456 results found for Editorial, displaying items 1 - 20
December 1, 2008 International CES Takes Center Stage In January
The second week of January is a special time for the consumer electronics (CE) industry. This is when the International CES®, the largest tradeshow of its kind, rolls into Las Vegas with more than 130,000 attendees, including 6000 or so engineers. If youâ??ve attended this spectacle before, you probably listened to Bill Gates of Microsoft give the preshow keynote on a Sunday night at The Venetian. International CES will start on a Thursday this...
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Joseph Desposito
December 1, 2008 As 2008 Comes To A Close, We Salute The Industry's Best
Selecting the best OEM products and technologies of the year can be a daunting task, given the wealth of innovations that this industry produces. But a few always stick out in an editor’s mind, somehow making their way to the top of the list. For this issue, the Electronic Design staff and contributors wrote about these products and technologies. The editors made their selections entirely on their own, without any voting from readers or advertisers,...
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Joseph Desposito
November 17, 2008 The Very Old And Very New Converge At Belgium’s IMEC
Though I’m interested in both history and technology, it’s unusual for both of those interests to be served side by side. But upon arriving in Leuven, Belgium, recently for the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre’s (IMEC’s) annual technology review meeting, I could not help but be struck by contrasts between the very old and the very new. Leuven, the provincial capital of Flemish Brabant, is an utterly charming college town dominated by its Catholic...
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David Maliniak
November 7, 2008 Parting With Old Electronics Can Be Hazardous To Someone's Health
I just recently emptied out a storage unit I had been renting for many years. As a consequence, my garage took over the job of storing all kinds of different electronic equipment. Part of my original storage plan was to unload the old electronics little by little, mainly through eBay. I tend to think of eBay as this great storage bin in the sky, where you get paid to store an item and can buy the same or similar item back whenever you want, if the need for...
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Joseph Desposito
October 23, 2008 In Troubled Economic Times, Our Salary Survey Provides Reassurance
I just finished listening to a webinar by Shawn DuBravac, economist and certified financial analyst (CFA) with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), entitled “Economy in Crisis: How We Got Here, Where Do We Go and What Does It Mean for Consumer Electronics and Your Business.” The presentation offered a wealth of historical economic information via charts and numbers showing how we arrived at today’s economic crisis. But when it came to the prospects ...
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Joseph Desposito
October 9, 2008 Traffic Jam? Bored Kids? Don't Worry—As Long As MOST Is On Board
As a father in a family that has spent a lot of time on the road, particularly round-tripping on Route 80 from Ohio to New Jersey for just about every holiday, I know from experience that multimedia in the car can be a lifesaver! With my three kids at all the various stages growing from tot to teen, packed in our progressively wired wagons and minivans, we have definitely made the most of in-car entertainment. I’ll never forget the worst traffic delay of...
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Mark David
October 9, 2008 GaN-Based Power Device Signals Next-Gen Power Conversion
International Rectifier Corp. has successfully developed a GaN-based (gallium-nitride) power-device technology platform. It’s expected to provide improvements in two key application-specific figures of merit, on resistance and gate charge, of up to a factor of 10 compared to state-of-the-art silicon-based technology platforms. On resistance relates to how much current you can process in a unit area. It also can be related to the cost per amp of...
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Joseph Desposito
October 2, 2008 After All These Years, Ideas For Design Get The Royal Treatment
One of the most popular sections of Electronic Design in both print and on the Web over the years has been Ideas for Design (IFDs). We’d like to celebrate this department by dedicating this entire issue to IFDs, including insightful commentary from our editors and contributors alike. First, we’ve asked some of the industry’s top engineers, who we like to call design gurus, to reflect and write about the circuits they’ve created over the ...
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Joseph Desposito
September 25, 2008 Is Your Personal Computer A CUDA-Enabled Speed Merchant?
Sometimes I don’t hear a rumble until it becomes a roar. I’m not sure if CUDA has become a roar yet, but my ears have perked up based on a bunch of announcements I’ve received over the past few months. If CUDA hasn’t registered on your radar yet, here’s a brief summary. CUDA, which stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture, is a C language environment developed by Nvidia Corp. (www.nvidia.com)...
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Joseph Desposito
September 11, 2008 Graphical Programming Gets Ready To Enter Grade School
NI Week has always been one of my favorite industry conferences. National Instruments does such a great job presenting its latest innovations as well as those of others in the LabVIEW community. This year was no exception. One of the announcements at this year’s show was a product called WeDo, a classroom robotics platform from the LEGO Group (www.lego.com). It puts the power of graphical programming into the hands of...
