Parrot AR.Drone Is the Hottest CES 2010 iPhone Accessory

Parrot AR.Drone Is the Hottest CES 2010 iPhone Accessory

Topic: CES 2010
Posted on Wed, 6 Jan 2010 04:00:00 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr


The CES 2010 did not officially start yet, but the Parrot AR.Drone already made it on my short list of CES 2010 coolest products. The Parrot AR.Drone is a quadricopter piloted with an iPhone or iPod touch that carries two cameras that deliver live video feed onto your iPhone. How bloody cool is that? (watch video below).
Parrot is positioning the Parrot AR.Drone as a video game for the iPhone. It combines wireless, video and gaming technologies to allow real-world objects and conditions, like a tree or wind, to become a part of the video gaming experience.
Parrot AR.Drone is a quadricopter that consists of a central cockpit surrounded by four propellers. One camera located underneath, connects to an Inertial Measurement Unit, which allows the AR.Drone to measure its speed and perform flawless stationary flight.
Parrot Smart Piloting (PSP) technology compensates for wind and other environmental conditions during outside flights. For the first time, these technologies, used primarily for professional and military applications, have been adapted to the gaming universe.

The second camera, at the front, broadcasts and streams to the iPhone or iPod touch screen, what the AR.Drone sees, as if you were sitting in the cockpit. This allows for the augmented reality gaming experience.

The Parrot AR.Drone generates its own Wi-Fi network that simply connects to an iPhone or iPod touch and turns it into a true piloting station.

I am not even sure if the U.S. Army has a better drone than this. Pricing has not been announced yet for Parrot AR.Drone. I hope it will be below $200.
Parrot launches the iPhone Drone later this year. The company is more known for Bluetooth gear, but with the AR.Drone they could land a huge hit. I certainly want a AR.Drone when it is out for my iPhone. See also these hi-res photos.

Game developers are invited to creating games for the Parrot AR.Drone on the open platform that Parrot provides for it. More details can be found on the Parrot AR.Drone site.

CES 2010 is here and with it tons of hot product announcements. Stay on top of the huge amount of CES 2010 news and highlights with I4U News. Read all about CES 2010 now. Follow I4U News on Twitter.

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Why a Microsoft Tablet PC is Better for Business

TABLET PCS

Jan 06, 2010 02:52 pm | PC World
Rumors are at a fever pitch regarding both the Microsoft and Apple tablet PC's
by Tony Bradley

Reports suggest that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil details of Microsoft's entry in the tablet PC arena during his keynote speech today at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The announcement will steal some of the thunder from the extreme hype and speculation over Apple's "iSlate" tablet PC-- which may or may not exist and may or may not be announced at an Apple event later this month.

Tablet PC's are not new. The slate form factor portable computer has been around for almost a decade, since Microsoft initially pushed the concept with its Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Those tablets were before their time, though, and the concept never really caught on.

Technology has evolved now, as technology does, and with mobile phones like the iPhone, Droid, and Nexus One which are more or less mini tablet PC's with phone capabilities thrown in, and newer technologies like netbooks and smartbooks, it seems the time has come for tablet PC's.

Microsoft and Apple--assuming the rumors are on target and they both release tablet PC's in the near future--are not the only players in the tablet PC market, but they will be the biggest and most visible. Speculation is already mounting that the Apple "iSlate" could spark lines similar to the launch of the iPhone, and one rumor suggests that Apple intends to sell 10 million tablet PC's per year.

It's hard to compare vaporware based on rumored specifications and capabilities , but I'll give it a try anyway. Actually, I am not going to compare the devices directly, but instead address why a Microsoft tablet will be a more suitable business tool, while the Apple tablet will be more of a consumer gadget.

Apple has a legions of loyal followers and I assume that the "iSlate" will be a grand slam success, possibly rivaling the success of the iPhone. The "iSlate" may revolutionize tablet computing the way that the iPhone revolutionized smartphones. But, almost three years later the iPhone is still struggling for acceptance in the corporate world and is primarily a consumer-oriented device despite its popularity.

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CES 2010 Flashpoints: The platforms for the next decade in electronics

By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published January 5, 2010, 1:28 AM


The world does not run on gadgets. Consumers purchase gadgets as investments in the functionality that they provide. Gadgets are handles to their underlying platforms.

