OLED technology emerges big in new smartphone

It consumes little power, gives superior picture quality and was touted as the future of all displays, but organic screen
technology has been languishing in manufacturers' backrooms until now.

Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AM-OLED) displays are making a belated appearance in pricier smartphones as makers latch on to the technology to get an edge in a sector where competition is fierce and features matter more than price.

Samsung Electronics, the world's No.2 mobile phone maker and a main proponent of the technology, has eight models featuring organic screens and plans to roll out about 10 more by the year-end.

In the United States, its Impression model is sold via AT&T, and Sprint Nextel will also offer at least one Samsung phone using AM-OLED technology.

Global cellphone leader Nokia is offering AM-OLED in its N85 and N86 high-end models as it fends off smartphone rivals such as Research In Motion and Apple.

Fans of the technology say that while AM-OLED mobile phone screens are 50-80 percent more expensive than conventional LCD screens and their high price has kept them from mass-production, their time may have come.

"I think the economics of it are somewhat irrelevant," said Ben Wood, an analyst at wireless research firm CCS Insight. "It's a real differentiator. I predict you'll see AM-OLED devices from all the major manufacturers within 12 months from now."

But AM-OLED technology failed to catch on for a reason. The screens are more expensive to produce, and supply is restricted to a few manufacturers, primarily Samsung Mobile Display, which has 97 percent share of the market.

"I've no doubt about (AM-OLED) growth over the long term. But whether all players would immediately follow the trend set by Samsung, I'm not sure," said Oh In-bum, an analyst at Dongbu Securities.

The appeal of AM-OLED technology lies in the thin layer of organic materials that allow screens to glow on their own, unlike liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, resulting in slimmer screens that use less power, boast faster response speed and have more vivid colours.

Samsung is the main proponent of a wider adoption of the technology, and forecasts 37.5 percent of all mobile phones sold in 2015 will have AM-OLED screens, up from 2.3 percent in 2009.

Samsung Mobile Display aims to sell 23 million units of AM-OLED displays this year, up from 7 million in 2008. Jeff Kim, an analyst at Hyundai Securities, expects Samsung's sales to reach 49 million next year.

LCDS TOUGH TO BEAT

Analysts are hopeful that AM-OLED prices will come down as output increases, lifting the biggest hurdle for wider adoption.

"Technologies have been advancing at a faster-than-expected rate and even in the downturn, consumers are keen to buy high-end products," said Hyundai Securities' Kim.

He expects the premium for a 2.8-inch AM-OLED display (used largely in handsets) over the same-size LCD screen to narrow to 10-20 percent within two years from 50 percent now. Displays typically make up 10-20 percent of a phone's manufacturing cost.

But some analysts have lower expectations as many manufacturers remain comfortable with mass-produced LCD screens. Vinita Jakhanwal, analyst at iSuppli, expects AM-OLED phones to account for only about 10 percent of all phones sold in 2013.

"This still means LCD has the bulk of the market," Jakhanwal said. "LCD screens are evolving too and they're improving their performance." LG Electronics, Samsung's home rival and the third-ranked handset maker, went for a premium LCD display on its 'New Chocolate' touchscreen phone.

Its screen-making affiliate LG Display is also building a new production line for more technologically advanced LCD screens for mobiles.

And for the AM-OLED business to grow in scale and turn profitable, the technology needs more manufacturers. Apart from Samsung, the only other two manufacturers are LG Display and a unit of Taiwan's Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp.

Industry specialists also note that while organic displays for handsets appear ready to take off, the sheer cost of using the technology on larger PC and TV screens is still prohibitive. Japan's Sony Corp launched the world's first OLED TV in late 2007, but has not followed with new models.

Agencies

Avail smart ticketing from Indian Railways

The Indian Railways has selected a chip technology by NXP Semiconductors, a semiconductor founded by Philips to power its contactless smart cards for automatic fare collection system. The secure microcontroller-based technology called MIFARE DESFire will be implemented across various Indian cities in the ATVMs (Automatic Ticket Vending Machines).

