Panasonic Announces 85 inch Full HD Plasma Display

The size wars is picking up again, this time by Panasonic Japan with its recent announcment on a 85 inch Full HD (1920x1080 resolution) Plasma display.

Intriguing? Perhaps not as it was Panasonic who have developed the world's largest 103-inch plasma display to the market in 2006. So what's so special with this 85 inch display ?

With a thickness of 99mm, Panasonic's 85 inch Full HD plasma display incoporates Panasonic's NeoPDP energy-efficient, double luminance technology.The display will sport a contrast ratio of 40,000:1, max. 2,000,000:15.An overall improvement as compared to the bigger display

The display has a viewing area of 1,889 mm (W) x 1,062 mm (H), weighs about 130kg and boasts a long life of 100,000 hours. Retail price and launch date is not confirmed yet.

Piracy is Good For Business Who Said That Angry Birds, That's Who!

Regardless of the industry you work in, counterfeiting or unauthorized distribution is something youll have to learn to live with. The biggest difference is how you treat the end customer - are you going to punish or educate the customer. While MPAA and RIAA are hell bent on punishing the customer, even when that customer is U.S. Congress, or the actual offices of MPAA and RIAA themselves, there are companies that strive on educating the customer and expanding their own ecosystem to cover counterfeited products as well.

One such example is Rovio Mobile and their Angry Birds franchise. At Midem 2012 conference in Cannes, France, CEO of Rovio Mobile Mikael Hed stepped forward and made a daring statement: "We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There are tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which are not officially licensed products," continuing with "we could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy."

Seeing multi-billion dollar companies like Valve, Blizzard as well as music artists actually thriving on changing their business models to protect their own content and yet protect the consumer at the same time is the right way forward. Digital distribution channels created tens of billions of dollars in revenue which did not exist before.
"Already our apps are becoming channels, and we can use that channel to cross-promote - to sell further content," Mikael said. "The content itself has transformed into the channel, and the traditional distribution channels are no longer the kingmakers."

The conclusion of his speech was "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day."

The problem with RIAA and MPAA model is ultimately, it is more about the control of the user than the control of who owns the content - given the number of artists who have their own parallel channels of their own content distribution. But the companies like Rovio Mobile can challenge the counterfeiting and piracy, educate the consumer and earn ton of money in the process. Will it account for lost sales - they certainly would. But they will be too busy counting the money earned by customer education.

Powermat aims to expand its reach this year

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain (February 15, 2010) – Powermat will expand its reach at an ambitious rate of one global market per month through the end of 2010. The bold announcement was made today in support of the unyielding appetite of partners around the world, who have called upon the wireless charging pioneer to access every market that can benefit from wireless energy.

Just four months ago, Powermat launched its premiere product line in the US to great success as consumers flocked to stores with over 750,000 units shipped and widespread sell outs in just the first two months of availability. Having solidified a stronghold on the consumer market, Powermat will now introduce new supportive technology aimed at the OEM. The company will pioneer its new Adaptive ASIC (A²) chip; a breakthrough achieved by miniaturizing Powermat technology to a level that allows for seamless integration into virtually any device. Adaptive ASIC draws on infrastructure already in place by original equipment manufacturers (OEM) as a basis for adapting Powermat wireless capability to fit the need of the OEM rather than the other way around.

The company will also introduce an entirely new line of products in 2010, which offer consumers additional options in both the number of devices they can wirelessly charge as well as the number of ways they can charge them.

Powermat 2010 Product Introductions

Powermat Receivers
The Powermat Powerpak receiver provides seamless integration into virtually any phone by allowing consumers to upgrade to wireless charging with no change to the phone’s ergonomics and design. More than a dozen models from HTC, Blackberry, Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson will debut by June 2010. Powermat also expands its support of the iPhone 3G/3GS by introducing 2 new models; a silicone case receiver and an extended battery case receiver, which combines the dual benefits of extended battery life and wireless charging.

Powermat Home & Office Mats
Powermat will launch a sleek new line of single, double and triple position mats for home and office use – Powermat 1X, Powermat 2X & Powermat 3X. These new models offer a wider range of price points to a broader audience. Powermat will also offer Prepack Bundles, whereby a charging mat is bundled together with a receiver; such as the Powermat 1X single position mat with iPhone Receiver Case, or Powermat 2X double position mat with Powercube.

