eldavojohn writes "The BBC is reporting that many countries are dumping their e-Waste in poorer African nations. From the article, 'The world's richest nations are dumping hazardous electronic waste on poor African countries, says the head of the UN's Environment Programme (Unep).' The problem with e-Waste (versus other wastes) is that the gases and chemicals that make up a lot of electronics are particularly harmful for the environment. I suppose nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."

MattSparkes writes, "Creating a layer of bubbles underneath a ship's hull could improve fuel efficiency by 20%. When you consider that 90% of the world's goods are transported by sea, the importance of this discovery is obvious. 'Conjured up from thin air at the flick of a switch, this slippery blanket will help transport a fully laden tanker or container ship across the ocean at higher speed, and using far less fuel, than ever before... There is currently no other technique in naval architecture that can promise such savings.'" The article looks in some detail at the engineering problems that will need to be overcome before this technique is practical.

Information Week is carrying a Reuters story examining the shift towards LCD technology in recent large-screen television models. Though some analysts acknowledge that plasma displays have faster response times over large surfaces, the industry seems to be betting that consumers will prefer higher resolution images over time. From the article: "CPT's Wu agrees that plasma panels, especially 50-inch and larger ones, do excel LCDs in some aspects of picture quality, but he says the sheer size of the LCD camp will help LCD panels overcome whatever drawbacks they have in a timely manner ...With the 40-inch-class market gradually taken over by LCD TVs, plasma models need to migrate to the market for 50-inch TVs and above, but demand is not as well developed there, analysts say. 'The United States accounts for more than 70 percent of demand for 50-inch plasma TVs and larger. In other words, there is virtually no 50-inch-class plasma TV market outside the United States,' DisplaySearch director Hisakazu Torii said."

fermion writes "Xerox is reported to be working on some interesting forms of digital paper. The New York Times reports a 16 hour reusable paper. This system uses a coated paper and special ink to produce a copy that will fade over 16 hours, or sooner if the paper is put back in the copy tray. It can then be reused for a new copy, up to 10 times. According to the article, the rational for this is that paper is no longer used to store information, but merely to temporarily display it. The research suggest that in the typical office many copies end up in the recycle bin by the end of the day. The main obstacle to commercialization seems to be the question of whether people need this product. Will people have digital displays that will take the place of paper? Will something radically different from plain paper, but with competitive costs and characteristics, become popular? Xerox itself is working on something called gyricon, a system of tiny bichromal beads encased between sheets of plastics. Evidently the beads can be set electrically to either reflect of absorb light, thus allowing images to be generated at will. According to the page, the images can be set by a printer or a hand held wand. The 'paper' could even be combined with electronics to create a flexible display. So, /., where is our display technology headed? Coated conventional paper? Plastic reprintable paper? Glasses with heads up displays and wireless data feed?"

jrieth50 noted that a method of using geometric shapes combined with color to store up to 256GB of data on a sheet of paper or plastic. The article says "Files such as text, images, sounds and video clips are encoded in 'rainbow format' as colored circles, triangles, squares and so on, and printed as dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch. The paper can then be read through a specially developed scanner and the contents decoded into their original digital format and viewed or played."

An anonymous reader writes to mention a BBC article, looking at South Korea's vision of the home of the future. Their vision includes the use of many recent advances in interface technology, networking, and wireless communication. The difference? Unlike the high-tech demo homes we've discussed in the past, 100 of these units have already been built. Another 30,000 high-tech flats are in the planning stages, to be completed by 2008. From the article: "Here, everything is voice activated, and the fridge can provide you with recipes which use the ingredients inside, and let you know if your food is out of date. It relies on the food packaging containing radio tags, or RFID labels, which can be read by the fridge each time it passes through the door. In the bedroom your wardrobe mirror can tell you your schedule for the day, help you select your clothes — if all your clothes have washable radio tags compatible with the system — and keep you up to date with the weather and traffic."

An anonymous reader writes "As all of you surely know by now, the PS3 has just been released in Japan. What you might find interesting, however, is that among those 80 000 happy PS3 owners (or self-appointed resellers) was at least one who decided it was his or her sacred mission to crack this puppy open for a peek inside. About the article, it is in Japanese. Someone who knows enough of this fabled language of wonder well enough would do well to offer some translations, although I don't really suspect that the story is the most important thing here..."

prostoalex writes "With both startups and large companies such as Boeing working on solar power, the technology is becoming more affordable, MIT Technology Review says. Solar power concentrators are all in rage now: 'The thinking behind concentrated solar power is simple. Because energy from the sun, although abundant, is diffuse, generating one gigawatt of power (the size of a typical utility-scale plant) using traditional photovoltaics requires a four-square-mile area of silicon, says Jerry Olson, a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. A concentrator system, he says, would replace most of the silicon with plastic or glass lenses or metal reflectors, requiring only as much semiconductor material as it would take to cover an area the size of a typical backyard. And because decreasing the amount of semiconductor needed makes it affordable to use much more efficient types of solar cells, the total footprint of the plant, including the reflectors or lenses, would be only two to two-and-a-half square miles.'"

