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The WAVE Report on Digital Media 3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space ---Published by 4th Wave, Inc.--- Issue #0612------------------3/24/06 |
The WAVE Report is Searchable on
http://www.3dlinks.com
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0612.2 Occupational Safety
Safety.BLR.com Advises Companies to Avoid the OSHA 'Dirty Dozen'
0612.3 RFID Growth
Driving Security, Efficiency and Safety: ABI Research Investigates Automotive RFID
0612.4 Ethernet Technology
0612.5 Future Technologies
Technology Review Identifies Emerging Technologies That Will Make a Difference
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0612.1 Story of the Issue
***CeBIT 2006
John Latta
Hannover, Germany
March 9–11, 2006
Halls 10, 18 and 21 are empty. In 4 years we have not seen such a light opening day. Many of the aisles were near empty. Sony did not come. Hall 27 which is Digital Living by CeBIT was pathetic. We are left wondering – is CeBIT obsolete when other large trade shows are dying? At one time, an all-in-one trade show which covered banking to PCs to phones to security to smart cards may have had a purpose but no longer.
Germany has had a history in staging massive trade events including IFA and Photokina, but these were based on shows every 2 years. This year, IFA goes annual and will compete with Photokina. In the consumer space, CeBIT is attempting to compete with CES, and doing a very poor job. In fact, one speculation is that CES has drained the pipeline of new product announcements at CeBIT's loss. With the globalization of products and their reporting on the Internet, one can only question the merit of any more than one major event by sector a year.
Samsung Rolls
Samsung is very proud of their string of first products in the cell phone market. This continued at CeBIT.
A slim HSDPA phone which supports 1.8Mb\s. It can play DVD quality movies. There is also a 2mp camera.
A phone with UWB. But the data rate is only 13Mb\s. Samsung stated this is due to the limitations of the UWB chip set and the limited processing capability of the processor in the phone.
Showing mobile WiMAX up to 120km\hour. A chart indicated that Samsung's implementation will support triple play to mobile devices.
The ability to link multiple phones with WiFi Ad Hoc networking. This allows for multiple player games based on each player being a node on the network for other phones. Examples were shown of as many as 5 hops.
A 10m pixel camera phone. This includes Bluetooth connectivity, music and video player and auto-focus and flash in the phone. There were also 5mp and 7mp phones in the booth.
Technology at CeBIT
The WAVE went looking for technology at CeBIT. We found a number of interesting examples.
Panasonic Demos 103” Plasma HD 1080p Display
There is only one word for this – awe. It pushes the limit of available content to fully experience the capability of the display.
Nvidia Shows Quad SLI
Combining the output from 4 7900 GPU chips Nvidia showed 30f/s on a 2560 X 1600 display. The output from each card would dynamically adjust across the screen based on the rendering load. The visual quality was stunning.
Rdw (RedDot Wireless) Has MaxBand which combines 802.11 and 802.16
MaxBand is a baseband and PHY chip for both 802.11 and 802.16. Shown in the booth was a wireless bridge which interfaces to a WAN with 802.16 and then outputs to WLAN with 802.16. The PA and RF portion could be provided by such vendors as Maxim or Atmel. The chip is to sample in June. It is expected that it could go into base stations in 18 months. The target would be deployments in rural areas of Europe, Asia and Africa.
The chip also supports 802.16e, based on OFDMA, which is the mobility specification but no products are certified yet.
One target for this chip could be AMD based processors to create a complete wireless capability.
Cisco/Linksys Highlights KISS Products
KISS was acquired by Cisco in September 2005. This Danish company was showing for the first time how its products integrated with the Linksys product line. The theme of the booth was Digital Living. Three products were being shown:
Media Mate, 250€, which is new at CeBIT, due May 2005,
DP-600, High Definition Media Player, 399€
VR-558, DVR & EPG, 699€
These products are focused on IP delivery. KISS has its own media service with delivery over the Internet. KISS has been working with Microsoft on its IP television efforts.
