PrintoCent printed flexible lighting

Posted by – July 3, 2017

PrintoCent Innovation Center commercializes the research results of Printed Intelligence and Optical Measurements. Application focus areas in PrintoCent range from rapid disposable diagnostics, smart flexible lighting and wearables to Internet-of-Things with sensors and energy harvesting. With the multitude of possibilities there are great opportunities to new type of products and to disrupt existing value chains in all industries. Filmed at the IDTechEx Show!

Cynoware POS are Android ARM Powered

Posted by – July 3, 2017

Cynoware is a producer of Android ARM Powered point of sale and cash register devices. By using Android on cost effective ARM systems they are able to offer cloud integration features which offers value for stores and businesses that use point of sale. Cynoware offers many sizes and form factors from 9.7″, 10.1″, 14″ as well as a dual screen system.

Onyx Boox E Ink Notepads at Computex 2017

Posted by – July 3, 2017

After the previous videos that I recently filmed with Onyx showing their 1-month battery life E Ink ARM Powered laptop and their new upcoming amazing e-readers which you can see here. At Computex 2017, Onyx demonstrates some of their software features to come with their next generations of large E Ink display notepad reader devices, to come with new faster ARM chipsets (maybe the same new 64bit quad-core Marvell IAP140 ARM Processor which is also in the amazing new Sony DPT-RP1, I’m just guessing). Here their software for example can move and reduce the size of handwritten notes to fit more onto a page and nicely put it on lines for note taking. Onyx is aiming to bring their next generation amazing 10.3″, 13.3″ and 9.7″ devices with also their new software. Onyx is trying to bring in some big educational customers trying to optimize the hardware and software of large E Ink notepads for the education market.

ITRI shows OLED Lighting, Chess playing robot “Turk”


ITRI is the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan which is one of the world’s leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. ITRI shows their solution for controlling Flexible OLED lighting. OLED Lighting offers more natural and more vibrant lighting than conventional lighting. ITRI also shows their sensors which are for example used in shoe pads which generate electricity. ITRI’s Intelligent Vision Robot plays chess seeing all the chess pieces on the board and moving them around. I play a quick game of chess against the robot which sadly I had to concede to the Chess Playing Robot Turk because I didn’t have enough battery in my camera (I think).

Nintendo Switch Extension Dock by Via Labs Multifunction with Integrated Power Bank

Posted by – July 2, 2017

Via Labs shows their USB Hub and controller which is in the Nintendo Switch docking station and they show how they make similar hubs for other types of devices as well. The Nintendo Switch uses VLI’s Hub controller (VL210 USB 3.0 1x SS, 3x HS Hub controller) lasts 2.5-3 hours undocked when playing games. In order to extend the playing games time for better gaming experience, VLI has developed an intelligently exclusive turnkey as below:

All-In- One Technology Demonstrator
– Standard USB-C Power Bank: VP242 (USB-C Power Bank DRP Controller)
– USB PD Wall Adapter: VP300 (USB PD Wall Adapter)
– Switch Docking Station: VL212 (USB 3.1 Gen 1 PD Hub (1x SS, 3x HS))
– VP230/VP231 (TCPC for UFP/DFP)

What I think Google should do about Google Shopping and about YouTube Donations and YouTube Shopping Monetization

Posted by – June 29, 2017
Category: Opinions, Google

Here’s an illustration of what I think Google needs to do at the top of Google search for when users search for any item that can be purchased online. I think Google needs to automatically list a bunch of top price comparison sites as well as a list of top e-commerce sites like Amazon and the likes which Google would otherwise anyways list as the top search results below:

It’s important that Google cannot be taking any commission or advertising fees from these competing price comparison sites or these competing online stores like Amazon for them to be listed here. Google must fairly list the top most relevant price comparison sites and online stores which they would list at top of search results anyway. Google must integrate better with competing price comparison sites so they can nicely automatically list the top prices and if possible also grab images, product details to show on mouseover or even if possible integrated in this list if there is enough space.

Google can display Google Shopping as one of the options, let’s say, probably at the bottom of the list of price comparison search engines listed.

