A heat map is a graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors. A very similar presentation form is a tree map. The term is also used to mean its thematic application as a choropleth map.

Heat maps originated in 2D displays of the values in a data matrix. Larger values were represented by small dark gray or black squares (pixels) and smaller values by lighter squares. Sneath (1957) displayed the results of a cluster analysis by permuting the rows and the columns of
a matrix to place similar values near each other according to the clustering. Jacques Bertin used a similar representation to display data that conformed to a Guttman scale. The idea for joining cluster trees to the rows and columns of the data matrix originated with Robert Ling in 1973. Ling used overstruck printer characters to represent different shades of gray, one character-width per pixel. Leland Wilkinson developed the first computer program in 1994 (SYSTAT) to produce cluster heat maps with high-resolution color graphics. The Eisen et al. display shown in the figure is a replication of the earlier SYSTAT design.

There are several different kinds of heat map:

• Web heat maps have been used for displaying areas of a Web page most frequently scanned by visitors.
• Biology heat maps are typically used in molecular biology to represent the level of expression of many genes across a number of comparable samples (e.g. cells in different states, samples from different patients) as they are obtained from DNA microarrays.
• The tree map is a 2D hierarchical partitioning of data that visually resembles a heat map.
  A mosaic plot is a tiled heat map for representing a two-way or higher-way table of data. As with treemaps, the rectangular regions in a mosaic plot are hierarchically organized. The means that the regions are rectangles instead of squares. Friendly (1994) surveys the history and usage of this graph.

Ref.Wiki

So What’s a Heat Map and how it is useful for Web marketing?

Through years of research in web marketing, patterns have been seen in the ways that people not only navigate the web, but web sites and even web pages. All of this data was compiled by marketing firms and used to create a heat map.

Heat maps are charts that show us where most people look when they open a web site or page, by human instinct. The map displays regions colored yellow, orange and red – the darker the color, the more high-profile the spot is.

So if you are a web analyst/developer: simply look at a heat map before you design your next web site, plan to remodel your existing one, or are planning on remodeling your online advertising campaign, and make sure the ads are placed in the right “hot” areas!

Website Heat Maps

A heat map enables the website owner to determine what areas of a website the visitors find most interesting. It is best displayed visually.

Heat map image of Google

As you can see the more red the color, the greater the activity on that area of the website. Thus, for Google rankings the top 5 listings get a majority of the eye balls. You will also notice the red lines on the image, these represent the “fold,” the area above where you would have to scroll down to see more of the page.

Website Heat Maps with eye tracking

An eyetracking “heatmap” shows how much users looked at different parts of a Web page. Areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer fixations, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn’t attract any fixations.

As we all know, Opera is the master of mobile internet browsing. I have installed Opera Mobile 10 which is a symbian version and worked flawlessly on Nokia 5800. The entire layout and user interface which appears on Nokia 5800 gives a feel as if you are not browsing on a handset.

This version of Opera is much more stable than previous versions. The kind of functionalities that have been included is really useful and power packed. Features like to copy text on your webpage, webpage save option, password save option, Download files with Opera 10 are just fantastic.

You can set your own preferences like, page magnification value, full screen option, Opera Turbo option and a whole bunch of other settings. I browsed through our entire blog, other websites on Opera 10 and it did not even crash once. The load time for pages was as usual very fast and optimized to eat up as less data as possible.

Its time to say bye bye to the nasty phone browser. I recommand installing Opera 10 on your mobile phones.

A first-class mobile Web experience

Opera provides a brand-new look and feel in a class of its own with smooth animations and visually appealing graphics. The Opera rendering engine displays complete Web pages, just like on your computer, and is fully standards-compliant.

Switching between open Web pages is a snap with tabs, and Speed Dial launches your favorite Web sites with a single click.

Opera’s well-designed user interface has you navigating gracefully and efficiently on both touchscreen and keypad devices. The browser comfortably adjusts to your needs by switching between portrait and landscape mode and also lets you adjust the font size for easier reading.

The Web has never been so fast on your phone. Opera’s streamlined rendering engine and server-side compression allows Opera to load Web pages much more quickly than other mobile phone browsers. Features, such as the address bar, shortcut keys and touchscreen control, save you time and effort when performing

basic tasks, such as entering addresses or scrolling rapidly through pages.

