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I4U: During the Salone del Mobile (Famous Italian Furniture show) taking place in Milan, the Sony Design Center will showcase the Sony Design x Master Craft Lombardia project.

Sony collaborated with Lombard artists and artisans to create unique design pieces that incorporate Sony technology.

The creations include wooden, marble or leather shelves with built-in speakers; seats with leather or fabric upholstery whose headrests emit soft and soothing notes; picture frames and other solid marble objects that hide tiny speakers and in some cases small light and scent sources; specially processed glass panels containing monitors; or galvanized, laser-engraved coffee tables.

See this Sony site for some background and photos of the prototypes.

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TG Daily: Toshiba announced yesterday that more than 100,000 family-room HD DVD players have been sold within the first year of the technology’s launch.

That number puts HD DVD in the lead over the competing Blu-ray format, if only CE players are considered. Manufacturers of Blu-ray players have not released official sales figures so far, but is generally believed to be lagging HD DVD.

The North American HD DVD Promotional Group said that CE sales do not include sales of Microsoft’s HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360, which is considered to be the best selling HD DVD player currently on the market.

A good reason for ignoring the  Microsoft HD DVD drive sales figures may have been the fact that this scenario would have forced the group to include the overwhelming sales numbers of the PS3’s Blu-ray drive: According to Nexgenwars.com, Sony has sold about 2.8 million PS3s and Blu-ray drives so far.

The battle between the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps will be heating up throughout the year, as Toshiba has recently launched new entry-level HD DVD players and more and more HD content is making its way into the market. The HD DVD group expects more than 300 HD DVD titles to be available by this summer worldwide. Blu-ray is trailing this number, but can claim the best selling HD title: Casino Royale, which has been included in some PS3 shipments, has shipped more than 100,000 times in the Blu-ray version.

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Crunchgear: Though the popularity of FM radio is starting to dwindle, some of still enjoy some classic rock, sports radio, or NPR.
Brando knows this and have created quite a nice looking add-on for the Nintendo DS that allows you to listen to FM radio. It leeches off your DS’ battery and has a bright, monochrome screen. And the best part? It’s only $14 (10 euro)! Pick one up and actually start getting some tunes out of your Nintendo DS that aren’t made with Elektroplankton.

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Newlaunches: The Nintendo DS plays a number of roles for the Japanese and the latest is it teaches driving. Game publisher D3P is out with the ‘Driving school for DS’ where not only does it teach kids to drive cars and bikes safely but also bicycles. It is actually a simulator where you go through the process of enrolling in a driving school to learning traffic signs and rules to driving. (…)

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Engadget: The DisplayPort 1.1 specification has been approved by VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association).  The new digital interface standard is meant to replace DVI and VGA ports while co-existing with HDMI for HDTV connectivity.

As you can see in the picture above, it’s about the size of a USB connector yet offers 2x the performance of DVI in a much smaller package. Also included is HDCP 1.3 content protection to keep the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps happy.

The small size allows the interface to be included in smaller handheld electronics while enabling direct-drive LCD panels thereby eliminating the need for non-panel LVDS electronics in the monitor designs.

Of course it also supports pass-through of DVI and HDMI signals via simple adapters similar to DVI-to-HDMI variety on the market today.

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Newlaunches: The Japanese continue to find innovative ways of using the Nintendo DS from teaching English to a museum guide to a cook book.

Now thanks to Capcom you will be familiarising yourself with words like Bull run, operator, EPS, futures, options, profit booking just to a few, you guessed it right the new game from Capcom teaches you stock trading.

The game starts with a protagonist explaining the basics of money markets after which you start trading and building a portfolio, the goal of the game is obviously to accumalate max profits. There is also a v/s mode where you can play against a friend with the aim of earning profit while causing maximum damage to your foe.

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Engadget: It’s official: EMI music is now DRM-free. True to his word, Steve Jobs has “embraced it in a heartbeat” making it available for download from Apple’s iTunes store, first, starting in May.

It’s taken so long but now, even (one of) the Big Four realizes that DRM fails to prevent piracy yet succeeds at being an unnecessary nuisance for the vast majority of law abiding consumers.

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Techdigest: The World Economic Forum released its ranking of the top tech superpowers, and Denmark is now the worldwide high tech leader. Rounding out the top ten are Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the US, Iceland, the UK and Norway.
Yes, the UK is well behind the inventors of the cuckoo-clock and lutefisk – but at least it beat out my drunken relatives in Oslo. The dramatic slide of the US from top dog to back of the pack is attributable more to growing innovation and infrastructure in Europe than any laggardness in the US as such. (…)

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Engadget: In an effort to allow VoIP / computer-based communications to be handled without tethering yourself to your PC and also allow you to hear ambient conversations around the office, researchers at Microsoft have “developed an algorithm that adjusts the timing of sound waves emitted from each speaker in an array, creating a focused beam of sound that acts as virtual headphones.”

Essentially, the speakers would create a “sweet spot” so that computer users could hear the audio perfectly, while individuals just inches away from the sound zone wouldn’t hear much more than a peep.

Furthermore, the focused wave technology could even bleed over into the tracking realm, which could actually allow the tones to follow one around as they move. Ideally, the creators want to conjure up a beamforming system that is easy to configure and relatively inexpensive, but it’ll probably be at least three years before these aural luxuries break into the corporate sphere.

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TWICE: About 25 percent of consumers use the Web as their primary pre-purchase resource, according to a survey conducted exclusively for TWICE by the market research firm Campaigners.

The survey’s purpose was to determine how consumers research technology products when they’re shopping.

Consumers named a number of factors to back up their pre-purchase research process, including their belief that the Web is convenient, available 24/7, includes a broad spectrum of opinions, doesn’t “use pressure tactics,” is unbiased and is free.

However, it seems “word-of-mouth” still has some cachè. The survey found that about 23 percent of consumers use their friends, families and co-workers as their primary source for information on technology products because they’re “trustworthy, reliable, honest, easy to understand and have first-hand knowledge.”

Sales associates also have a fairly significant influence with consumers; 19 percent of those surveyed chose them as their main source of information.

Other noted research sources and methods named by participating consumers included:

• magazines and reviews, 11 percent;
• speaking to someone who already owns the product they’re researching, 10 percent;
• TV, 9 percent; and
• other, 3 percent.

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Dutch navigation device maker TomTom will set up a research and development (R&D) facility in Eindhoven, southern Netherlands, the company said yesterday.

The company will seek to strengthen its position in the market for car navigation and focus on technological innovation, TomTom said in a statement. It will hire 200 engineers for the Eindhoven R&D centre. Currently, 275 of TomTom’s 900-strong staff work in R&D.

The company plans also to appoint a team of experienced automotive specialists, who should support carmakers among TomTom’s customers.

According to Harry van de Kraats, head of human resources and organisation at TomTom, Eindhoven was a logical choice for the firm’s new R&D facility; the city is home to Eindhoven Technical University.

Source: Het Financieele Dagblad

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Smarthouse News: Constant new consumer electronics (CE) products are driving growth in the accessories market according to a new report. In fact many consumers who had no intention of purchasing a product are lured into making a purchase simply because the accessory is new.

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