Every year, the Consumer Electronics Show is a gauge of the directions in which platforms are moving, a barometer of the evolution of functionality. Sure, we see plenty of neat toys, many of which end up either being for kids or making us feel like kids. And sure, we hear plenty of loosely coupled metaphors that play to our need to be excited, like how a certain device unleashes connectivity or harnesses the power of disruption -- phrases that read like they were assembled using that word game you play with refrigerator magnets.


Those are all diversions. At the heart of it, CES is a big chessboard, played out on a massive and often chaotic scale. And once again, the game's afoot.

As Betanews covers the goings-on, we'll be keeping watch over a handful of what we consider to be the key flashpoints of interest, with regard to platform evolution -- operating systems, systems-on-a-chip, connectivity standards, networks, systems. We'll be looking for how things fit together, so here are the first story lines we'll be watching for:
Android takes center stage. Last year at this time, Android was the emerging story at CES, the player just on the horizon, but with about as much overall buzz as Symbian. This year, with Apple still treating CES like a pagan festival in the opposite hemisphere, Android stands a real chance of becoming the most interesting and most innovative smartphone platform this year, finally giving Linux a place in the driver's seat. But a lot depends on how Google plays its Android card. By staging an iPhone-like pre-CES press event back in Mountain View for the rollout of its Nexus One device with HTC, Google could very well be sending the wrong message this year to the CES audience: that it, too, believes it can thumb its nose at CES. That may not be what Google intends; it may simply want to follow in Apple's footsteps. But assuming that's the case, even putting on an Apple costume may not be the stance Google should be taking during this critical period. Remember, this is the "Gphone" that was the subject of so much speculation since 2006. With such a head of steam holding it aloft, the only direction remaining could be down.
Does Palm have a follow-up act? Last year, the resurrection of Palm was the story of CES, effectively casting Windows Mobile as the platform of the past. But twelve months ago seems an incredibly long time, and even though Palm has followed up the Pre with the Pixi, the webOS platform doesn't appear to have maintained its lofty position in the public conscience. Verizon's and AT&T's reticence to embrace Palm phones as quickly as Sprint, and as soon as bloggers had speculated, may be among the reasons for webOS' recession. Palm has an opportunity at CES '10 to reverse this trend, to keep the recession from becoming a depression. But it needs to demonstrate the potential for nurturing new and innovative apps as rapidly as Android.
The next stage of netbook evolution. Since 2005, manufacturers had been planting the seeds for a portable computer platform that's in-between a notebook and a smartphone in flexibility, performance, and price. But they didn't seem to have the right formula for the fertilizer, if you will, until last year. Netbooks took root, sprouted, and bore some fruit in 2009, thanks in large part to Intel's Atom positioned just where the market needed it to be. But one ingredient for the juice in the "Miracle-Gro" for netbooks last year was the poor economy -- an ingredient which may be in shorter supply in 2010, as the consumer sector appears to be rebounding. Customers may have been settling for netbooks -- especially with carrier subsidies -- because they couldn't afford even low-cost notebooks. That may not be the case for long, even if Intel maintains artificial barriers between its next-generation Atom netbook and notebook platforms, especially now that the company is under intense scrutiny from at least three governments.
Wherefore Windows Mobile? We asked this question at this same time last year, and believe it or not, we have yet to see an answer. Usually, an unanswered question doesn't stay on consumers' minds for longer than a year. But with Microsoft still being a big sponsor of CES this year, and with the CEO still making the keynote (this year, Steve Ballmer), the topic of Microsoft can't help but be discussed. Last November, senior officials told Betanews there wouldn't be any serious Windows Mobile news until next March, at the company's MIX '10 conference. But Ballmer can't afford to take the spotlight from Bill Gates only to tell his audience, "Stay tuned, we'll be right back." If Ballmer's message concentrates on Windows 7 -- something that's already part of our lives -- or if he presents the company's usual parade of maybe-possibly home electronics devices, then he'll be seen as stalling for time. That's what happened last year; if Microsoft does it two years in a row, it's as good as surrendering the mobile market. Imagine if AMD had failed to innovate its notebook platform for two successive years after Intel's introduction of Core 2.
Can BlackBerry keep up? Once you collect all its popular models together, the smartphone brand with the widest penetration in North America is Research In Motion's BlackBerry. It's also, in many ways, the least evolved platform in terms of functionality. But there are several ways RIM could engineer a breakthrough almost instantaneously. BlackBerry badly needs a competent and competitive Web browser. RIM purchased browser maker Torch Mobile last August, and it's time for that convergence to bear fruit. With so much as a software update to existing models such as Storm 2 and Bold, RIM could find parity against strong and sudden competition from Android.
Will PCs infiltrate HDTVs? In terms of percentage of gross national product, this issue could actually be the greatest of all. Last year, we saw the first signs of HDTV manufacturers testing the waters with building Linux- and Windows-based PCs with small form factors directly into their sets, giving them Internet functionality along with media centers, DVR control, and phone-based remote programming. Though more consumers are embracing small PCs in the living room, there's not enough there upon which the framework of a market segment can be cemented. But if those PCs were out of sight, providing their functionality more transparently, suddenly Windows would be a formidable competitor against the set-top box -- a market Microsoft has tried to crack for over a decade, and failed. What makes this issue so important in this volatile economy is the fact that the fate of corporations rest upon which platform ends up delivering digital, Internet-driven, on-demand entertainment directly to the set. Comcast is making a multi-billion-dollar investment in NBC Universal, a part-owner of Hulu. As we saw at CES the past two years, Comcast is staking its future on owning the delivery channel for digital entertainment -- something that will be much harder to do if Microsoft cuts off Comcast's supply route to the HDTV.


