Category Archives: Products

Droid Incredible

The Droid Incredible really is a great gadget. I am too cheap to get it but if I were to use a cell phone much I think this is the one I would get. I personally prefer more open software like Android (which the Droid Incredible uses) to Apple (though Apple’s user experience is great, I admit).

The Droid Incredible by HTC features a body design that measures 4.63 x 2.3 x 0.47 inches (HxWxD), making it easy to slip into your pocket. A large, 3.7-inch HD screen with 480×800 resolution graces the front of the device. The responsive OLED touch screen features rich colors and is easy to use.

With a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 512 MB of RAM, and 8 GB of internal flash memory, the Droid Incredible delivers incredible performance, letting you run multiple applications. It includes an 8-megapixel camera with auto focus and 2x power LED flash, and also Google Maps Navigation, which provides GPS-based turn-by-turn voice guidance to get you where you need to go.

New Server Uses 75% Less Power and Space

SeaMicro drops an atom bomb on the server industry

[SeaMicro] has created a server with 512 Intel Atom chips that gets supercomputer performance but uses 75 percent less power and space than current servers.
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Today’s servers are so inefficient when it comes to being properly utilized,” Feldman said. “This misalignment between the server and the work load is the root of the power consumption problem.”

So SeaMicro guessed that servers could benefit instead by using lots of smaller processors, and it got lucky when Intel started promoting its low-power, low-cost Atom chip for netbooks. That lowered power consumption, since Atom processors deliver three times the performance per watt versus Intel’s server chips.
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But SeaMicro also attacked the power consumption in the rest of the system, which accounts for about two thirds of the power consumed by a server.
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it applied the concept of virtualization to the inside of a server. Feldman designed custom chips that could take the tasks that were handled by everything beyond the Intel microprocessor and its chip set. The custom chips virtualize all of those other components so that it finds the resource when it’s needed. It essentially tricks the microprocessor into thinking that the rest of the system is there when it needs it.

SeaMicro virtualized a lot of functions that took up a lot of space inside each server in a rack. It also did the same with functions such as storage, networking, server management and load balancing. Full told, SeaMicro eliminates 90 percent of the components from a system board. SeaMicro calls this CPU/IO virtualization. With it, SeaMicro shrinks the size of the system board from a pizza box to the size of a credit card.
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This advance is coming just in time. Google said recently that if current power trends continue, the cost of energy consumed by a server during its three-year life span could surpass the initial purchase cost for the hardware. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that volume servers consume more than 1 percent of the total electricity in the US—representing billions of dollars in wasted operating expense each year.

NASA to Launch GM Co-Developed Robot to International Space Station

NASA will launch the first human-like robot to space later this year to become a permanent resident of the International Space Station. Robonaut 2, or R2, was developed jointly by NASA and General Motors under a cooperative agreement to develop a robotic assistant that can work alongside humans, whether they be astronauts in space or workers at GM manufacturing plants on Earth.

The 300-pound R2 consists of a head and a torso with two arms and two hands and will launch on space shuttle Discovery as part of the STS-133 mission planned for September. Once aboard the station, engineers will monitor how the robot operates in weightlessness. R2 joins another station robot, known as Dextre. That robot, built by the Canadian Space Agency, consists of two, long arms to perform tasks that normally require spacewalking astronauts to complete.

While Dextre is located on the station’s exterior, R2 will be confined to operations in the station’s Destiny laboratory. However, future enhancements could allow it to move more freely around the station’s interior, and it could one day be modified to operate outside the complex.

“The use of R2 on the space station is just the beginning of a quickening pace between human and robotic exploration of space,” said John Olson, director of NASA’s Exploration Systems Integration Office. “The partnership of humans and robots will be critical to opening up the solar system and will allow us to go farther and achieve more than we can probably even imagine today.”

The dexterous humanoid robot not only looks like a human, it is designed to work like one. With human-like hands and arms, R2 is able to use the same tools that station crew members use. In the future, the greatest benefit of humanoid robots in space may be as an assistant or stand-in for astronauts during spacewalks or for tasks too difficult or dangerous for humans. For now, R2 is still a prototype and lacks adequate protection needed to exist outside the space station in the extreme temperatures of space.

Updated Black and Decker Codeless Lawn Mower Review

Update: Less than 2 years old the battery can’t even mow 1/2 of what the old lawn mower battery could mow after it was much older. Unfortunately it seem that even my pessimistic expectations were too high. They managed to provide worse battery product after years of breakthroughs in improving batteries. I would recommend avoiding Black and Decker.

Better options: Toro 20360 e-Cycler 20-Inch 36-Volt Cordless Electric Lawn Mower – Earthwise 60120 20-Inch 24-Volt Cordless Electric Lawn Mower

The bag is indeed much better than the old version but it is the only improvement. The other problems I mentioned do indeed continue to annoy as it is used.

