VizWorld.com

OLED-Displays.net has the news of several big OLED announcements coming out of CES2010.  In particular, Samsung has several things coming out like the new “IceTouch” MP3 player with integrated transparent OLED touchscreen.

The Samsung IceTouch (YP-H1), featuring the world’s first 2-inch, full color, transparent Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) touch-screen display, functions as a DVD-quality video player, studio quality audio player, an ultra-portable photo album, an FM radio and even a portable storage device.

The stylish IceTouch is a 16 GB player and made of tempered glass.

In addition, they’ve got news of an OLED Digital Photo Frame, several different 14-inch OLED prototypes from Sansung, a new Sony walkman with OLED display, and pictures of several displays in the partially assembled booths of LG, Sony, and Samsung.  A korean company IDTV also plans to announced the ‘World’s First Portable Digital TV’ called the myGoTV, sporting a nice 3.4″ AMOLED display.

Could 2010 finally be the year that OLED makes mainstream?  Nothing in the “absurdly large” category, but it seems to be quickly gaining momentum in the embedded and mobile device spaces.

via Samsung IceTouch PMP with Transparent AMOLED touch screen.

Hardware ces, displays, oled

The internet is abuzz today about a report in the recently released “3D Display Technology and Market Forecast Report” where DisplaySearch, a market research and consulting firm, forecasts that 3D displays will become a $22B industry, with 64Million TV’s deployed by 2018.

The market for 3D displays—which is encouraged by the recent success of 3D cinema—is forecast to take off in 2010, providing a welcome boost to the electronics industry. “3D displays are taking off with consumers due to increasing availability of 3D content. In addition, 3D standardization has also been addressed or is being evaluated in several 3D organizations,” noted Jennifer Colegrove, Director of Display Technologies at DisplaySearch.

64Million seems like a lot, and if a sucker’s born every minute then they’ll have to sell one about every 5 seconds (ha ha, I made a funny).  By 2018, I’ld say it’s definitely possible, but mostly because a significant portion of existing consumers will have to go buy something to replace existing equipment.  What I take issue with is their prediction on the “Driving force” of 3D technology:

• Mobile phones will be the largest 3D display application on a unit shipment basis in 2018, with 71 million units with 3D capability.
• The largest screen size category for 3D display shipments will be 1-4.x”, due to demand from mobile phone and digital camera/camcorder applications. The second largest size range will be 40-49”, due to TV, public display and 40+ monitor applications.

While 3D is neat and all, I can’t envision any possible scenario where glasses-based 3D becomes popular on mobile phones or camcorders.  On camcorders would require 3D-capable recording functions, which are still very early in development and definately not ready for deployment to the masses.  On mobile phones, one has to note how people ridicule bluetooth headsets right now, and wonder what will happen to people wearing 3D glasses around all the time.

Maybe Back To The Future’s “3-D” was just ahead of his time?

3D Display Revenues Forecast to Reach $22B by 2018; 3D-Ready TV Shipments to Reach 64M Units – DisplaySearch.

Hardware 3d, displays, stereoscopic

In a possible rebuttal to the “How many Pixels do we really need“, John Sviokla over at the Harvard Business blog discusses how Data Visualization is aiding Knowledge discovery in fascinating new ways.  One great anecdotal piece of evidence is this:

In another instance, a group of neuroscientists, psychiatrists, neurophysiologists, and geneticists gathered together at Calit2, a supercomputer and visualization lab, headed by Dr. Larry Smarr — where there’s a 40 by ten-foot visualization wall which has tens of thousands of times more resolution than the most advanced HDTV at Best Buy. This team used the spectacular display space to simultaneously look at CAT scans, genetic and statistical data. By being able to see all the data together, and have the minds of all those experts working in harmony, they were able to identify two genes that they suspect are involved in causing schizophrenia. It is still early, but the participants claim that this vital discovery would not have been possible if they were not able to see all the data, in detail, and in its entirety as a group.

The article continues on to discuss how such large displays are routinely aiding in knowledge discovery, but that few (if any) corporate entities are actively pursuing the technology.  It’s a bit misinformed, as several entities are actively engaged in visualizations of large-scale datasets and massive displays, but they don’t get the same kind of press coverage as other entities.  It’s also a huge research problem, as there are still more questions than answers on how to effectively use the technology.

I think I smell another VizWorld feature coming along.

via It’s Time to Reinvent Knowledge Work – John Sviokla – HarvardBusiness.org.

Science displays, editorial