CES 2006 Photoblog and News

We are touring the various pre show day press events and taking pictures along the way. Be sure to follow our PDAToday PhotoBlog for constant updates starting tomorrow. Today we attended the Pioneer press event and saw several interesting products coming out.

Notable items included the Pioneer 50” Plasma that is HD 1080P for a mere $10K, the Elite Blueray DVD Player with an MSRP of $1800, PC Blueray player DVD recorder coming out soon for $999.

Also of interest was the Pioneer in-dash GPS navigation system with bluetooth and XM/Sirius satellite radio and they even managed to include enhanced iPod support.

At the left you will see a picture of the Motorola Moto Q Windows Smartphone coming soon, Motorola girl not included

A little later we will be meeting with a bout a dozen GPS navigation vendors...stay tuned!

Matsushita to sell 42-inch full high def plasma TV

Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. said on Tuesday it planned to launch the world's first 42-inch plasma TVs with full high definition panels on April 27 in Japan.

Matsushita hopes to challenge liquid crystal display TV makers by providing a better lineup of full high definition models, which can produce images with a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels.

Matsushita is the world's largest plasma TV maker and competes with Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Sharp Corp. in the $84 billion flat TV market.

Plasma TV makers already offer 50-inch and larger full high-definition models, but it has been difficult and often costly to pack this technology into smaller models.

Reuters Pictures

The 42-inch TVs from Matsushita are expected to sell for 410,000 yen to 430,000 yen ($3,449-$3,617), the Osaka-based company said.

It plans to manufacture 25,000 units of them a month for the domestic market. The Japan launch will soon be followed by overseas debuts.

Matsushita's plasma TV sales came to an equivalent of about 4 million 42-inch models in the year ended March 31, and the company aims to boost those sales by 50 percent to 6 million units in the current business year, a company spokesman said.

Matsushita, which controls one-third of the global plasma TV market according to DisplaySearch, plans to bring its $1.5 billion plasma display plant onstream by summer 2007 to take on the LCD camp.

This is why im hot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is why I'm HOT!

The World's Smallest Thinker

Using lasers, Korean researchers have crafted a microscopic version of Rodin's famed sculpture "The Thinker" just about twice the size of a red blood cell at 20 millionths of a meter high [image].

Muscles and even toes are visible in the tiny model.

The new technique could help develop novel biosensors and other complicated microscopic devices, the scientists said.

For more than a decade, researchers worldwide have experimented with lasers to fabricate elaborate 3-D creations. They start with a resin that hardens when exposed to certain frequencies of light. Using overlapping beams of lasers, researchers can then solidify a sculpture with details measuring less than a wavelength of visible light in size.

While the skins of these sculptures are hard, their innards remain soft. This leaves them vulnerable to surface tension, the same force that causes water to bead up into droplets. The surface tension of the fluid in which the sculptures are immersed can cause them to deform.

These sculptures can by made stronger by increasing the power of the laser beams or leaving the beams on longer. This makes each spot on the surface of these sculptures extend deeper, yielding a thicker skin. Unfortunately, each spot now also takes up more surface area, sacrificing detail.

To solve this problem mechanical engineer Dong-Yol Yang at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea, and his colleagues use multiple laser beams focused at and below each spot on the surface of thea sculpture [graphic]. The result is a thicker skin without each spot taking up more surface area.

With this new approach, the scientists scanned a replica of Rodin's popular masterpiece "The Thinker," originally sculpted in 1880, and created a version 93,000 times smaller than the roughly 6-foot-high original.

Cutting-edge Technology: The World's Smallest Scissors

Scientists in Japan have created what may be the smallest scissors in the world—molecular clippers that are opened and closed with light.

These novel shears could help control genes, proteins and other molecules in the body, researchers said.

The scissors are just three nanometers, or billionths of a meter, long. This makes them more than 100 times smaller than a wavelength of violet light.

Just like real shears, the molecular device that researcher Takuzo Aida at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have designed consists of a pivot, handles and blades. The team presented their findings today at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Chicago.

The blades are made of rings of carbon and hydrogen known as phenyl groups.

The pivot is a molecule dubbed chiral ferrocene, which essentially sandwiches a round iron atom between two carbon plates. The carbon plates can rotate freely around the iron atom.

The handles are organic chemical structures dubbed phenylene groups. These are tethered together with azobenzene, a molecule that reacts to light. Shining visible light on the scissors makes the azobenzene expand and drive the handles apart, closing the clipper blades. Shining ultraviolet rays on the shears has the opposite effect.

The researchers say their scissors could help firmly grasp molecules like pincers and manipulate them, say by twisting them back and forth.

"This work is the first example where a molecular machine mechanically manipulates other molecules by light," Aida said in a prepared statement. "This work is an important step for the future development of molecular robotics."

The researchers are now working on larger scissors that researchers can manipulate remotely. Such clippers might find use in the body, operated using near-infrared light that "can reach deep parts of the body," said researcher Kazushi Kinbara at the University of Tokyo.

