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February 2005 Archives

February 1, 2005

In 1965 Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every couple of years. Eventually the industry has interpreted that to mean that computing power of new microprocessors would double every 18 months. This exponential growth of computing power has lead to the explosion of small and handheld electronic devices over the last 20 years. Recently there has been concern that this process would begin to slow. As the size of transistors on a microprocessor has approached sizes as small as a few atoms the ability to scale the current style designs further appears to be reaching its limits. This has lead researchers to examine alternate materials and alternate processes. Today, a group of Hewlett-Packard researchers will release a report on their work on molecular-scale alternative to the transistor. So rush out and pick up your copy of "The Journal of Applied Physics" in which the research is being published or at least remember you heard it here first. By the way do not expect to see HP a computer based on this technology soon. We are still many years away from seeing this in a comercial product. But it looks like we have made a significant step toward the "Quantum Computer" described by Michael Crichton in his novel of time travel, "Timeline". For more details check out the New York Times article.

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Moore's Law Extended?"

February 2, 2005

We are all used to hearing about convergence in consumer electronics. If you haven't noticed, your cell phone, pda and mp3 player are quickly becoming one product. At home your PC, VCR and cable TV box are developing more than a passing equaintence. Now this same metamorphosis is taking plan in the medical world. Two weeks ago Dr. C. C. de Cock of the VU medical center in Amsterdam implanted the first SMS equiped pacemaker. SMS (short messaging service) is the technology that your average teenager uses to send text messages from their cell phone to their friend's cell phone. So what does that have to do with a pacemaker? In this case the pacemaker monitors the heart rhythm of the patient and takes corrective action to maintain that rhythm. If it is necessary for the pacemaker to correct the rhythm it sends a text message to the patient's physician to let them know what is going on so the physician can follow up with the patient. Now if you look around the web, there seems to be some controversy if SMS is the best technology for this application as their is some question how quickly the message will be delivered. Regardless, the ability to keep the doctor in the loop and not wait for the next appointment has clear advantages. If not SMS their many other technologies out there that can provide this communications. So check out the article at http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2005/01/28/pacemaker_trans.html and think about how your products can benefit from convergence. What capability would your product benefit from and how do you get it incorporated into your portfolio?

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "What do you get when you cross a pacemaker with a cell phone?"

Convergence is a term often discussed when cross technologies are incorporated into new product designs. Often the term is synonymous with the drive towards products which are ever present, so much so that they may be with us twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Such devices could be life saving cardiac monitors, the everyday cell phone, or the convergence of both devices... Note the previous blog entry. However, the avenue of convergence that is most talked about at the moment are internet access devices, ranging from cell phones to televisions, to internet enabled refrigerators. Not just any internet connection, but wireless internet, often refered to as Wi-Fi internet. In order for such a network to function, a number of nodes, or "hotspots," are setup to provide a local area within a give radio-frequency area access to teh internet. Now the question is, if everything is wireless, how do you know if you can connect to the internet from where you are situated? The answer is a Wi-Fi area locator that indicated when you are in an area with a wireless internet connection available. The current locators are rather bulky, requiring something "extra" which you have to carry around, so why not incorporate the feature into something that you can keep with you at all times? Here is one possibility and it will take some additional engineering, but it certainly is innovative.

Wi-Fi Ring

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Wi-Fi at your fingertips... literally."

February 3, 2005

Why is it that the idea.... that design costs money..... is pervasive. Do we (the design community) have to suffer over and over again like some kind of modern day prometheus, the ephipany of the obvious (see article below). Is this some kind of penance for atrocities committed during the post modern
period......please....someone,...... poke me in the eye.......

NY Times Article

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "poke me in the eye............."

