Hasta La Gadget!

The research team at General Electric wanted to show off their OLED advancements for the year, so they rolled up the flexible displays to make a Christmas tree. 

Sadly, due to the soul-crushing pressure known as political correctness in the 21st century, they dully named it ‘The Holiday Tree.’ There’s no mention of it in their blog, but the rumor is that a fat man with a white beard and a red jumpsuit made out of OLEDs also stopped by and people kept calling him Jolly Sparkly Man.

The GE OLED tree is essentially a 6-inch-by-15-ft. OLED roll-out screen around a base, and it currently doesn’t play any images. Earlier this year, GE Research was among the first groups to design successful ‘equipment modules’ to mass-manufacture large, flexible OLED screens.

According to a team leader, they’ve also managed to improve upon the efficiency and longevity of the diodes, an important step in their goal to reproduce the tech into large public areas, like lamps and walls.

I’m a sucker for OLEDs, but a recent development in their security division managed to steal their thunder for a beat. Not surprising since it deals with surveillance and the prevention of nuclear proliferation.

In seeking to improve webcam monitoring, GE researchers built an automated algorithm that tracks a person in 3D. It determines speed and direction with precision without forcing webcam operators to zoom in on jittery video, like they do now.Check out the video of the test right here.

The algorithm controls a network of cameras and determines the best position for capturing. The angle of the face and the distance of the subject from the camera are some of the measurable data points. 

But according to GE, the team is also using this algorithm for a far more serious application. Cameras are expected to be used soon with a Compton imager to detect radiation from a distance. The project’s name is called Target Linked Radiation Imager (TLRI) and is expected to be used by Homeland Security to find ‘location of targets of interest,’ or rather, dangerous radioactive material.

There aren’t too many details about this project, with reason, but it’s scary to know a simple cam that might simply show a kid skipping down the street might one day soon be powerful enough to see through shielded uranium.

Photos: GE Global Research

This article was written on November 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Considering the amount of money the music industry pours into trying to stop people from downloading music from file sharing networks, I think it’s fair to say that they believe their efforts will help increase the sales of CDs. They must, otherwise the RIAA wouldn’t be suing people left and right, and spending so many days in court trying to “help the music business thrive.” Given this, the question of the year is, does illegal downloading of music really harm the music industry?  Canada’s National Statistical Agency took a look at the sales of music and their findings point to a big answer of no! So if the recording industry isn’t really affected by illegal downloads, why is so much effort put into stopping it?

As many of you have pointed out in comments before, downloading music illegally actually pushes you to go buy the music that you really like after you hear it.  With the amount of people that turn to P2P networks increasing, you’d think that the sales of music would be decreasing, but at least in Canada, it’s not. In fact, it’s increasing. The study found this: “downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD.” The bottom line is that P2P file-sharing increases rather than decreases music purchasing, despite the fact that the big four (Warner, Universal, EMI, and Sony BMG) will lead you to believe that the industry is devastated.

Source: Michael Geist (Thanks for the tip Sean!)

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

• File-Swap.com Provides An Entertaining File Sharing Experience
• The New Way Of File Sharing Is With ‘Peer Pressure’
• O Demonoid, Demonoid, Wherefore art thou Demonoid
• File Sharing Just got that much Better
• Password Protect Your Photos

In today’s Q3 Conference Call, Verizon stated that the Blackberry Storm has been their top seller over the last month, attracting new BB converts in droves.

RIM wouldn’t release specific numbers, according to Alley Insider, but did say that the Storm launch brought in the highest number of new RIM subscribers for a single day. Following that trend, over 75% of Storm buyers have been new Blackberry users, as opposed to former Pearl/Curve/8800 users (they’re all buying the Bold).

And either they had low expectations or sales are actually great, but Verizon is having trouble meeting demands at the moment. Take THAT, David Pogue! [Alley Insider]

The latest update to Evernote adds a new feature to its premium version: adding, syncing, and accessing your Word, Excel, Powerpoint docs, or any other file you throw at it, on any device or platform.

Users will now be able to drop any file into a note which is then synchronized with the Evernote Service. The note is made instantly available to all versions of the app, including the one for the iPhone. While you won’t be able to edit those files on the iPhone, you will be able to view, listen to, and even email them. Currently, this feature is limited to Evernote Premium. The service costs $5/month or $45/year if you pay annually. [Evernote via Wired]

If the Wii has Wii Fit, then Nintendo’s smaller handheld console, the DS, now has the “Walk With Me!” fitness game that encourages walking as an outdoor activity. The game comes bundled with a couple of pedometers dubbed as “Activity Meters” that players have to bring with them wherever they go. These pedometers are not much bigger than a coin and will measure your activity throughout one day. After you get through a week, you can transfer the data on the pedometer via wireless connection to the Nintendo DS.

Your activities are the key to unlocking the mini-games in “Walk With Me!” One example according to Telegraph UK is a mini-game called Walk the World that lets you collect geography trivia every time you accomplish a required number of steps. The Activity Meters could store data for as much as four users, so with two of them per game pack, eight people could share the experience. Nintendo’s “Walk With Me!” will be launched on February 20, 2009 across Europe.