The problem with media, above the bandwidth required by audio, is that wireless is not reliable enough. So when KISS works with IPTV providers the home distribution technology is wired or powerline.
The cable interface on its media boxes is analog only as CA is not supported.
ASUS Wireless Home Products
ASUS exhibited the following:
WL-500gP
It has BroadRange with an embedded media server that is claimed to have 3X the coverage of 802.16g. There is the ability to automatically download media from the Internet. The media server supports both video and audio.
WL-600g
Wireless ADSL2/2+ with a home gateway, wireless router with support for USB printers. Also included is WMM and WDS. Security includes the ability to NAT and an SPI firewall.
WL-799gE
Wireless storage router with the ability to automatically backup a PC. A wizard to easily set up large size internet photo albums and message boards. Compatible with iTunes to allow management of music stored in the WL-700gE. BroadRange support for 3X coverage of 802.11g.
From the Floor
Man Power International – MP3 Recording Watch
Man Power was showing a stylish MP3 recording watch. It also supports WMA. There are two methods of charging the battery: USB cable or AC adapter. The watch is claimed to water resistant.
Chic Technology – Skype Multimedia Keyboard
Chic Technology has combined a high end keyboard, which has a display, with Skype support, Model TKM 131.
Tablets Abound
The WAVE noted a number of tablets as input devices.
UC-Logic Technology was showing its LaPazz D-Note Series. This included a 12 X 9 work space, with 1024 pressure sensitivity and 2000dpi resolution.
ACECAD Enterprises showed MyScript Notes on its DigiMemo A501. This is a standalone device which captures all that is written on a paper tablet. Then when connected to a PC is will download what has been captured. The unit runs on 4 AAA batteries which last 100 hours.
Hanvon exhibited the WhizKid learning Pen Tablet. This is directed to children in China learning the alphabet. In addition to supporting Chinese writing it supports cartoon drawing and stories and games.
http://www.hw99.com/english/products0204.asp
Pegasus Technologies Digital Pen uses a clip which attached to a pad of paper. Using a special pen it allows the user to write into any table and then connect to a PC USB port. The device has 100 dpi resolution.
Ubiquitous Commodization
We were surprised to observe an increase in the number of China suppliers on the floor.
There is a surge in products such as MP3 players, handheld media players, Skype phones, VoIP phones, Bluetooth products especially ear pieces and anything related to the iPod.
Most of these companies are not high volume producers but just looking for an OEM contract. But it is also a testament to how commoditized the market for small size technology devices has become. Thus, getting products designed and produced is not the issue - it is about getting to market and capturing share.
Logitech Announcements
The press event was opened by Guerrino De Luca, President and CEO while most of the presentation was given by the recently hired Gerald Quindlen, SVP Sales and Marketing. Major points made include:
Harmony has become a major growth driver in the company. This has happened in the short span of 2 years since Logitech acquired Harmony. It has allowed the company to enter the living room. The product has done well in the US and sales are picking up in Europe. It was stated that Harmony had redefine the category of universal remotes. It has picked up 50% of the $ sales in universal remotes. The best market in Europe is Germany. Logitech was to associate Harmony with the growth of flat panel televisions in Europe. Already on the list of buyer preferences, the flat panel TV has passed automobiles in Europe. The Harmony is based on our Smart State Technology. At CeBIT, Logitech is introducing two new remotes 785 for $249 euros and 755S for 129 euros. The former has a color screen.
Web cams are another area of growth. This has been driven by the wide adoption of broadband and video services with the major portals. Sales of web cams grew 44% in the last quarter. Logitech introduced 4 new web cams for the value sector of the market, all of the eyeball design. Prices range from 19.99 to 39.99 euros.
Audio has become an important category. The white mm50 portable speakers for the iPod has the highest sales rate of any product of the company. At CeBIT, Logitech announced a black companion speaker. The company also announced noise canceling headphones which are priced at 1/2 of most in the market today - retail pricing will be 149 euros. In support of the surge in audio, the company has announced a wireless music system. There are two models: one for the speakers already in the home and another for iPod music and its output anywhere in the home. Later this year there will be many more audio products announced.
