The issue lies with the theoretical efficiency ceiling assigned to OLEDs in a 2001 paper published in Nature. That paper suggested OLEDs would eventually be capable of converting 41 to 63% of electricity passed through them into light. The current ceiling for OLEDs is 25% efficiency, and that is where the most recent research out of Utah says it will probably stay.

In the end, all this talk of percentages and efficiency might be moot, especially considering OLEDs main purpose will be to replace LCD screens, not illuminate rooms or serve as the running lights on an Audi A5. OLEDs are also a superior light source for flexible materials, so there's that, too. They just won't be lighting up any kitchens or anything like that anytime soon.

To summarize, the future appears bright—for both LEDs and OLEDs. To each their own, we suppose. [NewsWise via CrunchGear]

Arumugam Manthiram, a professor of materials engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, has shown that a new technique that uses microwaves can reduce both the amount of time it takes, and the temperatures required to make li-iron phosphate batteries. Instead of many hours and 700 degrees Celsius, his technique only takes a few minutes and 300 degrees.

Researchers at the U. of Michigan and Princeton are saying they made OLEDs that can produce 70 lumens per watt (compared to 15 lumens per watt for incandescent), and that they might be able to do even better than that. To achieve that impressive efficiency, they are using a grid combined with micro-lenses, all of it on the nano-scale (the lenses are 5 micrometers wide).

Google's philanthropic arm, via its RechargeIT program, has just bet $2.75 million on two companies trying to make plug-in hybrids and electric cars a reality: Aptera Motors, maker of the three-wheeled two-seater Typ-1, and ActaCell, a spinoff from the University of Texas at Austin that is working on lithium-ion battery technology.

"Plasma TVs, industry officials say, consume about four times the electricity as recharging a plug-in hybrid. Yet utilities have managed to cope with the increased loads as thousands of new televisions came on line." This is a very good sign for the next few years when plug-in hybrids and electric cars are expected to come to market.

TreeHugger's EcoModo column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

There's sliders three keyboard pieces that form together to make one Voltron keyboard, one that has a dual-screen clamshell (which we've seen before in other people's patents), one with OLED hard-keys that change displays depending on where you are (think Optimus) and one with a display that stretches from normal size to King Kong/Naomi Watts/weird bestiality theme size. We're not sure how these will actually play out on phones, but it's good that Samsung's not standing still. [Unwired View]

The experts Sound and Vision asked tended to think not, with both Toshiba and Sony confirming they had no plans in this direction. Partly it's a question of manufacturing: the tooling is set up for production of TVs in 16:9, which mainly concerns the production of LCD panels (or OLED panels that're in the pipeline), and changing that would be pretty expensive. As a Samsung expert points out this even affects things like the glass used for the panels: manufactures are used to particular dimensions and achieving a particular yield from a "mother" sheet of glass... changing the screen dimensions would involve adjusting all this production too. And of course there's all the tech involved in getting 2.35:1 images onto the screen in the first place: DVDs and BDs aren't that ratio, though you could achieve it by throwing away pixels.

But all of these problems are not insurmountable. And I, for one, would welcome the idea of a "full" widescreen TV sitting in my living room in four or five years time: maybe because I mainly watch movies rather than TV shows. What's your take on the idea, guys?

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

It's pretty far down the road for any serious speculation, but rumors of an OLED-equipped iPod which would use less power by eliminating the backlight and offer better color reproduction have been flying for a while. And the 2.5-inch size matches what's currently found on the iPod classic, as well as the Zune 80 (Zune 80 uses a 3.2 inch screen, thanks Marx). Autumn 2009 is a long way off, and these could just end up in one of many OLED-equipped phones or PMPs already out there, so don't hold your breath on this one. [Bloomberg via Electronista]

Sony's plans for FED displays are to push them to broadcasting and medical apps first, building slowly, rather than to jump right into the high-stakes plasma/LCD war, where nobody's making money thanks to the very bloody price war. Then it'll inch into the consumer market, first with 60-inch displays (at the level they can be more profitable, obviously). Looks like after plasma vs. LCD, we might have yet another fight on our hands: FED vs. OLED. [Nikkei]

It's still got the metallic body, in five colors—Soul Grey, Platinum Silver, Metallic Black, Soul Pink, Amethyst Violet and Red—which may please the fashion-conscious. And it has a 2-inch QVGA TFT screen, 3-megapixel cam with "PowerLED" light, full HTML browser, document viewing app, Bluetooth v2.0, MP3 player, FM RDS recordable radio and 1GB of internal memory with microSD expansion.

