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[#13] Communicating fashion

PIX is an unconventional product from an unconventional lifestyle company called Xenofreaks Inc. With PIX, Xenofreaks have hit on an idea that may change the way people interact with each other, especially those whom we don't know, but would like to.

Communication and interaction is the basis of the new Korean product PIX, an interactive visual display device that has just hit the market. Also coined the "ego visualiser" by its designers, PIX could quite possibly pave the way in how we express ourselves through our clothes and accessories in the 21st century. With its futuristic look, it is a stylish and visually arresting product that is powered by 2 AAA batteries using 177 high luminous LED's in a 15 x 15 matrix. The bright LED's form basic display patterns and moving animations that can be looped, scrolled and even waved. The latter, also known as a "swing sign", is a mode where images or text can be displayed "mid-air" by swinging the device back and forth in a motion not unlike waving hello or goodbye.

PIX is light enough to hang around your neck like a chain, attached to a limb with a strap, placed on a hook on a wall or anywhere else you can think of. Indeed, imagination and self-expression are the keys to its use. The most fascinating part of PIX is its ability to interact with other PIX users. The device does so by employing infrared-ray communication of user ID and icon comparison between other PIX devices, which allows users a new form of communication between individuals and groups. So not only is wearing PIX a form of expression, but the capability of PIX as a form of communication is where the real potential lies.

The PIX displays its own set of patterns, text and pictures, although users are encouraged to create, design and edit their own pictures and messages and share these ideas with other users in online PIX forums. Also by connecting to the Internet or using MMS, data can also be shared with other PIX users directly, as well as establishing relationships with people you may not even know. In terms of a social context, the designers of the PIX look to be angling the product towards the youth culture, which readily picks up on new fashions and trends. Indeed, it is stylishly designed, and with its bright and vibrantly moving LED display it certainly attracts immediate attention to itself and the user.

This would certainly make PIX a winner in nightclubs, chat groups and other places where people simply go to meet other people. In fact, it is designed to be activated with other PIX users and to search for icon "matches" on other people's devices. A user can also try "communicating" with other users, allowing a wireless ID transmission and stored icon comparison. However, the possibilities for PIX do not necessarily have to end on the dance floor. The interactive capabilities of the device make it ideal for business meetings, interactive seminars and workshops, as well as at "breaking-the-ice" situations like business fairs, carnivals and social events.

Networking would be made a great deal easier with one of these devices, as common ideas and interests could be displayed in a fun and effective manner. Establishing common aspects and providing grounds for conversation make the PIX more useful than just a regular fashionable accessory. And with its ability to edit and tailor graphics and text, PIX could easily be made to function in a very similar fashion to another interaction-prompting device, the nTAG badge. Launched in July 2003, the PIX has already hit the Korean market, and it is expected to be successful in youth markets across Asia, notably Japan and Taiwan, although it is not yet available in Australia.

Much like France Telecom's new clothing concept, electronics in fashion accessories and clothing is not a new concept, although it is certainly an idea begging to be developed and marketed. Despite this, in the ever-changing world of fashion, one maxim seems to remain constant: You must be eye-catching. However, the PIX is more than just an expression of fashion or an eye-catching wearable electronic accessory, it is about communication and establishing relations.

[#14] High-End Cell Phones Ride Wave of Development

"Camera phones of 5 million mega pixels will be launched by the end of this year."

The market share of high-end mobile phones that enable one to take photographs of 1 million pixels has risen to two digits this year. Multi functional phones that contain the basic functions such as sound and communication function with other specified ones such as game and MP3 functions are launching as well. Camera phones first appeared in July 2000 and with pixels of only 350,000, but a camera phone of 1.3 million pixels was introduced at the end of the previous year and since then standards have rapidly developed. Many new models of 2 million pixel mobile phones appeared this June and a month later, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech & Curitel launched mobile phones of 3 million pixels in July. Mega pixel phone markets are growing rapidly as well.

Mega pixel phones of Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech & Curitel cost about W500,000, but demand is growing fast among the young generation who wants to possess the most up-dated products. Mobile phone producers say domestic sales of mega pixel phones in July was more than 1 million units. (Samsung Electronics: 447,400 units, LG Electronics: 279,800 units, Pantech & Curitel: 295,000 units.) Kim Heang-woo, executive director of Samsung, said, "The Introduction of mega pixel phones means mobile phones now have good resolution and functions as digital cameras." He added, "Camera phones of 5 million mega pixels will be launched by the end of this year."