User experience

Multitask with tabs

Keep several pages open at the same time and easily switch between them using tabs – just as you would on your desktop computer. On touchscreen devices, visual tabs even allow you to see a preview of the open pages you can select.

Feel at ease on any device

The user interface has been designed for both touchscreen and keypad-style mobile phones. Scroll and pan at warp speed with your keypad or flick the touchscreen to use kinetic scrolling for long pages.

Instant access to your favorite Web sites

See your top Web sites visually laid out on your screen in Speed Dial and load each of them with a quick tap. It is easy to add your preferred pages to Speed Dial, and you even can synchronize them with your desktop, using Opera Link.

Enter addresses with far less typing

Effortlessly enter addresses thanks to our sophisticated URL auto-completion. Opera intelligently guesses what URL you are typing in the address field, allowing you to start loading that site after entering only a few letters. Your bookmarks and previously visited addresses also appear in a list as you type,

so you can select the one you want.

Read the largest pages comfortably

Even pages designed for large screens are easy to read on your mobile phone, with text wrapping, which ensures that you can read most content without having to scroll sideways.

Your view where you need it

When moving around large, complex Web pages, Opera will stop just where it needs to, snapping the view to the column you want to read.

Type without losing focus

Entering text into your browser with a touchscreen phone just got easier. On phones where the default touchscreen keyboard provides a less-than-optimal user experience, you can use Opera’s virtual keyboard to type and edit information without ever leaving the page you are viewing.

Make the most of your screen

Take advantage of every pixel that your phone’s screen has to offer with Opera’s fullscreen mode. The address bar and toolbars disappear until they are needed, allowing you to see more of the page you are viewing.

Get a better view

Opera smartly fits Web pages to your screen when you visit a site, showing you an overview of the site. To get a close-up view and begin reading, a simple tap or button press is all that is required to zoom in exactly where you want to look.

Congratulations to Opera on the new release!

On the Net, we really only have to deal with three main types of images: CompuServe GIF, JPEG, Bitmaps and now png. At the moment, those are the only three that are roundly supported by the major browsers. But what’s the difference between them? What does it mean if a GIF is interlaced or non-interlaced? Is a JPEG progressive because it enjoys art deco? Does a Bitmap actually offer directions somewhere? And the most often asked question:

When do I use a specific image format?

I’ve been meaning to write this article for a while. I offer it as a catch-all answer to the many questions I get about images and their use.

Image or Graphic?

Technically, neither. If you really want to be strict, computer pictures are files, the same way WORD documents or solitaire games are files. They’re all a bunch of ones and zeros all in a row. But we do have to communicate with one another so let’s decide. Image. We’ll use “image”. That seems to cover a wide enough topic range.

“Graphic” is more of an adjective, as in “graphic format.” You see, we denote images on the Internet by their graphic format. GIF is not the name of the image. GIF is the compression factors used to create the raster format set up by CompuServe.

So, they’re all images unless you’re talking about something specific.

44 Different Graphic Formats?

It does seem like a big number, doesn’t it? In reality, there are not 44 different graphic format names. Many of the 44 are different versions under the same compression umbrella, interlaced and non-interlaced GIF, for example. Before getting into where we get all 44, and there are more than that even, let me back-peddle for a moment.

There actually are only two basic methods for a computer to render, or store and display, an image. When you save an image in a specific format you are creating either a raster or meta/vector graphic format.

Raster

Raster image formats (RIFs) should be the most familiar to Internet users. A Raster format breaks the image into a series of colored dots called pixels. The number of ones and zeros (bits) used to create each pixel denotes the depth of color you can put into your images. If your pixel is denoted with only one bit-per-pixel then that pixel must be black or white. Why? Because that pixel can only be a one or a zero, on or off, black or white.

Bump that up to 4 bits-per-pixel and you’re able to set that colored dot to one of 16 colors. If you go even higher to 8 bits-per-pixel, you can save that colored dot at up to 256 different colors.

Does that number, 256 sound familiar to anyone? That’s the upper color level of a GIF image. Sure, you can go with less than 256 colors, but you cannot have over 256.

That’s why a GIF image doesn’t work overly well for photographs and larger images. There are a whole lot more than 256 colors in the world. Images can carry millions. But if you want smaller icon images, GIFs are the way to go.

Raster image formats can also save at 16, 24, and 32 bits-per-pixel. At the two highest levels, the pixels themselves can carry up to 16,777,216 different colors. The image looks great! Bitmaps saved at 24 bits-per-pixel are great quality images, but of course they also run about a megabyte per picture. There’s always a trade-off, isn’t there?