The first news coming out of CES Tuesday morning is from Skype, whose latest innovation is 720p videoconferencing at 30 fps. But it requires an HD webcam and a fast PC -- faster than anything you'll find on a phone, so we're already seeing signs of Skype backing away from its emphasis on mobile platforms. And the WirelessHD Consortium is preparing to demonstrate home video components and PCs that can share HD video data at up to 28 Gbps speeds over the 60 GHz band.

The brand that emerges as the star of the show this year will, like Palm last year and (surprisingly) Comcast the year before, be the one that makes the most convincing case for profitable platform evolution in its respective market space. Does anyone out there really think it'll be Microsoft? Will Google be perceived as a team player or as a rebel? Will Android be able to cash in on the most important and lucrative platform gains in the history of Linux? And despite Nokia's screams and pleas, is Symbian's star finally fading? These are the threads we'll be watching all week long, with our Tim Conneally and Jacqueline Emigh at the scene, and insight and plain sense from our veteran analyst contributors Carmi Levy and Sharon Fisher.

We know you'll be checking out the gadget blogs to see which toy gets the five-star awards. When you want to know what it all means, and why it matters on a deeper level, come back home to Betanews.

READ MORE - CES 2010 Flashpoints: The platforms for the next decade in electronics

Firefox development dilemma: tweak or overhaul?

by Stephen Shankland




Mozilla is building a number of features into the upcoming Firefox 3.7 browser--but the organization now has begun stewing over whether to introduce some of them in a significant update as planned or to rewrite some sooner for a variation of the current browser.

Programmer Benjamin Smedberg proposed the retrofit approach with a version called Lorentz on a Mozilla mailing list in late December. In the resulting discussion, developers and observers weighed the tactical advantages to each approach and wondered whether the quickening pace of Firefox development is ill-suited to browser users among businesses.

Firefox is based on a browser engine project called Gecko. The nearly complete (but somewhat tardy) Firefox 3.6 is built on Gecko 1.9.2, and the Firefox 3.7 is set to use Gecko 1.9.3. The question afoot is whether to "backport" significant Gecko 1.9.3 features to 1.9.2 and release the new Lorentz version of Firefox based on it.

"With the [Lorentz] project branch, I believe we could go to beta in the middle of January and release in late March/early April," Smedberg said. In contrast, "doing a release from mozilla-central/1.9.3 presents a lot of schedule risk without matching reward."

One feature in question is out-of-process-plugins (OOPP), a design change that moves plug-ins such as Adobe Systems' Flash to a separate computing process--and a project Smedberg is involved in. The work, the first phase of a Mozilla project called Electrolysis, is expected to improve stability; many browser crashes are the result of problem with Flash programs. Another feature he'd like is a less disruptive browser update process--a particularly relevant technology given Mozilla's attempt to move to a more frequent release cycle.


