qi

A select group of registered users on Notion Ink's company blog will be given first crack at preordering the company's long-awaited Adam tablet today.

The heavily optimized Android-based tablet comes in six models, ranging from a $375 Wi-Fi version with a standard LCD, up to a $549 version using 3G and the coveted Pixel Qi screen technology.

If you're new to the Adam, the mythical tablet sports an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, a 10-inch screen, a unique rotating camera, and a head-turning design. More importantly, the high-end models are one of the first to offer Pixel Qi … Read more

Three years ago, when Microsoft invested $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook, it looked to be just a bit nutty.

Back then, Facebook was an unprofitable three-year-old company with a business model that the ad industry still wasn't fully believing, and the News Corp.-owned social network MySpace was still bigger than Facebook both in the U.S. and internationally. Facebook's paper valuation of $15 billion at the time of the investment was believed to have been embarrassingly overinflated because Microsoft had been in a bidding war with Google over the stake in question, and indeed, … Read more

Updated 12:35 p.m. PDT with additional information and background.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Bing will soon allow searchers to see results generated by their Facebook friends' use of the "like" button on the social network, Microsoft announced today.

Microsoft's Qi Lu, president of Microsoft Online Services, and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a press conference at Microsoft's Silicon Valley headquarters to announce an extension of a long-running partnership between the two companies to feature Facebook profiles and a "liked by your friends" section that takes advantage of the way that Web … Read more

Led by such companies as Powermat, inductive charging has been around for a few years. In case you don't know what we're talking about, the idea behind inductive charging is to relieve you of the burden of connecting your phone (or another device) to a charging cable that has top be plugged into a wall outlet. Instead, you simply rest you phone on a special pad and presto, the battery starts charging.

Well, the only problem with all that is that you have to add a special sleeve or attachment to your phone to make it capable of … Read more

The Wireless Power Consortium has finalized a standard for wireless charging of mobile devices, bringing universal charging for products one step closer to reality.

On Friday, the trade alliance said that it has agreed upon specifications for three key areas of the Qi low-power standard, which is based on magnetic induction technology. The three areas are interface definition, which outlines the requirements for power transfer between the transmitter and receiver; the performance requirements; and the test procedure for compliance with the standard.

The specifications for the interface definition have been released to consortium members, with the public release set for … Read more

The PixelQi screen is one of the most exciting developments in display technology since LED-backlit panels. To be clear, it is not simply an e-ink screen with backlights. Instead, the new panels are based on the same conventional liquid crystal display used by current laptops and monitors.

The main difference is that PixelQi models have an outdoor-readable mode that turns the backlight off. This not only reduces power consumption, the fast LCD refresh rate also allows for video playback, unlike e-ink devices.

Despite not having a single retail model sporting its display yet, at Computex 2010, the San Bruno, Calif.… Read more

QI Macros SPC Software for Excel allows you to analyze data in a variety of formats, including histograms with Cp and Cpk, Pareto charts, scatter plots, box whisker plots, and all variable and attribute control charts.

Since this program integrates itself into Microsoft Excel's interface, you should have no problem using it. It appears as an extra tab at the top of your Excel window. The tab itself is broken into seven categories: Statistical Tools, Fill-in-the-Blanks Templates, Data Transformation, Capability Charts, Control Charts, Improvement Charts, and Other Charts. Each transforms your inputted data for the best analysis. We entered … Read more

REDMOND, Wash.--In the wake of Microsoft's search deal with Yahoo, online chief Qi Lu outlined why the business is so important to Microsoft and how the company hopes to make headway.

For one thing, he promised the crowd of financial analysts, it can be a huge money maker.

"When you are at scale it can be a hugely profitable business," Lu said.

The problem is that many of the costs are the same even if you are not operating at scale, which is the place Microsoft has found itself. "Even if you have one user … Read more

There's been some buzz this week around Pixel Qi's 3qi display technology, which integrates e-paper attributes with LCD to create a versatile and potentially very energy-efficient screen. The idea is that with a flip of a button you can go from a traditional high-resolution color LCD experience to a low-power black and white mode to an even more energy-efficient e-paper mode that allows you to easily view text in bright sunlight.

This week the technology was demonstrated at Computex in Taiwan, and it seems very impressive. If these types of displays can be produced cost-efficiently, they may revolutionize … Read more