Category: News

Wow!   Have you seen Avatar in 3D?     This movie adds a whole new meaning to 3D.  And sometimes we forget that the rest of the world is 3D including the product that electronics industry companies design.   So why do we sometimes limit our design capabilities to only consider the 2D aspects of the PCB?  Certainly the mechanical design MCAD world has gone mostly 3D.

In a viewpoint I wrote for PCD&F magazine I talked about the need and existing/emerging capabilites that link MCAD to the electronics (ECAD) and enable the two very different disciplines to collaborate real time during the product design process.  The example I highlighted was the need for thermal analysis not only at the standalone PCB level but also with the PCB(s) in the full 3D enclosure using Mentor’s FloTHERM/FloEFD capabilities.  But this is only one example.

Even the PCB and packages are going 3D now with cavities, direct chip attach using wirebonds, die stacking, and Ridgid-flex designs that need to be folded to fit into the product enclosure.   So the need to consider a product design and manufacturing as a 3D challenge is increasing.  Aspects like HALT (Highly Accelerated Lifetime Testing) where software simulates the 3D vibration and temperaure cycling failure effects on the PCB’s reliability.  PCB to enclosure interference checking.  PCB pick and place assembly analysis and sequencing.

 We’re committed and in the unique position as a PCB systems design supplier to continue expanding our 3D capabilities.  You’ll see our R&D and some acquisitions with increasing emphasis on 3D.   And by the way, if you haven’t seen Avatar in 3D, it’s worth the time.

When the government announces its latest monthly unemployment report on Friday, it’s a safe bet that the data will include another uptick in the number of health-care jobs.

(Update: The latest BLS employment data Friday made it official, showing the health-care sector adding 21,500 jobs in December. Doctors’ offices added 8,900 jobs and home health-care services grew by 8,000 slots. Here’s the overview story from WSJ.)

That’s pretty much a no-brainer considering the health-care sector added 381,000 jobs in 2007 and another 372,000 in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the gains in the first 11 months of 2009, health care has expanded by more than 600,000 since the recession’s start in December 2007.

We won’t venture a guess at what December’s official numbers will show. You can look at what our colleagues at Real Time Economics said today if you want a peak at the overall jobs situation.

On the health-care front, online help-wanted data out today from the Conference Board showed demand increased the most in December for health-care practitioner and technical jobs. The business research group said that “advertised vacancies for healthcare practitioners or technical occupations outnumbered the unemployed looking for work in this field by almost 3 to 1,” citing November data.

The industry’s hiring wave is far from over. A report on NPR this morning notes BLS statistics that more than three million health-care jobs of all types will be added by 2018, including 581,500 registered nurses and almost 461,000 home health aides.

Image: iStockphoto

If I were a phone service company, I would not be excited about 2010. As Slate’s Farhad Manjoo explains, Google is set to blow up phone industry. No, this isn’t about the Google phone. It’s about Google Voice.

Here’s Manjoo:

Last year, Google
reinvented the phone–but unless you’re among the handful of VIPs who
got access to the U.S.-based, invitation-only service, you probably
haven’t noticed. Google Voice
does several amazing things. It gives you a central phone number that
rings all of your phones–when people call your Voice number, you can
pick up at your office, your cell, or at your vacation house in Bermuda
(and they won’t know the difference). Voice also transcribes your
messages, rendering voice mail obsolete.
And then there’s this: Because it routes all your calls through the
Internet, it lets you call anywhere in the United States for free, and
anywhere in the world for cheap, without a contract.

I’ve been using Voice since its debut–and before that I was a
devotee of GrandCentral, its predecessor–and I find it indispensible.
It has proved more useful than any other technology launched in 2009,
including the new iPhone, Google Wave, and all those e-readers. Among other things, I can now make international calls from my cell phone for no extra charge.