The three main Internet formats, GIF, JPEG, and Bitmap, are all Raster formats.

Some other Raster formats include the following:

• CLP Windows Clipart
• DCX ZOFT Paintbrush
• DIB OS/2 Warp format
• FPX Kodak’s FlashPic
• IMG GEM Paint format
• JIF JPEG Related Image format
• MAC MacPaint
• MSP MacPaint New Version
• PCT Macintosh PICT format
• PCX ZSoft Paintbrush
• PPM Portable Pixel Map (UNIX)
• PSP Paint Shop Pro format
• RAW Unencoded image format
• RLE Run-Length Encoding

(Used to lower image bit rates)

• TIFF Aldus Corporation format
• WPG WordPerfect image format

Pixels and the Web

Since I brought up pixels, I thought now might be a pretty good time to talk about pixels and the Web. How much is too much? How many is too few?
There is a delicate balance between the crispness of a picture and the number of pixels needed to display it. Let’s say you have two images, each is 5 inches across and 3 inches down. One uses 300 pixels to span that five inches, the other uses 1500. Obviously, the one with 1500 uses smaller pixels. It is also the one that offers a more crisp, detailed look. The more pixels, the more detailed the image will be. Of course, the more pixels the more bytes the image will take up.

So, how much is enough? That depends on whom you are speaking to, and right now you’re speaking to me. I always go with 100 pixels per inch. That creates a ten-thousand pixel square inch. I’ve found that allows for a pretty crisp image without going overboard on the bytes. It also allows some leeway to increase or decrease the size of the image and not mess it up too much.

The lowest I’d go is 72 pixels per inch, the agreed upon low end of the image scale. In terms of pixels per square inch, it’s a whale of a drop to 5184. Try that. See if you like it, but I think you’ll find that lower definition monitors really play havoc with the image.

Meta/Vector Image Formats

You may not have heard of this type of image formatting, not that you had heard of Raster, either. This formatting falls into a lot of proprietary formats, formats made for specific programs. CorelDraw (CDR), Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language (HGL), and Windows Metafiles (EMF) are a few examples.

Where the Meta/Vector formats have it over Raster is that they are more than a simple grid of colored dots. They’re actual vectors of data stored in mathematical formats rather than bits of colored dots. This allows for a strange shaping of colors and images that can be perfectly cropped on an arc. A squared-off map of dots cannot produce that arc as well. In addition, since the information is encoded in vectors, Meta/Vector image formats can be blown up or down (a property known as “scalability”) without looking jagged or crowded (a property known as “pixelating”).

So that I do not receive e-mail from those in the computer image know, there is a difference in Meta and Vector formats. Vector formats can contain only vector data whereas Meta files, as is implied by the name, can contain multiple formats. This means there can be a lovely Bitmap plopped right in the middle of your Windows Meta file. You’ll never know or see the difference but, there it is. I’m just trying to keep everybody happy.

The following sections offer examples of the image formats discussed here. The images are all from my wife’s and my trip to Turkey in the summer of 1998. It was a wonderful time in a wonderful country.

The images are large on purpose to show the effects of the format.

What’s A Bitmap?

I get that question a lot. Usually it’s followed with “How come it only works on Microsoft Internet Explorer?” The second question’s the easiest. Microsoft invented the Bitmap format. It would only make sense they would include it in their browser. Every time you boot up your PC, the majority of the images used in the process and on the desktop are Bitmaps.

Against what I said above, Bitmaps will display on all browsers, just not in the familiar < img SRC = " -- " / > format we’re all used to. I see Bitmaps used mostly as return images from PERL Common Gateway Interfaces (CGIs). A counter is a perfect example. Page counters that have that “odometer” effect () are Bitmap images created by the server, rather than as an inline image. Bitmaps are perfect for this process because they’re a simple series of colored dots. There’s nothing fancy to building them.