The user-friendly ATVMs will be rolled out across five Indian cities - New Delhi, Secunderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Pune. Together with card and inlay-manufacturer Siepmann's Card Systems, NXP will provide MIFARE DESFire-based ICs for approximately 6.5 lakh contactless cards over a period of one year. This project is expected to be launched in September 2009 and will initially be rolled out in Delhi and Secunderabad.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the IT wing of the Ministry of Railways had developed the ATVMs as part of an Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS). In 2007, CRIS developed the smart card based contactless solutions using NXP's MIFARE 1KB Classic chip in Mumbai Suburban Railway and Chennai. Over five lakh smart cards were issued to passengers in the Central/Western Railway at Mumbai and Southern Railway at Chennai.

Commenting on the implementation of smart card technology in India, Ashok Chandak, Senior Director, Global Sales and Marketing for India, NXP said, "We see a significant growth in the use of contactless Smart Card technology in transport systems in India." According to NXP, 75 percent of all electronic tickets in public transport worldwide use the NXP MIFARE technology.

Agencies

Open Source projects dominated by IT vendors

More vendors are getting involved in open source project despite the economic slowdown. Gartner has reported many key findings related to open source in Predicts 2009: The Evolving Open-Source Software Model report. Gartner reports that 50 percent of direct commercial revenue attributed to open-source products or services will come from projects under a single vendor's patronage. Many new projects are being commercialized early in their maturity phases - often by a dot-com startup and before a broad community "network effect" is firmly established. These projects are often under the patronage of a single vendor that employs nearly all key code contributors.

According to Gartner's key findings, driven by expanding mainstream IT adoption, open-source usage profiles are shifting to more-conservative, risk-versus-reward dynamics. As a result, new adopters now place an increasing premium on commercial support channels to establish service-level agreements on par with closed-source alternatives. Gartner recommends that companies should understand the role that a broad and vendor-independent community plays in mature open-source projects. More specifically, keep in mind that intellectual-property warrants and indemnities are strongest when vendors maintain more control over the source code pedigree.

The report also says that through 2011, less than 50 percent of Global 2000 IT organizations would have implemented a formal open-source adoption and management policy as part of an enterprise software asset management strategy. Open Source Software (OSS) has become unavoidable for most IT organizations. Open source is leveraged in virtually all mainstream enterprises. A comprehensive enterprise open-source adoption policy is the most important critical path towards establishing an optimal balance between risk and reward; however, less than 30 percent of IT organizations have such a policy in place.

Agencies

Desi version of Google Earth launched by ISRO

Bhuvan gives you an easy way to experience, explore and visualize IRS images over Indian region.

ISRO is well known amongst space faring nations for its world-leading reputation in developing new, indigenous and innovative service oriented applications using remote sensing technology.

Over the past 2 decades, ISRO has mastered the art of developing these unique applications using various spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions offered by the versatile IRS satellites and these have been successfully institutionalized in many important areas of policy making, natural resources management, disaster support, and enhancing the quality of life across all sections of the society.

Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO

Bhuvan is an initiative to showcase this distinctiveness of Indian imaging capabilities including the thematic information derived from such imagery which could be of vital importance to common man with a focus on Indian region. Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO to take Indian images and thematic information in multiple spatial resolutions to people through a web portal through easy access to information on basic natural resources in the geospatial domain.

Bhuvan showcases Indian images by the superimposition of these IRS satellite imageries on 3D globe. It displays satellite images of varying resolution of India’s surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D viewing environment.

The degree of resolution showcased is based on the points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered upto at least 5.8 meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters from AWifs Sensor. With such rich content, Bhuvan opens the door to graphic visualisation of digital geospatial India allowing individuals to experience the fully interactive terrain viewing capabilities.