Google
seems to have big plans for Voice. At the moment, the service works by
patching phone calls to your own phone–to make a call, you go to your
Web browser (on either your PC or your smartphone) and type in a phone
number you’d like to call; then Voice rings your phone, and when you
pick up, you’re connected to your mom in Australia! This system (which
is much simpler than it sounds) has a big advantage over Skype and
other Internet-phone services: You don’t need to install special
hardware or software to use it. But it has a disadvantage, too–mainly,
that all calls need to go through the phone system and can’t be routed
directly through a PC. But Google looks to be fixing that–executives
have hinted that they’re building a phone-free version of the software
that would let you make calls through your PC or mobile device (like
you can do with Skype). Google also seems close to opening the service
to more users, even those outside of America. That can’t happen soon
enough–phone companies have long forestalled improvements on their
services (making huge profits, for instance, on voice mail), and Voice promises to finally bring the innovation we’ve seen in the software industry to the phone business.

Google’s recent foray into phone technology really demands serious attention. It’s not just the new Google phone. Or Google Voice. Or the new Android software. Or the purchase of Gizmo5, a Skype-like online phone company. Or the purchase of AdMob, an online ad display company. It’s the fact that these developments basically happened within a few months of each other. Twelve months ago, Google’s contribution to the phone industry was hard to perceive. In 12 months, Google could be a leading hardware developer, the leading software developer for Verizon, a disruptive challenger to the very business model of pay-to-call phone service and the runaway leader in online advertising. It seems to me that Google is prepared to be synonymous with something much vaster than searching in a year’s time.

The NBA has seen enough of Gilbert Arenas’ gunplay. On Wednesday, the league suspended the Wizards’ hoopster indefinitely without pay after Arenas admitted to storing four unloaded and unlicensed handguns in his locker at the Verizon Center.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Arenas said he took the unloaded guns out of his locker on Dec. 21 “in a misguided effort to play a joke on a teammate.” He denied threatening or assaulting anyone. The New York Post reported that Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other. A pair of league officials told The Associated Press that the incident stemmed from a dispute over card-playing gambling debts and a heated argument in the locker room.

“Joke or not, I now recognize that what I did was a mistake and was wrong,” Arenas said in a statement Monday. “I should not have brought the guns to DC in the first place, and I now realize that there’s no such thing as joking around when it comes to guns – even if unloaded.”

National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern issued the following statement on Wednesday, and it was posted on NBA.com:

“Although it is clear that the actions of Mr. Arenas will ultimately result in a substantial suspension, and perhaps worse, his ongoing conduct has led me to conclude that he is not currently fit to take the court in an NBA game. Accordingly, I am suspending Mr. Arenas indefinitely, without pay, effective immediately pending the completion of the investigation by the NBA.”

Do you have a bit of Palm Pre Touchstone envy? Powermat has finally evolved their product enough so that almost any phone can be turned into an inductive charging device simply by replacing the battery with one by Powermat that includes the charging receiver.

Powermat, who sold more than 750 000 units sunce October 2009, will be showing off their new technology at CES.

"It’s all about freedom and convenience," said Ron Ferber, President of Powermat. "While our initial line delivered on our promise to eliminate the hassle of plugging and unplugging allowing consumers to plug in their Powermat and simply Drop and Charge the assortment was limited to a handful of popular devices and charging environments. For 2010 we’ve taken our product line to a whole new level through the successful miniaturization of our technology to the ASIC level.

With this and other incredible advances we’ve increased the selection of devices that we’re able to wirelessly charge to include virtually every brand of handset or handheld device. At the same time we’re offering a full range of new mats that allow consumers to charge in every possible environment, no matter where they may be.

Our next generation of products takes Powermat to an unsurpassed level. In fact our technology is so mature that we are already working with many top tier OEM brands that will be launching Powermat-enabled models in 2010."

More than 10 models from HTC, Blackberry, Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson will debut at CES, but the technology can be applied to virtually any phone ensuring access to the freedom and convenience of Powermat wireless charging to consumers worldwide. Devices without removable batteries like the iPhone will continue to have to use a charging sleeve, which can interfere with the ergonomics and style of the device.

Powermat will be launching a sleek new line of single, double and triple position mats for home and office use – Powermat 1X, Powermat 2X & Powermat 3X.