Some at Mozilla would like to see a few new features added to the nearly final Firefox 3.6 rather than wait for a later, more substantial update.
(Credit: Mozilla)

Chris Blizzard, who runs Mozilla's developer relations, sounded supportive of the Lorentz plan and added some features he'd like to see included sooner rather than later, including faster Direct2D-based graphics for Windows machines, CSS transitions that can add pizzazz to some graphic elements, and Web Sockets for communication between a browser and a server.

But, he added, delay is a risk of new features. "We need to make sure this train doesn't get too big, though, or it will stretch out into a pretty long release," Blizzard said. Indeed, that's what happened with Firefox 3.5, which began as a quick 3.1 update but arrived months later as more features were added.

Added L. David Baron, "I have bad feelings about this plan based on the last time we did this: Firefox 2.0 sucked resources away from the trunk [the development of new version of Gecko] and allowed it to become extremely unstable, and it look a long time to get things back together for Firefox 3."

Eventually the discussion turned to how well corporate users are able to deal with a fast development cycle.

"The nature of the Web doesn't really lend itself to long-lived stable browser branches, IMHO," said programmer Robert O'Callahan. "A lot of the security issues we discover in the Web itself require proactive security measures such as UI [user interface] and architectural changes that one normally wouldn't apply to a 'stable branch.'"

John J. Barton, an IBM programmer who involved with the Firebug extension to Firefox to aid Web developers, made the case for relatively rapid changes.

"IBM and our customers are all moving to faster development cycles," Barton wrote. "That's why I urge Firefox team to continue to lead in that direction."

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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Five New Year's resolutions for Google

by Tom Krazit



In general, most New Year's resolutions tend to last as long as the NFL playoffs. But those who enter the year working for the world's most ambitious technology company won't have that luxury.


Google enters its 12th year as an information and financial powerhouse, holding claim to perhaps the most enviable position on the Internet and worming its way into all sorts of businesses that Internet companies have traditionally avoided. The company shows little sign of slowing down its innovation engine, but as a result of that pace faces competitive threats like never before from other giants of the technology and media worlds.

What should Google leaders Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page focus on in 2010? Here are five suggestions:

1. Don't forget where you came from
Search remains Google's cash machine. It ended the year with around 65 percent of the U.S. search market, according to ComScore, and does not appear to be losing any momentum. Microsoft's well-received reinvention of its search efforts in the form of Bing seems to have the main effect of taking business away from Yahoo, its pending search partner, rather than denting Google's advantage.

But the nature of search is changing as the nature of information produced for the Internet changes. Real-time results are now seen as important, and Google has much work to do in order to prove its real-time strategy unveiled in December will produce the same types of relevant results that its main search engine did in rising to the top. Social-networking sites are host to an enormous amount of relevant content that Google can't necessarily find.

Google does not face as many competitive threats in search at the moment as its antitrust defense lawyers would like you to believe. But that doesn't mean that it's not vulnerable to the same sort of scrappy start-up that it once was, operating under the radar with a fresh take on the world. As Schmidt well knows, having imposed a strategy of focusing 70 percent of Google's attention on search, keeping the gravy train running is job No. 1 at Google.

2. Get control of the engineers
This is undoubtedly a controversial notion inside of Google. But the tech history books are raft with giants that slowly grew arrogant and haughty with their success, from IBM to Microsoft. Google knows it needs to avoid traveling down a similar path while catering to an engineering culture that has almost never taken no for an answer.

Simply put, Google's engineers do things because they can. And at some point, that's no longer going to fly as Google enters more and more markets. That's because while much of Google's self-image revolves around avoiding evil, that mindset only applies to users of its products. It doesn't apply to competitors or partners, who have the ability to cry foul if they believe they are the victims of unfair competition (regardless of whether or not it's actually true).

If at some point the government deems Google to have a monopoly in search advertising, expect Google's march into other markets to slow. Engineers may scoff at such restraints, truly believing in the quality and usefulness of their work. But regulators are not engineers, and those folks might arguably hold more power over Google in 2010 than any other force.

3. Get HTML5 standards finalized
Much of Google's strategy for ushering computing into the 21st century revolves around the notion that the browser can be the dominant platform for applications. There are numerous benefits to this approach in theory; software can be much more lightweight and suitable to mobile devices if run over the Internet, malware can't knock out a personal computer that doesn't allow things to be installed locally, and, of course, users who spend their lives on the Internet are more likely to search for information.