Users can customize how these lists are generated, users can choose to show by cheapest price. Users can select one or several favorite sites to always use each time they come back. Just as one can choose a default search engine on Chrome, one must be able to choose one or several favorite price comparison search engines, or for example choose to always only display Amazon Prime results on each search if Amazon Prime is the user’s favorite way to buy.

A click on a price can lead directly to shopping site, bringing a commission only to the price comparison engine on the sale, not taking any commission to Google on the sale. Unless the clicks are from the area of Google Shopping.

This UI and comparison or top price comparison sites and of top shopping sites must be adapted for mobile.

As for YouTube:

New Monetization should be implemented in two ways:
– Same as above Comparison and integration of top Price Comparison engines and of top user favorite stores such as Amazon must be integrated as the Instant Buy Now and Price Comparison overlay on top of every YouTube video. YouTuber must be paid as close to a 4% commission on each sale as possible, regardless the shopping site. YouTuber can choose if limit to any specific e-commerce site such as Amazon or let Google figure out the best comparison sites or shopping sites to show. YouTube may take a fair commission on the sales revenue on YouTube Shopping because the YouTuber choses to link only to sites that give a 4% commission back on each sale. A feature I have been asking YouTube to implement for nearly a decade.
– Viewers must be able to Donate and support their favorite YouTubers directly, see my illustrations below:

To easily allow viewers to one-click to donate any amount to support the YouTube content creator, the YouTuber must be able to enable a Dollar sign to be displayed on the left side of every Thumbs up icon on all monetized videos of the whole channel of the YouTuber.

Dollar sign in USA or if viewer prefers to donate in USD currency, this currency icon can also be €, £, ₹, ¥ or whichever based on viewer location (donations must work for any viewer worldwide) and converted in list of top donators to be displayed in the local currency of the viewer who is looking at that list.

Scroll down on the video page:

Below the video area, below description, but above comments, it should show the list of the top donators for that video. Viewer can switch to view top donators on whole channel in the last week, month, year or lifetime. YouTuber can limit if these week/month/year/lifetime lists should be shown or not throughout the whole channel of the YouTuber.

Donators can decide to display nickname (any amount of text up to short limit), realname, or display their @socialmedia/+googleplus/facebook-link or to display their blog/website/company URL as the donator. Google can be slightly smart and make sure an anonymous $0.49 donation cannot link as mcdonalds.com as the YouTube/Google account holder may have to verify ownership/control over advertised website.

When donating, the user can easily choose other ways to regularly support the YouTuber by recurring weekly, monthly, yearly or by payment for each new video posted, or for each 5/10/any number of videos posted.

A donator can have his comments highlighted and automatically pushed to the top of comments displayed below. Top donators can highlight comments more based on how much they have donated. There may be some settings that the YouTuber can control as to how much of a highlight the comment can get based on how much the donation amount is set for.

This system can thus turn some of the donations into advertising, as people can then show their appreciation for the YouTube content by showing off their blog, website, company as the top donator. As the top donator just for that video or the good idea could be to have companies and patrons/philantropists compete to be the overall top donators/sponsors not just for supporting under that one video, but supporting the whole channel over the past week/month/year/lifetime.

A donator can hide their contribution(s), turn those into anonymous and back into public name/company/socialmedia/website at any time.

Eventually YouTube can automatically add top donators/sponsors as end of clip “Thanks for the support of:” or any other text customizable. And top donators can even have their logos displayed automatically as end of show credits clip that YouTube can automatically add to specific videos or to the whole channel and to customize over time. A $20 sponsor may not have his logo in the end of show credits, YouTuber can specify certain thresholds that may or may not unlock that end of show credits placement. A very large donator/sponsor can even be inserted as a brief “Supported by” clip at the beginning of each video, but it must not be permanently inserted in the video, that dynamic credits system should be inserted by YouTube at beginning/end and can just be temporarily.

YouTube must not take a commission on the top donations system on YouTube, YouTube may only keep the approximate 2.6% credit card processing fee. This Top Donators system must be considered a system for fans and companies to become Producers/supporters of the content that is created. YouTube can still monetize every video as they usually do with ads, with YouTube Red subscriptions, and with the Buy Now one-click Shopping and customizable Price Comparison system that I specified above.