My old version of this mower just stopped working and the repair guy said it would cost $250 for a new starter, new battery… So I bought a new one: Black & Decker 19-Inch 24-Volt Cordless Electric Mulching Lawn Mower #CMM1200. He said that the new ones were not as well manufactured. I couldn’t imagine how you could make things worse (it is a simple product and just adopting improvement over the years should be really easy).

But, the starter on this model is horrible. You have to tun this incredibly cheap key in a very poorly designed socket. Fails over 80% of the time. The old model started easily essentially every time. The design was just as you would expect, foolproof. Whatever pointy haired boss approved this design needs to go into another line of work.

The ability of the mower to cope with high grass is very poor – much worse than the previous model. I had a good test at first given the time between my mower breaking and getting the new one. Not often an issue, but still not a good thing.

They had a poor indication of the charge left in the battery previously. They now provide no indication of the charge left. It makes you realize that a poor indication was much better than none.

Battery technology has improved a great deal, and that was one of biggest the weaknesses of the last one. Well they seem to have managed to provide worse battery performance after 5 years of improvement in that technology. Pretty sad.
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Sub $100 Tablet in 2011

I must admit I am skeptical. If it happens this looks very cool.

One Laptop Per Child Revamps Tablet Plans

On Thursday the foundation announced a partnership with chip maker Marvell to collaborate on a sleek and cheap touch-screen tablet for developing-world school children, a device it now plans to launch at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2011 for less than $100. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) says that’s close to two years ahead of its scheduled release for the so-called XO-3, the long-awaited upgrade to the non-profit’s XO, the so-called “hundred-dollar laptop” launched in 2007.
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The first XO, for instance, never reached its price target of $100; it now sells for $172. About 2 million of the devices have been sold–a significant achievement for a small nonprofit, but far less than its initial projections. And a flashy double touch-screen model known as the XO-2 was quietly scrapped last year when OLPC decided it couldn’t be made cheaply enough.
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As for Marvell, the partnership with OLPC could lend more credibility to its Moby tablet, which is designed for educational uses like electronic textbooks. OLPC is also building Marvell’s chips into an upgraded form of its XO, known as the XO 1.75, later this year. “When we first met Nicholas, we were very moved by his leadership,” says Dai Weili, Marvell’s chief operating office. “We’ve got the cost structure, feature capability and scalability to support his vision for many years to come.”

Green Technology Innovation by College Engineering Students

With prizes totaling more than $100,000 in value, this year’s Climate Leadership Challenge is believed to be the most lucrative college or university competition of its kind in the country. The contest was open to all UW-Madison students.

A device that would help provide electricity efficiently and at low cost in rural areas of developing countries took the top prize – $50,000 – this week in a student competition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for innovative ideas to counteract climate change.

The “microformer” is the brainchild of Jonathan Lee, Dan Ludois, and Patricio Mendoza, all graduate students in electrical engineering. Besides the cash prize, they will receive a promotional trip worth $5,000 and an option for a free one-year lease in the University Research Park’s new Metro Innovation Center on Madison’s east side.

“We really want to see implementation of the best ideas offered,” said Tracey Holloway, director of the Nelson Institute Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at UW-Madison, which staged the contest for the second year in a row. “The purpose of this competition is to make an impact on climate change.”

The runner-up for the “most action-ready idea” was a proposal to promote the use of oil from Jatropha curcas plants to fuel special cooking stoves in places like Haiti. UW-Madison seniors Eyleen Chou (mechanical engineering), Jason Lohr (electrical engineering), Tyler Lark (biomedical engineering/mathematics) won $10,000 for their scheme to reduce deforestation by lowering demand for wood charcoal as a cooking fuel.

CORE Concept, a technology that would cut emissions from internal combustion engines by using a greater variety of fuels, won mechanical engineering doctoral students Sage Kokjohn, Derek Splitter, and Reed Hanson $15,000 as the “most innovative technical solution.”

SnowShoe, a smart phone application that would enable shoppers to check the carbon footprint of any item in a grocery store by scanning its bar code, won $15,000 as the “most innovative non-technical solution.” Graduate students Claus Moberg (atmospheric and oceanic science), Jami Morton (environment and resources), and Matt Leudtke (civil and environmental engineering) submitted the idea.

Other finalists were REDCASH, a plan to recycle desalination wastewater for carbon sequestration and hydrogen fuel production, by doctoral student Eric Downes (biophysics) and senior Ian Olson (physics/engineering physics); and Switch, an energy management system that integrates feedback and incentives into social gaming to reduce personal energy use, by doctoral students David Zaks (environment and resources) and Elizabeth Bagley (environment and resources/educational psychology).