But it's just a sleek, metal candybar phone with high specs... much like a boat load of other cellphones out there. It's on sale in Germany at first, then most of Europe, Africa, Asia and South America, so we've no word on when it'll come to the US. [Samsung]

Despite what we and other media have hinted at, despite what Sprint itself is spending a lot of money trying to convey, the Samsung Instinct is not an iPhone killer. To be sure, Samsung and Sprint borrowed liberally from the iPhone playbook when it came to look and feel. But the comparison itself isn't fair: The iPhone is a software platform that is growing every day, soon to have a host of applications that put it squarely in the smartphone category along with BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile. The Samsung Instinct will never be mistaken for a smartphone. Then what is it? It's the best carrier-centric feature phone I've ever seen, a delight to use for many—though not all—of its intended purposes.

Due to business decisions Apple and the US carriers have made, most Americans are still not faced with the choice to buy an iPhone or not. They have to pick the best "feature phone" that their carrier has to offer. That is, a phone that costs somewhere between $50 and $250, built first and foremost to make voice calls, then serve additional social purposes—messaging, photos, etc.—and, finally, offer data connectivity to the web but more importantly to e-mail.

In this array of duties, there are some where the Samsung Instinct falls flat on its kiester, but there are an unusual number of ways in which this phone makes life easier. I'll start with them, then get to the grimmer stuff:

Snappy Interface: Other touchscreen phones we've seen have annoying split-second lags. The Instinct, for the most part, does not. Some of its visuals were obviously borrowed from Apple, such as pop-up option screens, lists of settings, etc., but at the same time it has features that are original, albeit inspired by Cupertino: When a call comes in, you tap the center then slide up to accept or slide down to ignore. Hanging up is a slide from left to right. (The phone interface has other cool features, too, like "personal" call history for each of your contacts—so don't go cheatin'—and the ballyhooed visual voicemail, which unfortunately wasn't available to test at this time.) The UI only got stuck a couple of times, and never permanently. As with any other "natural" interface, it takes a few minutes to figure out the physics of the system, but once you do, it's intuitive.

Favorites: The Home button actually takes you to one of three panels, Favorites, Main and Fun. When you get the phone, the Favorites pane is blank, but you can add all kinds of stuff. As you can see up top, I've added Weather, E-mail, Alarm, Camera, Navigation and Settings, but it can get so specific, you can have a Favorites button for sending text messages to Brian Lam, cuing up your "I'm So Sad" emo song playlist, or launching Gizmodo.com. This sounds retardedly obvious, but I can't think of a carrier phone that lets you do it. Certainly not the Voyager, the Glyde, the Venus, the Rumor or any other Verizon or Sprint phone that comes to mind.

E-Mail: Feature phones most typically have bad e-mail programs, some of them hidden away where you can barely find them. The message? Do Not Use! But on the Instinct, the e-mail program is really easy to setup, with all the major webmail providers preconfigured for instant log-ins. You can put in more than one account, naturally, and easily jump from one to the next. The mail's vertically oriented view is great, with header frozen in place at the top of the screen and the message itself scrolling along with an iPhone-like flick of finger. And you are alerted to new e-mails with a blue star on the top of the phone's screen.