Announced was a niche mouse product - MX610. This is a left hand mouse which has laser, cordless and BT. It was stated that Guerrino De Luca has been asking for this for 7 years. Notebook mobility is another important area to the company. 4 new mouse were announced: MX610 left hand cordless, G7 laser cordless mouse with LAN case, MX400 precision laser mouse and V150 laser mouse for notebooks.
A new iopen was announced but no details given at the news conference.
WAVE Comments
CeBIT remains a premier exhibition. But when 3 halls go empty and Sony and Philips do not exhibit, one is left wondering. An attempt to go into the digital living room is a flop – CeBIT is not a CE show no matter how it is packaged.
If one mentally subtracts in the PC space, the commodity suppliers from Asia, and the gamers, CeBIT looks hollow. It lacks direction in the information technology market. One of the reasons is the increasing competition between CE and PC, and CeBIT is weak in CE. While CES can play to both CE and the PC, CeBIT is just not doing this. It could well be that CeBIT will become just a German show and not the international venue it has been.
Some technologies stood out. Display technology is on a roll. The Panasonic 103” 1080p PDP was impressive. Yet, the WAVE saw no OLED displays. The nVidia Quad SLI demo was also impressive. With $2000 in display cards in a PC one wonders how far this can go. For an avid PC gamer, there is no need to turn the heat on in the winter.
When it comes to cell phone technology, Samsung seems to be leaving the competition in the dust. When they showed ad hoc WiFi networking on cell phones for game play, we could only wonder how far this could go. With one of the first implementations of WiMAX mobility, 802.16 is showing progress. Samsung’s high megapixel cameras were looking more like cameras with cell phones attached to them.
As a home distribution media, wireless is down. In spite of its leadership roll, Linksys, via the recently acquired KISS, confirmed what stood out at IPTV World Forum – not a single carrier will use wireless for home media distribution. It is just too unreliable for mass distribution.
***Safety.BLR.com Advises Companies to Avoid the OSHA 'Dirty Dozen'
OLD SAYBROOK, Conn.
March 21, 2006
For many safety managers, enforcement action by OSHA seems like a remote possibility. This perception is fueled by a decline in the number of inspections in 2005 and a commensurate drop in the total number of violations uncovered.
The actual safety compliance reality is a harsh one, though, because OSHA did issue over 10,000 general industry citations last year.
According to Safety.BLR.com, despite reports to the contrary, OSHA is alive and well. The agency issued the largest fine in its history in 2005, $21 million against BP Products North America, Inc.
And OSHA's "dirty dozen," its list of the 12 most cited standards in 2005, was largely unchanged from the top 12 lists from the past several years. Companies continue to be fined for the same violations, year after year. Realizing this can give companies a leg up in protecting themselves from future inspections.
The top 12 violations fall into the following seven categories:
-- Hazard Communication (numbers 1, 3, and 10)
-- Machine Safety (numbers 2, 4, and 6)
-- Lockout/Tagout (numbers 7 and 9)
-- First Aid (number 5)
-- Walking-Working Surfaces (number 8)
-- Electrical Safety (number 11)
-- Respiratory Protection (number 12)
http://www.blr.com/81001600/PRS101
***Driving Security, Efficiency and Safety: ABI Research Investigates Automotive RFID
OYSTER BAY, N.Y.
March 21, 2006
From immobilizers to tire pressure monitors, on the assembly line and in the supply chain, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is making its presence felt throughout the automotive industry.
The largest current segment for automotive RFID is in vehicle entry and security systems, principally the immobilizers that disable a vehicle unless its RFID reader detects the correct tag in the driver's ignition key. Some 40% of new cars being produced in North America today contain such immobilizers.
