Cool Tv

Samsung has unveiled an ultra-thin ‘flapping’ OLED screen at FPD International 2008, demonstrating the flexibility of the display by letting it bend and flutter in the wind. At a paper-thin .05mm, the 4-inch screen is still able to create an image of 480×272 pixels, with a 100,000:1 contrast ratio and 100% reproduction of the NTSC color gamut, which is in line with most new flat panel screens on the market. If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Sony made a lot of the same claims a few weeks ago — but they didn’t have the balls to let their screen go all flippy-floppy in public.

Samsung couldn’t accomplish this with a normal glass substrate for obvious reasons, so they pioneered a new “sputtering” technique to coat the panel with a flexible membrane. Here’s how it goes: a block of the coating material is blasted with an ion gun, causing it to eject bits of itself into an thermodynamically unbalanced cloud of atoms, which then cling to and form a film on anything else in the vacuum chamber — namely, this floppety panel.

This looks like it is just a one-off, unpriced expo unit, but at least we know it’s possible. This tech come interesting close in capability to Samsung’s other recently demonstrated ultra-thin color display, so we might have the beginning of an confusing display tech overlap. Cool, Samsung. Please sort that out, and wake me up when my shirt is a TV. [TechOn via OLED Display]

U.S. Residential Real Estate Sites

Check out this article or click on the individual companies below.

http://agentgenius.com/?p=5701

http://rentbits.com

http://www.homethinking.com

http://agentshield.com

http://www.condogala.com

http://www.dwellgo.com/

Here’s a second post about this too:
Link

The top 10  real estate websites for September, 2008, based on visits, according to Hitwise:

http://www.realtor.com/

http://realestate.yahoo.com/

http://www.zillow.com/

http://www.ziprealty.com/

http://www.rent.com/

http://www.remax.ca/

http://www.servicemagic.com/

http://www.coldwellbanker.com/
http://www.hud.gov/

http://www.homegain.com/

Worlds Fastest Copier

Japanese office equipment manufacturer Riso has developed the world’s fastest color photocopier for office use [JP] (at least this is what they and their partner Olympus claim). The ORPHIS X9050 is able to make 150 copies per minute.

This performance has a price: The machine’s list price is $46,000. Riso is also planning to sell a trimmed down version of the X9050, the ORPHIX X7250, for $10,000 less. But that model is only able to make 120 copies per minute.

Both photocopiers are scheduled for release in Japan in February 2009. I wouldn’t be too suprised to see them sold outside Nippon soon thereafter.

Advertising Industry

I went to an advertising / networking event with a client www.pixelcarve.com… here are my favorites.

http://Shrink2One.com/0f1c

How to transfer large files online

from WebWorkerDaily by Samuel Dean

Over the past few years, I’ve been working with video files more and more. The problem with collaborating with others on video files is that if you’re not in the same location, the sheer size of some of the files creates annoyances, and makes sharing files difficult. FTP applications are a standard solution for this, and I’ve used them, but for very small fees, there are a couple of other very convenient solutions.

Two ways to solve the problem of sharing large files online without headaches are WhaleMail and ADrive. WhaleMail has come under Symantec’s wing, as a result of the company’s acquisition of SwapDrive. WhaleMail is dedicated to one thing, and one thing only: Making it easy to share large files online.

You need to sign up for WhaleMail before using it, and there are tiered plans–with fees that are quite low–available. You pay according to how much monthly or annual storage space your files are going to be occupying, as seen here.

Once you’ve picked a plan, when you want to share a large file, you upload it, and then enter e-mail addresses for those you want to share it with, and click send. The recipients get an e-mail with a link to the location of your file, and the recipient downloads the file. Of course, it still makes sense to compress your files, but there are many free applications for quickly doing that. Xvid is a good, free tool for video file compression.

I’ve written about ADrive’s low-cost monthly service here recently. The company is offering a service for $6.95 a month that gives you 50GB of free storage and the option to upload files of up to 2GB in size–much larger than the size limits imposed by most of the free, online storage providers. The $6.95 a month also buys you the ability to access your computer remotely, backup services, and more.

Both of these are easy ways to move large files such as video files around at very little cost, and without the need to deal with FTP applications.

HP Mini

I have the Acer One on my coffee table for blogging in front of the TV… and poker…

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Laptops

HP’s obviously getting ready to expand its netbook line beyond the well-received Mini-Note 2133 — the company recently started teasing the Vivienne Tam Digital Clutch, and now images and pricing for a “Mini 1000″ have appeared on the HP shopping site. As expected, the new rig is basically a non-glam version of the Digital Clutch, and specs appear to be right in line with what we’ve seen: 10-inch screen, sub-1-inch thickness, and 2.25-pound starting weight — and we’re guessing the Mini 1000 also gets the upgrade to an Intel Atom over the 2133′s VIA C7-M. Not bad at all for a starting price tag of $399 — hopefully we’ll find out a lot more soon.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

Double Layered LCD

Exactly like the old animator’s trick of having stacked gels photographed at different depths in front of the lens, this concept display by designer Mac Funamizu has a dual-layered transparent LCD screen. The idea being that by displaying suitable images on both screens, you’ll get a sense of depth when you view it. A simple way of adding 3D-effects to things like GPS units? Possibly, or just a very funky LCD photo frame perhaps. Just a concept, but the sort of thing you expect might surface in a real gizmo sometime. [Ubergizmo]

Spreed reading

I think I’ll start using this… maybe it’ll teach me what it preaches?

from Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy

Free speed-reading webapp Spreed:News lets you choose from a wide array of news sources and have their articles read to you in small clusters of words. Working from the principles that make for faster reading, you can scale the tool between 240 and 1500 words per minute, and set up an account to save your favorite sources—from Boing Boing to the New York Times and dozens more—for quick browsing. Spreed offers a tally of the seconds you’ve saved from word-by-word reading, and offers an iPhone-optimized interface for speed reading while on commutes or trips. Spreed is free to use, requires a sign-up to save your feeds. For tips on honing your speed reading, check the how-to article on the via link below.

Spreed:News [via Wired How-To Wiki]

Save time AND energy

My old office used to have those irritating IR-sensor lights, so if you were working late and popped out—say to the loo—for more than a few minutes, you’d be welcomed back to uninviting darkness: now you can have the same facility in your home thanks to Black&Decker’s LightsOut. Well, actually it’s quite a neat gizmo—it’s battery powered, and simply mounts directly over a light switch, which it then throws for you if it doesn’t detect movement in front of its sensor. Plus it turns the lights on when you enter. You can even change the “off” preset delay time, up to 30 minutes. Handy if you forget to switch the light off in your garage—like I often do. No word on pricing yet.

Colliers Market Info

Market information – Colliers Knowledge Exchange