MSI Updates Afterburner and Kombustor

MSI have released new versions of the Graphics Card software Afterburner and Kombustor. This release comes after months of developing and bug testing during the beta phase. For those not in the know, Afterburner is MSI’s overclocking software for GPUs. It allows the user to change clock speeds and even voltmod their GPUs, thus facilitating some pretty cool overclocks. Afterburner was updated to version 2.1.0 Final in this release. MSI Kombustor is a stability testing software that places a lot of stress on the GPU in order to check how stable the overclock, or the card itself, is. Kombustor was updated to 2.0.0 in this release.
New in this release is support for GTX5xx series GPUs from the NVIDIA stable, and the Radeon HD6xxx series from AMD’s. Furthermore, Afterburner also has a new feature in the form of Predator, which allows you to capture in-game video. Sadly, it doesn’t support sound capture yet but I hope it will in future versions. The name Predator is quite the headscratcher, though.

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Apple Launches New and Improved Macbook Pros

It was Steve Jobs’ birthday yesterday, and as was speculated a couple of days ago, Apple did indeed release the updated MacBook Pros on their absentee CEO’s birthday. The new MacBook Pros come powered by Intel’s second generation Core i5 and i7 processors, codenamed Sandy Bridge, and either Intel HD3000 integrated graphics solutions or AMD’s 6-series Mobility GPUs.
They also feature updated front-facing cameras for Facetime, and Intel/Apple’s new optical input/output interface - Thunderbolt (previously called Light Peak) - which will allow for transfer speeds of upto 10Gbps and also support nearly every kind of digital video output interface. You can check out the various configurations in the specsheet below.





Apart from the above, the new MacBook Pros also have a few optional components you can include in your customized notebook, which include 128, 256 and 512GB Solid State Drives, upto 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, an anti-glare display, Apple Remote, various adapters, etc.

The new MacBook Pros will be bundled with Snow Leopard and Apple’s updated iLife software suite. The prices for the various default configurations are as follows:

• 13-inch/2.3GHz Dual-Core i5/320GB HDD – Rs. 69,900
• 13-inch/2.7GHz Dual-Core i5/500GB HDD – Rs. 84,900
• 15-inch/2.0GHz Quad-Core i7/500GB HDD/Radeon HD6490M – Rs. 1,04,900
• 15-inch/2.2GHz Quad-Core i7/750GB HDD/Radeon HD6750M – Rs. 1,24,900
• 17-inch/2.2GHz Quad-Core i7/750GB HDD/Radeon HD6750M – Rs. 1,42,900

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Lava Launches Dual-SIM B8 QWERTY Business Phone

While a review of the Samsung Chat 335 is on the cards, Lava has released a QWERTY keypad business phone called the B8. The phone has some decent specs and features which we’ll look at now.
The B8 is a Dual-SIM business phone with a QWERTY keypad and a track pad for navigation. The phone has business features like Push Mail and users can set up to ten email accounts in the phone. The specs for the B8 are as follows:

• 2.3-inch screen
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• 3.2 Megapixel camera with LED Flash
• Memory expandable up to 16 GB

B8 has an in-built G-Sensor which lets users change tracks and can also be used to play the Java games that come bundled with the phone. This handset has applications like Nimbuzz, Snaptu and an Opera Mini browser for instant messaging. In addition to this, there’s also GTalk and Yahoo Messenger. The phone is available at your nearest mobile store and is priced at Rs. 5,299 and has an MOP of Rs. 4,300.

The B8 looks like a decent phone for business end-users who have a tight wallet. The only downer could be an otherwise plain Java user interface.

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Apple Gives Developers a Sneak Peek at Mac OSX Lion

Apple have released a preview of the next iteration of Mac OSX, Lion, on the Mac App Store for developers registered with the Mac Developer Program to take a look at. The new version of the trademark Operating System aims to borrow ideas that made iOS and the iPad a success, and implement them in the PC OS experience.
Some of the features include:

• Mission Control view
• Launchpad for Applications
• New Multitouch gestures
• Fullscreen applications that utilize the entire Mac display

Apart from this, the preview also features the Mac App Store, the Airdrop wireless file transfer service, autosave and versioning for documents, a Resume function, FileVault for file and disk encryption and the Mac OS X Lion Server, which will help people set up servers more effortlessly.

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New Google Apps Launched

This one’s fresh off Google’s blog. Google just launched two new initiatives that should help more people experience the productivity benefits of web-powered collaboration. The first innovation is Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft, which has been made available worldwide. Anyone who has a Google account can use this service, and it seems to be quite useful; much like Google Docs. It brings multi-person collaboration to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, so everyone using this application can use the same version of a file at once.
The other announcement was a 90 day programme called Appsperience, which is a way for companies that currently use cumbersome legacy systems to see how web-powered tools help their teams work together more effectively.

This is what Google has to say about this programme:

“We’re also introducing the 90-Day Appsperience program, a way for companies that currently use cumbersome legacy systems to see how web-powered tools help their teams work together more effectively. A nominal fee covers 90-day access to Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Cloud Connect and more, as well as assistance from Google experts to help coworkers quickly become more productive together. And companies trying Google Apps can use the new collaboration dashboard in the Google Apps control panel to assess the value of our tools. The dashboard provides data on how people are using Apps to collaborate more efficiently without the hassles of document versions, check-in/check-out or attachments

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The First Full-Color Display with Quantum Dots

Bright and bendy: Color quantum dots and oxide thin-film transistors work together in this new active matrix display prototype. Credit: Byoung Lyong Choi, Samsung Electronics

Researchers at Samsung Electronics have made the first full-color display that uses quantum dots. Quantum-dot displays promise to be brighter, cheaper, and more energy-efficient than those found in today's cell phones and MP3 players.
Samsung's four-inch diagonal display is controlled using an active matrix, which means each of its color quantum-dot pixels is turned on and off with a thin-film transistor. The researchers have made the prototype on glass as well as on flexible plastic, as reported in Nature Photonics this week. "We have converted a scientific challenge into a real technological achievement," says Jong Min Kim, a fellow at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.
Quantum dots are semiconductor nanocrystals that glow when exposed to current or light. They emit different colors depending on their size and the material they're made from. Their bright, pure colors and low power consumption make them very appealing for displays. Most computer monitors and TVs use power-hungry liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are more brilliant and energy-efficient, but are confined to small gadgets because they are too expensive for TV screens, and their organic materials have limited lifetimes.
Quantum-dot displays would consume less than a fifth of the power of LCDs, says Samsung researcher Tae-Ho Kim. They promise to be brighter and longer-lasting than OLEDs. What's more, they could be manufactured for less than half of what it costs to make LCD or OLED screens.
This potential has caught the attention of big display manufacturers other than Samsung. LG Display is partnering with MIT spinoff QD Vision to develop quantum-dot displays.
To make their prototype, the Samsung researchers start by coating a solution of quantum dots on a silicon plate and evaporating the solvent. Then they gently press a rubber stamp with a ridged surface into the quantum-dot layer, peel it off, and then press it on the desired glass or plastic substrate. This transfers stripes of quantum dots onto the substrate.
In a color display, each pixel contains red, green, and blue subpixels. These colors are combined in varying intensities to produce millions of colors. By using their stamping technique over and over, the researchers can create a repeated pattern of red, green, and blue stripes.
They transfer the stripes directly onto an array of thin-film transistors. The transistors are made of amorphous hafnium-indium-zinc oxide, which provide higher, more stable current than conventional amorphous-silicon transistors. The resulting display has subpixels that are about 50 micrometers wide and 100 micrometers long, small enough for use in cell-phone screens.

