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Attention will be riveted on the Olympic torch Friday during the opening ceremony of the 29th Olympiad, but in cyberspace, another torch relay is under way to promote visibility of a “sport” not yet ready for prime time in Beijing. It is the digital torch of the World Cyber Games, being passed from country to country, ultimately to land in Cologne, Germany, on Aug. 11. World Cyber Games? That’s right: pro video-game play. Before anyone snickers, remember that sports channel ESPN routinely showcases poker tournaments, which arguably involve even less athleticism than video-gaming. Indeed, competitive video-game leagues have contracts with...

AP story via Fox News. Link only Link

IBM researchers have achieved a breakthrough in photovoltaics technology that could significantly reduce the cost of harnessing the Sun's power for electricity. ------------------------------------------------------------------ IBM today announced a research breakthrough in photovoltaics technology that could significantly reduce the cost of harnessing the Sun's power for electricity. By mimicking the antics of a child using a magnifying glass to burn a leaf or a camper to start a fire, IBM scientists are using a large lens to concentrate the Sun’s power, capturing a record 230 watts onto a centimeter square solar cell, in a technology known as concentrator photovoltaics, or CPV....

Memory plus resistor may add up to longer-lasting batteries and faster-booting computers After nearly 40 years, researchers have discovered a new type of building block for electronic circuits. And there's at least a chance it will spare you from recharging your phone every other day. Scientists at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif., report in Nature that a new nanometer-scale electric switch "remembers" whether it is on or off after its power is turned off. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.)Researchers believe that the memristor, or memory resistor, might become a useful tool for constructing nonvolatile computer memory,...

PORTLAND, Ore. — The long-sought after memristor--the "missing link" in electronic circuit theory--has been invented by Hewlett Packard Senior Fellow R. Stanley Williams at HP Labs (Palo Alto, Calif.) Memristors--the fourth passive component type after resistors, capacitors and inductors--were postulated in a seminal 1971 paper in the IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory by professor Leon Chua at the University of California (Berkeley), but their first realization was just announced today by HP. According to Williams and Chua, now virtually every electronics textbook will have to be revised to include the memristor and the new paradigm it represents for electronic...

Blockbuster Inc, the No. 1 U.S. movie rental chain, said on Monday it has offered to buy electronics retailer Circuit City Stores Inc in an all-cash offer in the range of $6 per share to $8 per share Blockbuster said it made the offer in a February 17 letter to Circuit City's Chief Executive Philip Schoonover on behalf of Blockbuster's board, but that Circuit City had so far failed to provide due diligence. Blockbuster said it was making its proposal public, "because it believes the shareholders of Circuit City should have the opportunity to participate in determining the destiny of...

Walk into the Circuit City in my town, and you'll suddenly get a strange sensation. Look around...you're the only person there. Wait, someone must work here. Hello? Anyone? Then head over to Best Buy, which is packed with customers and ringing up sales.

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 4, 2008) – Superinsulation may sound like a marketing gimmick for a drafty attic or winter coat. But it is actually a newly discovered fundamental state of matter created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with several European institutions. This discovery opens new directions of inquiry in condensed matter physics and breaks ground for a new generation of microelectronics. Led by Argonne senior scientist Valerii Vinokur and Russian scientist Tatyana Baturina, an international team of scientists from Argonne, Germany, Russia and Belgium fashioned a thin film of titanium nitride which...

Graphene is a single planar sheet of sp2-bonded carbon atoms that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice. It can also be viewed as an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. The carbon-carbon bond length in graphene is approximately 1.42 Å. From a physicist point of view, graphene is the basic structural element for all other graphitic materials including graphite, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. For a chemist, graphene is an infinitely large aromatic molecule, an extension of a family of flat polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons called graphenes. University of Maryland physicists have shown that in...

