Say goodbye to traditional system of "different chargers for different gadgets"

You could soon be saying goodbye to having several different chargers for all your handheld gadgets like your mobile phone or MP3 player..The mouse-sized pad allows users of cellphones, PDAs, and other portable, recharcheable devices to simply place them on the pad for recharging rather than plug them all in separately. Great idea, right? Yes a great mind’s creation of “SPLASH PAD” made it possible.The splash pad system is based around a small flat mat that plugs into the main electricity supply and a special module inside a gadget. You turn is just to pick up your phone and drop it on the pad ….it charges.The technology is based on the principle of magnetic inductive power transfer.The splash pad is expected to cost between $25 and $50.

Only problem is that the SplashPad requires the use of SplashModules, thin little receiver modules that fit onto the portable devices to be recharged. It would have been nice if the SplashPad worked on its own without having to put stickers all over our devices, but we'll still give this thing a try. Could solve some serious wiring (and more serious electrical fire) issue we always seem to battle, what with about 800 adapters under the desk.

HAPTIC TECHNOLOGY----technology behind touch sensitive screens

Technology may be the ‘hidden hand’ — no pun intended — of etymology! The term, ‘hands-on computing’ has come to assume a whole new meaning, when your fingers do more than jab at a keyboard; when they interact with the computing surface and receive a reassuringly reciprocal sensation that tells you, that your wish is its command.
Origin of haptics
The ancient Greeks called it ‘haphe’ or ‘haptesthai’ — meaning contact or touch —till now the applications are of high-end industrial applications of haptics… and they have not ‘touched’ lay users — till now. But the explosion in ‘convergence’ devices at the confluence of PC, TV and Internet, has changed all that.
The customer’s demand
The new and emerging customer is saying: “If you want me to use a computer or surf the Internet as easily as I use my television set, then I demand the simplicity of the TV.”Industry has heard the underlying threat in this demand. Which is why Francis Lee, Chief Executive of Synaptics, a leading maker of touch sensors, told the Associated Press last week: “This new ( touch) interface will be like a tsunami, hitting an entire spectrum of devices.” Hewlett Packard’s new TouchSmart IQ770 PC, just launched in India, uses a 19-inch touch-sensitive screen as a user-friendly interface for all its functions — as entertainment centre, home security and control console, Internet browser and as a plain old personal computer. Microsoft which generally touted voice as the emerging personal device interface, has nevertheless made its own ‘touching’ contribution… the ‘Surface,’ a table-top computer whose large plastic-topped surface hides a numbers of scanners, projectors and the heart of a personal computer.
You could read the menu in a hotel, off the table top, touch an item to order it — then eat it at from the same surface. Perhaps the most hyped consumer offering to exploit touch technology is Apple’s i-Phone. This all-in-one, phone-multimedia-Net-access device does away entirely with the mobile phone’s keyboard and substitutes a screen that uses what is known as multi-touch technology. You can slide a finger up and down to scroll through your address book, flick it to open and leaf through a photo album and glide it across the screen to open other applications.
Conventionally, touch sensitive screens are created by embedding a resistive or capacitive layer just beneath the exposed surface. Touching it sets off changes in the electric current that runs between the two layers and knowing the coordinates of the spot touched on a grid, allows the computer to interpret the action.
Today’s tactile technologies have become a bit more sophisticated. For the iPhone, it has deployed a proprietary gesture-enhanced multi-touch technology.

Do you wanna know abt "POCKET TELEVISION"?...then go through this article:

If your daily trip to work involves commuting for long spells, by bus or train, you might, today, be carrying a folded newspaper to while away the tedium. Tomorrow it could well be a folded television set.
Still agonising ....
Many of us are still agonising over whether our next television set should be a Plasma or a Liquid Crystal (LCD) screen, assuming we can afford to buy either. Yet these competing technologies are already being challenged by a brash, ultra slim and amazingly sharp newcomer, that might well push us into the next era of high-definition display technology. It’s called Organic Light Emitting Diode or OLED — and among other characteristics, it can be rolled out as a flexible, rather than a rigid sheet.Which means, that some time in the coming decade, we can expect to fold or roll up a portable TV and carry it in a pocket or a purse, for viewing while ‘on the go.’
Right now, OLED TV monitors are thin — but not that thin. Recently, Sony announced that it will be putting on sale, sometime in December this year — and initially only in Japan — the world’s first OLED-based TV set. The XEL-1 has a 11 inch (28 cm) screen; it is just 3 mm thick and weighs less than 2 kg. Its high definition (1920 by 1080 pixel) screen has an amazing and hitherto unachievable ratio of 1,000,000:1. It will cost 200,000 yen, that is, around Rs. 67,000. That might sound like a lot of money for a small hand-held TV panel but the situation is poised to change dramatically, price and availability-wise. Toshiba has already announced that it will forsake these small screens and come out with its own OLED offering — a 30 inch TV model — by 2009.
Less power overhead
To put it in simple terms, since an OLED emits light, it does not, unlike an LCD panel, require additional back lighting to create a bright image. That, straight way reduces the power overhead and allows manufacturers to reduce the effective thickness of the monitor screen.
An OLED is created by placing a series of carbon-based organic thin films, sandwiched between two conductors.
Fabrication innovations :
When a current is passed, bright light is emitted by the organic film layers. Most of the early patents in OLEDs were obtained by Kodak in the early 1980s, while fabrication innovations have been made by many other companies. In 1999 Kodak and Sanyo jointly developed the first full colour 2.4 inch OLED display panel. Indeed, many of us might be using OLED panels today, without realising it. They are already to be found in many small screen devices like high-end, graphic mobile phones, portable video players and the like.
Consumers’ hunger :
Worldwide, consumers’ hunger for better, sharper, brighter television and video screens, fuelled by the imminent availability of high definition media like Bluray and HD-DVD, may be just the stimulus that will kick start the OLED business and make it a mass consumer contender. In many countries, governments are also doing their bit by mandating cut off dates for the analogue TV transmission as we know it today, after which all TV will be high-definition and digital.
Compelling attraction :
Even without these market-driven factors, OLED technology has a compelling attraction for the display industry: It can be manufactured in the form of flexible or near-flexible sheets — holding out the hope that some time in the future, TV makers will roll out television screens by the metre, much as textiles are manufactured today.
Reference models :
Sharp, Epson, Samsung are all known to have perfected their own OLED technologies for large screens like TVs and PC monitors — indeed most of them showcased reference models earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, that went up to 40 inch diagonal.
One of key advantages of the Sony 11 inch OLED TV, after the extreme fidelity of the picture, is its frugal power requirement — less than 45 watts.
The reason lies in one of the core design features that distinguishes OLED panels: its property of electroluminescence, when excited with an electric current.

When a Plane flies on Wireless Power

An aeroplane consumes nearly 50% of its fuel during takeoff.25% of that fuel is used on the runway.Instead of using fuel,electric power could wirelessly propel an airplane.
Last year,there were two billion flights.by 2010,this figure will go up by 500million.A single trasalantic flight consumes 60,000 litres of fuel that release 140 tonnes of carbondioxide.Green house gases such as carbondioxide trap heat onto the earth and contribute to global warming.it’s a real problem.According to a recent UN report on climate change,the glaciers of gangotri that supply 70% of water to the ganga could melt by 2030.
If aeroplanes are part of the problem,nikola tesla,the extraordinary inventor of the AC motor who held over 1200 patents in his day,is a part of this solution.The principle of Resonance that underlies your ability to tune into a particular station is behind an exciting innovation in wireless power.In a recent issue of science,proff Marin soljacic and collegues at MIT demonstrate that over a distance of two metres they can wirelessly light up a 60-watt bulb.The transmitter coil emits a weak magnetic field that is only noticed by an identical coil tuned to it.As the coils resonate,energy is ‘tunnelled’from one to the other with high efficiency.
How can this slow global warming?an aeroplane consumes nearly 50% of its fuel during takeoff and 255 of that fuel is used on runway.Instead of using fuel,in theory,electric power could wirelessly propel an airplane to flight that would require significantly less fuel on board and shift our carbon burden to the lower atmosphere where it is less damaging.What could keep the plane up once airborne?Both light and microwaves can do long distance energy tranfer.in the 1980’s the canadiansbuilt an unmanned aircraft that could fly 20KM above a large microwave transmitter that powered it from the ground two years ago,NASA demonstrated that it could focus light(through a laser) and fly a model airplane that had photovoltaic cells,to convert the light into electricity.theses are the necessary technologies for tomorrow.Virgin atlantic is purchasing new boeing 787s that are made of lighter materials to consume 27% less fuel than comparable.

Heartbeat may power Future Mobiles...

A good news for all those who are tired of frequently charging their mobiles. Researchers from Southampton University have developed a technology that will be able to harness your heartbeat to power your cell phone.British researchers have developed a miniature generator that can produce electricity from vibrations in the surrounding environment, reports the Telegraph.The new find is supposed to prove a boon for people with pacemakers. Initially developed for use in industrial machinery, the scientists are now tweaking the design so it can be used to power pacemakers off a beating heart. It would allow patients to avoid surgery to replace batteries in their pacemaker.
However, researchers also hope that they will eventually be able to use the highly-efficient generators to power other portable wireless devices, including mobiles and MP3 players. It would mean that mobile users could charge their phone by simply keeping it in their breast pocket near their heart.
The miniature generator works on the same principles as a kinetic powered watch, which uses the movement of a coil between magnets to produce an electrical current. The researchers at Southampton and their company Perpetuum have found that they can tune the device to a particular frequency of movement so it will produce far more power than the devices found in watches.The researchers are also hoping to use their technology to scavenge energy from the vibrations of bridges and roads.

1st SEMINAR SESSION

The first seminar session of IICM is going to be held on 7th Feb. 2008 on 11:10A.M at seminar hall-Pragati engg college.

Topics for the seminar:

1.Contribution of Faraday

2.Alternative of Nuclear fusion

3.Applications of ringing circuit.

Interested students can give a seminar on the above topics at the session. Not only the above but seminar on any interesting ideologies are also invited.