But in order to make that vision happen without being labeled as a usurper, Google's representatives on the W3C Working Group for HTML5 must make sure that the various components of the HTML5 technologies are approved in concert with the community of other browser vendors, so that Google is not seen as having a distinct advantage. The company appears to take this very seriously, and the sooner the process can be brought to fruition, the easier it will be for projects like Chrome OS to develop without being seen as an attempt to corner the personal computing market.

4. Live up to the promise of Google Books
Perhaps the biggest albatross around Google's neck in 2009 was its settlement with authors and publishers over Google Book search, a process in which Google managed to turn lemonade into lemons. Its attempt to create a digital library for the ages was vehemently protested by authors, privacy advocates, and copyright experts angry over Google's scan-first ask-later approach to building that database.

Few doubt the value of an open digital library that unlocks access to books stored on musty shelves at exclusive universities. But many are distrustful of Google's intentions when it comes to Google Books, and putting their fears to bay could go a long way toward ending the acrimony over the settlement. A final hearing is scheduled for February, and while Google has already made concessions in response to criticism from the Department of Justice, lining up an independent partner to be a second source of this digital material would take the wind out of much of the opposition's argument.

5. Clarify your mobile strategy
We may get a sense of this one extremely soon, as Google is scheduled to host an Android event Tuesday that most believe will mark the debut of its first Android phone sold directly to the general public.

Google is walking a fine line at the moment, should it really intend to sell its own branded phone. One of the primary reasons that the iPhone took off was that Apple dictated the experience that iPhone users and developers would see, locking the hardware specs and controlling the distribution of software for the platform. Of course, that approach has all kinds of side effects, which appeared to be the primary motivation behind Android: a modern mobile software platform free of such restrictions and available to anyone who wants to make a phone.

However, Google's partners--even if they knew about the Nexus One months ago--are likely to be perplexed by its decision to make its own phone. Will Google developers reserve key Android features for Google devices? Will they cut back on their promotional resources for Open Handset Alliance partners in order to promote their own phone? And why should they trust Google in the future, given that the company has said numerous times that it had no interest in making its own phone?

The beauty of the mobile computing market is that it is truly up for grabs, and that no one company appears ready to dominate in the same manner that Microsoft came to own the PC. But Google will have crossed a line if it really does plan to sell its own phone: it will have leaned on the efforts of others to create a viable market for Android only to swoop in once the software has grown popular with a device of its own.

That means other companies could think twice about partnering with Google in the future.

Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom.

READ MORE - Five New Year's resolutions for Google

The New Internet: Who will Control Information Technology by 2010?

EDITOR: During the next three to five years, the international Internet system will evolve to the new IPV6 protocol standard, which will provide a quantum leap in comprehensive Internet capabilities. This will affect defense, economic prosperity, communications and sharing of information within nations and internationally, as well as daily household integration of hi tech systems. The current IPV4 system was developed and funded entirely by the United States Government and US private companies [using substantial US Government funds]. Whoever leads the development and deployment of IPV6 will, in fact, have a dominant role in being the architect and "toll keeper" of the rapidly growing international information superhighway.

The national security and economic stability of the United States has been based on control of the first generation of Internet communication technologies. Today, Asian countries have surpassed the United States in development and use of the next generation of Internet Protocol. Although Japan, Korea and Europe have joined with the United States in International Summits to set new Internet standards, China is secretly and substantially developing its own IPV6 infrastructure and solutions.

Beijing is taking advantage of technologies and investment from America and its allies. The concern of international economists, human rights advocates and defense experts is that Beijing will use its political and economic leverage in many areas of the developing world to eventually dominate new Internet standards, imbued with the repressive nature of its own non-democratic regime. In addition, whoever controls the distribution of the technologies related to the IPV6 will have the ability to monitor and block information, disrupt communications and, in a time of conflict, shut down entire IT systems vital to a nation's economy and defense.

IPV6, THE NEW INTERNET: The dominant edge of America's economic, communications and military leadership is based on a national investment made 50 years ago to create what became today's global Internet communications systems. At a June 28, 2005 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Alex Lightman, CEO of IPV6 Summit, stated, “...some $9 trillion out of America's $13 million economy is related to IT services, subscriptions and transactions... It is also responsible for the creation of millions of American jobs... And it is the backbone of thousands of products and services vital to the national defense and homeland security systems.”