The entry and security segments may have the highest profile, but ABI Research believes that the greatest growth potential for automotive RFID lies in automating the manufacturing process. As in other mass manufacturing industries, RFID can play a significant role in streamlining assembly lines. Both General Motors and Volkswagen, for example, employ Identec's RFID tags and readers in their manufacturing operations. Other large players in RFID assembly line automation include Escort Memory Systems and, in Europe, Siemens.
RFID can also play a more traditional role: providing visibility and security to the supply chain. Containers of GM parts moving from Canada to the United States, for instance, are RFID-tagged. The technology helps keep track of finished BMWs, Minis and Land Rovers as they leave the factory, and in the huge parking lots of the Broekman Group's automotive division in Rotterdam, a WhereNet wireless tracking system can precisely locate any one of 40,000 vehicles parked there at a given time.
The new ABI Research study, "Automotive RFID Markets: Vehicle Entry and Security Systems, TPMS, Automotive Manufacturing, ETC and AVI" examines how manufacturers are beginning to explore the use of RFID in improving manufacturing processes as well as adding functionality to vehicles. It includes not only RFID, but technologies utilizing RF, such as tire pressure monitoring systems and vehicle entry and security systems. It forms part of the company's Automotive Systems Research Service.
***Ethernet Everywhere by 2010?; Carrier Ethernet Comes Home as MEF Targets Access Technologies
LAS VEGAS
March 21, 2006
The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) has announced that the next phase of its Carrier Ethernet strategy and certification program will address the broad spectrum of access technologies - from copper pairs, coax cable to optical fiber and wireless. The MEF believes Ethernet is a universal communications technology and their first objective was to enable Carrier Ethernet as the preferred carrier technology and service. They are now seeking to ensure its universal availability by removing any access obstacles to Ethernet services.
Carrier Ethernet services are proving highly popular, both with end users and service providers. MEF now wants to ensure one hundred percent reach-ability via any existing access medium. They are determined to deliver the full benefits of Ethernet services by opening access to anyone, anywhere, anytime. By 2010 there should be no excuse for not delivering Carrier Ethernet services to every office, every home and to mobile users too.
The initial phase of this strategy and certification program, beginning in the second quarter of 2006, is to address the conformance of IEEE 802.3ah OAM standard for Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) in delivering Ethernet services via copper, fiber and EPON access. The initial phase also includes wireless Ethernet mesh access certification testing, based on forthcoming IEEE 802.11t, ensuring total coverage and mobility of Ethernet services.
According to MEF, people too often associate Ethernet just with cables. They forget that Ethernet was derived in 1973 from Alohanet packet radio. MEF decided back then not to call it something like Coaxnet. They imagined that Ethernet media -- ethers -- would proliferate and evolve, and indeed they have over 33 years. Ethernet has evolved from thick baseband coax, to thin coax, to telephone pairs, to television broadband cable, to powerline, to lambdas on optical fibers, and all the way back home to Alohanet wireless. Modern wireless Ethernet is now called WiFi. In parallel, Ethernet has evolved from a local-area network (LAN) to a wide-area network (WAN) and most recently, thanks to the MEF, to Carrier Ethernet -- access services using many media.
About The Metro Ethernet Forum:
The Metro Ethernet Forum is a non-profit organisation created to accelerate the adoption of Ethernet in metro networks worldwide, the Metro Ethernet Forum consists of more than 80 member companies representing a range of leading Ethernet service providers, major incumbent local exchange carriers, top network equipment vendors and other prominent networking companies.
http://www.MetroEthernetForum.org
***Technology Review Identifies Emerging Technologies That Will Make a Difference
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
March 20, 2006
With new technologies constantly being invented in corporate and academic labs around the world, identifying which ones will transform computing, medicine, telecommunications and business always is a challenge. In "10 Emerging Technologies," a special package in the March/April issue of Technology Review, MIT's magazine of technology, the editors name those that they feel will soon have a significant impact.
