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Microsoft Silverlight lands on 60 percent of Internet devices

March 16th, 2010

“Silverlight 4, Microsoft’s software for Web multimedia, is now on 60 percent of all Internet-connected devices, the company said. A year ago, the software was at 45 percent penetration.”

People Power releases SDK for wireless home energy sensors

March 16th, 2010

“The brains of the SuRF wireless sensor platform is a Texas Instruments TI-CC 430 system on a chip that combines the microprocessor and the radio. A network of sensors placed around a house, connected to appliances like your dishwasher or thermostat, could monitor energy use. It could also automatically turn down the heat or air conditioning in an unoccupied room, or shut off power to an outlet where a TV or computer is plugged in but not on.”

Casio “digital art” photo frame prototypes promise passive entertainment

March 15th, 2010

“That prototype replaces the power button with a presence sensor, turning on the display only when there are people around to enjoy it. Meanwhile there’s also a more complex image processing unitthan you’d usually find in such a frame; that’s because the Casio DPF can convert regular photos into painting-style artwork on-the-fly. Meanwhile there’s also WiFi connectivity and – despite the passivity premise – support for Flash Lite 3.0 widgets. There’s also talk of more advanced user-recognition systems, rather than solely presence, which could be used to automatically pull out images to display based on who is looking at the screen.”

South Korean Scientists Transmit Broadband Signals Through Human Arm

March 15th, 2010

“The finding may lead to a new generation of medical devices that can monitor blood sugar or electrical activity in the heart. Such devices cut energy needs for a monitoring network by about 90 percent compared to wireless devices running on batteries.”

NeuroSky Announces New Brain To Computer Interface Technologies At GDC

March 15th, 2010

“Wireless and self-pairing USB connection make setup and use effortless. MSRP will range from $49 to $99 depending on volume and bundling options. It will ship before the Christmas 2010 holiday season.”

Apple hires ‘Senior Prototype Engineer’ for work on wearable computing

March 15th, 2010

“Richard DeVaul’s Linkedin status changed last month from Founder & President at AWare Technologies to Senior Prototype Engineer at Apple, Inc. This is a significant hire for Apple and one that shows the company is looking far ahead into the future of mobile computing.”

SpotRank Is Skyhook’s Intelligent Location Firehose. SimpleGeo Is The First To Wield.

March 15th, 2010

“SpotRank gives developers access to hundreds of million of anonymous location entry points put into the Skyhook system. In fact, there are some 500 million points (100 meter “spots”) at the service’s launch. With this massive amount of data, developers can do things such as predict what locations will be hot on which nights, or predict traffic patterns. They have so much data because it’s not based around things like check-ins, which are hot right now on the consumer side of location, but rather everytime a device needs location for anything.”

Battery Life Could Increase By Four Times With Lithium-Sulphur Batteries

March 15th, 2010

“Lithium-ion batteries are already close to the 20-hour life promised back in 2007 for laptops, but Lithium-sulphur batteries being worked on at Stanford University may improve battery life by 300 per cent.”

Consumer electronics market to grow by 8.2% in 2010 to reach $406 billion

March 15th, 2010

“IMS research study estimates global Consumer Electronics (CE) market to reach $406 billion in 2010, a growth of 8.2% compared to 2009 global revenue of $375 billion (excluding home office equipment and low-end mobile phones). 2009 CE revenues have declined by 5% compared to 2008.”

China IPTV Subscriber Growth Shows No Sign of Stopping

March 15th, 2010

“Subscribers to IPTV delivered via the Internet and broadband networks will jump to 8.5 million in 2010, rising by a hefty 96 percent from 4.4 million in 2009, according to iSuppli Corp. And while growth rates during the next three years will not equal the 2010 peak, IPTV development will continue to acquire impressive momentum, reaching expansion rates as high as 51 percent, iSuppli estimates. By 2014, IPTV subscribers in China will exceed 31 million.”