Read more at Powermat.com here.

Via Engadget.com

The automotive industry is emerging from the worst year it has faced since 1970 and automakers are cautiously optimistic that a recovery is under way for U.S. auto sales.

Executives and analysts said yesterday that they expect car and light truck sales to increase to 11.5 million or more in 2010 as compared to 10.4 million in 2009. Some very optimistic analysts are forecasting sales to exceed 13 million vehicles, still below the peak of 17.4 million at the start of the last decade.

The decline in sales started in 2005 and went on until 2008, forcing General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy and pushing Toyota into the red for the first time since 1950.

Sales in December totaled 1,010,003, up 1.9 percent from December 2008.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Detroit News

»  In just two months, Apple’s App Store jumped to 3 billion downloads from 2 billion. [CNET]

»  Rogers Communications will be the exclusive carrier for the Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) Xperia X10. [Engadget]

»  A video demo of the quest to turn the iPhone into a computer, complete with a virtual keyboard and mouse. [iPhone Alley]

»  The CEO of mobile advertiser Greystripe on what to expect in 2010. [PocketGamer]

AT&T has announced a new line of Android-based smartphones for 2010. Dell, HTC and Motorola will make the five new devices, which are scheduled to be released during the first half of 2010.

Endgadget is predicting that AT&T will be using the Motorola Backflip, while Slashgear has confirmed that the Mini 3i will be the choice for Dell. The other three, Endgadget says, will most likely go to HTC.

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The announcement is good for AT&T customers who wanted an Android phone but are held under contract with the company. Up until now, AT&T has offered the iPhone and a variety of Palm and Blackberry devices, but nothing operating the Android OS.

The company made the announcement today at CES where they also announced new initiatives to increase the number of applications available to their customers. To this end, the company is offering a new software developer kit and is looking to sign new distribution deals in order to offer its phone apps worldwide.

Nokia also announced today that its Ovi mobile application store will be available to AT&T customers in the United States.

Full details can be found in the company’s press release.

Discuss

“7-11″ evidently stands for how the number of pounds a regular customer will gain in six months

The University of Montreal conducted a study of 632 kids and their families from across the economic scale in an effort to determine how their neighborhoods affected their weight. Most of the children were of normal heft, but 42 percent were overweight and 22 percent downright obese. The researchers looked for correlations between weight on the one hand, and parks and green spaces and commercial food outlets on the other.

Their conclusions: Neighborhood availability of parks, playgrounds and other open areas doesn’t seem to have any affect on children’s weight; fast food restaurants may be somewhat relevant to childhood overweight, but there appears to be a direct connection between childhood obesity and proximity to convenience stores.

The researchers feel strongly enough about this to have recommended that convenience-store-free zones be established in the vicinity of Canadian schools.

Of course, it’s possible that this study was secretly funded by McDonald’s as part of a blame-shifting strategy, but when you think about it, the fast food chains at least make some effort to address their role in our national fat problem, whereas your typical convenience store seems dedicated to selling the least healthy food products permitted by law. Then again, what would you expect from a place that also sells cigarettes and lottery tickets?

Further proof, if any were needed, that people who enter eating competitions are batpoop loony

If eating competitions merely involved widely beloved food items, such as your hot dog and hamburger and pancake and apple pie and other items off the classic Norman Rockwell America menu, that would be one thing. It would be simple gluttony.
But eating competitions don’t stop there. They go on to include items than ordinary, rational Americans would eat only to avoid offending hosts in a hostile foreign land or to humor future in-laws here at home. And that verges on crazy.

Think I’m exaggerating? Herewith are a few such items, and the current world records for consuming them, straight from the Uncle John’s Endless Engrossing Bathroom Reader, 2009 edition.

