Technology
This is where you will find all the pages tagged Technology.
Goodbye wires
Imagine a future in which wireless power transfer is feasible: cell phones, household robots, mp3 players, laptop computers and other portable electronics capable of charging themselves without ever being plugged in, freeing us from that final, ubiquitous power wire. Some of these devices might not even need their bulky batteries to operate.
Goodbye wires... MIT experimentally demonstrates wireless power transfer
The Secret of Apple Design
Apple, Inc. has made an art of not talking about its products. Fans, journalists, and rumormongers who love it or love to hate it have long had to practice a sort of Kremlinology to gather the merest hints as to what is coming next out of Cupertino.A case in point is this story, which was to be about the iPhone--about how an innovative and gorgeous piece of technology was conceived, designed, and produced by the vaunted industrial-design team at Apple. Along the way, it would address the larger question of how one company can so consistently excel at making products that become icons, win design awards, and inspire customers.
Technology Review: The Secret of Apple Design
The rise of technology addiction
The seemingly exponential growth of portable technology has sparked fears that people are becoming addicted or swamped by gadgets and their uses.One major consequence of this phenomenon is that the line between work and private life is much more blurred, now that e-mail and phones provide a 24-hour link between employers and staff.
Experts believe that even the decision-making process of the average person can be adversely affected.
The rise of technology addiction
Researchers make tricorder a reality
Purdue researchers have come up with a handheld device they say can determine the chemical composition of an object or detect trace elements on its surface, sort of like the tricorder that the actors used to whip out on Star Trek.Researchers make tricorder a reality, sort of | CNET News.comThe chemical analysis tool sprays a fine mist of charged water droplets onto an object. The water droplets cling to particles on the surface of the object. The ionized particles are separated and dried out; the chemicals that remain thus provide a chemical map to the surface of the item tested or the object itself. If there are skin cells or other organic tissue on something, the device will detect it.
The system is really a combination of two existing devices, said R. Graham Cooks, the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue University's College of Science. The first is a DESI, or desorption electrospray ionization, the component that creates the fine mist. The other is a handheld spectrometer.
The age of technological revolution is 100 years dead
Dazzled by neophiliacs, we have lost the power of scepticism - the new is grotesquely oversold, the tried and tested neglected.I rise each morning, shave with soap and razor, don clothes of cotton and wool, read a paper, drink a coffee heated by gas or electricity and go to work with the aid of petrol and an internal combustion engine. At a centrally heated office I type on a Qwerty keyboard; I might later visit a pub or theatre. Most people I know do likewise.
Not one of these activities has altered qualitatively over the past century, while in the previous hundred years they altered beyond recognition. We do not live in the age of technological revolution. We live in the age of technological stasis, but do not realise it. We watch the future and have stopped watching the present
The age of technological revolution is 100 years dead | Columnists | Guardian Unlimited
The phone of the future
And yet speculation about the future of phones persists, and no wonder. The telephone has changed beyond recognition since its invention in 1876, and is now both the most personal, most social and most rapidly evolving technological device. So to imagine the phone of the future is also to imagine the future of consumer technology, and its personal and social impact. What mobile phones will look like in a year or two is easy to guess: they will be slimmer and probably will let you watch television on the move. But what about ten or 15 years from now?Mobile phones have already changed social practices among their users, and seem likely to do so even more in future. The ability to superimpose images and sound upon reality means that future phones will “create layers on our world”, says Pierre de Vries of the Annenberg Centre for Communication at the University of Southern California. Users will always be connected, he says, but in concentric circles of conversations and interactions that range from people right next to them to those far away.
“When I try to make predictions, I don't look at what I see in the technical realm, I look at what I see in the social realm,” says Mr Norman. He has recently been investigating how children interact with each other and with technology. “They are never alone with their own thoughts,” he says. Instead, they listen to music while texting and talking with friends next to them. “We are learning that we never have to be away from people,” says Mr Norman.
The phone of the future | Economist.com
Imagining the future of mobile graphics
Graphics used in mobile applications are increasingly being found in a variety of devices, from handsets to GPS navigation devices to ultra-mobile PCs and are playing an increasingly important role in the functioning of such devices. UK-based Imagination is one company whose IP (intellectual property) includes solutions for mobile graphics and display applications.DigiTimes.com had an opportunity to sit down with Imagination's head of PR, David Harold, and Woz Ahmed, business development manager - APAC, to talk about Imagination's presence and experience in the semiconductor industry and its relationship with Texas Instruments (TI) and Intel, and where the company is heading, including its plans for the Greater China region.
The cell phone as artistic platform
If you think of the mobile business - in terms of content most of it is - well - commercial, of course. But as with any business there is always a niche that finds its way and manages to avoid using it as a mere platform for marketing and selling content. One thing you might know for example is that in Japan you can easily watch NHK (national TV) on your mobile.
