demo video by Wipower And what's really new about the technology? Nothing. All systems of wireless power transmission are based on induction. A well known principle that has long been used in households, like in electric toothbrushes or induction hobs.
Right in time for the upcoming CES 2009 in Las Vegas the issue of Wireless Energy appears again, which means the wireless transmission of electricity. Promising, especially for all types of mobile devices, but is this technology really applicable?
From time to time you can read about breakthroughs in Wireless Energy research. Last year at this time in some blogs was speculated, that Apple is going to bring a Wireless Energy docking station for the new MacBook Air on the market. So it is, however, never.
I think, that new sources of energy (see report on innovative energy sources) in mobile devices will have far greater potential than the wireless transmission of electricity.
Wireless energy
Wireless USB - the end of the cable era?
The technology has been available since several years, but now the first wireless USB devices will hit the market. The new radio technology seems to make the final breakthrough to succeed in 2009. 
Mirosoft Surface gets spheric
Microsoft demonstrates its Surface on a spherical display. Sphere, which is the name of the new concept, allows viewing pictures, videos and the like in a 360-degree angle.
The images are produced by a projector, which is placed inside the translucent sphere. Certain algorithms fit the picture to the round display shape. The interaction with the user is done via infrared sensors.
The head of the Sphere project at Microsoft, Hrvoje Benko, is sure that there will be many interactive displays of this type in future. Today the researchers focus to observe how people interact with the Sphere.
The project will be presented at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2008 in Redmond.
read more at seattlepi.com
First notebook with integrated pico projector
Asus showed at Computex Taipei the first proof-of-concept of a notebook with integrated pico projector. At the upper part of the notebook display a rotating pico projector unit is placed. Under the bright lights of the show floor the image brightness of this prototype was not particularly impressive. But the concept itself is very promising.
Asus notebook with pico projector (source: slashgear.com)
read more...OLED display for laptops soon?
At the moment it is very likely, that Samsung will get laptops with OLED display on the market in 2009. The first design study looks very promising.
For 2009 Samsung SDI announced the first 14 and 15.4 inch laptop with OLED display.
read more...
MS Surface starting mid-April at AT&T
Microsoft brings the surface for corporate customers on the market, starting with some selected branches of US mobile phone giant AT&T.
We reported in November last year on the impending launch of MS Surface, a new type of human-machine interface with multi-touch. On April 17th the surface will be presented at AT&T stores (not, as originally announced in T-Mobile stores) in New York, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco.
The Microsoft Surface at AT&T (source: engadget.com)
More pictures and details at engadget.com
Historical concepts for the office of the future
The office and the working method of the future were also in the past popular objects of research. Many well-known designers and architects gave their thoughts on it. Here are some concepts by Austrian visionary pioneers.
Haus-Rucker-Co - Mind Expander - 1967
An apparatus for (drug free) awareness extension was designed by the architect and artist group Haus-Rucker-Co. The construction consists of a seat for two people and a collapsible hood.
Mind Expander by Haus-Rucker-Co 1967 (source: Ortner & Ortner)
Hans Hollein - mobile office - 1969
Long before mobile communication got common, Hans Hollein designed the inflatable office. Using this device temporary work in different places should be possible. It took almost 40 years to transform the concept into a real product by Offect.
mobile office in the field (source: Hans Hollein)
read more...Holography - state of the art
Screens with the ability to display three-dimensional images are already quite common. Real holography, with volumetric displays, which enable the observer to go around the displayed subject and look at it from all sides, exist so far only in experimental research set-ups.The rotating mirror
Research set-up at the University of Southern California (youtube video)
Holodust - the 3D dust-display
In another approach researchers try to produce the hologram in a artificially generated dust cloud. The exact position of each dust particle is identified by using an infrared laser. If a dust particle gets randomly in the correct position, a second laser gets it to shine. Is the distribution of the dust particles well enough a static or moving 3D image can be generated.
The Holodust concept from New York University (video)
News from the pico projector
Now even leading companies in mobile communications industry rely on the pico projector technology. The market launch of a pico projector from Samsung is likely to be imminent. Sony Ericsson on the other hand patented a special technique for the pico projector.
micro projector MBP-100 by Samsung (youtube video)
Still there are no further technical details and information on the price available. The launch of the product will be in March 2008 in Korea.
Auto focus for pico projector
Even at Sony Ericsson they are already thinking about the future with pico projectors in their mobile phones. They presented no device with pico projector yet, but filed a patent for the technology.
Image from the patent specification from Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson wants to use the built-in camera in the mobile phone analyse the image, produced by the pico projector. With this technology focus, brightness and contrast of the projector should automatically adapt to the particular circumstances.
read more...The future of lighting is organic
LEDs are now considered as pioneering technology on the market in the field of lighting. Now the revolutionary development of OLED (organic light emitting diods) could succeed the LED technology.
transparent OLED panel by OSRAM (source)
By 2013 experts reckon with a more than 100% increase in energy efficiency and lifetime of OLEDs compared to 2007, while halving the manufacturing price. Japanese market research institutes expect by 2015 an increase in the market share of OLEDs to 25% of the total lighting market.
read more...
Multi-touch interface at CNN newsroom
multi-touch system at CNN (youtube video) According to CNN, the main advantage of this technology is, that complicated matters for the prediction of the election result could be visualized very easy. For example, pie charts got adjusted by hand movement to show the impact on the final result.
For reporting on the US presidential primaries CNN used the multi-touch technology from Perceptive Pixel.
A multi-touch system similar to that of Microsoft (as reported in November 2007) was installed in the CNN newsroom.
Reality Mining
An emerging area of research should help tracking the real social interactions of people - the so-called “Reality Mining”. With Reality Mining the “stupid” IT infrastructure gets automatically taught about our social behaviour.
Functioning
With a variety of sensors, each person carries around, data gets collected. Using Reality Mining, patterns in our life are detected. This information is used by the IT systems for different things. So it should be possible to share specifically information with other persons, or notice them that we are in their vicinity, and much more.
With cell phone already possible today
Is Bluetooth activated, the phone could recognize other devices or could be “seen” from those. If these data gets recorded, the system knows with what frequency the phone of another person is found.
The iPhone also has a built in acceleration meter. So the system knows whether one sits or moves. The microphone in a cell phone could be used to analyze our voice, or how long a person speaks.
Impact on the office work
Using Reality Mining in organizations and companies, it is possible to analyze group behaviour. It is conceivable that with the help of this data, the cooperation and the work efficiency of employees could be improved. But Reality Mining is also useful for new approaches, for example with spam mail filters. Messages from people that I have never met in real could get filtered. The system would almost fall back on the experience that you gathered in real life.
Data protection concerns
Using Reality Mining the world gets much more transparent. In any case it has to be ensured that data is used, but not abused. A possible approach could be that the user of such a service itself decides when and what is being recorded.
A detailed interview with MIT professor Sandy Pentland, who coined the term Reality Mining, could be found at Technology Review.