Digicom Technology News

Video conferencing has been around for a long time - roughly since the concept was introduced at the 1964 World's Fair -- and has often been suggested as a way to save travel costs for businesses. The problem is, with many videoconferencing systems and applications that most small business owners have seen, the quality is similar to what you might expect if you were talking to an astronaut on the Space Shuttle. Not quite a substitute for real face-to-face interaction.

The technology has made amazing leaps and has come down in price, so that most small businesses can at least consider deploying video communications for their business -- even in businesses with as few as 10 employees. Suppliers such as Polycom, Siemens, Cisco, Tandberg and others are the big names looking to encourage small businesses (under 1000 employees) to jump into telepresence.

Sue Hayden, executive vice president of video communications supplier Polycom, says the advantage of using what her company called "telepresence" (better technology needs a new vocabulary) goes beyond cutting costs through reduced travel. As important as reducing business travel costs is increasing productivity. People can "interact in a higher quality way and get more done. Visual communications allows companies of any size to meet face to face and ensure they are really productive."

So what's the difference between videoconferencing and telepresence? The latter, says Hayden, is a "high definition video experience that's crystal clear. You can see eyes blinking, people breathing. It's lifelike. It's an immersive experience." Systems today also are more flexible in terms of where they can be used. It can be from an employee's desktop computer, a conference room, or even a mobile computing tablet. Polycom says its systems are "platform independent" - a techie way of saying they go where you go.

A lot of entrepreneurial companies these days are virtual -- their employees may work from home, and they may not even have employees in the traditional sense. They may use talent across the globe with business partners and individuals who work for themselves. Telepresence systems can enable such organizations the flexibility to attract talent from anywhere in the world, knowing that true "like-being-there" communication and collaboration is possible. It's also easier to initiate telepresence contact than with videoconferencing. When individuals are part of a telepresence system, another user can "see" them online and can initiate contact, rather than having to schedule a pre-arranged meeting that employees have to log into.

Polycom has clients like a small magazine publisher with a few dozen employees, many of whom work from home; and a talent casting company with about 20 employees that's on the East Coast and can audition talent from the West Coast without having to fly them in. The technology also lends itself to fields like medical diagnostics, to give healthcare professionals the ability to share patient information remotely; and training/education, enabling organizations to offer higher quality interaction and information sharing.

Hayden says a business owner looking for a video communications system should focus on these questions:

• Is it easy to use?
• Is it affordable with a quick ROI?
• Does it have the quality and reliability that can result in productivity increases?
• Is it open standards (that is, will it work no matter what other technologies and vendor platforms are already in place)?
• Is it platform independent, able to work in any environment from a headquarters conference room to a laptop to mobile devices?

Article by Mitchell York, About.com Guide

Three-dimensional printing — also known as additive manufacturing, desktop manufacturing or rapid prototyping — involves a machine layering plastic, metal, ceramics or other material to build a physical object. The printer is directed by digital 3-D models created either by laser scanner or by industrial 3-D graphic software such as AutoCAD.

A report by the technology analyst firm Gartner last fall predicted 3-D printing would be adopted by the consumer mainstream within five to 10 years — ranking behind media tablets and electronic paper by two to five years, tied with Internet-enabled TVs and wireless power, and ahead of autonomous vehicles and mobile robots by more than a decade.

ABI Research has predicted 3-D printing technology will take off in 2011, growing to a more than $782 million market by 2013.

While it may not be in the average household yet, 3-D printing has been popping up in head-turning research projects. Last month, Wake Forest University researchers announced they were working on scanners and printers that could print customized replacement skin for burn victims.

In December, MIT Media Lab researcher Amit Zoran used an Objet Connex 500 — which resembles the larger ink-jet printers in most offices — to print a working flute made of plastic. Over the course of 15 hours, Zoran printed four plastic parts, and assembled them with a few springs into a flute. (See Youtube video above)

Article from Boston Herald

Researchers at Chalmers in Sweden have shown that a surface emitting laser – a cheaper and more energy-efficient type of laser for fiber optics than conventional lasers – can deliver error-free data at a record speed of 40 Gbit/s. The break-through could lead to faster Internet traffic, computers and mobile phones.

Today's commercial lasers can send up to 10 Gb of data per second (Gbit/s) through optical fibers. This applies to both conventional lasers and to surface emitting lasers. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have managed to increase the speed of the surface emitting laser four times, and see potential for further capacity increase.

“The market for this technology is gigantic. In the huge data centers that handle the Internet there are today over one hundred million surface emitting lasers. That figure is expected to increase a hundredfold,” says Professor Anders Larsson, who has developed the high speed laser together with his research group in optoelectronics.

The laser volume is smaller. It requires less power without losing speed. The energy and power consumption is a tenth of what a conventional laser requires at 40 Gbit/s – only a few hundred fJ/bit. If Anders Larsson and co-workers succeed in their development he expects that the power consumption of a complete optical link, between eg circuits in a computer (including drive electronics and receiver) will be no more than 100 fJ/bit.

“The laser's unique design makes it cheap to produce, while it transmits data at high rates with low power consumption,” Anders Larsson sums up.

The combination is unique, and opens up to a large-scale transition from electrical cables to optical cables in computers, and to side equipment, as a substitute for USB cables, for instance. Electric wires can handle up to a few Gbit/s. One can easily imagine dramatic performance gains in mobile phones and other electronics ahead. Most imminent are applications in supercomputers and the type of large data centers run by Google, eBay and Amazon.

The next step for the Chalmers researchers is to modify the design and refine the ways to control the laser, to increase speed and reduce power consumption even further.

Full article can be found at AlphaGalileo