It’s actually a fairly simple process. In the script that runs the counter, you “build” each number for the counter to display. Note the counter is black and white. That’s only a one bit-per-pixel level image. To create the number zero in the counter above, you would build a grid 7 pixels wide by 10 pixels high. The pixels you want to remain black, you would denote as zero. Those you wanted white, you’d denote as one. Here’s what it looks like:

0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 1 1 1 0 0
0 1 1 1 1 1 0
0 1 1 0 1 1 0
0 1 1 0 1 1 0
0 1 1 0 1 1 0
0 1 1 0 1 1 0
0 1 1 1 1 1 0
0 0 1 1 1 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0

See the number zero in the graph above? I made it red so it would stand out a bit more. You create one of those patterns for the numbers 0 through 9. The PERL script then returns the Bitmap image representing the numbers and you get that neat little odometer effect. That’s the concept of a Bitmap. A grid of colored points. The more bits per pixel, the more fancy the Bitmap can be.

Bitmaps are good images, but they’re not great. If you’ve played with Bitmaps versus any other image formats, you might have noticed that the Bitmap format creates images that are a little heavy on the bytes. The reason is that the Bitmap format is not very efficient at storing data. What you see is pretty much what you get, one series of bits stacked on top of another.

Compression

I said above that a Bitmap was a simple series of pixels all stacked up. But the same image saved in GIF or JPEG format uses less bytes to make up the file. How? Compression.

“Compression” is a computer term that represents a variety of mathematical formats used to compress an image’s byte size. Let’s say you have an image where the upper right-hand corner has four pixels all the same color. Why not find a way to make those four pixels into one? That would cut down the number of bytes by three-fourths, at least in the one corner. That’s a compression factor.

Bitmaps can be compressed to a point. The process is called “run-length encoding.” Runs of pixels that are all the same color are all combined into one pixel. The longer the run of pixels, the more compression. Bitmaps with little detail or color variance will really compress. Those with a great deal of detail don’t offer much in the way of compression. Bitmaps that use the run-length encoding can carry either the common “.bmp” extension or “.rle”. Another difference between the two files is that the common Bitmap can accept 16 million different colors per pixel. Saving the same image in run-length encoding knocks the bits-per-pixel down to 8. That locks the level of color in at no more than 256. That’s even more compression of bytes to boot.

So, why not create a single pixel when all of the colors are close? You could even lower the number of colors available so that you would have a better chance of the pixels being close in color. Good idea. The people at CompuServe felt the same way.

The GIF Image Formats

So, why wasn’t the Bitmap chosen as the King of all Internet Images? Because Bill Gates hadn’t yet gotten into the fold when the earliest browsers started running inline images. I don’t mean to be flippant either; I truly believe that.

GIF, which stands for “Graphic Interchange Format,” was first standardized in 1987 by CompuServe, although the patent for the algorithm (mathematical formula) used to create GIF compression actually belongs to Unisys. The first format of GIF used on the Web was called GIF87a, representing its year and version. It saved images at 8 pits-per-pixel, capping the color level at 256. That 8-bit level allowed the image to work across multiple server styles, including CompuServe, TCP/IP, and AOL. It was a graphic for all seasons, so to speak.

CompuServe updated the GIF format in 1989 to include animation, transparency, and interlacing. They called the new format, you guessed it: GIF89a.

There’s no discernable difference between a basic (known as non-interlaced) GIF in 87 and 89 formats.Even the bytes are the same. It’s the transparency, animation, and non-interlacing additions to GIF89a that really set it apart. Let’s look at each one.

Animation

I remember when animation really came into the mainstream of Web page development. I was deluged with e-mail asking how to do it. There’s been a tutorial up for a while now at http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/animate.html. Stop by and see it for instruction on how to create the animations yourself. Here, we’re going to quickly discuss the concepts of how it all works.

What you are seeing in that example are 12 different images, each set one “hour” farther ahead than the one before it. Animate them all in a row and you get that stopwatch effect.

The concept of GIF89a animation is much the same as a picture book with small animation cells in each corner. Flip the pages and the images appear to move. Here, you have the ability to set the cell’s (technically called an “animation frame”) movement speed in 1/100ths of a second. An internal clock embedded right into the GIF keeps count and flips the image when the time comes.

The animation process has been bettered along the way by companies who have found their own method of compressing the GIFs further. As you watch an animation you might notice that very little changes from frame to frame. So, why put up a whole new GIF image if only a small section of the frame needs to be changed? That’s the key to some of the newer compression factors in GIF animation. Less changing means fewer bytes.

Transparency

Again, if you’d like a how-to, I have one you for you at http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/transpar.html. A transparent GIF is fun but limited in that only one color of the 256-shade palette can be made transparent.