Friday Fun: Cats and Kids with iPads

So usable 2 year olds and cats can use them. Fun. Apple sold 500,000 in the first week and demand has outstripped their capacity to produce so they are delaying the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May. Google is rumored to have a similar device based on their open Android operating system. Let the games begin. I must admit the iPad seems fun but it seems mainly like hype to me. But I can believe tablet-netbooks could evolve into very cool and popular devices.

Google Social Circle Results

I haven’t paid much attention to this before: Google showing results based on your social network. In genera,l I think Google is doing great stuff. Their approach to profiles, buzz, search wiki, and social stuff in general however, I find poor (extremely poorly when I see how well they do so much else). They are too borg-like in their insistence you do things exactly as proscribed by them. They opt you in far to often, in the way they want – completely and with few, if any, options. They don’t provide good tools to let you manage your profile and connections. The Google profile itself is extremely lame.

It is very silly that they don’t let you create personas you want to use and let you use them as you want. They force you to use the Google account you are logged in as to access Google services as the profile used in Google searches. I don’t want or need the 2 tied together. And I would much prefer a way to switch between my personas by search (or buzz [though I dropped it because it was so inflexible] or whatever). I know which persona I want for a specific search. This seems like a very obvious thing lots of people would want to do. Google’s whole monolithic, one-very-rigid-size-fits-all social solutions don’t allow this. It is a fundamental flaw. Without fixing the flexibility of social services from Google I see them having trouble succeeding in that area. On the other hand much else of what they do is fantastic.

The way their search wiki stuff works is very similar: inflexible. They seem focused on do it how we want which is not, I think, the way most people want. Their social solutions are very all or nothing. They want people to behave how Google wants. For that reason after short attempts to try Google’s social efforts I give up. I keep hoping they will become more flexible and user friendly but keep being disappointed.

This is the network of connections Google uses to identify relevant social search results. It is based on a combination of the following:

Direct connections from your Google chat buddies and contacts (5)
Direct connections from links listed on your Google profile (0) such as Twitter and FriendFeed
Secondary connections (252) that are publicly associated with your direct connections
In addition to web pages from your social circle, posts from your Google Reader subscriptions may also appear in your social search results.

Google Social Search is a feature designed to help you discover relevant publicly-accessible content from your social circle, a set of online friends and contacts. The idea is that content from your friends and social contacts is often more relevant to you than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from your best friend can be even better.

See video on Google social search:
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Solar-Powered Desalination

Saudi Arabia meets much of its drinking water needs by removing salt and other minerals from seawater. Now the country plans to use one of its most abundant resources to counter its fresh-water shortage: sunshine.
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KACST’s main goal is to reduce the cost of desalinating water. Half of the operating cost of a desalination plant currently comes from energy use, and most current plants run on fossil fuels.
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Reducing cost isn’t the only reason that people have dreamed of coupling renewable energy with desalination for decades, says Lisa Henthorne, a director at the International Desalination Association. “Anything we can do to lower this cost over time or reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with that power is a good thing,” Henthorne says. “This is truly a demonstration in order to work out the bugs, to see if the technologies can work well together.”
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Saudi Arabia, the top desalinated water producer in the world, uses 1.5 million barrels of oil per day at its plants, according to Arab News.
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In a concentrated PV system, lenses or mirrors focus sunlight on ultra-efficient solar cells that convert the light into electricity. The idea is to cut costs by using fewer semiconductor solar cell materials. But multiplying the sun’s power by hundreds of times creates a lot of heat. “If you don’t cool [the device], you end up overheating the circuits and killing them,” says Sharon Nunes, vice president of IBM Big Green Innovations. IBM’s solution is to use a highly conducting liquid metal–an indium gallium alloy–on the underside of silicon computer chips to ferry heat away. Using this liquid metal, the researchers have been able to concentrate 2,300 times the sun’s power onto a one-square-centimeter solar device. That is three times higher than what’s possible with current concentrator systems, says Nunes.

Finding good desalination solution could help many other locations (including southern California). But there is still a long way to go.

HP Makes Progress on Revolutionary Memristors

H.P. Sees a Revolution in Memory Chip

Memristor-based systems also hold out the prospect of fashioning analog computing systems that function more like biological brains, Dr. Chua said.

“Our brains are made of memristors,” he said, referring to the function of biological synapses. “We have the right stuff now to build real brains.”

In an interview at the H.P. research lab, Stan Williams, a company physicist, said that in the two years since announcing working devices, his team had increased their switching speed to match today’s conventional silicon transistors. The researchers had tested them in the laboratory, he added, proving they could reliably make hundreds of thousands of reads and writes.

That is a significant hurdle to overcome, indicating that it is now possible to consider memristor-based chips as an alternative to today’s transistor-based flash computer memories, which are widely used in consumer devices like MP3 players, portable computers and digital cameras.

“Not only do we think that in three years we can be better than the competitors,” Dr. Williams said. “The memristor technology really has the capacity to continue scaling for a very long time, and that’s really a big deal.”