Munich (Germany) - Infineon is the first company to announce a major contract to supply RFID chips that will be integrated in US passports. The chips will carry digital copies of the citizen's picture as well as the printed documentation in the passport. Infineon promises that more than "50 individual security mechanisms" are protecting the data saved on the chip.
Los Angeles (CA) - Car modders - people who hate anything slow, quiet and dim - have begun banishing their anemic incandescent dome lights with newer and much brighter LED lights. At the recent Hot Import Nights car show in Los Angeles we got a first impression on a new technology trend that not only provides much more light than your traditional lights, but last longer and uses far less energy as well.
Following a 5.8% increase in the price of 17" monitor panels in the first half of August, surging demand is pushing mainstream panel prices higher in the second half of August, according to WitsView Technology.
Sunnyvale (CA) - A surprisingly steep single-day average price drop in nearly all AMD dual-core processors, including its top-of-the-line FX series, plus a drop in Intel Pentium D 8xx series prices, characterized the last 24 hours of consumer CPU purchases, according to the latest data obtained by PriceGrabber. Suddenly, the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is selling for an average price of $144 - down $23 from yesterday, and below the new 3600+ target price - once it's introduced - of $149.
When CBS re-launches the Evening News broadcast next month, with Katie Couric in the seat that was originally dubbed "the anchor chair" for Walter Cronkite, it will be making the broadcast available on television and online at the same time, for the first time. Is this a long-overdue technological innovation in news delivery? Or will the simulcast create new problems as CBS continues to struggle - along with the other networks - with how to integrate itself with the Web?
The combined shares of 40" and 42" LCD TVs will exceed that for PDP (plasma display panel) TVs in the global 40" to 49" TV market by the fourth quarter of this year.
Sunnyvale (CA) - Almost one month after AMD signaled it would respond to Intel's then-forthcoming Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme releases with substantial price cuts, based on the latest performance data from Tom's Hardware Guide, TG Daily now projects that average street prices for Athlon 64 X2 processors now fall as much as 41.4% below the price/performance curve set by comparable Intel processors.
Acer's total volume of notebook orders is estimated to exceed eight million units in 2006, slightly ahead of Toshiba with 7-8 million notebooks, according to sources at Taiwan notebook manufacturers.
Creative Sensor Incorporated (CSI), a Taiwan-based maker of color contact image-sensor modules for multi-function peripherals, will invest about $3.1 million in a production line for liquid lenses, with small-volume shipments slated to begin by the end of 2006, according to company president Doris Hsu.
A new silicon chip capable of manipulating the spin of a single electron could ultimately allow futuristic quantum computers to be built using conventional electronic technology, researchers say.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed SWAN (an acronym for "System for Wearable Audio Navigation"), a wearable computing system to help blind people navigate in unfamiliar environments.
The number of households with HDTV services, which are homes with an HDTV set that can receive HDTV signals and watch HDTV programs, are projected to grow 35% from 15 million units in mid-2006 to 20.3 million at the end of 2006, according to research firm In-Stat.
Bedford (NH) - Segway, makers of the famous self-righting scooter of the same name, is rolling out two new models that have longer range and can even go off the beaten path. The i2 model can travel up to 24 miles on a single charge, while the x2 has rugged tires to take on trails and rough terrain. Both models also have a new wireless remote which functions like a car remote.
It's a disturbing thought: being able to remotely control the way a person moves at the push of a button. But scientists have already managed to do just that - although not with the same repertoire of complex movements as, say, a practiced nine-year-old controlling a toy race car.
Las Vegas (NV) - This year's Defcon computer security convention had a high-tech badge for an equally high-tech crowd. The circular badge was a colored circuit board complete with a small computer chip, battery and two blinking LED lights. Defcon staff wanted the badge to be difficult to counterfeit, but easy enough to add some interesting hacks.
