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The Zaurus SL-6000 has been specifically designed for enterprise-class mobility by incorporating a 4″ 640 x 480 VGA display, IEEE 802.11b wireless connectivity and a QWERTY keyboard in a small, durable, stylish design. The Transflective screen is viewable indoors or outdoors and consumes less power than other lypes of LCD. The entire file system, including personal contacts, documents and applications, are securely stored and backed up in 64MB of flash memory, protecting data and programs when the battery runs low. It’s even built to withstand a 1-meter drop onto solid concrete.

The SL-6000 incorporates industry standard Linux and Java environments to provide a high performance, reliable, secure and extensible platform optimized for time-to-market development of mobile enterprise applications to increase business productivity. The Opera 7 Web browser supports XHTML 1.0, HTML 4.01, 128-bit SSL and a subset of JavaScript 1.5. Create, view and edit Microsoft Word and Excel files and view PowerPoint presentations. Synchronize the PIM suite (Address Book, Calendar, To Do, Notes) and e-mail with attachments with Microsoft Outlook. Integrated dual CompactFlash and Secure Digital slots and a USB host controller provide flexibility to expand the SL-6000 for specific business functions. You can also add an additional CompactFlash slot and 1500mAh battery with the optional CF expansion adapter.

Sold at PC Connection – $699

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The Actius MM20 Notebook is for users who require maximum productivity in, and out, of the office. Never before has a 2-pound Notebook packed so much power and performance.

With its 1.0GHz EfficeonTM processor, 512MB RAM, 20GB hard drive*, 2 USB 2.0 ports integrated high-speed Wi-Fi wireless connectivity and high-performance ATI MOBILITYTM RADEONTM video controller, you will have the performance you need. And its groundbreaking design makes it a pleasure to carry, it is only 2lbs.

More info can be found at MM20

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17-inch TFT Display 1440×900 resolution 1.5GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache 512MB DDR333 SDRAM 80GB Ultra ATA/100
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (64MB DDR)

…the (near) perfect machine? $2,799.00 Released today 19.4.2004

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Nokia subsidiary Vertu recently announced a new addition to their ultra-luxury line of GSM mobile phones called the Ascent collection. These devices are made from hand-sewn leather, stainless steel, ceramic and sapphire materials including jewelled bearings, thus providing a welcome relief from the usual poly-carbonate and ABS plastic blends used in most phones. The price of $3,850 (which seems to include the Vertu Concierge service) is lower than the Signature line at about $26,000.

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The n52 PC game controller replaces the keyboard/mouse with 14 programmable keys, a directional pad, scroll wheel, and thumb buttons. Good for first and third person shooters. Configuration profiles & shift states allow multiple commands to be attached to any key so that the user can play Warcraft and use Photoshop without touching the keyboard. Nice design/highly rated product.

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Manufactured diamonds will be a disruptive technology in the areas of precious gems, semiconductors, high temperature electronics and thin-film coatings for industrial apps. Diamonds have unique properties. Diamonds are the hardest know substance, thanks to each carbon atom having four covalent bonds (…although cubic carbon nitride (C3N4) is theoretically harder). Diamonds are resistant to radiation damage, are chemically inert, and with a melting point of about 3550C (well over 2x that of steel), can sustain high temperatures.

In 1880, the Scottish chemist James Ballantyne Hannay claimed (since verified) that he had made diamonds by heating a mixture of paraffin, bone, oil and lithium to red heat in sealed wrought-iron tubes. General Electric was growing small, industrial-grade synthetic diamonds in the 1950’s. Last year Wired Magazine published an article that featured gem-quality synthetic diamond growers Apollo Diamond Inc and Gemesis. These companies produce near-flawless multi-carat diamonds in high-pressure chambers (devices that are about the size of washing machines) through a process know as chemical vapor deposition (CVD). . They polish them, mount them and then sell them for less than one-half the price of natural diamonds. The quality of the artificial diamonds is outstanding, in fact, one comment was “It’s too perfect to be natural”. An ABCNews article last year tagged manmade diamonds with the phrase “All the sparkle at half the price”“. There is an interesting discussion on Pricescope regarding the merits of man-mades versus naturals.

And then last month, scientists at Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, D.C. announced an improvement to the CVD process that allows synthetic diamonds to be grown directly from a gas mixture at a rate that is “up to 100 times faster than other methods used to date”(!)

Upon reading the above announcement, my thoughts turned to the laws of economics. Based on the economics of supply and demand, as supply goes up, then price should go down. However, so far this year, shares of Anglo American PLC, with about 60% share of the world diamond supply, are up about 25%. And in fact, some companies, such as Merrill Lynch and UBS have recently issued “Buy” recommendations for AAUKF. Not only that, but it has been reported that the Diamond Trading Company (DTC is the rough diamond sales and marketing arm of De Beers, which is in turn a sub of AA), has announced that the price of rough diamonds will increase 5 percent from 22 March 2004. This is the second price increase this year. The first increase of 3% went into effect in January when DTC warned that prices could continue to climb due to the market’s underlying dynamics of supply and demand.

The fact that Anglo-American shares are not off is certainly a reflection of the fact that AA is a large diversified company with only about 12% of it’s revenue based on the diamond trade. A bigger factor is that this alternate source of diamonds has not come on stream yet . Imponderables include such things as the public’s acceptance of cultured diamonds, and the reaction and possible counter-offensive (DiamondSure) by the gem industry, as well as the effectiveness of the Kimberley Process in outlawing ?conflict diamonds? .

