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?