As you can see, the bytes came out the same after the image was put through the transparency filter. The process is best described as similar to the weather forecaster on your local news. Each night they stand in front of a big green (sometimes blue) screen and deliver the weather while that blue or green behind them is “keyed” out and replaced by another source. In the case of the weather forecaster, it’s usually a large map with lots of Ls and Hs.

The process in television is called a “chroma key.” A computer is told to hone in on a specific color, let’s say it’s green. Chroma key screens are usually green because it’s the color least likely to be found in human skin tones. You don’t want to use a blue screen and then chroma out someone’s pretty blue eyes. That chroma (color) is then “erased” and replaced by another image.

Think of that in terms of a transparent GIF. There are only 256 colors available in the GIF. The computer is told to hone in on one of them. It’s done by choosing a particular red/green/blue shade already found in the image and blanking it out. The color is basically dropped from the palette that makes up the image. Thus whatever is behind it shows through.

The shape is still there though. Try this: Get an image with a transparent background and alter its height and width in your HTML code. You’ll see what should be the transparent color seeping through.

Any color that’s found in the GIF can be made transparent, not just the color in the background. If the background of the image is speckled then the transparency is going to be speckled. If you cut out the color blue in the background, and that color also appears in the middle of the image, it too will be made transparent.

When I put together a transparent image, I make the image first, then copy and paste it onto a slightly larger square. That square is the most hideous green I can mix up. I’m sure it doesn’t appear in the image. That way only the background around the image will become clear.

Interlaced vs. Non-Interlaced GIF

The GIF images of me playing the Turkish Sitar were non-interlaced format images. This is what is meant when someone refers to a “normal” GIF or just “GIF”.

When you do NOT interlace an image, you fill it in from the top to the bottom, one line after another.

Hopefully, you’re on a slower connection computer so you got the full effect of waiting for the image to come in. It can be torture sometimes. That’s where the brilliant Interlaced GIF89a idea came from.

Interlacing is the concept of filling in every other line of data, then going back to the top and doing it all again, filling in the lines you skipped. Your television works that way. The effect on a computer monitor is that the graphic appears blurry at first and then sharpens up as the other lines fill in. That allows your viewer to at least get an idea of what’s coming up rather than waiting for the entire image, line by line.

JPEG Image Formats

JPEG is a compression algorithm developed by the people the format is named after, the Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG’s big selling point is that its compression factor stores the image on the hard drive in less bytes than the image is when it actually displays. The Web took to the format straightaway because not only did the image store in fewer bytes, it transferred in fewer bytes. As the Internet adage goes, the pipeline isn’t getting any bigger so we need to make what is traveling through it smaller.

For a long while, GIF ruled the Internet roost. I was one of the people who didn’t really like this new JPEG format when it came out. It was less grainy than GIF, but it also caused computers without a decent amount of memory to crash the browser. (JPEGs have to be “blown up” to their full size. That takes some memory.) There was a time when people only had 8 or 4 megs or memory in their boxes. Really. It was way back in the Dark Ages.

JPEGs are “lossy.” That’s a term that means you trade-off detail in the displayed picture for a smaller storage file. I always save my JPEGs at 50% or medium compression.

The difference between the 1% and 50% compression is not too bad, but the drop in bytes is impressive. The numbers I am showing are storage numbers, the amount of hard drive space the image takes up.

You’ve probably already surmised that 50% compression means that 50% of the image is included in the algorithm. If you don’t put a 50% compressed image next to an exact duplicate image at 1% compression, it looks pretty good. But what about that 99% compression image? It looks horrible, but it’s great for teaching. Look at it again. See how it appears to be made of blocks? That’s what’s meant by lossy. Bytes are lost at the expense of detail. You can see where the compression algorithm found groups of pixels that all appeared to be close in color and just grouped them all together as one. You might be hard pressed to figure out what the image was actually showing if I didn’t tell you.

Progressive JPEGs

You can almost guess what this is all about. A progressive JPEG works a lot like the interlaced GIF89a by filling in every other line, then returning to the top of the image to fill in the remainder.

Obviously, here’s where bumping up the compression does not pay off. Rule of thumb: If you’re going to use progressive JPEG, keep the compression up high, 75% or better.

Portable Network Graphics (PNG)

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a bitmapped image format that employs lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve upon and replace GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) as an image-file format not requiring a patent license. It is spelled out as P-N-G. The PNG acronym is optionally recursive, unofficially standing for “PNG’s Not GIF”.