I have been wanting and asking to see a perfect Top Donators systems since 11 years ago when I paid a programmer $350 to get a WordPress top donators plugin made: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/paypal-donations-realtime-meter-top-6-donators/ but I didn’t follow up with it much, other than using it on my previous blogs for a few years and collecting something like $1000 in donations through the plugin in total I think.

HDMI Alt Mode for USB Type-C

Posted by – June 29, 2017

The HDMI Alt Mode for USB Type-C connector will allow HDMI-enabled source devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and camcorders to utilize a USB Type-C connector to directly connect to the Billions of HDMI-enabled displays (which is included with 100% of flat panel TVs), and deliver native HDMI signals over a simple cable without the need for protocol and connector adapters or dongles. HDMI Alt Mode will support the full range of HDMI 1.4b features such as 4K, surround, ARC, 3D, HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC), Consumer Electronic Control (CEC), Deep Color, x.v.Color and content types, HDCP 2.2. HDMI Alt Mode follows all necessary Alt Mode USB Type-C specification requirements which auto-detects HDMI Alt Mode source devices and HDMI-enabled displays, requires no adapters to connect from an HDMI source to an HDMI display, source output is AC coupled for HDMI Clock and Data lanes and other.

Microchip ARM, PIC and AVR Microcontrollers


Microchip acquired Atmel in 2016 for $3.56 Billion, this among other acquisitions by Microchip, grows their Microcontroller portfolio to include Atmel’s ARM based SAM Microcontrollers (which I have previously filmed here: SAM S70 and E70 ARM Cortex-M7, SAM L21 ARM Cortex-M0+, Atmel BTLC1000 Bluetooth ARM Cortex-M0, SMART SAM W25 Wi-Fi for IoT with ARM Cortex-M0+, together with Microchip’s own ARM cores, and their MIPS-based PIC-32 cores, a few older PIC cores, Atmel’s 8 and 32-bit AVR cores among other. Microchip Technology also provides Serial EEPROM devices, Serial SRAM devices, KEELOQ devices, radio frequency (RF) devices, thermal, power and battery management analog devices, as well as linear, interface and mixed signal devices. Some of the interface devices include USB, ZigBee/MiWi, Controller Area Network, LoRa, SIGFOX and Ethernet.

Fred Kahn work on LCD since 1967, LCOS projectors, VAN-LCD

Posted by – June 29, 2017

Dr. Frederic J. Kahn is an early pioneer in Liquid Crystal Displays, He developed some of the original LCD technology for Hewlett Packard calculators. Currently President of Kahn International, he recognized early on the unique physical properties of liquid crystals and their applicability to a broad range of direct-view (flat-panel) and projection displays, as well as to related printing and electronic component manufacturing systems. He has consistently and successfully followed up and built upon that vision with major contributions to the development of commercial enterprises based on information-display technologies.

At the NEC Central Research Laboratory in Kawasaki, Japan, from 1968 to 1969, he proposed and initiated NEC’s liquid-crystal-display R&D, including invention of a field-effect color-change LCD. Starting in 1970, at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, he initiated Bell Labs’ LCD R&D; advanced the understanding and control of LC molecular alignment on solid substrates; invented and was the first to publicly disclose (June 30, 1971) a vertically aligned nematic (VAN) LCD that reorients in a preferred direction at low voltage and which, after three decades of additional development and invention by subsequent workers, is now used in most flat-panel LCD TVs and high-performance LCD projectors; and invented and developed high-resolution LCD projection imaging devices and systems based on laser-addressed smectic-A LCDs.

While Kahn was a project manager for liquid-crystal displays at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, he led the development of multiplexed TN-LCD technology, which led to HP’s first LCD calculator products, including the best-selling HP 12c business calculator, introduced in 1981 and still sold today (2010). He also developed 40-character multiplexed dot-matrix alpha-numeric LCDs for portable computers and a computer-interactive high-resolution C-sized engineering drawing display. As department manager for optical materials and polymers and later for storage physics, he also led optical-fiber, IC-lithography, and erasable-optical-memory programs.

