Toshiba will soon start production of 2 new interesting products which may find their way into future mobile/portable devices.

First are the new SATA SSD (Solid State Drive) drives on 1.8' and 2.5' formats. According Engadget 32, 64 and 128 GB will be available. Speed announced is read 100 MB/s while reading and 40 MB/sec writting.

With such capacity, traditional mechanical hard disk will slowly disappear from portable devices. With no moving parts, a solid state drive largely eliminates seek time, latency and other electro-mechanical delays and failures associated with a conventional hard disk drive.

The second interesting product announced by Toshiba is the so called "Super Charge ion Battery" (SCiB) which is at this stage not intended for portable devices but for industrial systems and electric vehicles.

SCiB Major Characteristics

• Safety : SCiB adopts a new negative-electrode material that offers a high level of thermal stability and a high flash point electrolyte. Its structure is resistant to internal short circuiting and thermal runaway

• Long-life cycle : Capacity loss after 3,000 cycles of rapid charge and discharge is less than 10%. SCiB batteries are able to repeat the charge-discharge cycle over 5,000 times which is equivalent to more than 10 years with a once-a-day recharge-discharge cycle.
• Rapidly rechargeable : Safety characteristics of SCiB allow recharge with a current as large as 50 amperes (A), allowing the SCiB Cell and SCiB Standard Module to recharge to 90% of full capacity in only five minutes.
• High power (practical capacity) : The SCiB has an input-output performance equivalent to that of an electric double layer capacitor.
• Temperature : Extreme temperatures supported with sufficient discharge at temperatures as low as -30°C.

SCiB batteries will first be available on the market in March 2008 with the following specifications:

• Nominal voltage  : 24VDC
• Nominal capacity : 4.2 Ah
• Size : 10×30x5 cm
• Weight : 2 kg

Perhaps these batteries will also find other field of application,  but for portable devices they will need to become lighter and slimmer..but batteries that get charges in  five minutes are definitively very attractive for mobile users. 

What do you think ?  

Sources: Engadget Toshiba 

Tags: 2007, 2008, 24, api, arc, art, ATT, batteries, blog, capacity, ces, CTU, delay, failure, fast charge, find, flash, fon, hard disk, hdd, ia, im, lan, laptop, LED, light, minutes, mobile, nomadcom.net, portable, power, rechargeable, safe, safety, SCiB, Solid State Drive, SSD, technology, toshiba, user, vehicles, wp, www

Based on proprietary network software, 802.11x wireless access points and a fleet of vehicles, including buses and motorcycles, First Mile Solutions proposed stored-and-forward Internet access to remote rural villages in the developing world.

How does it work:
The main location called a Hub is where there is a reliable  and preferably high-bandwidth Internet connection. From this place, subscribers within a radius of 5-15 km, can get Internet access, as it is the case with any Wireless Local Loop system.

First Mile Solutions technology has the ability to distribute Internet connection's bandwidth to the last 100km – the Village Area Network (VAN) – with relatively small infrastructure costs by installing Mobile Access Point (wireless connectivity and cached Internet content) on any vehicle (buses, motorcycles, boats…) which physically transports data to/from surrounding rural areas and automatically collects and delivers data wirelessly to/from access devices in each village. Internet kiosks are installed in villages along the road taken by the "VAN vehicles".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Projects have already been deployed in India, Rwanda and Cambodia.

More informations :

• First Mile Solutions, 
• Village Area Network,
• Ongoing projects, 
• Comparative Access Word Map

Tags: 2007, 802.11, access, blog, ces, communication, connection, connectivity, CTU, develloping country, first mile, fon, Great Ideas, HP, ia, im, install, internet, internet access, lan, last mile, LED, live, location, map, MIT, mobile, Mobile Communications, mobile internet, network, nomadcom.net, project, rural community, space, store and forward, technology, telecom, Telecommunications, transportation, vehicles, village area network, wi fi, wireless, world, wp, www

The weekend was the grand opening of the 28th International Motorshow of Bangkok. The perfect opportunity to see how different such an exhibition can be here in Asia, as the only one I knew so far was the Geneva's one. 

The first surprise was to see where some exhibitors are located inside the exhibition hall. Imagine, just beside the prestigious british car maker Bentley you can find Carryboy (fiberglass hard tops & accessories manufacturer) and Club Car (golf cars & utility vehicle).

Then, come the real show…lots, but a lots, of pretty models everywhere. Normally (or I guess so), they are here to guide and inform potential customers on presented vehicles…nothing is less sure. In fact, I was wondering if cars were just there to serve as shiny background for the casting of new Southern Asia Top models (it's not a complain).

In South Korea, times have changed, and Korean design has advanced to the point where the need has waned to employ hundreds of pretty models at the upcoming Seoul Motor Show (6-15.4). Hyundai models will drop in number from 46 to 36, Kia is going from 44 to 36, and miniskirts and "sleeveless shirts" will be less prevalent in an effort to put more emphasis on the cars.

In resume, with global warming concern, if car sales go down and skirts stay up, the planet will be a better place to live (Monday philosophy!).

 

Flickr Photo Set : Intl. Motorshow
Source (about Seoul) : Autoblog 

 

Tags: 2007, 24, access, asia, asian girl, automobile, Bangkok, blog, cars, ces, CTU, customer, design, exhibition, find, Flickr, Fun, geneva, global, global warming, ia, im, International, lan, live, models, motorshow, New pictures, Our World, photo, Photography, power, pretty girls, resume, sexy, space, thai meet flickr, Thailand, vehicles, www