UNDATED (AP) - It may not be organized sabotage, but many of the hottest electronic gadgets on the market are coming pre-loaded with viruses. Recent cases reviewed by The Associated Press include Apple iPods, digital picture frames sold by Target and Best Buy, and TomTom navigation gear. Some of the viruses steal passwords that can expose a computer to hackers and prompt them to spew spam. In most cases, the sources appear to be Chinese factories where many of the devices are being made. Security experts say the problem appears to be lax quality control. The malicious software is apparently...

The wheel-like assembly of 16 duroquinone molecules on the edges and 1 duroquinone molecule in the center can produce quotone-to-manyquot parallel communication. Credit: Bandyopadhyay and Acharya. The wheel-like assembly of 16 duroquinone molecules on the edges and 1 duroquinone molecule in the center can produce "one-to-many" parallel communication. Credit: Bandyopadhyay and Acharya. For years, researchers have been building tiny nanobots that could one day serve a variety of purposes. But, until now, nanobots couldn't work together. Recently, scientists Anirban Bandyopadhyay and Somobrata Acharya from the National Institute of Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, have built the first ultra-tiny, ultra-powerful...

MERRIMACK, N.H., Feb 27, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Brookstone today announced that customers affected by the recent action to suspend acceptance of Sharper Image gift cards and gift certificates could exchange them at any Brookstone Store for an instant 25 percent savings off a Brookstone purchase. Brookstone, an innovative product developer and specialty retailer of gifts and lifestyle merchandise, said it made the decision after Sharper Image announced on its website it was suspending acceptance of Sharper Image gift cards, rewards cards, gift certificates and merchandising certificates related to Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceedings. Brookstone said it would exchange...

The tattoo display: "Waterproof and powered by pizza." Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin. The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and...

Three years ago a team from Bell Labs took on a very daunting challenge – put an optical networking system on a commercially manufactured silicon chip, load it with a smorgasbord of sophisticated opto-electronic devices in a combination that’s never been done before, and make it easy to mass produce. The project is part of a U.S. DARPA-funded program (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) to develop technologies and design tools necessary to fabricate an application specific, electronic-photonic integrated circuit (EPIC). This program is led by BAE Systems in partnership with MIT, Applied Wave Research, and Bell Labs, through Alcatel-Lucent’s LGS...

Intel Corporation and STMicroelectronics reached a key industry milestone today as they began shipping prototype samples of a future product using a new, innovative memory technology called Phase Change Memory (PCM). The prototypes are the first functional silicon to be delivered to customers for evaluation, bringing the technology one step closer to adoption. The memory device, codenamed "Alverstone" uses PCM, a promising new memory technology providing very fast read and write speeds at lower power than conventional flash, and allows for bit alterability normally seen in RAM. PCM has long been a topic of discussion for research and development, and...

The Consumer Electronics Show is more than a convention. It's an opportunity for companies to position themselves as leaders in their respective categories. And with the media -- and more than 140,000 attendees -- watching, there's a lot at stake. So, with today's close of this year's CES, here are my winners and losers of the 2008 CES in the category of High-Definition TV: Winner Comcast In a keynote speech on Tuesday, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts outlined his company's plan for High-Definition over the next year. And it's a bold plan indeed. HD movie downloads in four minutes. More than...

I am buying a very expensive though small piece of electronics (a HD camcorder that can fit in a purse or pocket). It's got a great price on Amazon, better than anywhere else. I was thinking that because it's so small and I have little kids, I might need some kind of extended warranty, which I usually never get nor need. Can I count on the manufacturer to provide good customer service for this product? Should I buy elsewhere in case something goes wrong or I get a lemon? Any suggestions from the techies?

Would you be surprised to learn that a certain Windows upgrade made the list? Behold the worst tech of the year, including a pair of $7,250 speaker cables, ad-riddled video downloads that expire after a week, a much-hyped TV set-top box that's dying on the vine, and more. So here we go...in alphabetical order: Apple TV: Apple's foray into the living room seemed like a no-brainer, and this HDMI-packing, Wi-Fi- and Ethernet-enabled set-top box looked like a sure-fire success. From the beginning, however, Apple TV was hamstrung by the meager movie selection (and now dwindling selection of TV shows) on...