Kahn founded Greyhawk Systems in Milpitas, California, in 1984 and served as VP Technology, with operational responsibility for LC light-valve development and manufacturing, as well as for new systems and applications development based on IR laser-addressed smectic-A and real-time photo-addressed (CRT and active-matrix) a-Si LCD projection technology. Greyhawk’s products included 7.5-Mpixel 40-in. D and 37.5-Mpixel 144-in. D full-color displays (Softplot and LAD, respectively), an 8.4-Mpixel professional short-run color printer (Ilford Digital Photo Imager), and a 31.5-Mpixel printed-circuit-board exposure and development system (DuPont Seriflash).

According to Dr. S. T. Wu at the College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida, “Dr. Kahn has made significant scientific and technological contributions in liquid-crystal alignment, especially single-domain vertical alignment, which laid down the foundation for today’s liquid-crystal–on–silicon projectors (commercialized by Sony and JVC), thermally addressed electrically erased high-resolution smectic liquid-crystal light valves, and pitch dilation of cholesteric liquid crystals, just to name a few.”

Dr. Kahn has 18 issued U.S. patents and is the author or editor of over 40 technical publications. He has been a Fellow of SID since 1981. In 2011 he received the Karl Ferdinand Braun Prize, the highest honor of the Society for Information Display (SID) for his “contributions to the research, development and commercialization of liquid crystal displays.”

He has been General Chairman or Program Chairman of six international display conferences sponsored by SID, SPIE, and/or IEEE. He has also served as an SID International Officer (Secretary) and is currently a member of the SID Display Industry Awards Committee and the SID Display Week Program Committee. His current work includes intellectual property and high leverage consulting activities.

Filmed at the SID Display Week tradeshow.

SID disclaimer: Opinions and facts presented by the interviewee are their own and do not represent SID’s views or opinions and are not corroborated by SID.

Larry Weber talks Plasma vs LCD History

Posted by – June 29, 2017

Larry F. Weber is an American electrical engineer and businessman who has devoted his 30-year professional career to the advancement and promotion of plasma displays, founder, president and CEO of Plasmaco in 1987 selling it to Panasonic in 1996. Dr. Weber has published 40 papers and holds 13 patents on plasma displays, including one for the energy recovery sustain circuit used in all the latest color PDP products manufactured worldwide.

Larry Weber is a recognized leader in the display community, serving on several SID committees and was General Chairman of the 1988 International Display Research Conference. In 1990 Dr. Weber was elected a SID Fellow. He has received numerous awards for his work on plasma displays including SID’s Special Recognition Award in 1982 and again 1995.

This video was filmed at the SID Display Week tradeshow.

SID disclaimer: Opinions and facts presented by the interviewee are their own and do not represent SID’s views or opinions and are not corroborated by SID.

Google fined €2.42 billion by EU, Press conference and Q&A by Margrethe Vestager

Posted by – June 29, 2017
Category: Google

EU Commission fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service. European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy gives this statement and Q&A with the media. 9 years ago, I video-blogged for Margrethe Vestager’s political party in Denmark: http://youtube.com/radikaletv

Press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1784_en.htm
Source for the video: http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/focus/index.cfm?sitelang=en&focusid=2480

Socionext 24-core ARM Server SynQuacer SC2A11, 60% lower power than Intel at same performance

Posted by – June 27, 2017

Socionext presents SynQuacer SC2A11 cloud ARM server based on 24-core ARM Cortex-A53 highly integrated low-power server system suitable for edge computing which processes data at the edge of the cloud in the IoT era. Socionext develop high power efficiency processor chip, and it is 60% power reduction on same performance compare to conventional chip. Also it is very good performance in parallel processing, like hadoop. This high power efficiency processor chip will be suitable for various application in the IoT era.

Nano Dimension 3D printed multi-layer PCBs

Posted by – June 27, 2017

Nano Dimension Ltd is focused on the research and development of advanced 3D printed electronics, including a 3D printer for multilayer printed circuit boards (PCB’s), and the development of nanotechnology-based conductive and dielectric inks, which are complementary products for 3D printers. Filmed at the IDTechEx Show!

Jenax J.Flex, Flexible Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery


Jenax J.Flex is an innovative flexbile battery freeing design limitations without sacrificing power enabling new form factors for flexible smartphones, flexible wearables and other ideas for flexible future devices based on Li-Ion Gel polymer electrolyte enabling rapid movement of lithium ion with no overheating, high energy density, low internal resistance and that can be stable even with bending fatigue. Filmed at the IDTechEx Show!