"This is a powerful demonstration," says Seth Coe-Sullivan, cofounder and chief technology officer of QD Vision. "The individual technology elements aren't necessarily new. Samsung definitely did a lot of good engineering to put all the pieces together in an impressive way."
He cautions, though, that there are many more research and engineering issues to be solved, and that quantum-dot displays are still at least three years away from commercialization. The best quantum-dot devices are still not as power-efficient as OLEDs. They also need to last longer—right now, they start losing their brightness after about 10,000 hours. Finally, researchers will have to develop ways to manufacture them at low cost and large scale.

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Where Solar Power Meets the Oil Field

Steam clean: GlassPoint Solar erected this greenhouse-protected solar thermal system to concentrate heat and generate steam for an oil field in McKittrick, California. 
Credit: GlassPoint Solar

Extracting heavy oil from the ground carries a large carbon footprint, because the oil must be coaxed from the earth with steam. In California's Kern County, where steam-hungry oil fields account for 9 percent of the state's natural-gas consumption, GlassPoint Solar is testing an alternative: a one-acre greenhouse full of solar heat collectors. The Fremont, California, firm hopes this method will deliver steam in a way that's cleaner and cheaper than burning natural gas.

GlassPoint's technology is a cut-rate version of commercial solar thermal power plants that use mirrors to focus sunlight on pipes and then convert the captured heat to steam to drive power-generating turbines. GlassPoint's system is cheaper because it doesn't need the turbines, and because it has redesigned its mirrors and pipes to pump out steam that's 250 °C to 300 °C (whereas the steam required to drive turbines must be 350 °C to 400 °C).

Also, rather than building steel structures to support weather-hardened precision mirrors, GlassPoint uses comparatively flimsy foil mirrors in greenhouses. Its heat-absorbing tubes, meanwhile, are coated steel, rather than the power plants' high-efficiency glass vacuum tubes.

The result, predicts John O'Donnell, GlassPoint's vice president of business development, should be steam at a cost of $3 to $3.50 per million BTUs (including federal tax incentives for solar equipment). He compares that to an estimated $11 to $12 per million BTUs for conventional solar thermal collectors, and roughly $4 for natural gas. The spread over natural gas will widen under California's cap and trade system, set to take effect next year, which will add at least 50 cents per million BTUs to the cost of gas-fired steam.

O'Donnell says the pilot plant unveiled at a site operated by Berry Petroleum, California's biggest independent oil producer, is intended to provide a rapid test of the system's performance and operating costs. Its 40-meter-long string of mirrors and collectors will provide about one million BTUs of steam per hour, which he acknowledges is barely 1 percent of the site's gas consumption.

Assembling and starting up the plant in just six weeks has given GlassPoint a jump over solar thermal power generators eyeing the oil field market. BrightSource Energy expects to complete a solar thermal steam plant this year at an oil field in Coalinga, California, operated by Chevron—a BrightSource investor. Spain's Abengoa Solar, which has already built plants supplying solar steam to a California potato chip factory, a federal prison in Colorado, and a groundwater treatment operation in Arizona, says oil fields are a potential market for its industrial steam systems.                                                                                         

Stanford University petroleum engineer Tony Kovscek, an expert in heavy oil recovery and an unpaid advisor to GlassPoint, says he is excited by how easy it is to integrate GlassPoint's system with oil fields burning natural gas. "There's a pretty significant carbon footprint associated with these more viscous oils, and GlassPoint has created the potential to reduce that carbon footprint fairly significantly," says Kovscek.

How significantly depends on how quickly oil field operators are willing to adapt and follow the sun's cycle. Kovscek says that under current oil field procedures, which call for heating 24 hours a day, solar steam could displace the one-third of natural gas burned during the day. But he says preliminary research suggests that a large solar plant could inject extra heat during the day and trim overnight heat demand, thus displacing another third of a field's gas consumption.

Convincing oil field operators to experiment will take some time, says Kovscek: "The guys who operate these projects are some of the most conservative people you can imagine, and they don't like to change things."

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Watson Goes to the Hospital

Last week, IBM's Watson computer beat two human competitors on Jeopardy. Before the contest was even over, IBM and Nuance, a leading maker of voice-recognition software, announced plans to put Watson to work in the health-care industry.

The idea is for Watson to digest huge quantities of medical information and deliver useful real-time information to physicians, perhaps eventually in response to voice questions. If successful, the system could help medical experts diagnose conditions or create a treatment plan. But it could prove a far more challenging trick than winning a game show.

"The medical domain doubles in knowledge every few years," said Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager of the health-care division of Nuance. "No human brain can possibly retain all the information that's out there."

Dillione says that while other health-care technology can work with huge pools of data, Watson is the first system capable of usefully harnessing the vast amounts of medical information that exists in the form of natural language text—medical papers, records, and notes. Nuance hopes to roll out the first commercial system based on Watson technology within two years, although it has not said how sophisticated this system will be.

Watson holds 200 million pages of unstructured data, including some medical information. But the first part of a new IBM-Nuance research project, which is taking place at the University of Maryland and Columbia University, will be determining what other information Watson needs to know. Even then, it will be tricky to present that information in the right format. For the Jeopardy challenge, Watson was fed precategorized and tagged data. The medical literature, in contrast, consists of terabytes of highly specialized and unstructured data.

"Clinical text is often ungrammatical, rich in ambiguous acronyms and abbreviations, misspellings, and sometimes written to resemble bullet lists or tables, especially when directly typed in by health-care providers," says Stephane Meystre, an assistant professor of biomedical informatics at the University of Utah.

Having Watson listen to the dialogue between a doctor and his or her patient would be very hard, as the dialogue is usually free-form and conversational.  Meystre says the main challenge in natural language processing in a clinical setting is the need for very high accuracy and speed—Watson can handle the speed, but problems with accuracy could lead to serious problems, including legal liability.

Physicians and nurses would also need to be trained to use the technology in their work. They would normally expect long descriptive answers to medical queries, not the short succinct ones Watson gave on Jeopardy, says Rohit Kate, a professor of informatics and computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. "Physicians and nurses may not be interested in just the answer but also some reasoning or justification behind arriving at it, otherwise they will be reluctant to use the answer by itself for something as critical as their patients' health." Watson would need to justify the answer and cite sources, according to Kate. Ideally, the system would even be able to clarify an answer by talking to a physician directly.

