed much work from them; but, Mr. Coca retired around the same time I did. And I did some work on his home when we both were working. Small world syndrome.

Anyway, Emilio cranked out dynamite service – arrived with the right tools and knowledge to change out capacitors on the power supply to my Samsung LCD-HDTV. A problem happening country-wide which Samsung has yet to acknowledge. Which is why [a] I will join whatever class action suit arises to recoup the cost of this service and [b] my next TV set – when I move to something LED backlit – will be LG and not Samsung.

Number 3 on my TV hit parade? Emilio’s new truck.

He rolled up the driveway in a shiny white Ford Transit Connect. Only 2000 miles on it, so far. Virtually all city driving and he’s averaging 24mpg. He loves it and I’m impressed. Beaucoup room inside – enough cubic space to compensate, frankly, for the bed of my pickup truck if I ever traded in on one. But, not until they bring them over with the small turbo-diesel.

UPDATE: The Class Action suit against Samsung for cheaping out on capacitors for some of their LCD TV’s has begun.

Samsung, the world’s second largest phone maker globally after Nokia, has announced Bada as its own new smartphone platform which it hopes to use to gain entry into the sophisticated phone market.

Samsung’s Bada, the Korean word for “ocean,” is reportedly built on top of Linux and is expected to be released with an open SDK next month, with the first Bada phones to be introduced early next year. Unlike Symbian or Android, Samsung appears to be developing its new mobile platform and software market solely for the benefit of its own phones, much like RIM, Apple, and Palm.

So, if Samsung expands their tie-in with Microsoft and does a special search engine for this smartphone it will be: Bada-Bing!

The giant South Korean company Samsung Electronics has said it will invest more than $4 billion to cut emissions from its plants.

It said it hoped that by the year 2013, the greenhouse gas emissions from its manufacturing facilities will be reduced by 50%. It also wants to develop its range of more energy-efficient products, such as new refrigerators and air conditioners.

The company’s green initiative follows the South Korean government’s plan to pursue an environmentally friendly agenda.

South Korea is the world’s tenth biggest producer of greenhouse gases and has vowed to spend $84 billion over the next five years on improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.

The government is on board. The largest corporations in the land are on board. At a minimum, pollution will be diminished and future generations of Koreans will grow up in a healthier environment.

None of this is rocket science. None of this bankrupted the leaders of their economy. What’s wrong with this picture? Don’t they have an equivalent of the Republican Party?

Let’s not jump to any conclusions. Maybe they just want to redecorate the Cupertino campus, and they thought covering the walls in 8Gb (gigabit, not byte) flash chips would be original and visually appealing.

Actually, that’s probably the last possible reason Apple recently placed a massive order for 100 million 8Gb chips from their suppliers, most of which will come from Samsung, according to DigiTimes, the source of the report. Yes, that is a lot of chips, and apparently the whole industry will feel the strain as the NAND flash supply will be pretty tight up until the end of May, thanks to fairly large orders by Sony and Nokia, in addition to Apple.

In case you didn’t guess, Apple is most likely going to be using the new chips for the new iPhone that’s been all but confirmed as due this June in time for WWDC ‘09. The tiny chips can be combined by Apple into larger configurations of 16GB and 32GB sizes, which is what most are expecting from the new iPhone models. For those still skeptical about the new iPhone’s imminent launch, the same thing happened last year around this time before the release of the iPhone 3G, except that time the order was only half the size. Which doesn’t mean Apple is planning on producing double the launch units, but that those units will almost definitely have double the storage capacity.

No one on the frugal side of the family is considering an iPhone until they get down to that $99 price point. Still – though smartphones are the strongest portion of the cellular market right now – that’s a lot of confidence on Apple’s part.

When it comes to green products, people are interested but skeptical.

Buyers these days may not be as swayed by the green attributes of a product as they are by price. But at CES, green was everywhere. It was part of the stock press conference script to start off with comments on the dismal economy, plow on to product announcements and end with a message about environmental initiatives.

Some companies found a natural way to integrate green messages with economic ones: Introduce products that consume less energy. Samsung, which practices what it preaches by …

… automatically turning off the lights in its Korean offices during the lunch hour, introduced at CES a line of LED televisions that consume 40% less power than LCD TVs. Panasonic showed a Blu-ray player that uses 50% less power than its previous model. And Hewlett-Packard is introducing printers that switch on only when a print job is sent. The average printer is actively printing for just 15 minutes a day but is usually not turned off, gobbling up energy. HP’s next-generation printers will turn themselves off after sitting idle for a few minutes…

With consumers being more budget conscious, however, the better pitch for now may be the fringe benefits. Samsung’s LED TV, for example, sucks up less power, but the LED lighting creates a brighter screen than LCD TVs for a better contrast ratio that makes images appear more vivid. Said John Godfrey, Samsung’s vice president of government affairs, “We call it the TV that lets you have your cake and eat it too.”

It’s just a matter of coming full circle for me. Growing up in a factory town through World War 2, being frugal was a necessity and a social positive. Now, it’s a useful trait – a progressive attitude unless you’re proud, somehow, of wasting money.

To the know-nothings who lost the recent election and more – in their narrow minds, being Green makes you the new Black, as well.