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Joseph Desposito
August 28, 2008 For Consumer Electronics, The Holidays Start In July
As an editor with a major electronics magazine, I’m invited to industry events all the time. Come July, though, I start receiving invitations from public relations folks for events that are really outside the magazine’s coverage—events that show the hottest consumer electronics items for the coming holiday season. I can’t resist the temptation. Could you? SAMSUNG HOLIDAY IN JULY Samsung Electronics recently held its...
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Joseph Desposito
August 14, 2008 Wireless Everywhere Still Needs To Work Out The Kinks
If you’ve ever seen the Dead Zone commercials from Verizon Wireless, you realize that there is some truth to the statement that wireless everywhere is still working out the kinks. My favorite is the one where a young couple is purchasing the “the old Miller place—in spite of what happened there,” according to an older woman who walks up to the couple as they’re moving in. “Oh, they didn’t tell you,” she says, “It’s a dead zone.” Of course, the couple isn’t worried...
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Joseph Desposito
July 24, 2008 CEA Gives Downtown Manhattan A Digital Boost
In the first installment of what promises to be a yearly commitment to New York City’s downtown area, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) kicked off Digital Downtown for press and analysts. Digital Downtown was conceived as a three-day showcase of consumer technology, open and free to the general public. The first day of the event, June 12, was warm and sunny. I took a subway to the general area and then had to walk quite a few blocks. As I continued...
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Joseph Desposito
July 10, 2008 Show Videos Take Center Stage On ElectronicDesign.com
Most of you have probably noticed the influx of videos to electronicdesign.com over the past year or so. For the most part, these videos were shot at trade shows. Typically, a staff member at the show who knows something about video cameras hooks up with an editor to do video interviews. We shoot with a handheld, harddisk- based camera. When we get back to the office, a member...
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Joseph Desposito
June 26, 2008 Is Solar Energy Really Ready To Rumble?
At the recent International Electronics Forum (IEF) in Dubai, UAE, I attended two days of presentations about the semiconductor industry. The speakers were from all parts of the world and offered unique perspectives. But the talk I found most interesting was given by Mark Pinto, CTO and senior vice president at Applied Materials, as his presentation tackled “Energy Conversion: Photovoltaics.” Photovoltaics (PV) have been making great strides in the last...
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Joseph Desposito
June 19, 2008 Transitions Make Tomorrow Much Different From Today
Welcome to the latest edition of Electronic Design’s Megatrends special issue. When our editorial staff sat down to decide its theme, we knocked around a few ideas before settling on transitions. We tried to envision what our world might look like several years from now in some key application areas due to the constantly evolving technologies in our industry. This issue is the result. Contributing editor Ron Schneiderman begins with the numbers behind some of...
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Joseph Desposito
June 12, 2008 Staying Employed In This Industry Can Be Tough At Times
In an issue where we celebrate the top 50 employers and also list the top employers in the electronics OEM, it’s worthwhile to bring up one of the dirty words of the industry—unemployment. As someone who has lived through many of the industry’s downturns and experienced layoffs firsthand, I can say with certainty that this profession is fraught with career minefields. But probably you already know that. When I found myself out of a job early in my...
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Joseph Desposito
May 22, 2008 Speaking Of Components, Here's An LED Story
The question seemed innocent enough. What type of bulbs do I need for those lanterns? The lanterns in question were a set of five solar-powered models that my wife Lorraine purchased at Costco about a year ago for $89. This wasn’t her first request for that information, but I admit I don’t always pay attention to requests like these. For some reason, this time I listened. So I’m going over the possibilities in my head, trying to remember what the...
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Joseph Desposito
May 8, 2008 Are You Screaming For Help With Prototypes?
At last month's Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, I met with Duane Benson, the Web marketing manager for Screaming Circuits. The company assembles prototypes in as little as 24 hours for one or more boards. You simply send it a package of parts along with the unpopulated printed-circuit board (PCB), and Screaming Circuits will assemble it for you. Screaming Circuits’ assembly capabilities include machine-placed surface-mount...
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Joseph Desposito
April 24, 2008 Turning Buses And Trucks Into Hybrid Vehicles
I recently had a chance to visit Odyne Corp., a sevenyear- old company based in Haupauge, N. Y. It develops plug-in hybrid electric power trains for medium and heavy-duty vehicles. While I was there, I met with its director of engineering, Dana DeMeo. I had worked with Dana when he was in college. His expertise then was in repairing all sorts of electronics equipment for his college buddies. Now, he’s in charge of developing the embedded system that controls the...
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Joseph Desposito
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