Today, the US Government is investing a mere fraction of what Japan, Korea, China and Europe are investing into developing the New Internet IPV6 protocol. Each nation's IT standards reflect their own political and economic priorities. A repressive government's priorities are ultimately in contradiction with democratic openness necessary for international peace and prosperity. Thus far, the Defense Department is the only US federal agency showing incentive in New Internet competitiveness. But DOD, worn down by interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, has a mere fraction of the funding needed to maintain an edge over America's competitors and adversaries.

CHINA's INTERNET LEAP FORWARD: Since 1994, China has emerged from practically no public Internet usage to become the world's second largest [after the United States] Internet population. Within two years, in 2007, China is expected to pass Japan as the world's largest IPV6 user. Meanwhile, the US Internet market is dominated by the rapidly out-of- date IPV4 standard model. IPV6 is increasingly dominant in Japan and Korea. Meanwhile, non- democratic China has refused to join a global coalition. Instead, Beijing is quietly and steady developing hardware and software in preparing to take the lead in providing IPV6, not only for its own economic and military modernization but also to protect the Communist Party's repressive dominance against its own citizens. Beijing can also use its political and economic leverage and advances in Internet censorship to protect dictators in developing countries across the world. More critically, as a component of “asymmetrical” electronic warfare, a country whose companies control and manage IPV6 technology can shut down entire IT systems.

THE CENSORSHIP "GOLDEN SHIELD" China has effectively "sanitized" its domestic Internet through extensive sophisticated on-line monitoring and censorship systems. This has been done with the willing assistance of high-profile US companies who seek greater play in the Chinese Government controlled market. Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society reports that China's Internet censorship regime is "the most sophisticated in the world." An Amnesty International investigation found that through early 2005, at least 54 persons were imprisoned for distributing "illegal" information through the Net.

A new Chinese Government high-tech surveillance project called "Golden Shield," has been under development for the past five years. US companies have flaunted the post-Tiananmen Square Massacre law that bans selling "crime control and detection" equipment to China, writes Anne Applebaum in the July 21, 2005 Washington Post. According to numerous press reports, American companies like Yahoo have signed a "public pledge of self-discipline" to abide by China Net censorship regime. Cisco Systems has reportedly sold technologies to Chinese internal security agencies that block admission to Web sites unfavorable to China's ruling minority, as well as certain material on sites otherwise accessible. And reportedly, Microsoft has altered the Chinese version of its blog tool, MSN Spaces, at the insistence of Communist information censors. The Orwellian collaboration between US companies and China's Internet censors can dramatically alter IPV6 standards and significantly degrade the free flow of information essential for international peace and prosperity.

READ MORE - The New Internet: Who will Control Information Technology by 2010?

Are you tired of your short laptop battery life with only a few hours? Would you like the charge of your mobile phone to last a couple of months? Well, the answer to your “prayers” might be the nuclear batteries, which are been developed at the University of Missouri. They are designed especially for providing a lasting source of energy. And some people think these batteries could replace the current ones, including those used by the electrical cars. According to the creators, a nuclear battery has a very enormous capacity to generate electricity when compared to a regular one.

The batteries have always been the Achilles’ heel of the mobile devices. Usually, the designers of electronic devices for mass consumption (like laptops or media players) use small displays or screens that are not very bright in order to save the scarce energy resources that are provided from the regular batteries. But the new nuclear battery would bring a solution based on a liquid semiconductor (rather than a solid semiconductor) that will produce a much longer lifetime for the battery. The reason is the solid semiconductors are attacked constantly by some radioactive elements used by other types of batteries, while the liquid semiconductor is quite resistant to these attacks. Although the term “nuclear” can be a little perturbing, the fact is that these batteries are not very different from those batteries used in, for example, medical pacemakers.



The new radioisotope battery has the size of a penny and provides much more power than the traditional ones because, according to the researches, its capacity is very superior. Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri, said that the radioisotope battery “can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries”. That is to say, it provides no less than a million times more charge than any “normal” battery.

