n g o b o k @ b l o g m a s

An ultra-thin television brighter and crisper than current generation screens will go on sale from Sony in December.

The TV uses organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) to produce the image, resulting in a screen only 3mm thick.

OLED screens are more energy efficient than LCD panels as they do not need a backlight to boost brightness.

But it is difficult and expensive to make large screens using the technology. Sony’s first OLED TV costs £850 and has an 11in display.

OLED screens are brighter than LCD panels and also have better contrast ratio - resulting in sharper pictures.

The diodes emit a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply and are also being developed for use as replacements to traditional light bulbs.

Colour display

Different organic materials produce different colours and are combined to produce a colour display.

Sony has hailed the new television as a signal of its returning strength as a technology innovator.

“Some people have said attractive products are slow to come at Sony despite its technological strength,” said Sony president Ryoji Chubachi at a news conference at its Tokyo headquarters.
He added: “I want this world’s first OLED TV to be the symbol of the revival of Sony’s technological prowess.

“I want this to be the flag under which we charge forward to turn the fortunes around.”

Other firms are also working on OLED screens - Samsung has shown off a 40-inch TV using the technology - but Sony is the first to market.

“I don’t think OLED TVs will replace LCD TVs overnight. But I do believe this is a type of technology with very high potential, something that will come after LCD TVs,” said Sony executive deputy president Katsumi Ihara.

The new TV goes on sale in Japan on 1 December. There are no plans for a global launch as yet.

The OLED TV has a lifespan of about 30,000 hours of viewing - half that of Sony’s LCD televisions.

LG and DivX has announced their partnership to enable a high-quality consumer media experience with the LG Viewty (Model: LG-KU990), a new 5.0 mega-pixel digital camera phone available from LG Mobile. The DivX Mobile Certified LG Viewty supports DivX playback and joins the over 100 million DivX Certified devices shipped into the market today, including DVD players, in-car devices, digital still cameras and more.

The LG Viewty enables consumers to easily playback a wide range of DivX files from the PC on the go or output to a TV monitor without converting to another format. Consumers can also view DivX files from popular online video communities such as Stage6.com at ten times the speed of WCDMA through the HSDPA 3.6 high speed internet access capability. DivX is a widely popular digital media format that enables consumers to create, share and playback high-quality video content across an ecosystem of platforms and devices.

LG Viewty is the first in LG’s new line of high technology handsets and boasts a number of ‘world first’ features never seen before on a mobile handset, including 120 fps video recording as well as unique camera functionality such as manual focus, image stabilizer and handwriting recognition that makes editing easy on the Viewty’s 3-inch wide LCD touch screen.

It is not yet known if the LG Viewty will make its way to Malaysia but the phone will go on sale in Mid October starting in Europe and then move on to other regions.

Microsoft s removing the beta, or test, tag from Live Search, its next-generation search engine, and making it the underlying search tool at its MSN.com portal.

The move comes as Microsoft attempts to gain traction in the search engine market, where it remains a distant third behind leader Google and Yahoo. Because search engine-based advertising is a fast-growing, multibillion-dollar business, Microsoft has invested heavily in improving its search tools and accompanying ad network. But it has failed to make a dent in Google’s dominance.

In June, Google nabbed 45 percent of all search engine queries in the U.S., while Yahoo got 29 percent and Microsoft 13 percent, according to comScore Networks Inc. This represents a market share reduction for Microsoft of almost 3 percentage points from June 2005.

From Tuesday to Thursday, Microsoft will replace the current MSN Search engine on MSN.com with Live Search, which features a revamped image search service, an improved local search, a redesigned user interface and new tools to refine query results, said Derrick Connell, general manager of the Microsoft search business unit. The change will take place progressively on different MSN host servers.

When users run a search on MSN.com, they will be taken to a Live Search results page on the Live.com domain, but there will be links there to guide users back to the MSN.com portal, he said.

Live Search went into public beta testing in March at Live.com, the home page of the Live-branded initiative Microsoft launched last year to boost its software-as-a-service offerings. Live.com is also exiting its beta status this week.

Among the enhancements in Live Search are new options to view full-size photos in image search results and an increased number of “bird’s eye” aerial images in local search, which is shedding its beta label in its U.S. and the U.K. services.

Live Search also features a new social search service called QnA, in which users can pose questions and have others chime in with answers. Yahoo, Google and others have similar question-and-answer search services.