Web Apps: I'll get to the web browser down below (yes, in the "grim" section), but first I want to sing praises for the numerous web apps on the phone. Weather, News, Sports—your typical need-in-a-hurry information—have been organized in an attractive way that delivers maximum info with the least effort on your part. Sports in particular is amazing (and I'm not known for being a sports fan): You tap one of your pre-selected teams to see a schedule. Any game in progress will immediately show a score. Tap it and you get stats and a write-up from AP or another wire, plus other data breakdowns as necessary. Photo Viewer: Another feature with some iPhone-like traits, the photo viewer lets you finger through your images in either a grid of shots or a Cover Flow-like stream of them. Videos you shoot are in there, too. You can add photos from your computer by copying them to existing folders or, better still, creating your own folders. This means you can have a nice organized gallery of pics, separated out how you want. You don't just have to settle with looking at shots from the passable but by no means award-winning built-in 2-megapixel cam. (There's an auto upload feature too, but it has PhotoBucket and MySpace but not Flickr, Picasa or Facebook, so I'm going to ask Sprint the deal with that.)GPS Navigation: Usually, I'm down on cellphone turn-by-turn GPS navigation, but Telenav has finally gotten it right, ahead of everyone. AT&T and Sprint both use it, but this is the first time I've really been happy with it, even in areas of questionable phone coverage. It's still an iffy proposition if you're in the middle of nowhere, but it works better than any I've seen, and looks far better than Verizon's sorry also-ran, VZ Navigator. (Hint to Verizon: Ditch your white-label software provider and pay a few more bucks for Telenav.) My only complaint is that the live map itself isn't oriented horizontally, like portable GPS products are.Voice Command: This is something that the iPhone lacks, and that's a shame. I have been a fan of voice command for years, especially the stuff built by VoiceSignal (now part of Nuance, the Dragon NaturallySpeaking people). The better Samsung and Motorola phones use it, so it's no surprise to find it here, but the good news is, it works. Not only can you dial people quickly, but you can pull up a text message or picture mail ("Send picture to... Dad"). Though you still have to tap the screen a few times after you've got your message cued up, the voice command eliminates a lot of menu digging.

There are a few features that work well in most instances, but have weaknesses that shouldn't be overlooked:Touch Typing: The typing feature looks a lot like the iPhone's, only it doesn't have the pop-up letters, and doesn't let you shift letters on the fly or auto-correct. However, for some reason, when I've typed on it quickly, everything has looked good. It's like the iPhone in that sense: When you just plunge ahead, results are better. In most scenarios, you can choose whether to type horizontally with QWERTY config or vertically with letters in alphabetical order. In some cases you can even get a third option: graffiti. Yep, like the Palms of yore, the Instinct lets you scrawl in characters one at a time. I can't imagine why you would, and frankly this implementation isn't very good, but it's fun to know what's hidden beneath the surface here.

Music Player: By the look of the thing, it should be fine. It's got all the typical categories, and unlike some Sprint and Verizon phones, it was clearly designed to support your own files as well as purchases from the carrier music store (if anyone was dumb enough to buy music that way). It's a decent player, but it has a potentially fatal flaw: It can't read all MP3 tags, only most of them. That means your "All Songs" lineup will have tracks by artists you can't see under "Artists." The saddest part is that you can't fix it with any hocus pocus either on the phone or on your computer.

Video Player: At the top of the TV/Video menu, there's a "My Videos" option, where you can see stuff you've recorded or sideloaded. I dumped in four different kinds of videos, and while my .avi, .mov, and .mpg failed, the one that worked was a .mp4. It was a Postal Service video, and it looked really good. The file type gave me hope that my vast iPod/iPhone-friendly video library would also be supported, but though the files show up in the queue, they do not play. That means a buttload of time consuming file conversion for yet another device... yippee!

The semi-bungles above can be tolerated, either by working with them or just totally ignoring them. But the Instinct gets one big ole check-minus in particular:

Web Browser: I gotta say it: The Instinct's browser is an ABYSMAL failure of design. It's not that I'm surprised. Nobody has pulled off the mobile browser quite like Apple has. But for some reason, despite Sprint's EV-DO Rev. A network, the browser is slow slow slow, too slow to do much of anything. Beyond that, the interface is streamlined almost to the point of unusability. I can't figure out a way to add a current page to favorites, and zooming in and out requires a tap of a button, that increases or decreases the page—again, very slowly—to an arbitrary size. As you can see in the gallery below, it's junk, and I don't see myself using it. There are some other issues that I had with the phone: I turned off the vibration feedback, since it seemed out of sync with the visuals and was frankly just annoying. As you probably guessed, you still can't make your own songs into ringtones, and you can't even turn Sprint's Music Store songs into ringtones either (full 3MB song download for $1.99 vs. 500KB partial song download for $2.50—you do the math). The ringtone-getting process was a bitch, partly because it's based on that slow-ass browser. I mentioned the camera wasn't award-winning, and I will stress that again, though in video mode, it seemed to do the trick in most well-lit cases.