PNG supports palette-based (palettes of 24-bit RGB or 32-bit RGBA colors), greyscale, RGB, or RGBA images. PNG was designed for transferring images on the Internet, not professional graphics, and so does not support other color spaces (such as CMYK).

PNG files nearly always use file extension “PNG” or “png” and are assigned MIME media type “image/png”; it was approved for this use by The Internet Engineering Steering Group on October 14, 1996.

Reader’s Image Questions

Which image do I use where?

There’s just not a good answer to this question. No matter what I say, someone else can give you just as compelling a reason why you should do the opposite. I’ll tell you the rules I follow:

• Small images, like icons and buttons: GIF (usually non-interlaced)
• Line art, grayscale (black and white), cartoons: GIF (usually non-interlaced)
• Scanned images and photographs: JPEG. (I prefer sequential. I’m not a fan of progressive.)
• Large images or images with a lot of detail: JPEG (I prefer sequential)

That said, I also follow the thinking, “Do people really need to see this image?” Can I get away with text rather than an image link? Can I make links to images allowing the viewer to choose whether to look or not? The fewer images I have on a page, the faster it comes in. I also attempt to have the same images across multiple pages, if possible. That way the viewer only has to wait once. After that, the images are in the cache and they pop right up.

How do I save in these formats?

You have to have an image editor. I own three. Most of my graphic work for the Web is done in Photoshop. I do that because Photoshop is shareware and you can get your hands on the same copy I have. That way I know if I can do it, you can do it.

To get these formats, you need to make a point of saving in these formats. When your image editor is open and you have an image you wish to save, always choose SAVE AS from the FILE menu. You’ll get a dialogue box that asks where you’d like to save the image. Better yet, somewhere on that dialogue box is the opportunity for you to choose a different image format. Let’s say you choose GIF. Keep looking. Somewhere on the same dialogue box will be an OPTIONS button (or something close). That’s where you’ll choose 87a or 89a, interlaced or non-interlaced, formats.

If you choose JPEG, you’ll get the option of choosing the compression rate. You may not get to play with the sliding scale I get. You may only get a series of compression choices, high, medium, low, etc. Go high.

Do you edit and create images in GIF or JPEG?

Neither. I always edit in the Photoshop or Bitmap format. Others have told me that image creation and editing should only be done in a Vector format. Either way, make a point of editing with large images. The larger the image, the better chance you have of making that perfect crop. Edit at the highest color level the image program will allow. You can always resize and save to a low-byte format after you’ve finished creating the file.

About CES

With more than four decades of success, the International CES reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive.

The International CES is produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the consumer technology industry. CEA represents more than 2,000 corporate members involved in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and integration of
consumer electronics products. All profits from CES are reinvested into industry services, including technical training and education, industry promotion, engineering standards development, market research and legislative advocacy.

CES 2010 Best in Show Award: Panasonic VT25

Sony, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba all announced 3D-compatible HDTVs at this year’s CES, but Panasonic has made the most noise about the technology. The company began touting an extra dimension at last year’s CES, and this year it has finally announced a shipping date for its first 3D plasma TV. Dubbed the
VT25 series, it’s expected to be released in the spring. It will be among the first 3D-capable flat-panel HDTVs available for sale in the U.S.

CES 2010 People’s Voice Award: Intel Wireless Display

While many media consumers have connected laptops, desktops, and small form factor PCs to their large plasma and LCD monitors for years, these setups typically required either a direct video connection or the use of clunky media extender boxes, with limited functionality and file format compatibility.
Intel aims to radically change this equation with its new Wireless Display technology, also known as “WiDi.”

CES 2010 best in category Car tech

Ford myFord Touch interface

Ford built up a good cabin tech lead amongst its competitors when it adopted Sync and Sirius Travel Link in 2008, and we didn’t think the company could come up with something new for CES 2010. But boy, were we wrong. Ford radically redesigned its cabin tech interface while at the same time adding new features and completely revamping its navigation systems, branding the whole shebang as MyFord.

Cell phones and smartphones

Motorola Backflip

On Wednesday, Motorola introduced its latest Google Android smartphone to the world, the Motorola Backflip. Scheduled for a global release at the beginning of Q1 2010, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said the device would be available in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America but would not disclose any
carriers

Computers and hardware

Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid

Lenovo has made an impressive splash at this year’s CES and the main halls haven’t even opened up yet: its bold new takes on ultramobile notebooks the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, Skylight, and IdeaPad S10-3t–have caused a big stir and bigger discussions as to whether each will perform as well as they look.