• Haggis (sheep lungs, liver and heart, plus oatmeal and onion, boiled in a sheep’s stomach): three pounds in eight minutes.
• Pickled beef tongue: one entire three-pound tongue plus a few bites of another (because who can stop at just one tongue?) in 12 minutes. On Fox TV, no less, which somehow makes sense.
• Cow brains: 57 of them, totaling about 17.7 pounds, in 15 minutes.
• Jalapeno peppers: 247, in an unspecified space of time, but probably not as long as the winner later spent in the bathroom.
• Butter (a classic American food item, granted, but always on something else, such as toast or corn on the cob; I mean, if somebody brought you a “snack” that was simply pats of butter, wouldn’t you be weirded out?): seven quarter-pound sticks in 5 minutes.

If the images of the eaters setting these records don’t curl your hair, or at least curb your appetite, keep in mind that these were competitions, meaning that whole bunches of people were desperately and zealously hammering down the cow brains or sheep innards or whatever. We’re not talking about isolated individual nutjobs, here, but whole legions of demented enthusiasts.
And you were worried about vampires and zombies.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)

Mini-marts linked to childhood obesity; eating competitions linked to insanity

We feel compelled to add our comments about Bono’s recent New York Times column, in which he appeared to express a strange hope that ISPs would start spying on their users in the name of protecting America’s intellectual property. “We know,” says Bono, “from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content.” He continues by hoping that “movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product.”

But Bono’s new-found embrace of tracking Internet activity is in direct conflict with his own positions (expressed in the same article) about global freedom and equity.

In discussing global freedom, Bono waxes about “the trouble an aroused citizenry can give to tyrants” and how the power provided to citizens “via cellphones, the Web and the civil society and democracy these technologies can promote, is being felt by those who have traditionally held power.” Surely Bono realizes that those technologies can only promote freedom when they are built so that the citizens using them cannot be tracked, censored and spied upon (and ultimately punished for expressing their views).

Indeed, when accused of violations of basic human rights, China and other authoritarian regimes are happy to equate the development of their apparatus of online repression with other countries’ censorship and surveillance systems.

And by far the best weapon they have in this global battle to erode the neutral role of service providers is the entertainment industry, which so regularly calls upon ISPs to actively police and censor the world’s networks. Perhaps Iranians, Chinese and North Koreans will find in the next decade, as he predicts, “their Gandhi, their King, their Aung San Suu Kyi.” But if all communications are built with the surveillance infrastructure and censorship policies he wants to force on ISPs, how will these emerging leaders protect their ability to motivate and inspire the world’s people?

As one of the world’s foremost champions in fighting global poverty, Bono has testified to Congress about the impact of excessive pharmaceutical patent enforcement on the availability of life-saving drugs. Given his understanding of the benefits of flexible IP reform, Bono’s new call to seize control of the Internet by embedding content tracking in the name of ensuring full payment for the movies, music, and media that are overwhelmingly produced by rich countries sounds especially off key. After all, the net transfer of wealth due to an excessive emphasis on copyright enforcement is overwhelmingly from the world’s poorest countries to the world’s richest. The flourishing of local art and the fair trade of native culture from developing countries needs the flexibility of the global copyright regime, not a war on piracy.

A free Internet plays a critical role in the global struggle for political and economic freedom. In lending his voice and reputation to the entertainment businesses’ radical demands, Bono risks silencing the global causes he otherwise so valiantly champions.

So you’ve got a fabulous idea for a startup? That’s great, but before you get wide-eyed and start thinking about wireframes, venture capital and moving to San Francisco, get your feet wet first by beginning to build your community.

Having a strong and loyal community behind you is an important step in the startup process. After all, it will be much easier to convince a potential investor of the viability of your product if there is a thriving community eager to get their hands on it.

Kevin Hale, co-founder of Wufoo, an online form builder, knows this better than anyone.

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Before they even knew what business they wanted to enter, Hale and his fellow co-founders, Chris Campbell and Ryan Campbell, began building a community by starting a Web development blog. The inspiration came from hearing Jason Fried speak at SXSW, Hale said yesterday in a video interview with Mixergy‘s Andrew Warner.

“We were like, ‘Let’s do what they do. We’ll start building an audience, and from that audience something will be born.’ So we started a blog called Particletree,” Hale says. Quickly, the blog garnered a captive audience of over 20,000 RSS subscribers and over 100,000 monthly visitors – all eagerly anticipating the eventual launch of Wufoo in the summer of 2006.

