Are you tired of your short laptop battery life with only a few hours? Would you like the charge of your mobile phone to last a couple of months? Well, the answer to your “prayers” might be the nuclear batteries, which are been developed at the University of Missouri. They are designed especially for providing a lasting source of energy. And some people think these batteries could replace the current ones, including those used by the electrical cars. According to the creators, a nuclear battery has a very enormous capacity to generate electricity when compared to a regular one.

The batteries have always been the Achilles’ heel of the mobile devices. Usually, the designers of electronic devices for mass consumption (like laptops or media players) use small displays or screens that are not very bright in order to save the scarce energy resources that are provided from the regular batteries. But the new nuclear battery would bring a solution based on a liquid semiconductor (rather than a solid semiconductor) that will produce a much longer lifetime for the battery. The reason is the solid semiconductors are attacked constantly by some radioactive elements used by other types of batteries, while the liquid semiconductor is quite resistant to these attacks. Although the term “nuclear” can be a little perturbing, the fact is that these batteries are not very different from those batteries used in, for example, medical pacemakers.



The new radioisotope battery has the size of a penny and provides much more power than the traditional ones because, according to the researches, its capacity is very superior. Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri, said that the radioisotope battery “can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries”. That is to say, it provides no less than a million times more charge than any “normal” battery.

Kwon and his research team have spent enough time working to solve many problems that they have encountered when developing this type of battery. One important thing is the batteries need to be small and thin in order to be practical and useful; this way, they could be used to power watches and small electronic devices. As mentioned before, the prototype (which you can see in the picture below) has the size and thickness of a penny, but the researchers think they can achieve a thinner battery. In order to do this, Kwon has required the collaboration of another professor: J. David Robertson (chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor). Together, they hope to maximize the power of the nuclear batteries as well as reduce the size and test other materials to make additional improvements. Kwon thinks that the final battery, which would be used in commercial gadgets, could be thinner than a human hair. For the moment, the research team have required a provisional patent in order to protect the exclusive right to use this invention.



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Samsung Electronics has introduced its first internal multi-format Blu-ray drive in the electronic market: SH-B083. This Blu-ray disc drive is compatible with high-capacity discs of up to 25GB if they are single-layer discs, or up to 50GB if they are double-layer discs. And, of course, the drive can be used with personal computers (PCs).

This drive reads BD-R and BD-ROM discs at up to 8x speeds. Besides, the CDs are read at up to 48x speeds and the DVDs at up to 16x. Also, the new SH-B083 multi-format drive features an average access speed of 350 ms. On the other hand, besides reading Blu-ray discs, it reads and writes CD and DVD.
The SH-B083 comes with two lenses for more stable reading and writing. This way, a lens is reserved to read BD discs, while the other one reads and writes CDs and DVDs. In addition, the Spherical Aberration Compensation Technology (SACT) improves the reading of those BD discs where the protective layer doesn’t have an uniform thickness.

Also, the precision step control technology (PSCT) allows users to enjoy a higher resolution in the optical pickup head unit (OPU), which is an absolutely necessary requirement due to the smaller track pitch of BD discs (when they are compared with CDs and DVDs).

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Not long ago Google announced that the source code at the core of its Android platform would be available for free to anyone wanting to use it and develop with. This open source approach has opened up the market to more phones manufacturers and developers able to make Android based phones but it also means there will be a host of application to download for it - and I suspect we will see more useful applications than the mainly games ridden App Store on iTunes (I want a good Exchange Mail client). It looks like Asus, Motorola and Samsung will be the next to follow Kogan and the rather averagely designed HTC G1 with a Google Android phone early next year, hopefully making the most of the Android platform finally. - (Read more Information) Read More!

Currently your best bet for an OLED is the Sony XEL-1 which I also included in my top Christmas gadgets list. It’s not the best price screen per inch but certainly is the best looking on the market. But as with all good technology the price will start to come down and screen sizes will go up. Samsung have already prototyped early this year a 40″ Full HD OLED display with 1920 x 1080 resolution, 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and is under 1cm thick. Samsung therefore have proved it can all be done so it just a case of making them at a consumer friendly price and I think next year they will we will see these large sized OLEDs appearing.-(Read more inforamition) Read More!

The Rolly from Sony is all about fun. It is essentially a robotic MP3 playing robot that dances to the music you play. It comes with Rolly Choreographer software to create your own motions and even share them online with others. But if you don’t want to create your own it comes with an Auto and Self Motion modes which will analyse the music and create the type of style dance you request. It also comes with Bluetooth streaming (A2DP), 5 hour battery life, 2GB of storage, high quality speakers with 180 degree baffle effect..(Read full information) Read More!