MP3 mobile phones that enable one to listen to music by storing MP3 music files inside the phone and sales are also increasing as well. Until this year, the memory holding capacity of mobile phones was not that high, which let the users install a small amount of an MP3 files, but the price of flash memory chips went down significantly this year and MP3 mobile phones, which allows the users to save more than 30 songs, are being introduced. Mobile phone producers estimate that the number of MP3 phones that were sold this year was about 700,000 units.

On the other hand, specialized function phones such as game phones and finger print reading phones are being introduced as high-end mobile phones. LG Electronics recently introduced its new finger print reading phone in early August that strengthens security while using mobile banking services.

[#15] Motorola Prototype - The SmartButton

SmartButton,a sleek-looking badge worn by the user which uses Bluetooth to connect to the user's mobile phone.

Mobile phones get smaller and lighter every year. With the part count for the average mobile going down by 20-30% every year, a phone bought five years ago now looks as old-fashioned as a 1950s wireless. But will mobile phones eventually be so small that they do not even look like mobile phones? Clues can be found in Asia, where many of the world's most technologically advanced firms are based. Japanese and Korean customers have been unusually receptive to technological innovations. Consequently, firms use the Asian market as a test bed for new ideas.

Mobile manufacturers have spotted the logical outcome of the ever-shrinking phone - a unit that can be worn rather than carried. A wearable phone is easier to use, and less likely to be lost or stolen. In Japan, says Michael King, a principal analyst with Gartner, manufacturers are beginning to produce "feminine-focused" phones using materials such as diamond and ruby bezels. Last year, two firms tried to cash in by launching wristwatch models. NTT DoCoMo's Wristomo phone, manufactured by Seiko and offering email and web browser functionality, sold out its initial run of 1,000 within 10 minutes of going on sale. Samsung's equivalent, touted as the world's first "Dick Tracy phone", launched last year offering GPRS, one and a half hours of continuous talk time, voice-activated dialling and a built-in phone book. It supported Wap and Bluetooth, and weighed less than 80 grams.

But it seems unlikely that wristwatch phones will be hitting the UK any time soon - NTT DoCoMo stopped making the Wristomo after interest tailed off, and last year's promised European launch of Samsung's phone never happened. The problem manufacturers face is the tension between people's desire for smaller phones and their hunger for greater functionality. A phone with a camera, PDA functionality and web access is never going to be small enough to wear. In Japan, says King, there has even been a reversal of the trend for miniaturisation, with consumers preferrring bigger phones with larger screens and multiple LCDs. He argues that no solution will satisfy everyone.

The answer could lie in Bluetooth, which allows short-range wireless communication. It enables a phone to have multiple functions without requiring them to be on the same physical device - and this is exactly the area Motorola is now working in. The firm has developed a prototype called the SmartButton, a sleek-looking badge worn by the user which uses Bluetooth to connect to the user's mobile phone. To use the phone, you don't need to pick up it up or even look at it, explains Joe Dvorak, a member of Motorola's technical staff: "If the user taps the SmartButton and says 'Call John Smith,' the phone looks up the number and places the call."

Don't expect to be able to buy such phones in the next year or so, however. The technology is there, but firms are still trying to find the form that works. "It's just a matter of someone hitting on the right combination of Bluetooth connective accessories and miniaturised product," says King.

[#16] Holographs through your Mobile

Holographic technology breakthrough promises projection technology from your laptop, PDA and mobile phone

Light Blue Optics of Cambridge (UK) has developed ground-breaking holographic technology which could result in a new generation of pocket-sized digital video projectors and projection displays incorporated into other handheld devices. Digital video projectors that produce large, high quality images are becoming increasingly popular, but there are limitations in the technology that make miniaturisation very difficult, preventing projectors from making inroads into the potentially lucrative mobile device markets.

Holographic projection of 2D (rather than 3D) images represents a compelling alternative to conventional image projection. Holograms are efficient: they work by routing light to the places where you want it, and away from the places you don't. Video projectors based on this holographic technology require only a very few components, which means they can be made very small - and the smaller you make holograms, the better the image that results. So a projector could be integrated into a laptop, a PDA, or even a mobile phone.

The concept of a holographic projector is not new, but up until now technical issues have prevented development of an actual product based on this technology. Holograms are extremely complex objects mathematically, and calculating them fast enough for video applications is very difficult; even the most powerful computers would take minutes to generate a hologram to project just a single video frame. The projected images produced by holograms tend to be speckly and of very low quality. The lasers that are required to illuminate the holograms have, until very recently, been very expensive and limited in availability.

