Cell phones and TVs converging with the Internet? That's so 2008. The next big tech trend may be the marriage of computer technology to your car or truck. This month, Hyundai is launching a system that warns motorists when they drift out of the lane they're traveling in. Another manufacturer has developed pedestrian-detection software that works with heat-seeking cameras to alert drivers when someone is in their path.
Malaysia is zooming in on forests with a satellite in order to fight illegal logging which its government says is harming the major timber exporting country, a report said Sunday. Darus Ahmad, deputy director-general with the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency, said the "eye in the sky" programme was put in place in October.
Toshiba said Wednesday that it will showcase a 512GB solid-state drive at the Consumer Electronics Show next month and begin shipments in the second quarter of 2009. To date, this would be one of the largest-capacity solid-state drives for use in laptops and come close to matching the size of mobile hard-disk drives.
Toshiba said it is releasing a broad family of "fast read/write SSDs" based on 43-nanometer Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash technology that will be showcased at CES. MLC technology allows solid-state drive makers to deliver higher capacity drives at lower prices.
You can't really blame technology executives and pundits for not wanting to go too far out on a limb in making prognostications and predictions about 2009.
The world tech companies will operate in will be pretty awful, but no one knows just how bad things will get: The global nature of the recession - and the dollars, euros and yuan governments are pumping into their local markets - simply is without precedent.
With the widespread availability of broadband connections, the internet is now being used to download more files than ever before. However, when large numbers of people download the same file from a single place it can lead to sluggish downloads or even result in websites crashing under the weight of too many users.
Rejoice, those of you with a "Comes with Music" subscription. You'll now be able to strip the DRM off the tracks that, remember, you've paid for - and use them whenever and wherever you like. In all honesty, I'm surprised it took this long.
The software you'll need is Tunebite. It costs £17.50 (or free, see below), and works by playing back the song at a very high speed, and then copying the data that comes out onto an MP3 file. It's a bit like holding up a tape recorder next to your speakers, but retaining all the quality of the original file.
If someone at the till is flashing their BMW car keys, they might just be showing off. Or they might be paying for their goods with that could be called the BMW car key credit card.
A one-eyed San Francisco artist says she wants to install a webcam in her empty socket so she can record her life. Tanya Vlach, 35, challenged engineers on her blog site to come up with a "sci-fi" substitute for her eye, which she lost in a car accident in 1996.
But she has a few specifications: the "eye cam" must be able to adapt to changes in light, blink to turn on or off and have easy control over zoom and focus. Ms Vlach envisages it as Bluetooth compatible, with a 3X optical zoom and have room enough to fit a memory card.
THE USB Implementers Forum will formally announce the technical specifications of the next generation of Universal Serial Bus connectivity at a conference in San Jose, California, next week.
Despite a difficult birth – hampered by infighting and political shenanigans between the big players, including Intel Nvidia and AMD – the new standard is expected to be something in the order of ten times faster than the current USB 2.0 specification.
Lithium secondary batteries for portable electronic devices that can last eight times longer than existing batteries have been developed in Korea.
Prof. Cho Jae-phil of the Department of Applied Chemistry at Hanyang University said he and his team of researchers had developed cathode materials that can boost the storage capacity of lithium secondary batteries eight-fold. The batteries are commonly used in notebook computers, mobile phones and other portable electronic devices.