Powermat Portable Mat
Embedded into a double position portable mat – Powermat Portable 2X - is a high capacity battery, which allows users to charge their devices without the need to plug into an outlet. The mat also folds into a sleek carrying case for easy portability and comes complete with a set of international plugs.

Powermat Netbook Mat
The Powermat 3X Netbook is a complete charging solution that simultaneously charges both a netbook and 2 additional low power devices such as phones, music players, Bluetooth headsets, eBooks and more. Since Netbooks are also coveted for their easy portability, the Powermat Netbook mat folds into a carrying case to maintain that convenience.

Powermat Car Charger
Powermat extends its reach to motorists by introducing the Powermat Car Charger, which eliminates the constant need to plug and unplug when entering and exiting a car. The Powermat Car Charger wirelessly charges hundreds of devices while travelling on the road with a simple Drop & Charge.

Prolimatech Unleashes First VGA Cooler

MK-13

Prolimatech, well-known for its Megahalems line of high performance CPU coolers, has released the MK-13 VGA cooler.










MK-13 with Accessories


MK-13 Poster


Measuring 205 x 43.5 x 99.87mm and weighing 555g, the nickel plated cooler has six copper heatpipes, a copper base and supports upto four 120mm fans. Representing Prolimatech’s first foray into highperformance GPU coolers, the MK-13 looks impressive and features theOmniMount Retention system, which makes it fully compatible with allsingle-GPU graphics cards (e.g. ATI Radeon HD X1000/2000/3000/4000/5000series, and NVIDIA GeForce 6/7/8/9/200 series). Bundled with allnecessary mountings and a syringe of Prolimatech thermal compound, theMK-13 VGA cooler is can be purchased from major retailers and e-tailersat a MSRP of 49.90 EUR in January 2010.

News via [Caseandcooling]

Japan's sumo wrestlers grapple with Apple's iPad

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After years of fat-fingered struggles to type emails and text messages on tiny mobile phone keypads, Japan's sumo wrestlers have been given Apple's iPad to pound with their jumbo-sized digits.

With the sport's reputation tarnished by recent scandals, the Japan Sumo Association is distributing about 60 iPads among all the 51 training stables and top association officials from this week to help improve communication.

And it's a giant leap for a super-sized sport that has until now relied on old-school modes of telephone and fax machines.

"It seems rather easy to use," association chief Hanaregoma said following a brief training session on the popular tablet gadget. "Sending emails was very easy."

A digital novice himself, the 62-year-old former wrestler admitted that while he can read incoming text messages on his mobile phone, he doesn't know how to write replies and does not usually use a computer.

But "time flies if you play with this", he said of the Apple gadget.

The

Judge hand-picked jurors for Apple vs. Samsung trial

Jury duties are usually not very interesting, but in the case of Apple vs. Samsung, jury duty is so important that presiding Judge Lucy Koh hand-picked the jurors to prevent biasness.

Judge Koh questioned potential jurors about various topics including what were their choices of phones, how the economic downturn affected them, experiences with the legal system, and connections to Apple, Samsung, or Google.

A Google employee was excused, and so was an Apple employee who said that he hoped his employer will win the case. Additionally, another person was excused because he felt that the Apple vs. Samsung case was similar to the past Apple vs. Microsoft case.

"In my mind this is practically the exact same thing, but now just dealing with slightly different technology," he said.

The case deals with patents (among other things), so a man with over 120 patents to his name was also eliminated.

Apple already won two early victories by obtaining bans on the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and a pretrial ban on the Galaxy Nexus in the U.S. The trial is expected to last at least one month.

Source: Reuters

Intel Mobile Processors Pricing Updated

The first quad-core mobile part, the Core 2 Extreme QX9300 for Montevina Platform will come along in Q3 for $ 1038. Intel has also added two new Celeron processors; Celeron 585 and 575 based on the older 65nm Merom core for the Montevina Value Platform. Lastly, the Atom N270 (1.66GHz/533FSB) for Basic Notebook Platform will arrive in Q2 for S$ 44.