The last thing I want to mention is that the phone has an all-you-can-eat service price of $99 per month that includes EVERYTHING. That is to say, everything but song downloads and some very peripheral video-on-demand options. Most streaming vid and music is included, all data for e-mail, all messaging including video mail, unlimited use of the GPS navigation, plus unlimited talk time. I believe that's a pretty good price when you consider all of the features. The key with a plan like that is to have a phone where those features can be used. That's what the Samsung Instinct is, to me—the best feature phone option for people who don't mind playing in Sprint's walled garden of services, but don't want to feel like a chump. I've been playing with it nonstop for days now, and it continues to impress me. And while I'm no iPhone fanboy, I'm not easily impressed. Now, if only Verizon would get something this nice...

Dell, teasingly, says "You'll see some great stuff from us this year, and 60% more notebook models.
He tends to think they lost focus on the consumer, and consumer products, as we all know, are sexy and business people like 'em, too. He says it's working. Today's business at Dell is half derived from desktops and laptops, but the other half is from servers, storage and peripherals.

Mossberg: There was a sense that you got not much in industrial design from old Dells. Is that changing?
Dell: We've tripled our staff for design focusing on usability and design.
Mossberg: People have always wanted that. Why now?
Dell explains that it's less about MHz and GHz now. In the consumer world, fashion is playing a bigger role, people just say they want a red laptop.
Mossberg: Are you trying to broaden the way you sell by going into retail, which is different from the past history. Are you going to open stores?
Dell: Right now, it's more important for us to pick the best retailers in the world. It's more important to be in 13,000 stores than open them.

Mossberg: Can you take products from market to market, say, from India to the US? For example the Asus Eee PC is something you'd sell in emerging markets but now you've got them doing very well.
Dell: Yes, but we may put them in China first because of the size of the market.

Mossberg: Are you working more closely with Microsoft with Vista 7?
Dell: Yes, it's unprecedented. That early engagement is how you create an early ecosystem, create something new.
Mossberg: You'd talked about software as a differentiator between models of Dell and HP. But those craplets, the additional programs can be a problem.
Dell: We have craplet-free options on our machines, actually.
Mossberg: How do you feel about Vista?
Dell: Early we had driver support problems but SP1 really changed that a lot. The ecosystem has come around. With the level of engagement at an early level (Windows 7), so we can work on things like multitouch, to make sure we have a stable driver base, etc...
Mossberg: Multitouch is going to be a core of Windows 7. Do you believe it'll be the new user interface for PCs? Do you believe it'll replace the mouse?
Dell: It'll complement what we have today, and it won't replace them in all instances, either.
Mossberg: What about phones? Are you going to make one?
Dell: We've got SIM slots in our laptops with 3G. You've got 3.8 billion cellphones going to 5 billion phones in 4-5 years and 1.4 billion internet users going to 2b in 4-5 years. There's an opportunity there, for devices that sit between the PC and the phone.

[All Things D]

OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, meaning that the glow-y part that lights up when zapped with electricity has organic stuff in it. Because the particles light up by their own damn selves, they don't need a backlight like LCDs, so they can be stupid thin, and they use way less power than either LCD or plasma. The problem is, they're still a bitch to make, which is why they're expensive and teeny.

Wilson and Benny Boo took a tour of the place where OLED panels are born, and got the full rundown on how they're made. Basically, phosphorescent colored particles are fused to a substrate (glass, metallic or plastic screen), which can happen in one four ways (which are covered in more detail here):
• Vacuum thermal evaporation
• Organic vapor phase deposition
• Ink-jet printing
• Organic vapor printing

Though they each deal with the tiny pixel-sized dots of phosphorescent material slightly differently, all of them are a pain in the ass (read: expensive). The first two techniques require the substrate to be suspended in the air, making larger screens harder to do well (they tend to bow in the middle). Hence, Sony's wonder TV is a mere 11 inches and costs more than a good plasma, and Samsung's 31-incher was nigh miraculous.

One of the major problems with OLEDs is that the organic materials degrade over time, as organic things tend to do, with blue being the quickest fader. To wit, it came out that Sony's XEL-1's half life is only about 17,000 hours, not the 30K it was rated for, and not even close to the 60K+ hours that many LCDs and plasmas get.

