Tech-Seeker

The Piece Of Glass That’s Actually A Phone!

The transparent glass phone running Android, create by Aston Martin and Mobiado (luxury phones). The transparent phone dubbed the CTP002 is essentially a large sapphire glass surface with titanium edges.

The glass display is also a touch-screen, but that’s pretty much it at the moment. Mobiado are intent on implementing a chip-set, a SIM card slot along with a battery (although I’m not sure where there going to go).

It certainly has potential and looks pretty cool to boot. So, as long as some new holographic phone doesn’t suddenly appear on the market it could be the future.

The transparent phone concept device is to be shown at BaselWorld in Switzerland, if you’re in the area…

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iPod Is Dominating the Market, and There Is More to Come

iPod contributes 12-14% of total company revenues, a number industry experts believe will continue to increase. With this increase comes pressure on gross margins, as the blended iPod gross margin of 20% compares unfavorably with Apple’s corporate average of 27-28%. The iPod helped augment Apple’s growth by expanding its addressable market from the core computer market, which continues to grow, but at slower rates. To increase penetration of the rapidly growing MP3 player market, Apple launched the iPod Mini internationally in July 2004, and HP’s iPod launch is scheduled for later in summer. http://www.ipodreviewforum.com

Apple’s entry into the digital music player market (MP3 market) with its popular iPod expanded the company’s addressable market and signaled a turn in Apple’s strategy. The iPod is a cultural phenomenon that is capitalizing on the convergence of digital consumer electronics and the computer, and Apple’s position as an early mover enabled it to achieve the number-one position in the marketplace. iPod adoption continues to accelerate, with little indication of a slowdown. It took Apple approximately 18 months to sell its first million iPods, but its second million came in six months and its third million came in four. In fact, it appears that only its suppliers can slow it down, in particular the hard-drive vendors, which are having a difficult time meeting demand. Industry experts believe that iPod’s growth will remain strong in the foreseeable future and do not expect any significant customer fallout stemming from Apple’s inability to meet demand.

An analysis of the launch of the Sony Walkman in 1979 indicates the market opportunity for a revolutionary portable music player will remain strong for several years to come and Apple is expected to maintain a strong share for the next few years (unlike Sony’s experience with the Walkman).

While iPod and iTunes generate significant awareness of the Apple product, they have done little to grow Apple’s core Mac business. Experts attribute this mainly to Apple’s aboveaverage pricing, along with continued ignorance on the part of consumers regarding the compatibility of Windows and Mac. With regard to pricing, the average consumer desktop PC retails for $1,019, which is $280 below Apple’s low-end price point on Apple’s now, discontinued flat-panel iMac. Furthermore, the industry ASP is falling as most of the growth in the market is taking place in the sub-$1,000 market.

With regard to the compatibility of Windows and Mac OS X, even though Apple made a concerted effort to educate consumers about the ease with which these two products work together, it has fallen on deaf ears for the most part. Apple made some progress through its retail stores, where it estimates half of Mac purchases are from first-time buyers, but for Apple’s stock to work over the long term, the company needs to maintain share against Windows, at a minimum. Understandably, Apple wants to avoid selling PCs at a loss, but unfortunately the growth prospects for $1,000-plus PCs are limited. This presents a conundrum for Apple longer term, but for now it maintains its current strategy. Incidentally, Apple’s revenue share has held much better, and while this is not an often-discussed topic, revenue share is probably more important than unit share. http://www.ipodreviewforum.com

We would have been still constructing the Panama Canal but for the modern gigantic construction equipments. These Herculean machines made life easy for us by their enormous strengths and capacities for long drawn heavy duties under all torturous conditions.

To think that these engineering marvels work for reclaiming lands from bays, striking piles into the hard sea beds or drilling tunnels deep below the sea beds (Trans European Tunnel connecting England to France), is mind boggling. The list can go endless but for the scope of this article which is limited.

Equipments to Suit All Needs
Construction equipments may be classified as per needs and further by capacities.

1. Excavating and Earth moving: These gigantic machines are hydraulically operated to safeguard from shock failures. These are the first machines to be employed for preparing the construction sites. Land leveling by digging and cutting terrains are done by excavators of appropriate capacities which run into 1000s of HP. Basic earth movers include dozers, tippers and loaders.

2. Concrete processors: Batch or continuous concrete mixers are computer programmed for consistent precise mix. These are stationed permanently near the site or in the factory depending on convenience. Small batch mixers of less than one quintal capacities are portable. The concrete is transported from far off plants in transit mixers of minimum capacity 6 cubic meters by volume. Concrete is poured to the spot using concrete pumps.

3. Bar bending machines: Small high torque generating bar bending machines are handy in bending and forming construction steel bars. These are available in various specifications.

4. Rollers and compactors: Rollers are employed to compact the ground after dozers have leveled it. Some rollers are also equipped with vibrating compactors eliminating the need for separate compacting. For small areas like indoors vibrating plate compactors, which generate up to 1000kgf maybe used.

These are just about the equipments fundamentally required for construction of homes and offices.

Road Construction
For road construction, depending on whether the road is being asphalted or concretized, the equipments change. Asphalt mixers and asphalt pavers take-up the job of road laying to perfection.

Concrete road pavers, although work on similar principle, can’t finish the road-laying as concrete needs setting time. There is a need for faster laying technique. Road surface finishing is by a technique called VDF, which stands for vacuum dewatered flooring. Smoother finishes are given by power trowels and anti skid finishes by brooms, mechanized or manual.

Have you ever wondered how your inkjet printer works?

