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The Federal Aviation Administration has published an interesting map that shows the amount of fuel burned by aircraft traffic worldwide for the years 2000-2004. The US and Europe show the highest amounts of fuel consumption, and thus air traffic.

The accompanying stats show that there were 24,085,131 passenger jet flights during 2004 that travelled a total of 18.7 billion nautical miles, and that these flights injected an estimated 584 billion Kg (about 644 million tons) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere…can’t be a good thing.

Global Aviation Emissions Inventories for 2000 through 2004 – FAA/SAGE, Sept 2005

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Sony has already begun to receive initial shipments of their next-gen PlayStation 3 game console from contract manufacturer Asustek. Newspaper DigiTimes reports that inventory levels will be driven to the 4M mark in advance of the November 11, 2006 official launch in Japan, and November 17 for the rest of us. No word on the breakdown between the Basic ($499) and the Premium ($599) models of the PS3.

Sony’s eventually hoping to move more than 100 million PS3’s, with 6M palletized by end of 1Q07. While the PS3 has it’s supporters, others suggest that sales of the PS3 will falter due to it’s high price (2x that of the Wii) and the advent of the Xbox 360 – this despite the PS3’s much-vaunted Cell Processor and Blu-ray and its 48 Mbps bitrate.

Still others think that the best way forward for the PS3 is to advertise more aggressively and less cerebrally. They suggest reprising last year’s Welcome Chang3 ad campaign, but with a more human face. A starting point would be to emulate the fake Welcome Chang3 ad that features Jeon Ji Hyun, but instead use the softer BoA to play the part of the PS3 model.

Asustek ships PS3 – DigiTimes, July 19 2006

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Motorola announced some new RAZR V3 derivative phones yesterday. The MOTORAZR maxx is put forth as a candidate for those interested in multimedia, web and speed – Motorola says that the phone’s speedy HSDPA and EDGE protocols provide for broadband-like functionality. The maxx (shown at right) is done in metal & glass, glows at incoming calls and has dedicated music keys on the cover.

And then there’s the MOTORAZR V3xx. The V3xx is not unlike the maxx, but comes without the metal, glass & music buttons and those “hi-end finishes”. The MOTORIZR is an enhanced implementation of the long-awaited slider version of the original RAZR V3. And finally, there’s the oddly-named MOTOKRZR which comes in 2 varieties, the Krzr K1 and the Krzr K2, and is a kind of squished version of the RAZR V3 in that they are narrower, thicker, but now with music.

The RAZR brand has helped propel Motorola to a 21.8% 2Q06 market share – they’ve shipped 50 million RAZRs so far, and they’re hoping to unload 500 million of them eventually. These new phones seem to have been well received, but there are always some cranks, er…nay-sayers lurking about.

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A professor of computer science over at Stanford is fed up with assembling some of Ikea’s not-so-easy-to-assemble products and is working on a solution. Andrew Ng plans to bring together a team of 30 computer scientists in order to build a robot that will be able to perform generalized tasks such as assembling an unassembled Ikea Billy Bookcase out of the box. Dubbed the “Billy Buster”, preliminary estimates are that this project will take 3-10 years.

Ng’s plans sound good, but Buster’s nemesis may turn out to be the missing parts and vague instructions and “fiendish plans” that are sometimes associated with Ikea flat-pack products.

Ultimate test for a robot: build an Ikea bookcase – The Sunday Times, July 23, 2006

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Today, Microsoft announced the pending arrival of the Zune “family of hardware and software products”. Zunes are portable music and video playing devices intended to compete with Apple’s iPod products and to win back some of the latter’s 75% market share of the digital entertainment business. According to Gaming Steve, the iPod-killer, er, iPod-discomfiter? will have a 30GB hdd, Wi-Fi and be able to access music and videos directly from Microsoft’s Live Anywhere platform, bypassing the need for a computer. Details will be forthcoming at the drolly-named website comingzune.

There’s an appropriate quote over at Forbes regarding competition in general, the Zune in particular and the pace of change in consumer electronics: “…the challenge for any tech company is to obsolete your products or someone else will“.

Zune Gets in the Ring – Billboard, July 29, 2006

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There’s been a lot of virtual ink used up in describing the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD high-definition blue-laser optical disk format wars, so another piece, this time from the Wall Street Journal, probably can’t hurt, although in this case it may not help much either. The Journal’s article is a very generalized overview of the BD-HD situation, offers no new insights, takes no sides technologically and does not predict an eventual winner. What it does do, however, is to echo the suggestion of many others regarding a way out of the dilemma, namely compromise. At the end of the piece, the Journal describes some past format wars that were resolved through the expedient of support by machines for both formats. The main players in this case, however, have already considered and rejected such a compromise…

An article by the BBC entitled Next generation DVDs tested, echoes some of the sentiments expressed above, implies that the 2 formats are very similar in terms of picture and sound quality, but that HD DVD players are cheaper.

Dueling Disks – Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2006

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has an update on the state of data storage in computers, and how flash memory is beginning to replace the ubiqitous hard-disk drive. They make note of the many advantages afforded by flash memory, how the cost of flash memory is halving every 12 months, as well as it’s recent appearance in the Sony UX90, and the Samsung Q1-SSD UMPC computers.

Some hard-disk manufacturers are fighting back by offering hybrid drives that combine flash with conventional disks, but the Journal implies that this is a rearguard action.

The article concludes by suggesting that Freescale Semi’s newly-developed MRAM chip (pictured) may pose a future challenge to flash memory. MRAM combines the speed of SRAM memory with the non-volatility of flash and is much faster than flash but quite expensive.

But even MRAM faces/will face competition. Word from Taiwan is that DRAM makers Nanya, ProMOS, Powerchip Semiconductor Corporation (PSC) and Winbond are nay-saying MRAM, and are instead promoting Ovonic Universal Memory (OUM).

And competitors to these competitors are technologies such as NRAM (Nano-RAM), and FRAM (Ferro-Electric RAM). The quest for a universal memory continues…

Flash Memory Puts Punch in Portable PCs – Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2006
..see also..
Not Just a Flash in the Pan – Economist, 10 Mar 2006

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There are some first-ever pix of the 2006 Ferrari P 4/5 by Pininfarina over at RSportsCars. They say it’s valued at more than $3,000,000, but with only 1 ever to be made, who can say.

6L V12. Based on the Enzo, which sells for 2/3 less. If the palette was fish, then the P 4/5 would play barracuda to the Enzo’s F1.

First Pictures of the P 4/5 by Pinanfarina – RSportsCars, 7/17/2006

Posted in Automotive ~ 1 Comment

NTT DoCoMo the Japanese Telco, is developing a compact water-based fuel cell intended to provide reserve power to portable devices such as cell phones.

The device basically strips hydrogen from the supplied water, sends it to the power unit where it’s recombined with atmospheric oxygen to produce water and elctricity…about 2 watts worth. The device can recharge a typical cell phone battery in about 2 hours and lasts for 3 uses.

Technically, it’s based on the polymer-electrolyte fuels cell (PEFC) which uses a special membrane such as perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) …etc, etc…details here.

NTT DoCoMo and Aquafairy to Develop Micro Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell – DoCoMo Press Release, July 14, 2006

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The world’s largest TV, at 103 inches was officially launched yesterday in Japan. The 103-inch 1080p plasma TV is part of Panasonic’s Viera product line, and has been designated as model TH-103PZ600.

The 103PZ costs about $98 per pound, which makes it more expensive than the Maybach 62 – tossup re which provides the better view.

VIERA (Viyella) the PZ600 series – Panasonic News Release with specs, 2006-7-19

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