And here's something you probably didn't know: While OLED does consume less power than LCD or plasma, its energy needs are content independent, so you'll be suckin' the same wattage whether you're watching the darkest scenes of Batman Begins or a virtual whitewall.

But, rest assured OLED is probably what you'll be watching Obama grow old and nasty on, with most majors promising mass production of big OLED TVs in the next couple of years. Presumably, that means prices and sizes will start getting reasonable. Not fast enough for our tastes, though—super thin, gorgeous picture, and none of the hallmark problems of LCD and plasma? Do want. So, so bad. [Giz Explains]

9:47 Mossberg: You didn't build your own facilities for LCD production and had to buy them from a competitor, Samsung.

Stringer: That was done to leap-frog the tech, but that didn't work. The brand covered us and we were still number one in the US one year. LCDs have a lot of life in them, but we started doing OLEDs a few years ago and we can't mass-produce it, but we've got a $250 model. Mossberg corrects him, the XEL-1. Stringer jokes that it's $250 for people in this room (a special deal). And Mossberg leads him: How big is it? Stringer: 11 inches, but the Dreamworks execs love it.

He's showing a 0.3mm OLED that is thin as a playing card and can be used in a 27- inch TV that will ship soon. But not at reasonable prices.

Mossberg: Is the video game business profitable?
Stringer: The PS3 is building excitement. The model is to lose money on the hardware for a long time and then make money on the software and later the hardware. The PS3 is expensive. We'll see games in June, not GTA4, that take advantage of the network, too. (Metal Gear.)

Mossberg: But don't gamers want to just play games on these?
Stringer: People are starting to download content, though. The first million customers of the PS3 were gamers, but more people ended up after that being Blu-ray customers and that's why we won the format war.

Mossberg: I thought you won the war with bags of cash?
Stringer: I thought that's what they did. You read it in the paper. We are not in the check-writing competition.
Mossberg: Then I believe it!

Mossberg: Does physical media have a future?
Stringer: You can finally see, using Blu-ray, the number of Arabs in Lawrence of Arabia. Digital downloads aren't matching the detail now. (I don't know if I agree that it's not somewhat close, thoug—B.L.)
Mossberg: You're in the PC business. Sales have dropped a bit...
Stringer: Actually we've done well, best year ever.
Mossberg: But I'm talking about marketshare. Why are you not the number one in the market?
Stringer: Because we're high end and expensive.
Mossberg: Is this your strategy?
Stringer: Yes, the less profit the better. (Laughs from the crowd.) The fact that we have a low marketshare, like Apple, doesn't mean we're inferior. Our engineers like to try new things, too.
Mossberg: What about craplets on your PCs? It loaded all this stuff on my machine I had to uninstall. (He owns a Vaio.)
Stringer: I have to evaluate these craplets, and I promise you a craplet review. (Vaio's have the most craplets of any PC—B.L.)

Mossberg: What about the Walkman phones?
Stringer: We started the trend and have more phones sold than the iPhone. All of this is on the back of music downloads. Nokia's got that all-you-can-eat system.

Stringer talks about being down on the iPod battle, too, but they're coming back by his estimation, quoting that a London paper said the audio quality was better.

We're a giant department store competing with lots of boutiques like Apple (although not tiny anymore) and ebook readers from Amazon. But do we want to invest that much money to compete with the Kindle's wireless? And we have to deal in millions in millions and prioritize.

Question from the crowd: What about advancing audio?
Stringer jokes: We have two new speakers that are so expensive, it's mind boggling, and the three people who can afford them love it. He then says it's not different from before.

Question from the crowd: Can Sony do software as good as their hardware?
Stringer: The test will be the PS3 network, and we have a lot of software engineers, contrary to popular opinion. They're well versed at doing firmware, but our software engineers are in vertical silos separate from each other. We've knocked down those walls. Firmware is late, but app-ware comes early. And you'll see how we've done. (We've also taken a lot of American software engineers into the company because they are more flexible, typically.)
[All Things D]

The fake gunwales on the rear of the hull fall away, and the masts come down (hopefully not on someone's head). Suddenly, the boat is less encumbered, more free to speed out to open sea where the good ole USAF can provide adequate air support. If you're found out, says Spycraft co-author Keith Melton, this would increase "your chance of living," which is nice. Boats like this were definitely in use, though the CIA will not say how often, or in what specific situations.