"Not all may be technologically savvy enough to be comfortable using such a system," says Kate. "Some may have qualms about trusting a computer and a few may even feel threatened that their expertise is being replaced by a machine." Kate predicts that it will take at least a decade before computers can converse with, and work alongside, physicians and nurses.

However, some technology experts foresee a more immediate use for Watson. Michael Swiernik, director of medical informatics at UCLA, says he could imagine the technology being used to process calls at health centers, making more useful information available to patients 24 hours a day.

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Searching for the Future of Television

Google and the geeks from Silicon Valley aim to revolutionize the 70-year-old TV industry. Conquering the Internet was easy in comparison.
Nearly every week from last February until mid-May, Google trotted wide-eyed visitors into a small room at its colorful headquarters in Mountain View, California. Inside were a comfy couch and easy chairs, a tall fabric houseplant in a corner, and a large high-definition television set atop a credenza. Under the watchful eyes of engineers and product managers on the other side of a mirrored window, the visitors would settle in with a wireless keyboard. They would search for and tune in to All My Children on ABC, catch a Glee episode on the Web, watch a recording of The Daily Show from a digital video recorder, or surf over to those witty Old Spice ads on YouTube—all on that nice big TV screen.
The company was testing one of the boldest bets in its 12-year history: Google TV. It is software that aims to give people an easy way to access everything available on regular television channels and the vast sea of content on the Internet, all on the biggest screen in the house—a bid to reinvent television for the Internet age. The initiative was set for its first public demonstration on May 20, and Google's geeks had to make sure the product would appeal to the average viewer, who watches about five hours of television a day. So week after week, the Google TV team would try out countless variations on everything from the look of the search results to the background colors for the screen, hoping to learn what worked best.

 

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Google TV Faces Some Prime-Time Challenges

Having conquered much of the Internet, it seems only logical for Google to try to take over television, too. But the Google TV platform unveiled at the firm's annual I/O developers' conference in San Francisco yesterday could face many problems.
The goal of the platform, said senior product manager Rishi Chandra, is to offer the "best of what TV has to offer today, and the best of what the Web has to offer today." However, closer analysis of what is known about Google TV so far suggests that the firm has some work to do if its new platform is to live up to that promise.
Google TV consists of a modified version of the open-source Android mobile phone operating system. It's designed to run on Internet-connected set-top boxes and high-definition televisions. The platform was developed in collaboration with Sony, Logitech, and chipmaker Intel, which is supplying relatively powerful Atom processors--chips already used in some laptop computers--for Google TV hardware. The hardware announced so far consists of two kinds of devices: Sony televisions and a set-top box made by Logitech. Both will be available in Best Buy stores in the fall.
Google TV users will be able to search for video by typing on a wireless keyboard, or speaking into a connected Android mobile phone. Results could include live TV broadcasts, places to view the show online like Netflix or Amazon, or future broadcasts to be set to record on DVR. Google TV devices will also run the Chrome browser and will be able to play Flash video from across the Web.
One problem for Google TV, however, will be integration with other TV equipment. It will be easy to make the most of Google TV if you're a subscriber to pay-TV satellite provider Dish Network. This company has partnered with Google to make a custom Internet protocol to control its satellite box and DVR equipment--a single click will take you from a search result to a live broadcast, or set the DVR to record.
"I went to see the Logitech demo, and with the Dish Network, the experience is very smooth," says Colin Dixon, an analyst at TDG Research. "With a different provider, some of the value is going to be lost." Without the new type of link developed for a Dish box, the integration with other hardware won't be quite so slick. The Logitech box will relay commands to other devices via an infrared repeater.
The new platform is open so any other TV provider could design their equipment to connect with Google TV. But the biggest problem Google faces with trying to deliver a great TV experience is getting content providers on its side, says Jonathan Taplin, a consultant on digital media economics and director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. He points out that Dish Network is a relatively small provider that doesn't have access to all the premium content of the big cable firms like Comcast. "I'm sure they wanted to have someone else behind besides Dish star on that podium yesterday," he says.
Unfortunately for Google, cable companies may not be keen to make their subscription services compatible with Google TV, for fear of handing over valuable information about their customers. These companies have tried to evade attempts by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to make cable boxes more open. Likewise, content providers have resisted efforts to connect televisions to their online services. Google admitted yesterday that it will be possible for video sites run by content providers, like Hulu, to block access to Google TV users. "They really have to get onside with some of the major content providers," agrees Dixon.
As for delivering the best of the Web, Google is again reliant on others. Speaking at a press briefing after the launch, Chandra said it was surprising how many sites translated to a bigger screen without problems, but admitted that Web developers would need to design custom pages to give Google TV users the best experience.
"I think you'll see the same thing happen that we did with mobile--as content providers see that new traffic, they're going to do something about it," Chandra said. Google has already launched a set of tools to help developers create Web pages designed for its TV platform.
Google is also appealing to developers of Android cell phone apps to help create new functionality for the platform. Google TV devices will run preexisting cell phone apps that are not reliant on phone features, as well as those designed for the platform. The company introduced one example at the launch. It runs closed captions from a broadcast through Google's translate Web service to create live captions in any language.
Dixon says that the power of the Google TV devices, which boast a 1.2 gigahertz processor typically used in small laptops, will allow developers to create new experiences for viewers. Apps that encourage socializing around TV content are just one example. Such apps--which can be paid for--may also provide a way for content providers to dip their toes into the new platform, for example by developing apps for the new platform that allow content to be pulled in over the web, says Dixon. He predicts such apps would be popular with viewers, and could ultimately encourage content owners to embrace the platform: "If those guys start to deliver Android apps, then, boy, are we going to see things change."

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A Sticker Makes Solar Panels Work Better