It certainly seems that these $50,000 gadgets at Apollo & Gemesis should have an impact on this market, and that there should be some way to profit from the pending increase in the diamond supply! Perhaps by shorting Rio Tinto PLC, which has a 60% ownership of Diavik Diamond Mines in Canada and thereby a 10% share of the world diamond supply. Diavik together with other Canadian diamond mines are slated to add about 14 million carats annually to the world supply of diamonds by 2007. Or perhaps by taking the opposite tack, and going long Diamonex Products or some other CVD diamond coating manufacturer.
But, more on this at a later date.

The Atlantic published an interesting article Feb 2002 entitled “Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?” detailing the creation of the diamond market in the 1930’s and 40’s, and the difficulty the public has in re-selling their diamonds.

Happy birthday Adam.

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HTPCs are getting popular.

HTPC (Home Theather PC) is no longer just for the geeks, with companies like Ahanix HTPCs are getting more attention from the general computer users.

Ahanix develops special PC cases which look like a high-end receiver or DVD player. With integrated VFD displays and brushed aliminum casing, they look very professional. Click here to see some models from Ahanix.

Also read this article about how to create an HTPC yourself.

I personally tried to build one with the case model D.Vine 4 from Ahanix. My choice for graphics card was ATI 9800 All-in-wonder-PRO because it had built in Component Output for HDTV quality viewing pleasure.

The sound card is Sound Blaster® Audigy™ 2 ZS Platinum Pro. I chose this card because it has an external connection box and makes your life much easier for cabling. According to Creative Labs. this model is also the only PC platform to deliver Advanced Resolution™ 24-bit DVD-Audio playback in pristine 108dB SNR clarity across all channels.

Don’t believe that yet though, I tried the DVD Audio player and was shocked with a stupid limitation. The player refuses to play if you connect this to a high end receiver with digital input (SPDIF) because of copyright limitations. I ask to Creative Labs. “If your system is capable of playing 108dB SNR, why are you limiting it to only analog connections?”

Another ceveat about this card is that you can not play multi channel audio if you are using SPDIF connection to your high-end receiver. If you are playing a DVD there is not problem, because you can choose the option not to decode it via the card but pass it to your receiver so it can decode it to you.

But when you try to get 5.1 sound via any Windows application, there is no luck. The reason of this limitation is there is no up-mixing or real-time AC3 encoding engine on this card. If there was such a feature, you could on the fly encode any multi channel sound into Dolby Digital (AC3) and pass it to your receiver so it can decode it. Creative Labs. claims that solution is not optimal because it would create delays in the sound. You can read their FAQ about this here.

So if you want to experience the Terminator 2 DVD in high definition (there is a new version of this DVD which has a Windows Media 9 compatible high definition version on the second DVD), you can get great picture but only 2 channel sound.

There is also an important tool you will need and here is why. There is a limitation again because of copyright issues. ATI All-in-wonder-PRO won’t let you use it’s Component Output to display a regular DVD in high definition (this is not related to the Terminator 2 special edition, that works around this problem with a licencing system). This is again because Macrovision copyright protection on the DVD. The idea behind that is also simple but stupid. In theory, you can output the video at very high definition, you can record the result yourself in digital form and thus create a copy of the DVD.

This shows us 2 things;

1. The video recorded on DVDs are better than 480p standard which is generally the highest the DVD players would display.
2. These people who created this protection system is not aware of free software which can already copy DVDs.

Anyway, if you want to bypass this problem and output regular DVDs as high definition video you need Remote Selector.

This tool supports many software DVD players (I recommend PowerDVD 5) and it can disable the protection system. It also can disable region limitations on the DVDs. Which means you can play DVDs from Europe or any other region. Which brings us to the conclusion that the DVD region system is not a limitation because of PAL or NTCS it’s just another stupid idea to make life more difficult for us the consumers. If you buy a DVD in North America, you can not watch it in Europe, I wonder which idiot tought of this sytem.

After all, you are trying to watch a DVD you legally own!

The last tool I want to mention is DVD Decrypter. This is a freeware and it creates a bit-accurate copy of your legally owned! DVD on your hard drive. After that you can play the DVD with PowerDVD and still have all the features like subtitles, alternative sound tracks, etc. With this techology you can create a storage system connected to your HTPC (that’s another project!), and copy all of your DVDs so you don’t have to get up from your couch to change DVDs!

I will tell you more about that another time.

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Valeo’s new Lane Departure Warning System will be introduced on the Nissan Infiniti 2005 model FX. The system generates a warning to alert the driver that the vehicle is about to move out of its lane. Some studies indicate that about one-half of fatal accidents in the U.S. are caused by unintended lane departures. Similar systems are already in use on some truck models from Mercedes & Freightliner.
The system uses a camera mounted in the vehicle’s rear-view mirror stalk, a CMOS image-processor, some ASIC’s, + an Intel StrongARM processor. Software is from Iteris Inc. The camera monitors the position of the car relative to the lane markers.

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There is a coffee warmer from Sunbeam. It uses USB port of your computer.

Features:
1&12289;Keep coffee/tea/drink warm at 40C;
2&12289;Suitable for any type of cup;
3&12289;Keep coffee/tea warm for any time interval.
4&12289;With translucent power indicating On/Off switch;
5&12289;No risk of burn, with enclosure made of quality insulation material;
6&12289;Easy installation, no driver required, Plug & Play.

http://www.sunbeamtech.com/new/products/accessory/accessory%20series-USB%20Coffer%20Warmer.htm

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This device measures current incidence and daily dosage of ultra-violet radiation. Good for those with sensitive skin, those living at high-altitudes or mid-latitudes or those living under areas of ozone depletion, such as Australia, New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego. On 7 Sept 2003 the ozone hole reached populated land areas — residents of Punta Arenas, Chile, the world’s southern-most city, were advised not to go outdoors between 11 and 3.

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