What's new out there in the IT world?

What's new out there in the IT world?

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): By now you must have heard people talking about
electronic newspapers of the future. Soon, you will have on your
screen a crisp bright display that you can roll or fold just by
pressing a specific area on a panel. You will soon be able to
download the latest update of The Jakarta Post through a wireless
connection. Gone will be the traditional newspaper that has been
around for hundreds of years. The first being in England, the
Daily Courant, which started publication in 1702.

Believe it or not, the technology for the sci-fi newspaper is
already available today. I have just received the 1998 annual
report of the Universal Display Corporation, a U.S. company that
develops flat panel display (FPD) technology. You can see one of
their planned products, the flexible organic light emitting
device (FOLED), the name of their core technology, in the
accompanying picture that I've scanned from their report.

Unlike the thin film transistor screen that we now have on
today's high-end notebook screens, each pixel on the device's
panel uses iridium-based dopant molecules that emit light based
on its electrophosphorescence mechanism. Its very low power
consumption makes this technology very suitable for portable
devices that run on batteries, including the electronic newspaper
that you can still take with you to the bathroom.

Also, when driving your car of the future, where do you think
you will see the emergency indicators for low fuel level or a
faulty wire connector? Will they still be flashing on your
dashboard? Maybe not. Maybe you'll see them on your windshield in
front of you and the road. The same company has also been
working on a transparent organic light emitting device (TOLED).
When nothing is displayed, you won't see it. You can see the road
ahead perfectly clear as if nothing but the windshield glass was
there. But when information needs to be displayed, it will pop up
on the windshield, visible but not too obtrusive to hamper safe
driving. You won't have to lower your eyes to look at the
dashboard anymore.

Another product from the company is the stacked organic light
emitting device (SOLED). The company stacks three of the devices
vertically to form a pixel in a cellular phone or notebook
display. By altering the color of each pixel into various degrees
of red, green and blue, you'll have a much better resolution with
more vibrant color on the screen. The company has been developing
this technology, which may eventually replace the liquid Crystal
Display (LCD) technology, in cooperation with Princeton
University and the University of Southern California for the last
five years. The company currently has over 40 patents pending in
the U.S.

Faster processors

Today, Aug. 2, is the planned international launch date for
the 600 MHz Pentium III and the 500 MHz Celeron, the latest
upgrades from giant chipmaker Intel Corporation.

The features are basically the same as what we already have on
the market. What this means is certainly a lower price for the
previous generation of the 450 and 500 MHz Pentium III or the
400, 433 and 466 MHz Celeron processors. Too bad the rupiah has
gone limp again, otherwise, it would be the right time to dump my
old Pentium 133 MHz system.

Intel has also announced that its upcoming 64-bit Merced
processor (the Pentium IIIs are still based on the 32-bit
architecture) has graduated from the drawing board and prototypes
are being constructed. They expect to be able to show them by the
end of this year.

Moving on to services, it seems that a responsiveness to
customers' needs has become the competitive tool of the day. Last
month we saw Epson and Metrodata announcing their one-hour
service, and this month Hewlett Packard (HP) has announced their
Service from the Heart call center. They call it Melati, which
stands for the Indonesian translation Melayani Sepenuh Hati.

With the availability of the call center, you can call in and
ask for advice on any of over 65,000 products that HP has sold in
Indonesia, from small hand-held calculators to UNIX servers.
Products up to five years old will still be supported. Printers
and scanners are included, of course. HP will have lines of
engineers that can help you solve your problems, and a Web site
will soon follow.

It's one more example of how competition almost always
benefits the customer, isn't it?

Use notebooks for days

The notebook computer is truly the mother of convenience to
today's mobile workers as it allows them to work anywhere -- in
the dining room, the boardroom, at the airport terminal or on the
airplane. Unfortunately, the battery is not an infinite source of
power, and as it gets older it has less and less juice to draw
on.

Some major airlines have fitted their first and business class
seats with power outlets, so, you can play Tetris productively
for hours between meals. However, there has been concern that a
short circuit may occur, and when you're 10 kms above the ground
that kind of problem may not be a good situation to have.

In fact, the concern came, among others, by an association of
batterymakers. Could it be because the sales of extra battery
packs would drop once the power outlets are also available in
economy class? Anyway, it's still up to the FAA to decide if you
can recharge your notebook battery as you try to sleep on a
cramped airplane seat.

However, a piece of good news has also come from the world of
science and technology, and it may eliminate the need for
batteries in portable devices altogether. The July issue of
Scientific American features an article by Christopher K. Dyer
that highlights the use of fuel cells to replace batteries.

Fuel cells, which were actually invented in the last century,
offer multiple advantages over our conventional batteries. While
they are easy to handle, fuel cells are cheaper to make and they
can provide much longer power by using hydrogen atoms.

Dyer says that a fuel cell will enable you to work 20 times
longer per charge compared to a Ni-Cad battery of similar size.

Fuel cells are also lighter, and recharging can be done just
by adding hydrogen. The article also says that you may eventually
be able to use your notebook for 100 hours non-stop, or leave
your cellular phone in stand-by mode for months without having to
recharge.

That's really great news, and with so much progress being made
by Honda, DaimlerChrysler and other carmakers to bring clean cars
to the road, I think the fuel cell technology will advance more
rapidly than it has in the past. If fuel cells become available
for our notebooks we could still use the power outlet at the
airplane seat for our electric shaver, couldn't we?