The power output of solar panels can be boosted by 10 percent just by applying a big transparent sticker to the front. Developed by a small startup called Genie Lens Technologies, the sticker is a polymer film embossed with microstructures that bend incoming sunlight. The result: the active materials in the panels absorb more light, and convert more of it into electricity.
The technology is cheap and could lower the cost per watt of solar power. Also, unlike other technologies developed to improve solar panel performance, this one can be added to panels that have already been installed.
The polymer film does three main things, says Seth Weiss, CEO and cofounder of Genie Lens, based in Englewood, CO. It prevents light from reflecting off the surface of solar panels. It traps light inside the semiconductor materials that absorb light and convert it to electricity. And it redirects incoming light so that rather than passing through the thin semiconductor material, it travels along its surface, increasing the chances it will be absorbed.
Researchers designed the microstructures that accomplish this by using algorithms that model how rays of light behave as they enter the film and encounter various surfaces within the solar panel--the protective glass cover, the semiconductor material, and the back surface of the panel--throughout the day. The key was bending the light the optimal amount, enough that it enters the solar panel at an angle, but not so much of an angle that the light reflects off and is lost. If light does reflect off either the glass or semiconductor surfaces, the film redirects much of it back into the solar panel.
Tests at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory showed that the film increases power output on average between 10 percent and 12.5 percent, with the best improvement under cloudy conditions, when incoming light is diffuse. [Note: The original version of the article cited a range from 4 to 12.5 percent, but this referred to an earlier version of the technology.] Adding the film--either in the factory, which is optimal, or on solar panels already in use--increases the overall cost of solar panels by between 1 percent and 10 percent. But the panels would then produce enough additional electricity to justify the price. What's more, increasing the power output of a solar panel decreases other costs--such as shipping and installation--because fewer solar panels are required at each installation, says Travis Bradford, a solar industry analyst and president of the Prometheus Institute.
Yet the overall benefit depends on how long the polymer film lasts. The cost per kilowatt hour of solar power is figured by estimating the total power output of the solar panel over its 20- to 25-year warranty. If the film is scratched, attracts dust, or becomes discolored after years or decades in the sun, it could actually lower power output over time. "Durability is a big issue," Bradford says. The materials used in solar panels today have been tested over decades, and although Weiss says his company's films will last for 20 years, their durability hasn't been verified.
Meanwhile, many solar panel companies are developing related approaches for increasing the amount of light a solar panel will absorb. For example, Innovalight, based in Sunnyvale, CA, has developed a method for printing silicon nanoparticles that can improve the amount of light conventional crystalline silicon solar panels absorb. It's working with two major solar manufacturers, JA Solar and Yingl, to commercialize the technology. Unlike many of these other approaches, which are developed for particular kinds of solar panel materials, the Genie Lens films can be applied to any type of solar panel--including crystalline silicon and newer thin-film solar panel technology.

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GE to Make Thin-Film Solar Panels

GE has confirmed long-standing speculation that it plans to make thin-film solar panels that use a cadmium- and tellurium-based semiconductor to capture light and convert it into electricity. The GE move could put pressure on the only major cadmium-telluride solar-panel maker, Tempe, AZ-based First Solar, which could drive down prices for solar panels.
Last year, GE seemed to be getting out of the solar industry as it sold off crystalline-silicon solar-panel factories it had acquired in 2004. The company found that the market for such solar panels--which account for most of the solar panels sold worldwide--was too competitive for a relative newcomer, says Danielle Merfeld, GE's solar technology platform leader.
She says cadmium-telluride solar is attractive to GE in part because, compared to silicon, there's still a lot to learn about the physics of cadmium telluride, which suggests it could be made more efficient, which in turn can lower the cost per watt of solar power. It's also potentially cheaper to make cadmium-telluride solar panels than it is to make silicon solar cells, making it easier to compete with established solar-panel makers. Merfeld says GE was encouraged by the example of First Solar, which has consistently undercut the prices of silicon solar panels--and because of this has quickly grown from producing almost no solar panels just a few years ago to being one of the world's largest solar manufacturers today.
GE will work to improve upon cadmium-telluride solar panels originally developed by PrimeStar Solar, a spin-off of the Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. GE acquired a minority stake in the company in 2007, and then a majority stake in 2008, but it didn't say much about its intentions for the company until last week, when it announced that it would focus its solar research and development on the startup's technology.
"It definitely makes sense that they would avoid silicon at this stage," says Sam Jaffe, a senior analyst at IDC Energy Insights in Framingham, MA. Especially in the last year, the market for silicon solar panels has been extremely competitive, with companies making little or no profit. "There's a lot more space to wring profits out of making cadmium telluride."
GE appears to be shying away from newer thin-film solar technology based on semiconductors made of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS). Merfeld says that it is uncertain how well that material can perform at the larger sizes and volumes needed for commercial solar panels. Cadmium telluride is a simpler material that's much easier to work with than CIGS, which makes it easier to achieve useful efficiencies in mass-produced solar panels.
Merfeld says GE hopes to compete with First Solar by offering higher performance solar cells and reducing the overall cost of solar power. In addition, its name recognition could encourage installers to buy its panels and could help secure financing of solar projects from banks. GE also has extensive distribution networks, especially for new construction, says Travis Bradford, president of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, a consultancy in Chicago.
Yet challenges remain. Tellurium is a rare material, so to keep its costs down, it will be important for GE to secure large supplies of tellurium rather than buying it on the open market, Jaffe says. He says having another large manufacturer of tellurium-based solar panels may make it necessary to discover new sources of the element.
What's more, First Solar has a large lead on GE in terms of its experience manufacturing cadmium telluride and finding ways to bring down prices. It could be challenging to even get close to First Solar's costs. "If GE wants to get into photovoltaics, the crystalline silicon boat already sailed," Bradford says. "The problem is that the thin-film boat may have as well, particularly for cadmium telluride."

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Solar Cell Maker Gets a $400-Million Boost

A thin-film solar firm spun out of Colorado State University says it has developed a way to make cadmium-telluride photovoltaic modules that could be cheaper than processes used by other makers of such solar cells. Abound Solar of Loveland, CO, has received a conditional $400-million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The loan will be tapped over the next three years to fund a 12-fold expansion of Abound's capacity, bringing its total annual output to 840 megawatts and giving the company the scale it says it needs to compete with industry leader First Solar. "Abound's device is almost identical to what First Solar makes," says W.S. Sampath, a professor of mechanical engineering at CSU and inventor of Abound's manufacturing process. "Our real distinction is in how we make it. It's a more continuous in-line process. What might take five or six different machines (for another manufacturer), we do in one chamber."

Sampath says that even though Abound produces fewer cells, its per-watt cost of production is already "quite close" to First Solar's. "With a little more volume, we can get lower," he says.

It's a bold claim. Tempe, AZ-based First Solar, which currently has about 1,300 megawatts of annual production capacity and plans to add another 800 megawatts over the next two years, disclosed in its last quarter that it can produce its modules for an industry-leading 81 cents per watt.

Abound (previously AVA Solar) was founded four years ago, but its cadmium-telluride manufacturing process is based on nearly two decades of research. Two years after its 2006 spinoff from CSU, the company raised $150 million from private investors looking for a thin-film photovoltaic maker to rival First Solar.

Anders Olsson, the company's vice-president of research and development, says all of the semiconductor manufacturing steps are integrated within a single piece of equipment. "Inside the chamber, there are many stages, but it's all done in one vacuum envelope. There is no breaking of vacuums between steps. You put glass in and get a completed semiconductor coming out."

He says some steps have been eliminated as a result. For example, there are no expensive and time-consuming wet chemical processes during the making of the semiconductor. And where some manufacturers lay a thicker layer of cadmium telluride and then etch back to the thinness they desire, Abound doesn't require an etching step. "We grow the thickness we need and leave it," says Olsson.