TOKYO - Sony is dropping its money-losing rear-projection TV business worldwide to focus on two flat panel technologies — liquid crystal display and organic light-emitting diode, the company said Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT Sales of rear-projection TVs had been declining recently as LCD TVs gain in popularity and get bigger, Sony Corp. spokesman Shinji Obana said. In October, Sony lowered its global sales forecast for rear-projection TVs — which uses a projector to create images on large screens — to 400,000 from 700,000, which is down from 1.1 million the previous fiscal year. By contrast, Sony expects to sell 10 million LCD...

Circuit City Posts Wider-Than-Expected 3rd-Quarter Loss, Shares Tumble RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Shares of electronics retailer Circuit City Stores Inc. lost nearly a quarter of their value Friday morning as investors reacted to a wider-than-expected loss driven by lower extended warranty sales and business interruptions the company blamed on ongoing restructuring efforts. "Clearly we are very disappointed," Chief Executive Philip Schoonover told Wall Street analysts during a conference call. Schoonover said the company underestimated the financial impact of cost-saving initiatives on sales. "Our current focus is to rebuild our selling culture," he said. The results came three days after larger...

MONTREAL (AFP) — After catching his 15-year-old smoking pot, a father sold the hard-to-get "Guitar Hero III" video game he bought his son for 90 dollars for Christmas at an online auction, fetching 9,000 dollars. The sale took place after the father spent two weeks searching for the video game for the Nintendo Wii gameboard. "So I was so relieved in that I had finally got the Holy Grail of Christmas presents pretty much just in the nick of time. I couldn't wait to spread the jubilance to my son," the father wrote on the eBay website. "Then, yesterday, I...

My set's on the blink, was hoping some of my Freeper brethren who might be in the TV/electronics repair biz could help.

(A) The thin film transistor array on a glass substrate. Inset: A magnified transparent transistor. (B) Scanning electron microscope image of the network of SWNTs. Image credit: Eun Ju Bae, et al. The ability to create flexible, transparent electronics could lead to a host of novel applications, such as e-paper and electronic car windshields. Now, scientists have constructed a transistor made of a network of nanotubes that may serve as an essential component in a trans-flex device. Such devices require two main components: light displays and current-controlling transistors. While scientists have found that OLEDs and LCDs work well as...

Georgia Tech researchers have fabricated high-performance field effect transistors with thin films of Carbon 60, also known as fullerene. Credit: Georgia Tech Photo: Gary Meek Buckminsterfullerene C60 Using room-temperature processing, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have fabricated high-performance field effect transistors with thin films of Carbon 60, also known as fullerene. The ability to produce devices with such performance with an organic semiconductor represents another milestone toward practical applications for large area, low-cost electronic circuits on flexible organic substrates The new devices – which have electron-mobility values higher than amorphous silicon, low threshold voltages, large on-off ratios...

Internet message boards are filled with claims that DIRECTV's new high-def lineup offers a better picture. But is that really true? DIRECTV recently added dozens of new High-Definitions channels, such as CNN HD, MGM HD and Smithsonian Channel HD. Because the new channels are stored on a new satellite -- and delivered via the state-of-the-art MPEG 4 transmission system -- Internet message boards are overflowing with comments that the new channels offer a better picture than DIRECTV's old HD lineup, which includes HBO, Showtime, HDNet and Discovery's HD Theater. However, Phillip Swann, aka Swanni and president of TVPredictions.com, has just...

Black Friday: Big Discounts On Plasma TVs? Industry analysts say Plasma high-def makers will try to slow down LCD sales. Washington, D.C. (October 22, 2007) -- Plasma HDTVs in the 42-inch and 50-inch categories will likely see sharp price cuts at the start of the holiday shopping season. That's according to an article by TWICE Magazine. The publication reports that industry analysts believe that CE retailers will again offer steep discounts on high-def sets on Black Friday, the unofficial opening of the holiday shopping season. (Black Friday comes the day after Thanksgiving.) However, they say the Plasma set will likely...