The audience built from the Particletree blog aided the trio in attaining their first round of funding from startup incubator Y Combinator by showing the investors that a thriving community already existed for their product. The audience also helped reduce blowback when Wufoo’s servers crashed the day of its launch by reassuring new users that this was not a common problem.

“Thankfully, our users who had known us immediately said, ‘We know these guy from Particletree. They know what they’re doing. They’re going to overcome this.’ And it immediately turned the tide for us,” Hale says. “That’s not something we did. That was our own audience.”

More than two years later, Wufoo has evolved into a prosperous business based on the freemium model. As the community continues to grow, the company realizes that keeping the users happy is a continuing step in community development. It has a seven-person support team on call from 9 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week.

Disclosure: Kevin Hale redesigned ReadWriteWeb’s homepage in the summer of 2006.

Discuss

Derek and Keith talk up the news while Dieter gets prepped for CES. We’ve got Verizon and Doom and updates, oh my!

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When considering Rhinoplasty, it is very important to make sure you learn as much as you can about the procedure, so that you know that it is the right procedure for you.

Rhinoplasty is a very life-changing procedure and can greatly effect your appearance through re-shaping your nose, increasing or decreasing it’s size or re-shaping the tip and bridge to make your nose more balanced with your face.

This procedure can also be beneficial to anyone who has breathing problems because of birth defects or injuries because it can open up the airways to allow easier breathing.

If anyone is interested in this procedure and would like to learn more about how it works, here is a page that is very informative about this and many other Plastic Surgery Procedures.

MIPS Technologies, one of the leading provider of the processor architecture and cores that power products from home entertainment, communications, networking to portable multimedia devices, has announced a line-up of demonstrations, partnerships and technologies aimed at making Android a viable platform for digital home devices such as set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, DTVs and VoIP solutions.

We are already aware that Android is likely to enter our home as the back-end software running our appliances but it would be more interesting to see the development of Android on MIPS as it would let Android drives more “home entertainment” appliances.

During CES, Western Mediabridge Inc. and Sigma Designs will demonstrate the first Android set-top box. The MIPS-Based STB features video-on-demand, ThinkFree Office (Word, Spreadsheet, Presentation) viewer software, web browser, remote control/keyboard interface and 1080p video quality.

“With Sigma Designs’ and MIPS Technologies’ industry-leading performance and Android’s open and flexible platform, our Android-based STB is one of the most innovative STB solutions in the market. We anticipate there will be a lot of Android-based products and applications in the near future which will be connected to each other. Our belief is that the Android set-top box will be positioned as a main device among in-home Android-based multimedia devices. We will continue to add more applications, making a more feature-rich Android set-top box,” said Ernest Bang, president and CEO of Western Mediabridge Inc.

MIPS will also demonstrate a prototype of an Android-based IPTV set-top box developed by KDDI R&D Labs. Inc., it will support IPTV set-top box functionality such as multicasting, video-on-demand (VOD), remote control user interface, and digital rights management (DRM) requirements. The later is, obviously, very important to get content from the music and film industries.

Also, MIPS will also demonstrate the Lemote YeeLoong8089 (some renaming should be done before releasing to Western markets!), a 8.9″ netbook computer running Android. According to Lemote, the YeeLoong8089, powered by a MIPS-Based Loongson processor, is “the world’s first laptop that contains completely free software“.

Finally to complete the line-up, MIPS will demonstrate ConnecTV, a new licensable software solution from Home Jinni Inc., billed as the the world’s first social media center for Android-based embedded platforms. ConnecTV enables consumers to search, discover, categorize and enjoy online media content directly from a TV, and to communicate and share with friends from the comfort of their living room. It also enables control and distribution of media content throughout the home.

Android will be more and more present in devices other than phones and rather than a fragmentation of the market that few fear, we might see the birth of a real ecosystem where all these devices will be communicating and sharing contents. The future looks great!