Abound also uses an approach to module construction that it borrowed from the dual-pane window industry. "Our product, if you think of a dual-pane window, is two pieces of glass with an air-gap in the middle, and it's sealed around the edge with a silicone sealant and polyisobutylene," explains Olsson. Polyisobutylene is a synthetic rubber that is impermeable to air. Such a seal protects against moisture, which can cause thin film cells to degrade.

Harin Ullal, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO, says it appears that Abound's manufacturing process has a smaller footprint compared to First Solar and can churn out modules in less than two hours--a half-hour quicker than the cycle time claimed by First Solar. Ullal says he doesn't think Abound risks overcrowding the market because there's no shortage of demand. "There is room in the market," he says.

Abound isn't the only thin-film maker chasing First Solar. Calyxo, a subsidiary of Q-Cells that was founded in 2005, and GE subsidiary PrimeStar are among several startups also pursuing the cadmium-telluride module market.

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U.S. Solar Market to Double in the Next Year

n a few years, the United States is likely to be the world's largest market for solar power, eclipsing Germany, which has taken the lead as a result of strong government incentives in spite of the relative paucity of sunlight in that country. A number of factors could make growth possible in the United States--especially changes in legislation that give utilities incentives to create large solar farms.
Last year, the U.S. solar industry got off to a slow start, but sales rebounded in the second half of the year, largely because of a drop in the prices of solar panels of up to 40 percent, partly caused by an oversupply due to the recession. Revenues for many solar companies were likely flat, but the megawatts of solar installed in the United States overall grew by 25 to 40 percent last year, says Roger Efird, the chairman of the Solar Energy Industry Association and the managing director of Suntech America, a branch of Suntech Power, the largest maker of crystalline silicon solar panels in the world.
This year, Efird says, solar installations could double, reaching a gigawatt of capacity. "That's a big number," he says. "If you are in the solar business, you were talking watts 15 years ago, you were talking kilowatts 10 years ago, and you have trouble even talking megawatts today."
The growth had several likely causes, including decreasing prices for solar panels and installation costs, as well as increasing state incentives, which can make solar far more attractive. According to Harry Fleming, the CEO of Acro Energy Technologies in Oakdale, CA, these changes mean that the cost of a typical five-kilowatt rooftop solar system has dropped from $22,000 after state incentives are applied ($40,000 without them) to $16,000 in the last 18 months. Prices are expected to fall to $13,000 by the end of the year ($25,000 without incentives). "This is going to make solar a middle-class product," he says.

At the same time, it seems likely that projects funded through the federal stimulus package will get underway this year. The U.S. General Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Defense, for example, are both ready to start solar projects, Efird says. "A big kick for us in 2010 will be these stimulus funds we've been waiting for," he says.
Another key could be solar projects undertaken by utilities. Efird says that a small change in the tax code has allowed utilities to take a tax credit for solar investment. After that, "we began to see, really for the first time, utilities starting to get interested in solar as a way of generating wholesale electricity that they could then resell." His company has done demonstration projects in the past, he says, "but we've never looked at the utility sector and said that's a market in itself." About a third of the new installations next year could come from utilities.
It's unlikely that a climate bill that puts a price on carbon dioxide will pass this year, but other legislation could further help the industry. A jobs bill, for example, might include incentives that were originally included in a climate and energy bill passed in the House last year. These incentives could include a renewable energy standard, which would require utilities across the country to use renewable energy. Just as important could be a national standard for connecting solar installations to the grid. Right now some states don't have laws that allow people to connect rooftop solar panels to the grid and receive credit for the power they generate, and the laws that do exist vary from state to state. A uniform standard could speed sales and installations.
Some experts, however, expect that a large number of the solar projects planned for the next several years will fall through--perhaps as many as 75 percent--because of the relative "immaturity" of the industry. Few large projects have been built so far, and so there will likely be large cost overruns.
For many solar companies, regulations, land-permit requirements, and the need for transmission lines have slowed down projects. In some cases, smaller solar projects located close to substations have a better chance than large solar farms that require special new transmission lines, even though the latter could, in theory, be more economical. One thing that could help with this would be designated areas that are preapproved for solar farms, and equipped with transmission lines that would serve a cluster of such farms. "But that would require a degree of strategic thinking that's currently absent," says Jim Barry, the chief executive of the Dublin, Ireland-based NRT, a company that's currently developing large solar projects in the United States.
Even with these problems, according to some estimates, the U.S. could account for 25 percent of the world's solar market by 2013, up from about 8 percent today. But the fraction of this solar that will be supplied by U.S. companies is less certain. Arun Majumdar, the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, said in testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee last month that over the last 15 years, the U.S. went from supplying 45 percent of the world's solar panels to less than 10 percent. But the growing U.S. market has started to attract solar manufacturing. Suntech Power, for example, which currently makes all of its solar panels in China, is building a solar factory in Phoenix this year. "We're the first Chinese company to export jobs to the U.S.," Efird says.

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The iPad: Like an iPhone, Only Bigger

Apple announced its latest creation, the iPad, at a special event in San Francisco, CA, today.

CEO Steve Jobs took the stage to unveil the device, which has been the subject of often dizzying speculation and excitement in recent weeks. "We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a magical and revolutionary product today," Jobs said.

The expectation and hope for many has been that Apple will revolutionize both the e-reader and tablet computing markets, just as it did with the cell-phone and PDA markets through the iPhone.

The iPad features a 9.7-inch (25-centimeter) multi-touch, in-plane switching LCD display; it is half an inch (1.3 centimeters) thick and weighs 1.5 pounds (.6 kilograms). The main processor is a one-gigahertz chip made by Apple, and the device is said to come with 10 hours of battery life when in full use. 

Along with 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth, the iPad will connect to AT&T's 3G wireless network. But the data plan is a hybrid of what is offered for phones and laptops already. Users will be asked to pay either $14.99 a month for up to 250 megabytes of data, or $29.99 a month for unlimited data.

The device costs between $499 and $829. The cheapest model will come with Wi-Fi only and 16 gigabytes of flash memory; the most expensive version includes 64 gigabytes of memory and 3G access. The device will ship in 60 days.

During the announcement, Jobs was careful to distinguish the iPad from the netbooks that have grown popular as a cheap alternative to laptops for browsing the Internet and simple computing tasks. Championing the design principles for which Apple is famous, he argued that the new device had to be better than a laptop for Web browsing, sending e-mail, viewing photos, reading e-books, and other tasks.

The interface for the device is similar to that of the iPhone: a multi-touch screen and an on-screen keyboard. The iPad is designed to run all iPhone apps "unmodified, right out of the box," according to Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software. It can run them either in an iPhone-sized window on the screen, or full-screen at lower resolution. Developers can also modify their applications specifically for the iPad, using a new software development kit that Apple made available today. "We think its going to be a whole other gold rush for developers as they build apps for the iPad," Forstall said.

Jobs and others demonstrated numerous applications running on an iPad. These included games, maps, and versions of Apple's iWork suite, showing word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Representatives from the New York Times demonstrated an electronic version of the newspaper created especially for the iPad. Jobs also announced an e-book reader app for iPad called iBooks that will have access to the catalogs of five major book publishers--Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette Book Group.