Plan To Ban 'Energy-Guzzling' Goods Updated: 07:59, Sunday September 09, 2007 The Conservatives are to propose banning plasma screens and other 'energy-guzzling' electrical goods. They plan to target white goods like fridges and freezers, as well as TVs, personal computers and DVD players that use higher amounts of energy or operate on stand-by. TVs and computers could be hitThe ideas, to be revealed this week, come from a Conservative group set up by Tory leader David Cameron to develop policies to protect the environment. And although the measures to make household electrical appliances more energy efficient are not binding on...

California continues to employ far more technology workers, pay higher wages and attract more venture capital than any other state. But the overall U.S. tech sector is also growing at a surprisingly brisk clip - for now. That's the conclusion of a highly anticipated annual report by AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, the country's largest technology trade association. Researchers relied on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, mostly from 2006. According to the 2007 "Cyberstates" report, to be published Tuesday, the U.S. tech industry employed 5.8 million people last year - up 2.6 percent from 2005. The...

The most technologically savvy homeowners bask in crystal-clear television screens when they're home and can control the lights while they're out of town. Without moving an inch, they can decide what music is playing in each room and can monitor the well being of their aging mother in a different city. So says Greg Hoshaw, owner of High Definition Systems in St. Charles, Ill., who presented the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association's top 10 "must have" technology trends for homes at the International Builders' Show here this week. A home theater or media room. A home theater is a...

Televisions grabbed the spotlight at the Consumer Electronics Show on Sunday with companies showcasing everything from super-sized models for the red-hot LCD market to technology enabling TVs to play video straight from the Internet. A slew of consumer electronics makers introduced bigger flat-screen TVs, while others highlighted products to enhance viewing, such as a DVD player that could be a bridge between rival formats for next-generation video discs. Sharp Corp showed off a 108-inch high-definition LCD television to rival a 100-inch model introduced only hours earlier by LG Electronics Inc. Sharp said its was the biggest yet among liquid crystal...

I've got a cell phone which is trying to die and have just ordered a replacement from Ebay, but I've held off spending any more than just over a hundred dollars because the thing I'd really like to have doesn't exist yet, which is a crying shame since nothing in the way of nonexistant hardware would be required; it would be a pure systems integration project. I'm hoping somebody who sells or markets consumer electronics ends up reading this. What I'd like to have would be a cell phone, PDA, GPS, and navigation device rolled into one thing with Dragon...

Japan bans 'spies who are buying electronics for missile programme' By Colin Joyce in Tokyo and Paul Willis (Filed: 15/10/2006) Their bags crammed with shiny new electronic goods, the passengers on the battered ferry to North Korea looked like any other tourists returning from a shopping trip in the malls of Tokyo. But the PlayStations and other gadgets carried on to the Mangyongbong-92 ended up not as children's gifts but as components in Pyongyang's military hardware. According to Japanese officials, North Korean spies have trawled electronic retail outlets in Tokyo for years as part of a covert operation to exploit...

IBM, the world's largest computer services company, will take in up to 3,000 new staff in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata to meet robust demand for outsourcing, a company official said. 'We are very bullish to fill up this capacity very soon because the business is growing and customers are showing more and more interest in sourcing of global delivery services,' Amitabh Ray, vice-president for application services at IBM India, said. The new centre at Kolkata, an emerging IT hub, will provide application development and application maintenance services. In June, IBM said it would invest $6 billion in India...

A single molecule, trapped between two electrodes, acts as a switch and has a ‘memory’ of the type used in data storage, Swiss and US researchers have found. Heike Riel of IBM’s research labs in Zurich says this is ‘a step along the way’ to making nanoscale electronic components a reality. Using single organic molecules as electronic components could allow researchers to miniaturise circuits far more than conventional techniques allow. They also avoid the interactions between the millions of molecules found in a standard transistor that can disrupt the conduction of charge. The scientists built their switch using a molecule...