Bhuvan brings a whole lot of uniqueness

Multi-resolution images from multi-sensor IRS satellites of India is seamlessly depicted through the Bhuvan web portal by enabling a common man to zoom into specific area of interest at high resolution. Bhuvan brings a whole lot of uniqueness in understanding our own natural resources whilst presenting beautiful images and thematic vectors generated from varieties of geospatial information.

Bhuvan will also attempt to bring out the importance of multi-temporal data and to highlight the changes taking place to our natural resources, which will serve as a general awareness on our changing planet.

There are lot more special value added services which will be enabled onto the web portal in due course of time and each one of those services are going to be unique to preserving and conserving our precious natural resources through public participation. We are sure the common man will get rich benefits from these Indian geospatial data services in days to come.

Basic features of Bhuvan

Access, explore and visualise 2D and 3D image data along with rich thematic information on Soil, wasteland, water resources etc.

Visualise multi-resolution, multi-sensor, multi-temporal image data

Superpose administrative boundaries of choice on images as required

Visualisation of AWS ( Automatic Weather Stations) data/information in a graphic view and use tabular weather data of user choice

Fly to locations ( Flies from the current location directly to the selected location)

Heads-Up Display ( HUD) naviation controls ( Tilt slider, north indicator, opacity, compass ring, zoom slider)

Navigation using the 3D view Pop-up menu (Fly-in, Fly out, jump in, jump around, view point)

3D Fly through (3D view to fly to locations, objects in the terrain, and navigate freely using the mouse or keyboard)

Drawing 2D objects (Text labels, polylines, polygons, rectangles, 2D arrows, circles, ellipse)

Drawing 3D Objects (placing of expressive 3D models, 3D polygons, boxes)

Snapshot creation (copies the 3D view to a floating window and allows to save to a external file)

Measurement tools (Horizontal distance, aerial distance, vertical distance, measure area)

Shadow Analysis (it sets the sun position based on the given time creating shadows and effects the lighting on the terrain)

There would be many more value added functions and facilities which will be added into the package from time to time.

Particular interest of ISRO/DOS would be to provide such functionalities to common man so that he/she adopts participatory approach with scientists to solve simple problems easily and interactively.

Urban Design Tools (to build roads, junctions and traffic lights in an urban setting)

Contour map ( Displays a colorized terrain map and contour lines)

Terrain profile ( Displays the terrain elevation profile along a path)

Draw tools (Creates simples markers, free hand lines, urban designs)

Navigation map (to jump to and view locations in the 3D India)

Courtesy: http://www.bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/index.html

Agencies

Is Koobface dangerous for networkers?

If you have been getting tempting messages with video links in your accounts in social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter,
IT Exploring Internet Explorer 8, Myspace, Bebo, Friendster and Hi5, beware. Any attempt to download the promised video will make you another victim of Koobface, a worm that could steal critical and personal information from your computer.

The government's India Computer Emergency Response Team has warned that Koobface, a play on the name of social networking site Facebook, comes with an enticing tagline and spreads by spamming the contacts of the victim on networking sites.

With more than 3 million members of Facebook alone in India, Koobface's potential for wreaking havoc on the country's computer systems is immense — a fact that has prompted the government to issue the warning alert.

Typically, Koobface victims get a message from one of their contacts inviting them to click on a video link. The link leads you to a site mimicking the video-sharing site, Youtube. Once there, you are asked whether you want to download a software needed to watch the video.

If you click `yes', the worm gets activated, leaving your computer vulnerable. The worm not only disrupts your internet experience by sending your searches on engines like Google elsewhere and return garbled replies, it also steals data that may have been left in your computer's memory.

If you do or have already been Koobfaced the only way to protect your machine is to delete all files and registry keys that have been added by the worm. Internet users have also been advised by the government agency to install and maintain updated anti-virus software in their computers, as also a desktop firewall, and block ports which are not required.

While you may not be able to notice the worm rummaging through your electronic files searching for personal data, including passwords, the visible signs of the worm would show up on your internet browsing where you would get abnormal results to your searches and be misdirected to other sites.