Melton says the concept is similar to an earlier one, the Q Boat or Mystery Ship, a gunship masked as a merchant vessel used during World War I to lure submarines to the surface.

All of this CIA tech and much more like it is covered with great depth and hair-raising anecdotes in Spycraft, a new book by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, reviewed by us, and available for pre-order at Amazon.

Brightness is the major issue here (though green is more saturated than the HDTV standard, if you care). If you move off-axis by 45 degrees horizontally (think viewing angle) then the image brightness drops by a third. And even if you actually calibrate the settings to "produce an optimum image," even on-axis, the best plasmas and LCDs are two-three times brighter (30-40 footlamberts vs. the XEL-1's 16.4 ft footlamberts).

Making the problem worse, one of the set's features is an auto-dimming circuit that slowly ratchets down the brightness (and contrast) within a minute of turning the set on (to around 7.8 footlamberts, way darker than "any calibrated plasma or LCD HDTV"). Sony says that it's to reduce the chance of burn-in, but it's more likely to help extend the set's life, which was discovered recently to only be half as long as it's rated for.

All that said, the picture quality remains "more breathtaking than its price," but you might wanna keep it in a dark room. [HD Guru]

The only problem is that they forgot that if it's electronic, chances are that it will be hacked, no matter what. According to Samsung SDI and Bundesdruckerei, however, their ePassport will be completely manipulation-proof. The thing is even heat-resistant, so it can be laminated to avoid access to it. The display itself won't use any batteries: it will be activated by a reader that won't require any contact, which will transmit electricity using induction. Jason Bournes and plastic surgeon junkies of the world, rejoice. [OLED Info]

Plus, the solar charging properties of the compounds means that there would be no need for a traditional power source. When applied to a surface, the OLED screen could run under the power that it generates for an indefinite amount of time. It could even be applied to the back of cellphones to provide a constant charge. Again, this sort of technology seems seriously out there, but the researchers believe that they can have a working prototype up and running within two years. I'll believe it when I see it. [Tech Radar via OLED-info]

Alright, so LCD stands for liquid crystal display. (Again, we're keeping this kind of simple, for simplicity's sake.) Basically, the liquid crystal part is a gel that sits in front of a backlight or—in the case of older panels such as those found in Game Boys up till like 2003—a reflective panel. (Remember those crappy lighting accessories?) The gel is divided up into a bunch of separate pixels, which can be fired individually. Color LCDs are a bit more complicated, made up of red, blue and green subpixels which combine to create pixels with the full range of color. To throw one more bit of tech at ya, most LCDs at this point are thin-film transistor LCDs, so that the control layer is embedded within the panel itself instead of off to the side. This provides better image stability and other benefits.

One of the problems with LCDs, and why plasma has an advantage in showing blacks, is that the liquid crystal layer is not opaque, even when all of the pixels are closed. On most LCDs, the bright backlight is on when the TV is on, so that will always bleed through at least a bit. LED-backlit LCDs can light up just a part of the panel instead of the whole thing, to an extent minimizing the problem.

Besides the "dynamic" backlighting described above, LCD technology is constantly improving its contrast through various crazier schemes involving pixel twisting and other light-blocking techniques.

The other notorious LCD problem is moton blur. If you've been buying LCD monitors for the past few years, you'll notice that advertised response times have dropped precipitously, down to as little as 2ms on some gamer-friendly computer monitors, and 6ms on big ol' TVs, so there's less true blurring of the picture. LCDs can also reduce motion blur further by processing the image: High-end LCDs use 120Hz technology to essentially double the framerate of source video, tricking the eye into seeing less blur.

Some 120Hz LCDs achieve this by tossing in a black frame of "downtime," but other sets morph two frames into a third, middle image that sits somewhere between the original frame and the next. As you might suspect, this can result in a weird, uncanny super silkiness that some reviewers object to.

Other reasons home theater buffs pick plasma over LCD in serious showdowns are that LCD naturally produces a less uniform picture and can't be seen as well (in color or brightness or both) from wide angles. LCDs can produce great pictures, and will keep getting better (LED backlights FTW), but in sets 42 inches and above, it just can't quite touch plasma, despite the fact that its cheaper pricer point has given it an overwhelming marketshare on the HDTV front.

