Sumsung just announced their Cannes line of plasma TV’s. The color depth for this new series is good at 18-bit color, and the contrast ratio can go up to 15000:1. No word on pixel response time, but the product announcement does talk up all the good stuff Samsung is doing re color temperature, white balance, gamma [...]

The Virgin Galactic public relations machine must be working overtime, as they have 3 new items to report. In a new article in The Times, Richard Branson informs us that about 200 people have paid a deposit of at least 10% of the $200K fee required to ride into space starting in 2009 on SpaceShipTwo, which is [...]

Well, Star Trek XI, the motion picture is on it’s way. Paramount Pictures Corp, who owns all of the rights to all things Star Treky, has just officially signed J.J. Abrams to direct/produce the latest movie.
Fans of Star Trek will no doubt welcome the news about this new flick, and be grateful that neither JJ Abrams nor Brad Grey have [...]

SED display technology, which promised so much, seems to be in more trouble than usual. After many tech delays in getting the product to market, Canon and it’s nascent SED TV line seems to have hit a legal brick wall. Reuters is reporting that Nano-Proprietary Inc has revoked Canon’s license and is seeking more/same/other partners.
Shame [...]

Canon has just announced a digital SLR camera that’s larger than this poor woman’s head! …well actually, the new EOS-1D Mark III while large-ish is a bit smaller than the previous model, the Mark II. The Mark II was a very well reviewed and highly recommended camera, and this new model improves on it.
While smaller, the Mark III is better [...]

Ars Technica was at the launch of that Quantum Computer by D-Wave Systems last week & apparently was not very impressed. While A/T, it seems, did attend the event in body (they’ve got the pix to prove it), they weren’t there in spirit (they brought along a rebuttal witness). Ars’ analysis makes note of a number of D-Wave sci [...]

A growing number of Ivy League and other colleges and universities are posting a selection of their courses online for all to use. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology seems to have started the trend back in 2003 and now have on offer materials for more than 1500 courses. The MIT courses can be found at MITOpenCourseWare. Ditto for [...]

 Kiichiro Toyoda founded Toyota Motor Corp in 1933, and the company has gone on to great success, with indications that it will become the world’s largest automobile company in a year or 2 or so, bypassing GM.
 The New York Times has a new article describing how Toyota did it, attributing their winning ways to the fabled Toyota Production System, [...]

Child rearing advice is ever-changing.
The latest thinking, according to New York Magazine is that it’s much better to praise kids for their efforts, and not so good to praise them for their intelligence.
Praising a child’s IQ sends the message that no effort is required, whereas praising effort itself rewards persistence.
This sounds plausible & might even [...]

A new report from the World Bank surveys the impact to be expected on developing countries from the effects of a 1-5 meter sea level rise, with global warming being the proximate cause. East Asia is deemed to be the most at risk, with Vietnam suffering a population displacement of almost 11% from a mere 1 meter [...]