Hasta La Gadget!

Sony appears to be readying technology that would increase the capacity of Blu-ray discs from 25 Gbytes to 33.4 Gbytes, an increase in capacity of just over 33 percent.

Nikkei Electronics Asia quotes a source at Sony that says the partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) signal
processing would continue to use the blue-violet laser (at 405 nanometers) currently used by the existing Blu-ray technology.

The problem, according to the story, was determining the error rate of the Blu-ray media, which currently is assessed using jitter. The new technique uses a method called i-MLSE
(Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) , which both Sony and Panasonic jointly developed in a paper presented in October.

Sony plans to propose that the Blu-ray Disc Association adopt i-MLSE, which would open the technology up for widespread adoption. The story doesn’t speculate on how this might affect Blu-ray media prices, or how quickly the technology could be implemented into Blu-ray readers don’t appear to be the hot sellers that DVD burners once were. However, the additional capacity could easily be used by additional featurettes and other content accompanying Blu-ray movies.

When Pandigital announced the first ZINK-enabled printer capable of making 4-by-6 “zero-ink” photo prints, it was a foregone conclusion that ZINK would introduce new paper sized to match. The first generation of ZINK-enabled devices–which include the Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Photo Printer, Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer, and the Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera–were limited to 2-by-3-inch prints on ZINK paper, which uses embedded dye crystals that turn color when heated in lieu of liquid ink or toner.

ZINK has since introduced photo paper in both 3-by-4 and 4-by-6 sizes. ZINK Imaging considers 3-by-4 the ideal size for mobile printing from pocket-sized handheld devices, with 4-by-6 targeted for home printers. That said, the Pandigital Portable Photo Printer can output 4-by-6 photos without the need of a computer, so consumers can bring the printer with them. ZINK says that additional paper sizes will be forthcoming.

Scientists believe they have found evidence of dark matter, the invisible substance believed to comprise three-quarters of the matter in the universe, in a defunct iron mine in northern Minnesota. The tentative detection of two dark-matter particles, known as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) for their tendency to pass unimpeded through ordinary matter, was made by the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) project and announced by several laboratories, partners in a consortium that manages the project.

 Despite the announcement, project scientists acknowledge that there is still about a 25 percent chance that the detections were caused by some other unrelated effect, and that they will need at least five detections before they can definitively state they have found this mysterious form of matter.