How does the ink get from the inkjet cartridge to the paper? Why is the print quality is so clear? Why the printing is so quiet?

Generally, all that most people know is that there’s some movement and a faint high pitched sound when it’s printing something — and then the finished document comes out.

Unlike dot matrix and character printers that strike ribbons to create an image, inkjet printers do not physically touch the paper.

All inkjet printers function using the same basic principles. Tiny ink droplets are “jetted” (or pushed) out multiple holes onto paper in a controlled and systematic fashion. This is where the term “inkjet” comes from.

The size of ink droplets, speed and reliability of this type of printer has been continuously improving since its inception in 1976. In 1993, Epson was the first manufacturer to produce an inkjet printer using micro-piezo technology. The Epson Stylus 800 was the first printer to use the multi-layer actuator printhead (the printhead is the part of the printer that holds numerous tiny nozzles that actually squirts the ink onto paper).

This specific printhead utilized an electro-mechanical element that acted like a tiny control room. When pulses of electricity passed through, it that gave specific signals to fire individual or multiple nozzles loaded with ink.

Micro-piezo technology utilized a tiny crystal in each individual nozzle that when electrically energized, would vibrate or bend causing a controlled amount of ink to be forced out onto paper. When the electrical current is off, the crystal bends back to its original shape, creating a vacuum, thus pulling ink into the nozzle from the reservoir for the next commanded fire.

The Epson printhead was fixed to the carriage so it never needed replacing (the printer carriage is what moves laterally across the paper). This also kept the cost of ink cartridges low since they were little more than reservoirs of ink.

This breakthrough printer produced a whopping 360 dpi (dots per inch) that was deemed, almost “letter quality” at the time. With a printing speed of 150 – 180 characters per second, the new Epson became the user favorite printer for home and office.

At the same time, HP was using a similar technology. A thermal jetting system was utilized in their printhead. The printhead still acted like the control room but each individual nozzle was instead independently super heated by electricity, which caused the ink to explode onto the paper. HP claims the temperature of a fired inkjet nozzle approaches that of the surface of the sun.

HP elected to put the printhead on the inkjet cartridge itself instead of mounting it permanently to the carriage. Since each inkjet cartridge would have its own printhead, replacement cartridges would be more expensive for these printers.

HP inkjet cartridges also could not print as fast as Epson because each nozzle needed to cool after firing. This heating technology also limited the types of inks that could be used.

In the 1990′s, Canon, Epson and HP engineered printheads that applied even smaller droplets of ink, drastically improving dpi and resolution.

While Canon and HP could produce a 6 – 10 picoliter droplet size from one nozzle, Epson was about half the size (between 3 – 6 picoliters). Currently, there are printers available which will produce an amazing 1 picoliter droplet! To get an idea of how small this is; a human hair is about 12 picoliters in diameter. Most human eyes can’t see one jetted droplet of ink on paper.

Inkjet printers have come a long way since their first inception.

Printers today are twice as fast as their predecessors were, and are cheaper than ever. Many printers can easily produce color photo quality images in at an incredible 6000 dpi.

As time goes on and as demand for printing remains high, the quality, speed and features of inkjet printers will only continue to improve.

Printers have certainly come a long way since the inception of the character and and dot matrix printers.

These ancient products (ancient in technical terms being as few as 10-15 years) were what are known as impact printers, simply because they needed to make a physical connection with the paper in order to achieve the ink-on-paper result.

Dot matrix printers came equipped with a group of pins that touched a ribbon which then connected with paper to produce the finished product. Character printers, which worked on the same principle as electric typewriters, used a bar or ball whose surface was embossed with all the characters you now see on any keyboard. These characters made contact with the ribbon, which in turn made contact with the paper.

Today we use non-impact printers – those that do not make physical contact with the paper to create the papered reproduction. The most prevalent for home or small office use is the inkjet printer – an economical choice for all but the most serious graphic arts requirements.

An inkjet printer produces the images and type it delivers from computer to paper by means of miniscule drops of ink. So miniscule, in fact, that a human hair would seem big by comparison. Standard ink drops of an inkjet printer have a diameter range of 50-60 microns. Arranged very precisely, these ink drops come in various resolutions (the higher the resolution, the clearer and more life like the output.) while 800×600 dpi (dots per inch) is a typical SOHO (small office home office) resolution producing quite adequate print quality, an inkjet printer can offer resolutions as high as 1440×720 dpi. Adding color to the mix can produce images nearly as high in quality as a laser printer product.

There are five basic parts to an inkjet printer: the print head assembly, the paper feed assembly, circuitry control, power supply, and printer ports.

The print head assembly is the heart of the printer workings. It’s what brings the ink to paper by means of a row of nozzles. The print head may be part of the inner workings of a printer cartridge, or they may be separate parts. Cartridges are responsible for delivering color and shading. Most inkjet printers made nowadays offer color printing. Some may require as many as three distinct cartridges, but generally at least two – one black, one color. The motor is part of the print head assembly as well. It’s the part that enables the ink and cartridges to move across the paper and produce the hard copy. It also keeps the cartridge stable when not in use.

The paper feed assembly includes the paper tray, which holds the paper ready for a printing request, and the rollers, which deliver the paper to the ink when a printing job is requested.

The power supply is simple – it’s what gets the electricity to your printer so that it can do its job. Printer circuitry controls take the message from your keyboard and mouse and deliver it to the printer so that the requested hard copy can be produced. Printer ports, also referred to as interface ports, much like a telephone jack, enable the peripheral (the printer) to talk to the computer. While in older models parallel ports were the norm, the newest printer models connect via USB ports, which require a special USB cord.