Throughout the record-breaking heat wave last week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg used his pulpit to underscore the urgency of saving electricity. He repeated his advice like a mantra, urging New Yorkers to set their thermostats at 78 degrees, to keep air-conditioners on only when at home and to avoid using household appliances like washers, dryers and dishwashers during peak periods. “If we want to keep the power going, we’re all just going to have to conserve,” Mr. Bloomberg said on Wednesday. “I’ve done it in my house. Please — I cannot stress it enough — do it in yours.” That...

Scouting survives: Even in high-tech age, youths learn to 'Be prepared'http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=144116 Sunday August 6, 2006 by CANDICE BOSELY candiceb@herald-mail.com TRI-STATE - These are a few of their favorite things: Cell phones and cookies, iPods and pop-up tents, video games and wilderness badges. Seeing teenagers - and children even younger - talking or sending text messages on cell phones, fiddling with mp3 music players and playing video games are common sights. Girl Scouting and Boy Scouting might almost seem passé, given the associated images of camping, surviving in the wilderness and sleeping in wooden cabins at camp. But it's not antiquated...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Diamonds are no longer a girl's best friend, according to a new U.S. study that found three of four women would prefer a new plasma TV to a diamond necklace. The survey, commissioned by U.S. cable television's Oxygen Network that is owned and operated by women, found the technology gender gap has virtually closed with the majority of women snapping up new technology and using it easily.

Is DRM just a consumer rights issue effecting your record collection? A UK board is treating it as such. But it's much more important than that. Before Gutenberg, copyists, using pen and ink, duplicated written political dialogue laboriously. Only the wealthy and the church could afford to employ copyists, and during this period the paucity of communications limited the exercise of democracy to small groups. The advent of Gutenberg's press made the mass distribution of written political dialogue possible. People vote based on what they hear and read, and the improvement in communications brought by the press made egalitarian mass...

L-3 Communications Display Systems has chosen the LynxOS-178 real-time operating system (RTOS) to power a portion of the panoramic cockpit display (PCD) subsystem for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft. This display system delivers information for all the major functions of the F-35, including flight and sensor displays, communication, radio and navigation systems as well as an identification system which gives the pilot total situational awareness. The key factors in L-3 Display System's choice of LynuxWorks' RTOS, which is DO-178B certifiable, were its adherence to open standards, its Linux compatibility, the interoperability benefits of a Posix API...

Help, I have promised my niece an MP3 player for her graduation and have found the selection available completely overwhelming. A friend has recommended the Zen by Creative Labs but a quick check of their sight revealed that there are dozens of Zen and MuVo models to choose from. I have found that I do not like the i-pod because once the battery recharger fails you have to send your unit back to Apple and recieve a refurbished unit as a replacement. I want something that produces a good quality sound, has a long life, can be repaired without sending...

Researchers create world's first transparent integrated circuit -------------------------------------------------------- Researchers at Oregon State University have created the world's first completely transparent integrated circuit from inorganic compounds, another major step forward for the rapidly evolving field of transparent electronics. Atomic Layer Deposition - www.cambridgenanotech.com High precision ALD systems for leading edge research labs Norkem Limited - www.norkem.com Stockist and distributors of all grades of Zinc Oxide Sponsored Links (Ads by Google) The circuit is a five-stage "ring oscillator," commonly used in electronics for testing and new technology demonstration. It marks a significant milestone on the path toward functioning transparent electronics applications, which...

CQ CQ CQ - Doctor Raoul has kindly asked if I would ping the Ham List in the hopes that a technically skilled Freeper may be able to assist with repairs to PA systems to be used in Freeps. Excerpts from his Freepmail appear below: ========================================================= I have a number of Amplivox portable PAs. It may be that I'm not aligning the prongs on the battery case or perhaps corrosion. Have a schematic on bottom of case. Need them checked out and then we can send them to people doing counter-protests. I think it's possible to wire them up to...