In the Photonics and Sensors Group at the Cambridge University Engineering Department, several major breakthroughs have been made, together making possible the generation and display of high quality holograms at video frame rates, using just a single custom chip. A hologram pattern, which to the naked eye looks like a collection of random dots, is displayed on a small liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) microdisplay - a tiny, very fast liquid crystal display built on top of a chip. The hologram patterns are calculated by Light Blue Optics' proprietary "hologram chip" so that when the microdisplay is illuminated by laser light, the light interferes with itself in a complex manner through the physical process of diffraction which, when carefully controlled, results in the formation of a large, high quality projected image on, for example, a screen or a wall.

Unlike a conventional video projector, heavy, bulky lenses are not required: diffraction does all the work for you, and the projected image is sharp and in focus at any distance. There are a huge number of applications for this technology in fields including business, home entertainment, aerospace and advertising. At present, the focus is on 2D applications, in particular tiny personal projectors for business and home use. The illustration shows an artist's impression of a potential early product - a personal video projector, which you could download movies to and then play anywhere, using a wall as the screen. In the future, the same technology could be extended into 3D applications - while we're some way away yet, this new technology could bring the holographic video displays of science fiction one step closer to reality. "One thing I would stress is that although this holographic technology could in the future be extended for 3D applications, the current focus of the company is to make ultra-compact 2D video projectors," said Light Blue Optics' Dr Nic Lawrence.

At present, Light Blue Optics has a lab-based demonstrator, which converts a standard composite video signal into high-quality 2D holographic video, in real time. The hologram generation engine runs in a commercially available FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chip, whose design extends naturally to cheap mass production. Other processing platforms including low-power digital signal processing (DSP) ICs are also under development.

Light Blue Optics is working with several strategic partners to further develop this technology into real products. It is envisaged that devices based on this technology will be in the shops in the next two to four years.

[#17] New Smartphone TCL E777

TCL has a new smartphone e777 expected to be available in 4th quarter 2004. It is the first TCL smartphone, clamshell design, developed with Microsoft SmartPhone OS.

Some of the characteristics are:

• Network: GSM 900/1800 MHz
• Size: 89 x 54 x 26mm
• Weight: 124g
• Screen: 262k colors, TFD
• Screen Resolution: 176 x 220 Pixels
• Standby Time: 120 - 140 hours
• Talking Time: 180 - 300 minutes
• Storage: Support SD/MMC
• Camera: MegaPixel Camera

[#18] Charge your handset on the move

A university research team in Korea succeeded in charging handsets with electricity generated by the movement of a walking person

"The new system works as a tiny Walking Generator and a voltage –generating driver built in footwear convert the move of the footwear or kinetic energy to electricity. Every 4 to 5 walks generate 5MW electricity to charge the micro battery in the footwear.

The research team also added that if the system gains 5 to 10 times more efficiency to become commercially useful, it is expected to charge mobile devices such as handsets or MP3 in 5 to 6 hours. Furthermore, the electric energy accumulated in the shoes can be switched to frequency to remotely trace location and help find lost children."

"The Korean daily Choson Ilbo reported that the research team led by Professor Hyung-sik Choi at division of Mechanical and Information Engineering in Korea Maritime University developed an advanced kinetic measurement system for footwear that converts kinetic energy to electric energy.

[#19] First Japanese phone to work in Europe NEC FOMA N900iG

NEC FOMA N900iG the first device to offer FOMA / tri-mode GSM / UMTS (Europe) roaming

This will be the first phone to offer FOMA (a tweaked Japanese 3G standard), tri-mode (900/1800/1900) GSM/GPRS and UMTS (Europe) roaming. The phone's manual never mentions directly UMTS (WCDMA) but on the other hand lists the following networks that are supported:In Japan: FOMA,Out of Japan: 3G, GSM, GRPS.

This makes me believe the device will work on the Europe’s UMTS 2100 MHz network. The phone’s manual is around 605 pages, so to list all its features it will take several pages. To enumerate the main ones:

• Internal 240 x 320 TFT display with 65k colors
• External 120 x 30 STN display with 4k colors
• Dual cameras:
  External - 1.2 mega pixels with movie mode (176 x 144 pixels);
  you can save up to 100 movies (depending on the available memory)
  Internal QCIF used for video calling
• miniSD memory extension slot
• Video calling
• Bar code reading
• Japanese-English, Egnlish-Japanese and Japanese dictionaries
• 50-voice ringtones; Voice recording

[#20] Tapwave Zodiac console to launch in UK Soon

Tapwave will begin selling its Zodiac Palm OS-based handheld games console in the UK "in a few months"

The move was confirmed by David Wenning, Tapwave's VP of global sales, when he told a New England Palm User Group meeting that the console would ship in Europe this Autumn. Reported by Tapland, also revealed the imminent arrival of a number of new accessories for the handheld, including a GPS navigation system and a Wi-Fi add-in card.