All About Nanotechnology

So what is Nanotechnology you ask? Nanotechnology is defined as the science and technology of building electronic circuits and devices from single atoms and molecules, or the branch of engineering that deals with things smaller than 100 nanometers.

A nanometer is about ten thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. Nanotechnology deals with and manipulates anything that occurs within the scale of a nanometer.

Nanotechnology is an extension of the field of materials science. Materials science departments at colleges and universities around the world are leading the way in current nanotechnology breakthroughs. The term Nanotechnology is also often used to describe the interdisciplinary fields of science devoted to the study of the nanoscale phenomena utilized in Nanotechnology.

The future benefits that nanotechnology research could serve include advances in telecommunications, information technology, healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

For additional information on Nanotechnology, what it consists of as well as its current and future impacts on the world of science, simply select any Nanotechnology article or other interactive

Wierd Stuff

Wierd Stuff is Seen

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is a field of applied science and technology covering a broad range of topics. The main unifying theme is the control of matter on a scale smaller than 1 micrometer, normally between 1-100 nanometers, as well as the fabrication of devices on this same length scale. It is a highly multidisciplinary field, drawing from fields such as colloidal science, device physics, and supramolecular chemistry. Much speculation exists as to what new science and technology might result from these lines of research. Some view nanotechnology as a marketing term that describes pre-existing lines of research applied to the sub-micron size scale.

Despite the apparent simplicity of this definition, nanotechnology actually encompasses diverse lines of inquiry. Nanotechnology cuts across many disciplines, including colloidal science, chemistry, applied physics, materials science, and even mechanical and electrical engineering. It could variously be seen as an extension of existing sciences into the nanoscale, or as a recasting of existing sciences using a newer, more modern term. Two main approaches are used in nanotechnology: one is a "bottom-up" approach where materials and devices are built from molecular components which assemble themselves chemically using principles of molecular recognition; the other being a "top-down" approach where nano-objects are constructed from larger entities without atomic-level control.

The impetus for nanotechnology has stemmed from a renewed interest in colloidal science, coupled with a new generation of analytical tools such as the atomic force microscope (AFM) and the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Combined with refined processes such as electron beam lithography and molecular beam epitaxy, these instruments allow the deliberate manipulation of nanostructures, and in turn led to the observation of novel phenomena. The manufacture of polymers based on molecular structure, or the design of computer chip layouts based on surface science are examples of nanotechnology in modern use. Despite the great promise of numerous nanotechnologies such as quantum dots and nanotubes, real applications that have moved out of the lab and into the marketplace have mainly utilized the advantages of colloidal nanoparticles in bulk form, such as suntan lotion, cosmetics, protective coatings, and stain resistant clothing.

Inspector Gadget theme song, solo acoustic guitar

This is my arrangement of the "Inspector Gadget" TV show theme song. I noticed YouTube has a few electric-guitar versions but doesn't have any acoustic versions.

Mvix MX-760HD Wireless HD Media Center

Last Spring, I had the opportunity to review the MV-5000U Multimedia Player from Mvix. Except for a couple issues like a noisy fan and no networking features, I really liked this device. It is one year later and we now have the MX-760HD. This unit addresses all of the complaints that I had with the first generation device and goes even further to add a few major enhancements.

Hardware Specs

Security Encryption: Wireless WEP Architecture
TV-System Compatibility: NTSC / PAL / AUTO
Standards: Wireless, LAN, USB-host, USB2.0
Protocol: 802.1b/g or MIMO (TCP/IP: DHCP client mode, Manual IP mode)
Port LAN: 10/100 Mbps RJ45 LAN Port
Media: Hi Definition Video Decoding
Supported Video Formats: DivX (3/4/5), AVI, Xvid, MPEG, MPG, VCD(DAT), DVD(VOB, IFO), WMV(WMV-9), ASF(WMV-9), TP, TS, TRP
Pixels / Resolution: 1920 x 1080i (Hi Definition decoding)
Supported Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, PCM, AC3, DTS (pass-thru and downmixing)
Features: Attach External USB HDD, flash drive or DVDROM
Supported Image Formats: BMP, JPEG/JPG, PNG
A-V OUT Options: DVI, Component, Composite, S-Video, Optical
Screen Aspect Ratio: 4:3 or 16:9
Subtitle Format Compatibility: SMI, SRT, SUB
HDD Compatibility: 3.5-inch IDE PATA, UATA or ATA
HDD Format Compatibility: NTFS or FAT32
LCD Display: 128 X 64 mm
Power: AC-DC Adapter 12V, 2.5A
Dimensions: 187mm(w) x 193mm(h) x 58mm(d) or 7.4"(w) x 7.6"(h) x 2.3"(d)

Package Contents

Mvix (MX-760HD) Wireless HD Media Center
Screwless Stand for Mounting
IR remote control with AAA Batteries
5dBi Wireless Antenna
Audio / Video cable
USB 2.0 High-Speed Cable
AC Power Adapter
Manual (English) and Driver CD

This player doesn't look that much different than the previous version. It's constructed of metal and plastic and is still designed to sit up vertically with a plastic stand to keep it from falling over.