H. writes "Following the success of GPU Gems and GPU Gems 2, NVIDIA has decided to produce a third GPU Gems volume to showcase the best new ideas and techniques for the latest programmable GPUs. If you would like to contribute to the GPU Gems series, please read the submission guidelines. The deadline for proposal submissions is Monday, December 11, 2006. If your proposal is accepted, you will receive additional time to complete the chapter." (Here are the participation guidelines.)

elzurawka writes "Apple has issued a recall of over 1 million batteries in the U.S.. This comes after Dell recalled over 4 million batteries just last week. It appears to be again an issue with Sony produced batteries. From the article: 'Computer giant Apple is recalling upwards of 1.1m batteries used in its laptop computers in the US. The announcement affects laptop computers sold between October 2003 and August 2006 and impacts the company's latest range of machines ... The recall is said to be the second biggest in consumer electronic history and will come as a blow to Apple after its launch of new MacBook and MacBook Pro machines had been hailed as a huge success for the firm.'"

BenEnglishAtHome asks: "One of our remote offices will soon be gutted/rebuilt and our local IT staff managed to fumble the political ball. Our server closet is being reduced to 45 square feet and there will be no more unused desk space that can be occupied by visiting techs. Result? That 45 square feet must house 3 desktop-size servers; 3 UPSs; a fully-adjustable user workstation that includes separate adjustments for work surface height, keyboard height, and keyboard angle as well as a big ergo chair; an area suitable for workstation diagnostics; a good KVM switch; 2 monitors, keyboards, mice, and laptop docking stations that must be simultaneously available; and some amount of small item storage, while still having enough room for a door to swing into the roughly square room. The only bright side is that I can have all the A/C, power, and LAN drops I want. Has anyone managed to find and deploy a freestanding server rack/workstation/furniture system (probably something L-shaped) that can perform this many tasks in such a small space?"

netbuzz writes "Laundry Time, an eight-week pilot program from the Internet Home Alliance, begins next week with three Atlanta families and the technology and services of Microsoft, HP, Panasonic, Proctor & Gamble and Whirlpool. The idea is to allow family members to receive alerts and control certain laundry functions from their PCs, cell phones and TV sets, presumably so they can spend more time with their PCs, cell phones and TV sets." I am all for tech for the sake of tech, but I'm pretty sure this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse Nostradamus prognosticated.

TechGranny writes "Linux Devices is reporting that MPEG-4 vendor Ateme has ported the GStreamer framework to the newest generation of Texas Instruments DaVinci chips. This audio/video platform uses an embedded engine dubbed Easee. Ateme says they are targeting applications such as video security, video conferencing, IP-STBs (IP set top boxes), PMPs (portable media players), digital media adapters, and 'many others.'"

ls129 writes "Humanoid robots are known for their rope-swinging ability and their martial-arts fighting capabilities. However, one humanoid robotics fan trained his robot to do something really useful. His Robotis based humanoid robot can actually pour a bottle of beer into a pint glass."

ROBOEXOTICA, the annual cocktailrobotics festival (to be held dec. 5th-9th in Museumsquartier Vienna) features the 8th Annual Cocktail Robot Awards (ACRA). Trophies are awarded in five categories, among them mixing and serving cocktails as well as lighting cigarettes and cocktail conversation. Entries welcome! Among the winners of 2005 was David Calkins, president of the Robotics Society of America and founder of Robogames. There is also a related post on SHIFZ-Blog.

FearTheFrail writes "Reuters reports that Wal-Mart is preparing to put "build your own computer counters" in 1200 of its 3200 stores, with plans to do so in at least 1400 by the end of the year. Maybe this will bring on an influx of new hardware enthusiasts, along with plenty of horror stories about attempted computer assembly. Do you think this will have an effect on the OEM parts market? And what about the operating systems to be offered? Will Wal-Mart shoppers migrate to Linux in order to save a hundred bucks or more, or will they even have the chance?"

Paul Carver writes "Smarthome has been advertising Insteon for a while now, but I haven't bought any of it, yet. I've accumulated a fair amount of X10 products over the years, including Smarthome branded signal boosters, signal couplers, noise blockers, and troubleshooting tools. Even so, I'm pretty much fed up with X10. Nothing I've bought has succeeded in making my X10 system more than 'just barely acceptable' and 'better than nothing but not by much'. A Google search for Insteon doesn't turn up much other than their own advertisements and a couple of vaguely positive but not detailed reviews. Is this new technology going to take off? What's the community's consensus on home automation?"

A reader asks: "I work for a very well known company specializing in Game Engine Middleware. Recently we've been trying to gather together marketing material for some new products, and one step towards that end is capturing high resolution gameplay footage (1280x1024) into some kind of movie file for editing. According to the 'experts', the best solution is to scan convert the DVI out into HDTV 1080p, and then HD capture it back into another PC for editing. Surely all this conversion to 'broadcast' quality is pointless - has anyone come across a pure DVI capture solution?"

Used PC Guy asks: "I'm trying to run a program to recycle PCs for charity to give to underprivileged kids. Trouble is, these kids have never seen a PC. What should I teach the kids if they're about 14-21? Should I teach Windows, Linux or both? What hardware should I be requesting, and what's the best way to test the influx of hardware that's coming in quickly, efficiently and reliably to make sure won't need servicing within another 6 months?"

christoofar asks: "HHDD (Hybrid Hard Disk Drive) technology has been receiving some buzz lately. The concept is not new, but Samsung has been working on a consumer version of HHDD that everyone can use. HHDDs are disk drives that carry onboard RAM (in this case, NAND flash) which is non-volatile and offers to speed boot times and writes to the disk. This carries enormous benefit to laptop users who need to keep their disk activity to a minimum in order to preserve battery life. Given that Microsoft is adding support for Hybrid Hard Drives in their upcoming Windows Vista release, what efforts are being undertaken in the Linux realm to use this new storage technology?"