February 4, 2005

At least that is what my mother told me. Apparently the computer gurus of the world believe that as well. Last year Virginia Tech introduced System X. System X is VT's new supercomputer that surpised the high performance computing world by placing 3 in the Fall 2003 worldwide rankings of supercomputers. The surprise was VT had not previously place anywhere in these rankings. System X is a cluster of 1100 dual processor G5 Macintosh computers and cost VT little over 5 million dollars to build. When you consider that the 1st and 2nd ranked super computers and many of the computers ranked below System X cost over 100 million dollars this is quite amazing. What makes it possible is the cooperation of those 2200 desktop processors.

In the news these days is a new technology called BitTorrent...

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Many hands make light work..."

Computers can indeed work together and compete with so called "Super-Computers" that cost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Of course there are issues regarding to what use these machines can be put towards... On one hand, the fastest supercomputer in the world is now being used to more accurately anaylse weather patterns through the world (Earth Simulator). On the other, most of these machines were initially developed for nuclear weapons development. However, everyday research in chemistry, biology, and physics can be greatly aided with super-computers. Recently, the cooporation between massively parallel networks of much lower powered CPUs has indeed enabled processing power equal or better than that of the afformentioned behemoths. An unusual example is work being done at the University of Illinois. Playstation Supercomputing is indeed a reality, with gigaflop performance for only $50,000. Desktop systems can also contribute to supercomputing efforts. Currently, I have my systems networked to a grid based distributed computing system for the last three years. Together, with thousands of other systems, much computing power has been put into cancer, anthrax, smallpox, and human genome research. You too can particpate here: Grid.org

Lastly, if you or your company wishes to acquire the use of a supercomputer, distributed networking is available for hire, something previously not possible without building your own.
Distributed Computing

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Speaking of cooperation..."

February 7, 2005

People often wonder where new ideas come from. It has been my experience that new ideas come from everywhere. One source is watching what people do with existing products. There is nowhere that this is more true than in the tech community. Just watch how people use, abuse and rearrange existing products can give you ideas for new products and applications. This morning on the web I found a person who used four iPod Shuffles to make a RAID. RAID is an acronym that stands for Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks. It is normally used in computer servers to make large disks out of smaller disks and to add some degree of data protection by storing the data simltaniously more than one disk. If done right you can have one drive fail completely and not loose any data...

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "They did it because they could..."

February 8, 2005

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center have treated 4 retinitis pigmentosa patients by implanting light powered microchips in their eyes. This provides a unique opportunity for correcting this blinding affliction. The implants consist of a silicon microchip approximately 2mm in diameter. For more details check out the details at the scienceblog.

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Bionic eyes for your cyborg..."

February 9, 2005

How about a flexible display. Just roll the display up an put it away. The ultimate vision is of an electronic device that is nothing more than a piece of paper (expensive paper that is). Just roll it up or fold it and put it in your pocket. Well this is a vision shared by a lot of folks. Arizona State University just announced that they will open a flexible display research center. The center is funded by a $43.7 million grant from the Army Research Lab. So how can your product benefit from this type of display?

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "So how do you make a product smaller than its UI?"

February 10, 2005

Not a cellular phone but the new Cell Processor. The Cell processor is in all the technology press these days. The result of a collaboration between IBM, Sony and Toshiba the Cell processor promises to provide orders of magitude improvement in performance for certain types of microprocessor applications.




The Cell processor is designed to provide high performance at a low price. It is optimized for multiple processor applications (i.e. several of the Cell cores working together). Sony is planning on using the Cell processor in the upcoming Playstation 3. So will your product benefit from this change in the technology landscape? Check out this detailed explaination of the architecture and find out.

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Put a Cell in your product?"

February 12, 2005

If you are creating models in CAD, think about taking it a step farther with Computer Aided Sculpting (CAS). With this technology the designer is actually touching and manipulating their digital clay model. The designer is getting a feedback sensation from the model surfaces during the sculpting creation. The model feedback resistance to the robotic arm is giving a touch sensation.
In this design process, a user combines the visual 3D object on the monitor with a contact feel of the model. This helps to communicate the design ideas in the virtual world before you “3D print” it with Rapid Prototyping SLA; SLS or another layer additive or machining process.