Carl Howe, an analyst focusing on mobile research at the Yankee Group, said that Apple is cleverly building on what it has already established with the iPod and iPhone.

Though Jobs did not focus as much attention on the e-reader potential of the device as expected, Howe believes that aspect could still prove significant. Because the iPad, unlike the Kindle, is designed with a high-resolution screen that can easily handle apps, movies, and music in addition to books, he thinks it will be more attractive to users than more dedicated e-readers. It might also be more attractive to publishers because the system will let them preserve more of their formatting and typography, and possibly allow for advertising.

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What to Expect from the Open iPhone

With its easy-to-use touch screen and slick software--including Apple's iTunes--the iPhone is the darling of the cell-phone industry. And last week, Apple made an announcement that only enhances the phone's appeal. The Cupertino, CA, company unveiled a set of new features for the phone that allow it to work well with business software, including e-mail and data-synching software. And crucially, the company released the instructions for the iPhone's hardware, offering a software development kit (SDK) that lets programmers outside Apple peek inside the gadget and write their own applications for it.

Anyone who uses an iPhone will soon reap the benefits of the phone's new capabilities--from accessing business e-mail, to running familiar desktop programs, to exploiting the built-in accelerometer for new gesture-based interfaces.

"This is a huge deal," says Ken Case, CEO of Omni Group, a company that implements ideas from David Allen's Getting Things Done in organizational software for the Mac operating system. "Apple has built this small handheld computer that's based around the same fundamental technology of the Mac. What [the SDK] means for us is that we now have the opportunity to build software that people have been clamoring for since the iPhone was announced." Case says that Omni plans to make an iPhone version of its "to-do list on steroids" that will capture data using the phone's camera and incorporate location information made available through the development kit. Omni's software could, for instance, automatically pull up a list of grocery items when it recognizes that the user has entered a store.

Businesses will be more likely to dole out iPhones to employees because, in addition to e-mail compatibility and synching ability, Apple is now offering a way for employees to access business servers that are behind firewalls. Moreover, the phones can be cleared of all data remotely, if they are lost or stolen. And Salesforce.com, a business services company, has already built applications using the iPhone development kit. "I think what you're going to see is, just the release of the enterprise integration alone is going to drive substantial business sales [of the iPhone]," says Raven Zachary, a software developer who started iPhoneDevCamp, a series of workshops to spur development of Web-based iPhone applications. "You'll see people leaving their BlackBerrys at the office."

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Micro Solar Cells Handle More Intense Sunlight

A startup company hopes to bring down the cost of generating power with concentrated sunlight by using microscale solar cells that can utilize twice as much light as other panels, without the need for expensive optics or cooling systems. Panels made from the tiny cells, which the Durham, NC-based company Semprius developed using a novel microprinting technology, also offer significant savings on materials costs. In late January, the company announced a joint agreement with Siemens to develop demonstration systems based on its technology. Semprius plans to begin volume production of the modules in 2013.

Adding concentrating lenses to solar panels increases the amount of electricity they can produce. But photovoltaic concentrators add a great deal of expense to a solar installation. The optical systems themselves are expensive and bulky--the larger a cell, the larger its paired lens must be. More intense light also means that more performance-degrading heat must be dissipated using heat sinks or fans. Although the cost is partly offset by the efficiency of high-concentration photovoltaics, it limits the potential power of such concentrator systems. The two major suppliers of concentrated solar modules, Amonix and Emcore, both sell systems based on conventional-size cells that operate under 500 times concentration sunlight with costly cooling systems.

Semprius's solar modules contain arrays of square cells that measure just 600 micrometers on each side. These cells have three semiconducting layers--each of which is based on gallium arsenide and absorbs a different band of sunlight--and they are made using a combination of chemical etching and printing, which means fewer raw materials are wasted. They can operate under sunlight concentrated 1,000 times using cheap optical systems. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratories, the efficiency of the resulting modules ranges from 25 to 35 percent and they can provide electricity for about 10 cents a kilowatt hour. The company expects the final costs, including installation, to be $2 to $3 per watt.

Last year, a study by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, suggested that microscale solar cells might offer various cost and design advantages. "You reduce the amount of semiconductor you need, so there can be a big cost savings," says Gregory Nielson, head scientist on the Sandia project. "And you can do things with the optics that you can't do with larger cells." 

Smaller solar cells are more efficient at dissipating heat. "When the cells are below a millimeter, they reject the heat so efficiently they'll be just as cool as a one-sun panel," without the need for any cooling systems, says Nielson. This is because the tiny cells have a much greater percentage of total area given up to heat-diffusing edges.

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PlayStation Phone: Innovator or Imitator?

fter seeing the mobile gaming market invaded by smart-phone makers in recent years, Sony Ericsson has now launched the first "Playstation phone," called the Xperia Play. The device resembles a regular smart phone but has gaming buttons that slide out from beneath the screen.
The Xperia Play, launched this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, is designed to fend off growing competition in the mobile gaming market while carving out a new niche among many other mobile devices.
Smart phones have encroached on the mobile gaming market in recent years—in 2009, revenue from iPhone games surpassed revenue from Sony's mobile PSP device, according to figures from research firm NPD and Flurry Analytics, a mobile analytics company.
Smart phones are now more powerful than many mobile gaming devices—the Samsung Galaxy S, for example, has three times the video processing of the Nintendo 3DS. Multitouch, motion-sensing interfaces have led to simple types of games that appeal to casual gamers. And smart-phone games sell for a few dollars, compared to around $30 for PSP games.
The Xperia Play's hardware matches that of any high-end smart phone. It has a one-gigahertz Snapdragon processor, an Adreno 205 graphics processor (both made by Qualcomm), and uses Google's Android operating system. It has a 10-centimeter, 854-by-480-pixel multitouch LCD screen, an eight-megapixel camera, and has eight gigabytes of SD memory, expandable to 32 gigabytes. Games can be downloaded via the Android Market.
In a time when many phones are focused on multitouch and motion control, the Xperia Play's slide-out keypad, featuring Sony's trademark gaming controls, may seem slightly retro. "It's almost like a step backward," says Daniel Ashdown, a mobile gaming research analyst with Juniper Research. But for the serious gamer, the buttons make sense, Ashdown says: "Sometimes you can't get such a good interaction without a keypad."
"If you are playing a driving game, you can use the accelerometers to steer, but it's quite hard to do braking and acceleration," adds Dan Hays, a mobile technology analyst and director of the consulting firm PRTM in Washington, D.C.
EA Games, which released its first games for the Android platform last October, has released two new titles for the Xperia Play: Fifa 10 and The Sims 3. According to Travis Boatman, VP of Worldwide Studios for EA Mobile, the company has been working with Sony Ericsson to ensure that the device's keypad gives players more control in the Xperia Play versions of its games.
Making PlayStation games available through the Android Market could help broaden the appeal of the platform, says Hays. Accessories could allow other Android handsets to play those games. But Xperia Play is unlikely to compete with the iPhone, says Hays. He believes the popularity of Apple and Android devices has both helped and hindered existing players in the mobile gaming market. It has drawn some customers away from dedicated consoles, but it has also drawn in fresh new users who may not have previously considered buying games, he says.
The trick, for Sony Ericsson, will be persuading some of these new players, as well as dedicated gamers, to buy the Xperia Play.