Sony chief Howard Stringer had almost everything in place going into this year's Consumer Electronics Show in January: big new televisions to show off, high-definition DVDs and the PlayStation 3 on the way, and even a scheduled appearance by Tom Hanks. The only thing he was missing was good news on Sony's Walkman, which has been eclipsed in popularity by Apple Computer's iPod. A promising new version of the Walkman had just been released in Europe and Asia, but it was being torn apart on Web message boards--largely because critics said the software it came with was slow and crash-prone....

RadioShack to close up to 700 stores Fri Feb 17, 2006 1:16 PM ET By Nicole Maestri NEW YORK (Reuters) - RadioShack Corp. (RSH.N: Quote, Profile, Research), whose chief executive has admitted to lying on his resume, on Friday said quarterly profit fell 62 percent after a switch in wireless providers led to an inventory write-down, sending its shares to a nearly three-year low. The consumer electronics retailer, which said it was hiring legal counsel to investigate the admission by CEO David Edmondson, also announced a new turnaround plan that includes closing 400 to 700 company-operated stores and liquidating slow-moving...

Eyeing an intricate DVD player or clunky home theater speakers? Better check with your spouse first. The idea of checking with a mate before purchasing a big-ticket item may not be a new idea, but its name, spouse acceptance factor -- usually called wife acceptance factor for the greater number of men interested in electronics -- is building steam among technology gurus and electronics manufacturers. Women control 88 percent of electronics purchases, whether they make the purchase or influence what their spouse buys, according to research by the Consumer Electronics Association. Whether an item passes the wife acceptance factor, or...

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Consumers, confused over the brewing battle between next-generation DVD technologies, are not alone: top U.S. electronics retailers at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas called the war "nightmarishly unfriendly" and "stupid."Stores like Best Buy (BBY.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Circuit City (CC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and closely held CompUSA may sell millions of devices, either HD DVD or its rival, Blu-ray, and some day one version could be obsolete, drawing the ire of their customers. What's more, many will chose not to buy any device, instead waiting for one format to win.Blu-ray is backed by Sony...

Timing of electronics, porn conventions underscores the ties between the two industries What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. So don't tell a soul that the International Consumer Electronics Show is shacking up with the porn industry this week. The biggest convention in Vegas is sharing space inside the Sands Expo Center with the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo., a confluence of scheduling that underscores the electronics industry's dirty little secret: Many of the devices it develops sell because they can be used to view naked people behaving badly. ''One of the easiest ways to access porn is the Internet," said...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Retailers who wondered where their customers went during a so-so holiday season might have tried looking in the TV aisles at Best Buy and Circuit City. The nation's two largest consumer electronics retailers both reported strong holiday revenue on Friday driven by surging sales of high-end televisions and larger average purchases. December sales jumped 5.8 percent at Best Buy Co. Inc. stores open at least 14 months. The increase was 10.8 percent at Circuit City Stores Inc. locations open at least a year, a key industry barometer of a retailer's health. Best Buy said fourth-quarter earnings would...

It's doubtful that Las Vegas bettors would have put any money on an ultra-Orthodox Israeli schoolteacher and mother of five taking the city by storm and setting the annual Consumer Electronics Show on its ear. But that's exactly what inventor and super mom Sarah Lipman did, overcoming the odds while casting a whole new light on the way users can interact with their computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices. She's not alone. Indeed, Lipman, who heads her own company - Power2Be Technology - represents part of a new generation of strict religiously observant Israeli women who are finding ways...

I've scoured the internet, and I just can't find what I consider to be a trusted source on this topic. I have a 2 part question: Our DVD player, a Toshiba SD-V291 (VCR + DVD) has been skipping and doing stop-start "hiccuping" on DVDs (including brand new ones) that play just fine on my laptop, other players, etc. First, why is it doing this (a cleaner has been used to no avail), and second, because we're thinking of getting a multi-DVD changer anyway (but accelerated due to this), what brands/models have my FRiends here at FR had better luck with?