Agencies

RIM now gets double attack from Microsoft, Nokia

Microsoft Corp and Nokia announced an alliance on Wednesday to bring business software to smartphones and counter the dominance
Apple of Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry.

The alliance between the world's largest software company and cellphone maker means the latest versions of Microsoft's Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and messaging, will be available on a range of Nokia cellphones, which make up 45 per cent of the global smartphone market.

The two companies, at one time fierce rivals in the mobile telecommunications business, expect to offer Nokia phones running Office sometime next year.

"This is giving some of our competitors -- let's spell it out, RIM -- a run for their money," said Nokia Executive Vice President Robert Andersson, in a telephone interview. "I don't think BlackBerry has seen the kind of competition we can provide them now."

Research in Motion's BlackBerry created the market for mobile e-mail, and its dominant position in the corporate sector, especially in North America, has protected it from Nokia's attempts to crack the market in recent years.

"RIM should be reasonably safe in the near-term because Nokia's presence in the US is relatively small," said Neil Mawston from research firm Strategy Analytics. "Partnering more closely with Microsoft will help to raise Nokia's profile in the US"

The alliance also aims to counter Google Inc's recent move into free online software, targeted at Microsoft's business customers, and the growing popularity of Apple Inc's iPhone device.

"It's clear that Nokia and Microsoft are both facing competitive challenges, most notably from Google," said John Jackson, an analyst at wireless research firm CCS Insight. "It makes sense for these two companies to work together to see if they can pool their competitive strengths to try and counter some of this pressure."

The alliance means Microsoft's new Office suite of applications could be available to a much wider audience than the users of Windows Mobile phones, which make up 9 per cent of the smartphone market.

"We see this as a great opportunity to deliver Office Mobile to 200 million Nokia smartphone customers," said Takeshi Numoto, an executive at Microsoft's Office business.

Analysts said Microsoft is clearly looking at the largest possible audience with the Nokia deal.

"The deal is a good win for Microsoft and it will surely now be hoping to upsell the Microsoft suite of operating systems
into Nokia's possible portfolios of smartphones, mobile Internet devices and netbooks over the next couple of years," said Strategy Analytics' Mawston.

The two companies stressed that the new venture will not affect the future of Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian operating systems for smartphones. Executives said Nokia has no plans to make a Windows Mobile device.

"We are extremely committed to Symbian," said Andersson. "This is very clear. This is a multi-year collaboration building on Symbian. We are as committed as before, if not more," he said.

Microsoft shares rose 2.1 per cent to $23.62 on Nasdaq while Nokia rose less than 1 per cent to 9.30 euros in Helsinki. Shares in RIM were 0.5 per cent lower in Toronto.

Agencies

Web updates on objects approaching Earth: NASA

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is introducing a new Web site that will provide a centralized resource for information on near-Earth objects - those asteroids and comets that can approach Earth.

The "Asteroid Watch" site also contains links for the interested public to sign up for NASA's new asteroid widget and Twitter account.

"Most people have a fascination with near-Earth objects," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL.

"And I have to agree with them. I have studied them for over three decades and I find them to be scientifically fascinating, and a few are potentially hazardous to Earth. The goal of our Web site is to provide the public with the most up-to-date and accurate information on these intriguing objects," he added.

The website provides information on NASA's missions to study comets, asteroids and near-Earth objects, and also provides the basic facts and the very latest in science and research on these objects.

News about near-Earth object discoveries and Earth flybys will be available and made accessible on the site via a downloadable widget and RSS feed.

For those who want to learn about their space rocks on the go, a Twitter feed is offered.

"Asteroid Watch" also contains a link to JPL's more technical Near-Earth Objects Web site, where many scientists and researchers studying near-Earth objects go for information.

"This innovative new Web application gives the public an unprecedented look at what's going on in near-Earth space," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Objects Observation program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA supports surveys that detect and track asteroids and comets passing close to Earth.

The Near-Earth Object Observation Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," also plots the orbits of these objects to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Agencies