Digital photo and video

Eye-Fi Pro X2

Eye-Fi heads into the new decade with a completely rearchitected design for its Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards for digital cameras. The system, an integrated ASIC dubbed “Arcturus,” powers the new Eye-Fi Pro X2 card, delivering higher capacities, theoretically better speed and power usage, and an overhauled software
interface with more of a client-side focus.

Gaming

Dell Alienware M11x

Alienware laptops are powerful, but they’re not exactly known for being ultraportable or affordable. At Dell’s press conference this morning, however, a chief focus was put on their new M11x laptop, which seems to be attacking both ends head-on. In a form approaching Netbook size, the 11.6-inch laptop comes
packed with switchable graphics, including an Nvidia GT335M GPU as its main powerhouse, and will sell this spring for under $1000.

Green tech

Tenrehte Technologies Picowatt Wi-Fi smart plugs

Tenrehte Technologies has a grassroots vision for the smart grid. Instead of relying on a utility-installed smart meter to help consumers ratchet down their electricity bills, the Rochester, N.Y.-based start-up is building Wi-Fi-enabled smart plugs. A few strategically placed smart plugs, called a Picowatt, will provide many of the benefits promised to consumers by the smart grid, including a real-time read-out of electricity usage and the ability to control appliances from a central point.

Home theater

LG BD590 Blu-ray player

All the focus is on 3D in the home theater space, but LG appears content to take a wait-and-see approach to the new 3D Blu-ray format. Instead of getting on the bandwagon, LG has gone in a different direction with its new flagship Blu-ray player, the BD590, which includes all the features that made the BD390 a hit, plus a 250GB hard drive that can be used to rip your music collection and store photos.

MP3 and portable video players

Valups Tivit

One of the big tech stories of 2009 was the transition of the U.S. broadcast TV standard from analog (NTSC) to digital (ATSC). But while ATSC broadcasts offer crystal clear high-def images, they have at least one drawback: unlike analog broadcasts, digital TV is tough to receive if you’re on the move.

Televisions

Panasonic TC-PVT25 series

Sony, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba all announced 3D-compatible HDTVs at this year’s CES, but Panasonic has made the most noise about the technology. The company began touting an extra dimension at last year’s CES, and this year it has finally announced a shipping date for its first 3D plasma TV. Dubbed the
VT25 series, it’s expected to be released in the spring. It will be among the first 3D-capable flat-panel HDTVs available for sale in the U.S.

@Astro_TJ, as Flight Engineer TJ Creamer is known on Twitter, posted the first live update about a day ago while in orbit, saying:

“Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! More soon, send your ?s”

Using a Nasa software upgrade on the international space station, astronauts now able to update their Twitter feeds themselves. Using a new, high-powered wireless connection which has been established between orbiters and groundlings, international space station astronauts can post tweets directly from their spacecraft.

Previously astronaut’s tweets have had to be emailed to ground control and then posted to astronauts’ accounts by Nasa’s administrative team. The new powerful web connection, called the Crew Support LAN, takes advantage of existing communication links to and from the station, allowing astronauts to browse and use the web.

This development will enhance the astronaut’s personal lives during long missions, easing the isolation associated with life in a closed environment. According to Nasa, astronauts will follow the same internet use guidelines as government employees on Earth.

Astronaut Mike Massimino, a.k.a. @Astro_Mike, may be credited with the first tweet from space, but technically it was “assisted,” and hence not live. Move over @Astro_Mike, @Astro_TJ just sent the first real-time tweet from space.

Here’s how NASA describes the new technology and what it means:

“This personal Web access, called the Crew Support LAN, takes advantage of existing communication links to and from the station and gives astronauts the ability to browse and use the Web. The system will provide astronauts with direct private communications to enhance their quality of life during long-duration missions by helping to ease the isolation associated with life in a closed environment.

During periods when the station is actively communicating with the ground using high-speed Ku-band communications, the crew will have remote access to the Internet via a ground computer. The crew will view the desktop of the ground computer using an onboard laptop and interact remotely with their keyboard
touchpad.

Astronauts will be subject to the same computer use guidelines as government employees on Earth. In addition to this new capability, the crew will continue to have official e-mail, Internet Protocol telephone and limited videoconferencing capabilities.”

By making this possible, NASA Extends the World Wide Web Out Into Space