Tapwave representatives will be in the UK next week, appearing at the industry-oriented European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) and the more consumer friendly European Game Network (EGN) event, both being held in London on 1-3 September. The company launched Zodiac just over a year ago, and began shipping the device in the US in November 2003. In May 2004, it began offering the handheld through retail channels, signing CompUSA in June.

The European expansion will initially target English-speaking nations, Wenning said, suggesting the company is not yet ready to offer localised product. Unlike the US, Tapwave is taking Zodiac straight to retail when then device launches over here.At the NEPUG meeting, Wenning revealed that Far Eastern manufacturer C-Guys is preparing a Wi-Fi SD IO card for Zodiac. The product is due to ship in a month's time. He also suggested that Sandisk may also have such a unit in the works.

Less tangible is a TomTom GPS receiver and sat nav package, which connects to the Zodiac via a Bluetooth link. Wenning was quick to claim that he was not making a product announcement, but the flier shown on his presentation slides came complete with the text: "Product available in September 2004", suggesting that the product is going to happen and providing further confirmation and a timeframe for Zodiac's European launch. Wenning also revealed PowerPlay, a PlayStation 2-style controller into which the Zodiac is connected and operated. It's due to ship later in the Autumn.

[#21] Times Online photo site backs Sony Ericsson phone

Times Online has launched a microsite for Sony Ericsson to promote its new cameraphone handset

Visitors to the site can view articles on digital imaging and a specially created photo feature, The Month in Pictures, to promote the new Sony Ericsson K700's handset. The feature gives a dual perspective on current events with contrasting sets of images. The page consists of a variety of iconic and humorous photographs, placed alongside contrasting images. One example is the photograph of American solider Lyndie England pictured with prisoners in Abu Ghraib, contrasted with one of her arriving for her hearing, viewed at Times Online. The images are accompanied by editorial. Visitors can click on a skyscraper ad running alongside the images to reach a Sony Ericsson microsite. The Times Online is hosting the site on behalf of Sony Ericsson's media agency, MEC Digital. Danny Ward Lee, group digital ad manager of Times Newspapers, said: "The Times Online Sony Ericsson microsite engages the online visitor by providing both intelligent editorial comment and thought-provoking images, perfectly reflecting Sony Ericsson's position as an authority on imaging." He added: "The site is another demonstration of the ability of Times Online digital team, to work closely with clients such as MEC Digital, to provide innovative solutions that creatively exploit the potential of the internet." Follow the link to the microsite.

[#22] Samsung to Unseat Motorola as World's No. 2 Handset Maker

Samsung Electronics is expected to unseat mobile phone giant Motorola as the world’s No. 2 handset maker

In the third quarter to September with sales of 23 million units. The Korean technology firm’s profit margin, however, is projected to be deteriorating as stockpiles of its unsold mobile phones build up in the U.S. market, and the average selling price (ASP) falls sharply. According to the industry Monday, Samsung Electronics is expected to sell over 23 million units in the third quarter, as sales of its new "SGH-800," released in Europe targeting the 2004 Athens Olympics, are proving strong. For August, sales are at 7.2 million units.

This is due to the better than expected marketing effect, which took advantage of Samsung’s official Olympic sponsor status, and growing popularity for its brand new product "SGH-E800," a souped-up version of the firm’s best selling model "SGH-E700." On the other hand, sales of Motorola is expected to fall to 22.8 million units in the third quarter from 24.1 million in the second quarter, burdened by a glut of unsold products in the South American and Chinese regions. Analysts expect the trend to continue until the early fourth quarter when Motorola rolls out new models.

Accordingly, Samsung is to overtake Motorola as the undisputed global No. 2 handset maker both in revenues and sales volumes, the industry sources said. The Korean technology firm’s ASP would decline sharply, however, as U.S. major mobile carrier Verizon Communications is currently holding a "Buy one, Get one free" promotion, in which customers who buy Samsung’s SCH-A610, 650 models with two year contracts would get another one for free. Industry sources said, “Though Samsung would clench a feat to outstrip Motorola for the first time ever even by a slightest margin, it’s deteriorating profit margin means the firm now faces a new challenge to put profitability at the forefront.”