...more recent posts
The SD card in my Treo popped out last week. I'm pretty sure it happened in my apartment (obviously the party had nothing to do with this.) So I figured it would turn up eventually, but now I'm starting to think that won't happen. Bummer. Those things are not cheap.
The result, not counting me losing my mobile mp3 playing ability that I really didn't use too much, is that I can't email my photos to the server. I need the expansion card for that. So the photolog is not getting any love these days.
Excellent. This is what we need. Matsushita is developing a hybrid image sensor chip that combines the best qualities of CCD image sensors (good quality, good low light abilities) with the best qualities of CMOS image sensors (low cost, low power consumption.)
For high-end digital camera and camcorder users, 1.3 and 2MP is a little bit of a disappointment since it will have no immediate impact here. What it does mean is that a whole new wave of higher image quality camera phones, X10 wireless cameras, and other low-power devices should start appearing on the market soon.Woot! 2MP camera phones with reasonable battery life. I. Cannot. Wait.
More technical details are here at EE Times.
Cool concept sketches of a hypothetical PDA / notebook combo with a folding screen. I've thought about something similar before. The tradeoff might be worth it: a much smaller folded size unit in exchange for a very thin seam down the middle of your display.
Texas Instruments is about to make wireless capabilities much easier for manufacturers to add to their products:
This will allow TI to add a cellular radio right into its DSP processors which are used by companies like Nokia and Palm. (Well digital CMOS radios have been around for a while, but it has been very hard to make them commercially thus far.)
This digital CMOS radio would cost an additional 35 cents and will basically do three major things: cut the cost of handsets drastically, reduce the power consumption hugely, and if all goes well basically make bluetooth, Wi-Fi and all future wireless PAN and LAN technologies fairly easy to incorporate into the handsets.