Miscellaneous

Qualcomm today announced that it has expanded an agreement between a subsidiary and Sharp and taken an equity stake in the ailing electronics maker.

Sharp and Qualcomm subsidiary Pixtronix already have a display technology agreement between them, according to Qualcomm. This new deal extends that partnership. The agreement centers on displays using Sharp's IGZO technology, which is widely considered one of the best options for visual quality in the industry.

As part of the agreement, Qualcomm has dropped some cash in Sharp, earning it a minority stake in the company.

Sharp saw its sales drop 16 percent year-over-year to … Read more

Ppl! Txting is 20 yrs old! Thats soo GR8!

Depending on your perspective, you might thank or blame Matti Makkonen, the pioneer of texting, for how it changed human communication.

Just don't shoot the first texter.

Neil Papworth is the British-born engineer who actually sent the first text message, 20 years ago today. Typed out on a PC, it was sent to a Richard Jarvis of Vodafone and read: Merry Christmas. … Read more

The text message may be celebrating its 20th birthday today, but as far as we know, only one SMS has been sent by a fox in all those years. (And by fox, of course, we mean the mammal belonging to the Canidae family, not the mammal belonging to the hot-humans-with-phones family).

The text reads like so: "jlv l øi\a0ab 34348tu åaugjoi zølbmosdji jsøg ijio sjiw," which, as the multilingual among you may have already ascertained, is Norwegian fox speak. … Read more

Mitsubishi plans to end the manufacturing of rear-projection television sets, the last major player to leave the dwindling business, according to a report.

Often clunky, rear-projection television set manufacture began to dwindle after flat-panel LCD displays took over the consumer market, and Mitsubishi currently retains a virtual monopoly in the market after other technology firms exited the digital light processing (DLP) screen market. When rival firms -- including Sony and Samsung -- vanished, Mitsubishi continued to release new DLP sets, but seems to have finally thrown in the towel.

According to a company memo obtained by consumer electronics industry site CE Pro, … Read more

I remember when Paul Mascarenas was named CTO of Ford. It was January 2011, and literally days later he made his way to the CNET stage for a chat at the Consumer Electronics Show. About 18 months later, the company opened its new Silicon Valley Lab to try and emulate the pace of innovation found in the electronics industry. These were very real indications that Mascarenas and Ford would place more than lip service on being in the midst of consumer electronics, and not just in the car business.

Mascarenas is part of CEO Alan Mulally's reinvention of Ford … Read more

Her majesty looks fantastic in plastic.

A polymer portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is in many Canadian wallets now that a new $20 bill packed with anti-forgery tech is in circulation.

The plastic note follows the circulation of new plastic $100 and $50 bills, but since it changes hands with greater frequently, more Canadians are taking notice.

Reactions to have been mixed. Some say the bills tend to stick together in stacks and ATMs, others have praised their security features, and some say they look like play money.

Apart from Braille-like raised dots for visually impaired users, the twenty's … Read more

I have a friend called Shirley.

She is from very refined stock. One of the results of this is that she can eat corn on the cob with such speed and precision that what remains when she's finished is a perfectly smooth stick.

Not everyone can do this.

Which is why I was especially moved by a YouTube video that suggests a new way to eat corn if not with utter precision, at least with astounding speed.… Read more

This year's Cyber Monday was one for the record books.

Market analyst ComScore reported that spending in the U.S. on Monday reached $1.465 billion, up 17 percent from a year ago, "representing the heaviest [U.S.] online spending day in history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday) to surpass $1 billion in sales."

ComScore said that the top category for sales was digital content and subscriptions (up 28 percent), followed by consumer electronics (up 24 percent and "buoyed by gains in smartphone sales"), computer hardware (up 22 percent, … Read more

Need a custom architectural or medical model in short order? How about a 3D map or, um... a handgun? Soon, Staples could be the place for all of the above -- OK, maybe not the gun -- through a new in-store 3D printing service just announced this week.

The office supply chain's apparent partner in the venture, MCOR Technologies, makes a commercial-class color 3D printer called the Iris that will be deployed first to Staples locations in the Netherlands and Belgium in early 2013. MCOR announced the printing service, dubbed Staples Easy 3D, in a press release, and at … Read more