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Silicon Solar Cells Ditch the Wafers

Startup Crystal Solar hopes to take some of the cost out of high-performance single-crystalline solar cells by eliminating conventional silicon wafers. The company says it has developed a wafer-free process for making 50-micrometer-thick solar cells with over 15 percent efficiency, with the possibility of higher efficiencies. Because the process doesn't waste much silicon, Crystal Solar expects to produce cells for half or even a third of the cost of conventional cells.

Earlier this month, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced it would give the company up to $4 million over the next 18 months to fund development of the technology. Crystal Solar, based in Santa Clara, California, will open a small-scale pilot plant by early 2013.

For solar electricity to compete with coal-fired power, silicon solar cells must get still less expensive and more efficient. (NREL's goal is grid parity by 2017.)  In today's conventional solar cells, silicon accounts for about two-thirds of the materials costs. During the four-day process of creating a pure, single-crystal silicon ingot and sawing it down into thin pieces, about half the starting material is lost. Using less silicon in each finished solar cell would further save on materials costs.

Crystal Solar uses a process called epitaxial growth to deposit silicon films directly from gases, eliminating silicon wafers from the process. Over the past two years, the company has adapted the process make very thin single-crystalline silicon solar cells. Crystal Solar says it can make silicon cells that are highly efficient, but thinner than a piece of paper. The sweet spot, it believes, is 40 to 50 micrometers thick, approaching the lower limit of how thin a solar cell can be while still performing up to the material's theoretical potential. (Much thinner than this, and it won't absorb enough light.)

For many years, researchers have tried to adapt epitaxial growth methods to make thin single-crystalline solar cells. The chip industry has been using this method for decades—in fact, modern microelectronics has been made possible by machinery that uses high-temperature vacuum chambers to deposit different forms of silicon on top of silicon wafers. (Before starting Crystal Solar, chief technology officer K. V. Ravi was the director of renewables and environment at Applied Materials, one of the world's biggest suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment—including equipment used to grow various forms of epitaxial silicon for computer chips, display electronics, and solar cells.)

But the epitaxial method hasn't been workable for making thin-film single-crystalline solar cells—the kind with the highest performance.  To make the process work for single-crystalline solar cells, Crystal Solar had to remake the processing equipment from the ground up.

Crystal Solar says it has now made the process practical. The semiconductor industry utilizes 5 percent of the silicon in trichlorosilane gas. Ravi says Crystal Solar's equipment uses 60 to 70 percent of the silicon, and can make a solar cell 20 times faster than making one on conventional epitaxial growth equipment. Academic labs have made similar efficiency demonstrations with very small test cells that have never been scaled up. Crystal Solar has made standard-size solar cells with its process.

Making these thin, high-quality silicon films is one thing, but handling them is quite another. Ravi says the company has also developed equipment to handle, finish, and package the thin silicon sheets to make solar cells, though it is not disclosing details on how it does this.

The company has been in stealth mode since its founding in 2008, and Ravi would not name the sources that have provided Crystal Solar with unspecified tens of millions of dollars in two rounds of funding.  He says the company does not intend to become an equipment manufacturer, but will partner with another company to make and sell panels.

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A Twin-Cell Solar Panel

                                                          
A start-up called Stion will receive $1 million from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to develop a new type of low-cost, high-efficiency solar panel. The company will use the new funding to make solar panels that combine two types of solar cells, which will allow the panels to efficiently convert a wide range of the solar spectrum into electricity.

Stion already makes thin-film solar panels, a type of solar panel that is generally less efficient than conventional, crystalline silicon solar panels, but that can cost much less to manufacture—in some cases half as much. The new panels are meant to be just as efficient as conventional silicon ones, but still significantly cheaper to manufacture. The funding is part of the Obama administration's recently announcedSun Shot initiative, which has the goal of reducing the cost of installed solar panels by 75 percent, to make solar power competitive with fossil fuels.

Stion's existing panels convert 12 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity. This is a high figure for thin-film solar panels, which typically have efficiencies that range from 6 to 11 percent. The new panels use a tandem-solar-cell design to increase efficiencies to 15 to 18 percent, says founder and chief technology officer Howard Lee.

Lee won't say exactly what it costs Stion to make its first-generation solar panels, but he says the company is now "close to being competitive" with First Solar, the world's biggest thin-film solar-panel maker. First Solar's low costs and relatively high efficiencies have made it the only thin-film manufacturer to rival the production capacity of the largest conventional solar-panel makers. (The panels are cheaper than conventional silicon panels, but less efficient.)

First Solar makes cadmium-telluride thin-film solar panels, while Stion makes a type of solar panel made of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS). This material is just starting to be commercialized, and many experts believe it can achieve higher efficiencies than cadmium-telluride solar cells.

But two things set Stion's technology apart from other CIGS solar panel manufacturers. First, it doesn't require specialized manufacturing equipment—instead it uses conventional sputtering equipment that is used now to make thin films for semiconductor chips and hard drives. 

Lee says that will make it easy for it to expand its manufacturing worldwide. "You can use equipment that you can buy off the shelf," he says. 

Second, Stion's panels are tuned to efficiently convert different parts of the solar spectrum than other CIGS panels. Its first-generation product is tuned absorb light more toward the red end of the solar spectrum, which makes it a good match with a solar cell—made of materials similar to CIGS—designed for the blue end of the spectrum.

Pairing the cells increases the overall solar-panel efficiency and can drive down costs by reducing the number of panels that need to be installed. (Tandem thin-film solar cells made of amorphous silicon have been made by other manufacturers, but they are far less efficient than the ones Stion is developing.)

Stion, which was founded in 2006, has raised about $115 million to date. It makes solar panels in San Jose, California, and is building another factory in Mississippi with the help of an additional $75 million loan. Its goal under the NREL funding is to produce, within a year, a version of its tandem panels that could be mass-produced.

The NREL program is meant to fund companies that are taking "radically different" approaches to solar panels that could lead to the production of solar panels at "below 50 cents per watt," says Martha Symko-Davies, who manages the PV Technology Incubator project at NREL. Researchers have experimented with CIGS solar cells for decades, but she says companies such as Stion have made great strides in the last three to four years in bringing CIGS to market. As a result, making a tandem cell should now be relatively easy. "If you've got your CIGS working, doing what Stion is doing shouldn't take much more," she says.