Kwon and his research team have spent enough time working to solve many problems that they have encountered when developing this type of battery. One important thing is the batteries need to be small and thin in order to be practical and useful; this way, they could be used to power watches and small electronic devices. As mentioned before, the prototype (which you can see in the picture below) has the size and thickness of a penny, but the researchers think they can achieve a thinner battery. In order to do this, Kwon has required the collaboration of another professor: J. David Robertson (chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor). Together, they hope to maximize the power of the nuclear batteries as well as reduce the size and test other materials to make additional improvements. Kwon thinks that the final battery, which would be used in commercial gadgets, could be thinner than a human hair. For the moment, the research team have required a provisional patent in order to protect the exclusive right to use this invention.


October 12th, 2009 - Disclaimer - Category: Gadget

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Digital piracy hits the e-book industry By Matt Frisch, CNN

CNN) -- When Dan Brown's blockbuster novel "The Lost Symbol" hit stores in September, it may have offered a peek at the future of bookselling.

On Amazon.com, the book sold more digital copies for the Kindle e-reader in its first few days than hardback editions. This was seen as something of a paradigm shift in the publishing industry, but it also may have come at a cost.

Less than 24 hours after its release, pirated digital copies of the novel were found on file-sharing sites such as Rapidshare and BitTorrent. Within days, it had been downloaded for free more than 100,000 times.

Digital piracy, long confined to music and movies, is spreading to books. And as electronic reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle, the Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble's Nook, smartphones and Apple's much-anticipated "tablet" boost demand for e-books, experts say the problem may only get worse.

"It's fair to say that piracy of e-books is exploding," said Albert Greco, an industry expert and professor of marketing at Fordham University.

Sales for digital books in the second quarter of 2009 totaled almost $37 million. That's more than three times the total for the same three months in 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Statistics are hard to come by, and many publishers are reluctant to discuss the subject for fear of encouraging more illegal downloads. But digital theft may pose a big headache in 2010 for the slumping publishing industry, which relies increasingly on electronic reading devices and e-books to stimulate sales.

"Piracy is a serious issue for publishers," said Hachette Book Group in a statement. The company that publishes Stephenie Meyer's wildly popular "Twilight" teen-vampire series says it "considers copyright protection to be of paramount importance."

Authors are concerned as well.

"I'd be really worried if I were Stephen King or James Patterson or a really big bestseller that when their books become completely digitized, how easy it's going to be to pirate them," said novelist and poet Sherman Alexie on Stephen Colbert's show last month.

"With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership -- of artistic ownership -- goes away," Alexie added. "It terrifies me."

And it's not just bestsellers that are targeted by thieves.

"Textbooks are frequently pirated, but so are many other categories," said Ed McCoyd, director of digital policy at AAP. "We see piracy of professional content, such as medical books and technical guides; we see a lot of general fiction and non-fiction. So it really runs the gamut."

Piracy of digital music, thanks to Napster and other file-sharing sites, has been a threat to recording companies for more than a decade. Over the years, the record companies tried different approaches to combat illegal downloading, from shutting down Web sites to encrypting songs with digital-rights management software to suing individual file-sharers.

Although illegal file-sharing of music persists, Apple's online iTunes store is now the world's biggest seller of music.

To some industry observers, this may be where the future of the book industry is heading as well. But talk to publishers and authors about what can be done to combat e-book piracy, and you'll get a wide range of opinions.

Some publishers may try to minimize theft by delaying releases of e-books for several weeks after physical copies go on sale. Simon & Schuster recently did just that with Stephen King's novel, "Under the Dome," although the publisher says the decision was made to prevent cheaper e-versions from cannibalizing hardcover sales.

Some authors have even gone as far as to shrug off e-book technology altogether. J.K Rowling has thus far refused to make any of her Harry Potter books available digitally because of piracy fears and a desire to see readers experience her books in print.

However, some evidence suggests that authors' and publishers' claims of damage from illegal piracy may be overstated.

Recent statistics have shown that consumers who purchase an e-reader buy more books than those who stick with traditional bound volumes. Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers.

Ana Maria Allessi, publisher for Harper Media at HarperCollins, told CNN, "we have to be vigilant in our punishment ... but much more attractive is to simply make the technology better, legally."

E-book technology offers so many positives for both the author and the consumer that any revenue lost to piracy may just be a necessary evil, she said.

"Consumers who invest in one of these dedicated e-book readers tend to load it up and read more," said Allessi. "And what's wrong with that?"

CNN.com's Brandon Griggs contributed to this story.

READ MORE - Digital piracy hits the e-book industry By Matt Frisch, CNN