Sony, which pushes Bravia LCD and hasn't sold plasma sets in years, is sending signals that it will soon focus on OLED instead. OLED pretty much makes both LCD and plasma look sad. They still cost a billion dollars and are a few years away, but the day of the OLED will come. [Giz Explains]

Here's the full run-down:

•OLED screen: 1.3 inch OLED 260k; resolution:128 x 160px touching panel.
•Water proof, Shock-proof
•Languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, turkish, portuguese, french, chinese
•Standby english, thailand, dutch, german, russian,vietnamese,chinese,rabbinic,etc.
•Ring tone: 64 polyphonic; support format:mp3/midi/wav
•Incoming ring tone, incoming photo, incoming movie
•Music format: mp3
•Movie format: mp4,full screen
•Camera: 2.0m pixels
•T-flash support: free 512 tf card. extend to 2gb
•Bluetooth function: supported
•Picture format: jpg/gif

Its battery will give you about three hours of talk time and around 160 hours of standby, which seems fairly decent actually. The best bit about this piece of Dick Tracy tech, though, is the price: it's just $299, and is available from May 10th. [Surprising Gift via Howardforums]

The Price: $199

The Verdict: I like the Livescribe Pulse quite a bit. I think it performs as advertised and is relatively easy to use. That said, this doesn't offer anything enticing or groundbreaking for people who don't use a pen and paper on a regular basis. It's a product for the likes of students, journalists, or even doctors, who are constantly scribbling things down with a pen. Here's a quick rundown of the pros and cons of the Pulse.

As a quick refresh, the Livescribe Pulse uses special dotted paper for spatial recognition to digitally replicate the notes. In one regard, this is good, because it doesn't require any secondary hardware. On the other hand, you cant just use any old piece of paper to make this thing fully functional. each sheet of paper has controls on the bottom, allowing navigation of the pens menu system, recording controls, bookmarking, playback controls, and speaker volume.

The note-taking/digital recording/replay function works smoothly. You hit the record button on the paper before you begin to write, then as you jot down your handcrafted masterpiece, it simultaneously records the audio and keeps the two linked. When you stop recording, you can tap anywhere in the vicinity of your notes and it will playback the audio from that moment when you were writing. It's awesome.

These can also be uploaded into Livescribe's Desktop software, which archives your notes according to the notebook they were written in and the page it was on. Text with audio linked to it appears in green, and when clicked, plays back the audio. There is also a search engine with handwriting recognition that works exceptionally well. I laid some chicken scratch on the page and it picked every word up, save for one word I couldn't even recognize. It doesn't currently support OS X right now, but they say its in the works.

Many of the secondary functions are neat, but I don't know I would use any of them on a regular basis. The Paper Piano is novel. The written calculator seems semi-practical, when in the middle of note scribbling, but the printed material on the inside cover of notebooks just isn't that useful. There's another calculator, a visual keyboard (which isn't yet supported) and status buttons for time and date. Also strange is that the settings can only be adjusted by the interfaces printed on the inside covers of notebooks. There's no on-screen system for adjusting this using the cross-based navigation.

The highly touted translator is also missing (though promised in the future), replaced with a demo that translates 20 words into Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish or Swedish. And one issue I had with the written calculator and translator was that I tend to write without picking up my pen between letters, and it couldn't recognize what I was writing. They say cursive support will come, but I'm not sure it will fix the recognition for people with poor handwriting.

The build quality of the pen is good, with a metal exterior that doesn't feel too light or heavy in the hand. It has an OLED screen that brightly displays pertinent info, stereo microphone, a loud speaker, and a magnetic dock/data connector. However, it's closer in size to a magnetic marker than a pen, and you have to hold the pen relatively high so as not to block the sensor. This feels a little cumbersome in the hand, but you mostly get used to it. Mostly.

The Livescribe Pulse is an amazing piece of tech, and I enjoy using it, but has an admittedly limited appeal. I'd love to see more creative and functional uses implemented with future "apps," and a touch of refinement in the current interface. But this is recommended for anyone who takes a lot of notes. [Livescribe on Giz]