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Google Gives a First Look at the Chrome OS

                               

Google gave the first demonstration of its Chrome operating system today, at the same time opening the source code to the public. The company highlighted features that have grown out of what vice president of product management Sundar Pichai called "a fundamentally different model of computing." Unlike other operating systems, which merely incorporate the Internet, Chrome is completely focused on it.

The Chrome OS is based so aggressively on the Internet that devices running it will not even have hard drives, Pichai said, emphasizing that "every app is a Web app." All data will be stored in the cloud, and every application will be accessed through the Chrome browser. Because of this, he added, users will never have to install software or manage updates on the device.

The user interface closely resembles the Chrome browser. When the user opens applications, they appear as tabbed windows across the top of the screen. Users can stick their favorite applications to the desktop with one click, creating permanent tabs for them.

Pichai coyly demonstrated the way the Chrome OS can deal with competitors' file formats. He inserted a USB drive into a laptop running Chrome OS, launching a window that showed that the device contained several Microsoft Excel files. When he clicked on one of the files, the system automatically pulled up the Windows Live Web-based version of Excel, opening the file inside.

"It turns out that Microsoft launched a killer app for Chrome OS," Pichai said, adding that anyone who writes a Web application is writing an application for Chrome by default.

The effect, Pichai hopes, is "speed, simplicity, and security." Today's version of the operating system can boot up in seven seconds and open a Web application in an additional three, he said. Google engineers are working to make those times shorter.

The implications of the Web-focused design were spelled out more fully by Matthew Papakipos, engineering director for Chrome OS. Part of the security scheme for Chrome is that it's hard to make any unauthorized changes to the system, he explained. The root filesystem, which stores the core files needed to make software run, is stored in a read-only format. On top of that, every time the user boots the machine, Chrome OS verifies cryptographic signatures that ensure that the operating system software is properly updated, and matches the build Google has approved.

If the system fails any of these checks, the operating system automatically launches into a recovery procedure and reinstalls the correct version of Chrome, Papakipos said. Normally, reinstalling an operating system is a painful process because of the effect that has on the user's data, settings, and applications. In the case of Chrome, he noted, all of that information will remain unaffected in the cloud.

Some data, such as Wi-Fi settings, is cached on the machine, but Papakipos said this is only to make the system work faster. The data is always synced back to the cloud. The vision, he added, is that a user could eventually get a new device, log in, and find everything running just as it had before, with all the settings still in place. 

Operating browser: The user interface of Google's Chrome operating system, demonstrated in public for the first time on Thursday, is designed to feel exactly like a browser. The company says the operating system will make it easy for users to discover new Web applications and store their favorites through an application menu, shown above. 
Credit: Google

Pichai said that Google plans to launch the first devices running Chrome OS by next year's holiday season. The operating system won't be available for download, however. Because of its tight integration between software and hardware, users will have to buy a Chrome device from one of Google's partners in order to use it. Google plans to give partners strict hardware requirements for the devices, specifying particular wireless cards and other components.

Developers interested in testing and debugging the system could run it today in a virtual machine.

Initially, Pichai said, Google is focused on "netbook-like devices" and expects that most of its target market will also have a desktop machine at home for applications that might not be available online or too processor-intensive to run, such as Photoshop. The Chrome OS is not intended for running without an Internet connection, but will have some offline capabilities. It will be able to display books or play media loaded from an external device, and it will be able to run Web applications that take advantage of the offline capabilities of new Web standards.

Though Google's Chrome browser hasn't yet taken over the marketplace, the operating system could stand a better chance, says James Staten, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. While users have to choose to download and use the browser, they might get the operating system by default in devices such as netbooks, and Staten believes that Google is counting on this. The key will be to make users happy enough with Chrome that they keep the software.

The strategy is a bit risky, Staten says, pointing out that though some netbook manufacturers have offered Linux-based operating systems by default, "there's been a heavy preference for swapping to Windows." Google hopes that users will want to use Google services such as Docs, Maps, and Gmail, and thus will like the integration that the Chrome operating system provides, he says.

To have a truly successful Web operating system, Google will have to make sure that users are satisfied that their data is consistent, available, and secure, says Amin Vahdat, a professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego, who was one of the researchers to first look into the merits and challenges of such a system.

Google's resources and many data centers, combined with today's increasing bandwidth, make it easier to keep data available, but the problem hasn't been completely solved. As far as security in the cloud, Vahdat says, "with services like Gmail and Google Docs, Google has demonstrated that for certain applications, people and even companies are willing to give up a little control and potentially security in exchange for the convenience that its model provides."

Though he thinks now is the right time to launch a commercial Web operating system, Vahdat adds that adoption won't happen overnight. He says Google is "laying the seeds now for something that could become widespread over the next three to five years."

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The Android that Apple's Rivals Have Been Looking For

                                 

When Apple's iPad debuted last year, it resurrected a form of computing long thought unworkable, and created entirely new markets for book and news publishers. Attempts by others to follow that lead have lacked the iPad's polish, but Google may have changed the equation by revealing its own take on the tablet experience yesterday.

Rather than offering a radical departure from the vision introduced by Apple, the company's tablet-flavored version of its Android mobile operating system—dubbed Honeycomb—brings a handful of slick new user-interface features, designed for the more powerful hardware of a tablet. It also significantly streamlines the experience of installing apps on a tablet.

Before an audience at Google's Mountain View headquarters yesterday, Hugo Barra, the company's director of mobile products, explained the user-interface tweaks designed to make tablet computing slicker and more powerful.

Some new elements of the operating system will be familiar to iPad users. But one major departure is that users can install "widgets" onto their home screen. These widgets provide cut down access to apps and at-a-glance information. For example, a Gmail widget places a small but scrollable in-box onto the desktop. YouTube and news apps such as Pulse use a "stacks" widget, which appears like a stack of cards with the latest information—like a news photo—on the top card. A user can tap on that card to enter the app and see the full content, or flick a finger over the widget to cruise through other information in the stack.

"Widgets can be used to 'bubble up' important information to the home screen," said Barra. "For the user, it's about quick and easy access to important information."

After the presentation, Akshay Kothari, cofounder of Alphonso Labs, which worked with Google to modify the Pulse News app for Honeycomb, told Technology Review that he considered widgets to be the biggest improvement over the iPad. "With these widgets, the user can interact a lot with their most-used apps without even opening them,

Two elements of Honeycomb's interface are always accessible to the user, and reside in the screen's lower left and right corners. In the lower left are three buttons: a "back" button, a multitasking button that calls up a list of all running apps, and a "home" button. In the lower right, a PC-like notification area displays alerts of new instant messages, and also allows access to apps running in the background and to system settings.

Apps can feature multiple panes, or "fragments," and also support drag-and-drop actions, which makes using them closer to the experience of using a desktop application. Support for apps built using fragments is built into Honeycomb, said Barra. Fragments are self-contained and can be used to build apps for phones and tablets in a modular way, he said, which should speed the creation of apps.

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