Electric Taxi with Battery Swap, 550kg, Adaptive City Mobility Prototype

Posted by – June 25, 2017

Adaptive City Mobility is the development of a complete, emission-free mobility concept for cities. Ten cooperating technology ventures are constructing a small electric light-weight vehicle of the vehicle category L7E and developing it for series production. Combined with an innovative software, hardware and battery exchange system it depicts an extensive solution for the urban mobility of the future, E Ink displays are used on the back for advertisement.

Filmed at the IDTechEx Show!

Gigabyte shows Cavium ThunderX2 ARM Server with AMD/Nvidia GPGPU for HPC

Posted by – June 19, 2017

Gigabyte shows a prototype of their upcoming 2U dual socket Cavium ThunderX2 ARM Powered Server optimized form factor with customization options like using AMD or Nvidia GPGPU Cards support, very high IO bandwidth expansions, storage, a lot of RAM, among many other optimizations and features, discusses all the considerations that they are having with their customers for the design, how Gigabyte can be creative about enabling higher value to their customers who many are now looking forward to launch ARM Servers as the ThunderX2 might have a fast enough performance, and they are aiming to provide a value proposition to be the system of choice for large cloud companies and for small companies also. Also working with Redhat, Suse and Linaro, bringing up the ecosystem to enable the cloud server and high performance computing market.

Cavium ThunderX2 at Computex 2017, Windows Server on ARM, Foxconn (Ingrasys), Inventec, Gigabyte

Posted by – June 18, 2017

Cavium ThunderX2 is the world’s most powerful ARM Processor for Data Center optimized for compute, storage, network and secure compute workloads in the cloud. Cavium ThunderX2 provides the world’s biggest single thread and multi-thread dual socket ARM Server performance, with 100s of Gigabits of I/O bandwidth, up to 1TB RAM through multiple DDR4 72bit memory controllers, Thunderx2 can run Windows Server on ARM also known as the Project Olympus and it runs every type of ARM Linux Server.

24-core Cavium Octeon TX for Networking, Base Stations, Security, NAS, Gateways

Posted by – June 18, 2017

Cavium Octeon-TX family of SoCs is configured from single core up to 24-cores 64bit ARMv8.1 cores designed with Cavium’s optimized implementation of the CPU core. Cavium Octeon TX is optimized to run multiple concurrent data and control planes simultaneously for applications such as UTM & Security, Appliances, IOT Gateways, NAS, Switch Control Plane, Mainstream Control Plane, NFV and SDN infrastructure, service provider CPE, Network Attached Printers, Enterprise Access Points, Service Provider Gateways, Industrial, Military/Aero and more enabling secure and intelligent processing for enterprise, data center, cloud, wired and wireless networking for control plane and data plane applications in networking, security, and storage.

TechNexion Factory Tour


TechNexion is a design and manufacturing company showing in this video its engineering team, that designs IoT smart devices, development boards for the needs of projects like the ARM powered Android Things ecosystem by Google or Amazon Alexa Voice-Recognition development platform and its advanced manufacturing capabilities. In the video, we get a direct glimpse of how ARM modules and systems are designed and how much automation is being utilized in a smart SMT factory. The video tour takes you through all production stages from the module design to SMT manufacturing to post production functional testing. The factory churns out up to 250K PCBA per month. Filmed on location at the TechNexion factory in Taipei, Taiwan in June 2017.

IDTechEx tours SID Display Week 2017

Posted by – June 15, 2017

IDTechEx Analyst Dr Guillaume Chansin walks us around the SID Display Week 2017 exhibition floor at the Los Angeles Convention Center, featuring Samsung, LG, JDI, BOE, CLEARink, E Ink and more. Talking about the state of flexible displays, OLED, Micro LCD, Plastic displays, E Ink, CLEARink, LG’s Wallpaper OLED, Samsung’s Quantum Dot LCD, and more. Check back for many more videos from the SID Display Week, and I am also posting many videos from the latest IDTechEx show over the coming weeks at http://138.2.152.197/category/tradeshows/idtechex/