This unique 3D touch-enabled system is offered as FreeForm Modeling Plus from SensAble Technology.

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Be creative - design with Digital Clay"

February 14, 2005

Most people would answer the battery. Well research into nanotechnology is going to change that. There are people who are talking about sensor on chip technology using nanobatteries. This means batteries the size of microchips. mPhase Technologies, Inc. has annouced a nano battery basied on technology licensed from Bell Labs. Are you troubled with batteries which limit the size of your products. What about new battery technology?

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "What is the biggest item in your handheld device?"

February 17, 2005

Sometimes innovation is not immediately apparent. Often truly innovative individuals think so far into the future that their peers may regard them as illogical, unreasonable, or even delusional in some cases. Throughout history, such individuals often kept their ideas to themselves for fear of ridicule from public at that time. In some cases, these individuals were persecuted or even punished for their beliefs. Who would ever believe that the Earth revolved around the sun, or that the earth is not flat. One would think that such narrow minded beliefs would no longer be present in today's scientifically advanced society, but this is not always the case. A little over 100 years ago, it was announced that “everything that can be invented has been invented.” Obviously, this was not the case and as recently as 50 years ago, the claims made by one individual, Richard Feynman, we disregarded as impossible to achieve. Today we look back upon his speech in 1959, now made famous for the accuracy of his predictions. Yet, Feynman was no prognostic, but rather a man who took notice of what could be possible and voiced his opinions. Today, the ideas that were once believed to be illogical are now considered to be genius. The lesson to be learned is that radical notions should not be disregarded as preposterous, rather they should be considered with regard to the basic science behind the ideas. If the science is sound, what may be at one time considered impossible, may later be considered truly innovative.

There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom

HLB Medical read more Continue reading ""There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom...""

February 18, 2005

As electronics and their associated mechanical interfaces have become more powerful our approaches to solutions have tended to leverage those capabilities. This has led to some exciting achievements but are these always the best solution. Over time most people would agree that the best solution is the simplest one that gets the job done. Usually that means the solution that takes advantage of natural properties. That might be designing an assemble to utilized Z-axis assembly orientation to take advantage of gravity. In the fluids world it might involve letting water run downhill rather than pump it uphill. But what does this mean in something as complicated as a humanoid robot. Well this week three humanoid robots were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that answer this question. The robots were developed by Cornel University, the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Delft University. These are able to walk using about the same amount of power as a human being where as traditional humanoid robots such as Sony's Asimo have take about 10 times as much power. These new robots accomplish this by taking advantage of momentum and using the forces of nature (momentum and gravity) to their advantage. Inspiration for these designs came for watching the common child's toy that walk down a slope in responce to gravity. So how can you take advantage to the tools that mother nature provides to make your products simpler and more efficient?

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Work with mother nature"

February 22, 2005

So you think you are the geekiest gadget guru of all time. Well Mobile PC magazine has just published a list of the top 100 gadget's of all time. Check out the list and see how many of these goodies you have had. So how do you make sure that your product reaches this type icon status? Well through consumer research to find out what resonates with the users and being willing to take a risk. You need to be willing to step ahead of the crowd and not just produce a me-to derivative of your competitors product. So what was number one on the list? Well the Apple Powerbook 100 vintage 1991. And yes I have three of these at home.

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Think you are a gadget geek?"

February 25, 2005

Well it had to happen. I have talked about all kinds of new power sources for your portable electronics. There are a range of new battery technologies coming. There are also lots of progress on fuel cells for your handheld gadgets. There are even people working on producing electricity from the temperature difference between your body and the surrounding atmosphere. Now students some industrial design students have suggested using a windmill to power your cell phone. The idea is to use a wind turbine as a back up power supply when your battery dies. So check it out.

HLB Medical read more Continue reading "Yet another power source for your cell phone..."