This year's list illustrates the hunt for an "ethical" stem cell and technologies that are increasing the understanding and treatment of diseases, the ways that chemical compounds can influence DNA, breakthroughs in imaging the brain and keeping the digital world accessible and secure.
-- Nuclear Reprogramming - producing cloned cells that have all the properties of embryonic stem cells, but don't come from embryos, thus avoiding a moral dilemma. Markus Grompe, director of the Oregon Stem Cell Center at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, uses a variation of the cloning procedure that produced Dolly the sheep but that stops the adult DNA reprogramming before it is complete, at the stage where the hybrid cell resembles an embryonic stem cell.
-- Diffusion Tensor Imaging - a newly developed variation of MRI that allows scientists to study the connections between different brain areas for the first time. Kelvin Lim, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, is using the technology to look at the complex network of nerve fibers connecting the different brain areas with the goal of better defining neurological and psychiatric diseases and yield more targeted treatments.
-- Comparative Interactomics - mapping the network of interactions among genes, RNA, metabolites and proteins. Trey Ideker, who runs the Laboratory for Integrative Network Biology at the University of California, San Diego, hopes that the work will uncover new drugs, help improve existing drugs by providing a better understanding of how they work and even lead to computerized models of toxicity that could replace studies now done on animals.
-- Pervasive Wireless - designing and testing methods for linking mobile, radio-equipped computers in ad hoc configurations that can change on the fly. Dipankar Raychaudhuri, director of the Open Access Research Testbed for Next Generation Wireless Networks at Rutgers University, envisions collections of wireless devices that will form mesh networks that pass data from one to another until they reach the Internet and then can be connected to computing servers as well as to pagers, cell phones or other gadgets that employ diverse wireless protocols.
-- Cognitive Radio - allows wireless devices to more efficiently share airwaves using technology to determine which frequencies are quiet and pick one or more over which to transmit and receive data. With up to 70 percent of the allocated spectrum sitting idle, University of California, Santa Barbara's Heather Zheng has demonstrated an approach using a set of rules based on "game theory" and designed software that made the devices follow those rules.
-- Epigenetics - a second order of genetics that has developed practical tools for identifying chemical modifications that can interfere with the machinery of protein manufacture. German biochemist Alexander Olek, founder of Berlin-based Epigenomics, seeks to create a rapid and sensitive test for gene methylation, a common DNA modification linked to cancer. Forthcoming tests will determine whether a patient has a certain type of cancer, its severity and likelihood that it will respond to a specific treatment.
-- Stretchable Silicon - unlike most electronics that come in the form as rigid chips, the future of devices thin and flexible enough to be rolled up like a newspaper is fast approaching. The potential applications for circuitry made from single-crystal silicon by John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, include surgeons' gloves to create sensors that would read chemical levels in the blood and alert a surgeon to a problem, without hampering the sense of touch.
-- Nanobiomechanics - measuring the minute mechanical forces acting on our cells. Massachusetts Institute of Technology materials scientist Subra Suresh applies nanomeasurement techniques to living cells to learn how they react to tiny forces and how their physical form is affected by disease. The new tools will be used to tackle major health problems including malaria, sickle-cell anemia, cancer of the liver and pancreas and cardiovascular disease.
-- Nanomedicine - using multipurpose nanoparticles to transfigure the diagnosis and treatment of not only cancer but virtually any disease. Researchers, like University of Michigan physician James Baker, are working on inexpensive tests that could distinguish a case of sniffles from the early symptoms of a bioterror attack, as well as treatments for disorders ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to cystic fibrosis.
-- Universal Authentication - to give Web-services users a single sign in that allows them to hop from one site to another securely, without violating their privacy, and at the same time protects the online businesses and other institutions whose Web-based services they are using. Scott Cantor, a computer scientist at Ohio State University, is expanding the reach of an open-standard scheme known as Shibboleth - currently used by universities and the research community - to act not only as an authentication system, but also as a guardian of users' privacy.
The ten technologies are also featured at
http://www.technologyreview.com/special/emerging
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