Silicon Nanowires to Boost Laptop Battery Life to 20 Hours
By Robert | January 9, 2008
Researchers at Stanford discovered a clever way to utilize silicon nanowires to reinvent regular rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that usually power laptops, video cameras, mobile phones, iPods and various other similar devices. Research was led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering and it highlights a new version that actually produces 10 times the amount of regular electricity that exists in lithium-ion. This basically means that a laptop that was previously able to run 2 hours on a full charge could now get up to 20 hours, something that was previously only a happy thought for businessmen and regular users alike. According to Cui, his exact words were that this research brought a result that “is not a small improvement, it’s a revolutionary development”.
Another interesting thing is that this breakthrough could also bring in the attention of car manufacturers. Nanowire technology combined with Lithium Ion can be utilized in offices and homes in order to store electricity generated by solar panels. Cui added that the technology can be brought to life really quick because of the mature infrastructure that is behind silicon. Technically speaking, the electrical storage capacity of Li-ion batteries is limited to the amount of lithium that can be held in the anode, typically made of carbon. Silicon comes with a higher capacity than carbon but will also bring in one flaw. Silicon has the property of swelling as it absorbs lithium atoms that are positively charged while charging, while shrinking during use. This change can lead to the silicon pulverizing, thus degrading the performance of the battery. Such a problem is eliminated with the use of nanotechnology and use of silicon nanowires. They do not fracture while swelling so this solves the problem. Cui said that a patent application has already been filed and we can expect production to start once it is approved and a manufacturer is contracted.
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Penryn-Based Notebooks to be Released
By Robert | January 9, 2008
The new Penryn notebooks have been leaked and Notebook Italia is responsible for posting some insider specs. Intel’s 45 nm Penryn based server and desktop based processors were released a few months ago and on January 6 we can expect the new Intel Penryn-based notebook processor to surface. The good news for us tech geeks is that we do not have to wait until the official January’s Consumer Electronics Show for details issued by Intel as notebook manufacturers already started leaking various details on upcoming Penryn-based notebooks.
First on the list is Acer, which will launch 8 new such notebooks in January. They will range from a 12.1 inch Aspire 2920 (coming with a Core 2 Duo T8300 processor and 320 GB HDD) to the much more impressive 20.1 inch Aspire 9920G (coming with NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT GPU, a Core 2 Duo T8100 processor and 500 GB of storage space). You might also opt in for various other Acer notebooks that come in various screen sizes. Fujitsu will also launch two new Penryn-based notebooks, the Amilo Pi 2550 and the Amilo Xi 2428. The second one comes with a better processor and both have 2 GB of DDR2 memory and a 15.4 inch WXGA screen. Sony also comes strong to the table with 5 new VAIO models that range from the 13.3 inch VAIO SZ71XN/C to the 17.1 inch VAIO AR61ZU. There are also various specs when it comes to hardware but the fact is that this is just the first wave of Penryn linked announcements and we do expect a lot to appear including Dell, Asus and HP/Compaq. The leak was expected and now we do have it although we can expect something special to have been left out. This means that we must also watch the official statements made at CEO in January.
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LimeWire and BitTorrent Dominating the P2P Market
By Robert | January 9, 2008
Recent statistics released have caused some uproar when talking about music and movie downloading software. A new report issued by Digital Music News and BigChampagne showed us that iTunes is not the most popular such program around. LimeWire stands out as one of the most looked after software with a lot more user support than previously thought of. We thus see that all personal computers that have a peer 2 peer client installed makes out a huge deal – 35 percent. LimeWire holds around 46 percent of them all, which translates in around 18 percent of all computers having the software installed. This means that it is the leading P2P client available. We can easily say that the darknet makes up for the majority of media downloads and piracy is not likely to go down in the future. One of the reasons why this happens is the price of media content. One iTunes song costs 99 cents. If we do the math we can easily see that filling up one iPod does cost a lot of money.
The major labels are constantly trying to increase the price paid for each song download and if we take a look at the data mentioned above, this is not a good idea. Also, another report pointed out the fact that BitTorrent is the leading P2P protocol when talking about nighttime P2P traffic. This can either mean that this client is more popular or that it is used to download more and/or larger sized files. The truth of the mater is that media price is still too high for the regular user and the capacity of storage we see in media players is continuously rising. A current generation iPod would cost an amount of around 5 digits in order to fill and with the possibility of getting it all free through P2P, although illegally, we can only think that a price that becomes higher would mean even more people turning towards LimeWire and BitTorrent.
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Google vs Hyperphrase – Still no Winner
By Robert | January 9, 2008
The War between Google and Hyperphrase Technologies is still going on although Google did gain one victory. The bad news for them is that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit only upheld Google’s request of summary judgment in a partial note while remanding a part of the case for reconsideration. For those that are not aware, this is just the latest round of a battle that started in 2006. The two companies are fighting over who owns the intellectual property that stands behind the AutoLink feature you can notice in Google Toolbar. Hyperphrase Technologies sued Google for patent infringement and Google responded with filing for summary judgment in November 2006. After receiving it in December, Hyperphrase did not agree and appealed it. The result is both companies going back into district court to re-examine AutoLink.
In order to understand this patent case you need to hold basic knowledge of how AdSense and AutoLink work. Those that have Google Toolbar know that AutoLink is included and is a tool that scans a loaded web page and identifies certain character strings. If it detects something that seems to bee a valid character string, it will link it to a relevant URL. AdSense also scans the web page and analyzes it. It then cross-references the keywords found with the keywords in the advertising database and then the results are re-analyzed in order to select with advertisement should be displayed. The original district court ruling stated that AdSense does not infringe HyperPhrase’s patents. On the other hand, the topic at hand still remains AutoLink and at the rate the current battle is going, who knows when a positive answer (and final) will be released? With all the appeal and re-appeals possible, we might as well simply use AutoLink and wait till it might disappear from the toolbar.
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Microsoft and DirecTV Might Actually Bring Something Out
By Robert | January 9, 2008
The possible collaboration between DirecTV and Microsoft has been announced in 2006 but no results have appeared yet. A lot of people wanted to utilize the Media Center DVR platform combined with the satellite TV service but nothing really happened. Now we finally might have something as some sources pointed out that the project is still alive. Rumors have it that Microsoft is currently testing for DirecTV and Sky TV solutions in the United Kingdom and they are hoping that different other satellite providers might come on board. We have reports that Microsoft is currently working on TV tuners that are designed to offer Premium TV experience provided by “world class Satellite TV network operators.”
We also know that Microsoft needs to support H.264 HD because DirecTV announced some time ago that they were shifting their high definition content to this codec, backing out of MPEG-2. Also, we need to think about pay per views as all operators will want this included as a good revenue earner. The truth is that these satellite operators do not really like services like TiVo because of not being able to work with PPVs. When talking about the Europe contact that Microsoft might be using, we have no confirmation but according to solid speculation, SKY TV might be the beneficiary. As we could expect, no official statement was released. Different sources highlighted the fact that the biggest problems noticed were corporate and not technical. The truth is that, no matter the real reason behind these problems, it sure took a long time for things to develop. We still do not have no official word on a release date so we might end up having to wait even more.
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