Blue OLED efficiency up 25%

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OLED technology may be about to take a massive leap forwards, which is good news for anyone looking to the screens becoming more widely used. The blue OLED has always been the weak link in the screens, offering significantly shorter lifespans than its red and green brethren. Well, a team from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is one step closer to cracking the problem by improving blue efficiency by an impressive 25%.

Concept Mac "triBook": fold out wings for extra screen space

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Portable computers are great but they’re not known for their screen real estate. The concept “triBook” based on an Apple notebook computer is a pretty impressive idea which solves that.

As the photo shows, it features a fairly standard notebook but with two additional side screens that fold out and can be angled to provide additional working/gaming space on each side of the main display. Together, they offer a total 21-inch diagonal widescreen…

The viral marketing ENDS HERE – Bungie's new game is "Halo 3: Recon"

Halo 3: Recon! It sounds like a joke. But it isn’t. Halo 3: Recon is the result of all that extremely tedious viral marketing nonsense Bungie’s been doing for months now, a game that brings a new character and play style to the dull old Halo universe.

Just announced at the Tokyo Game Show, Halo 3: Recon is a completely new chapter for Halo 3 that features a NEW CHARACTER and tells the story of events leading up to the start of Halo 3. It is a “standalone expansion” which means a separate game – not a downloadable mission pack for Halo 3. More expensive than that.

Halo 3: Recon will arrive in Autumn of 2009. The full official explanation…

Game makers having a grey old time in LA town

Remember the days when video games were packed full of wincingly bright characters, sharp sunny backdrops and vivid primary colours. God, they were awful weren't they? I mean, what kind of acid trip were those designers on? Look outside – it's all asphalt and concrete, aluminium and corrugated steel, heavy clouds and lingering smog. Real life is a kind of kind of dirty vomit colour.

Dribbling over a non-Sony OLED TV? Samsung says just wait until 2009!

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Samsung showed off a 40″ OLED TV at CES in January, however it’s taken until now for them to announce they’ll be available commercially as of 2009.

They’ve supposedly started producing the panels already – 1.5 million of them – however that number will reach 3 million in 2009, and 6 million in 2010. If they enter the market next year with OLED panels, they’ll be joining Sony…

Tech Digest Live: Testing reflective laptop screens on the beach

Seems like a good idea to test laptops on the beach, until you get to the beach. Where it’s cold. And windy. And raining. And suddenly you’re more worried about your camera and laptop breaking than seeing which screen is best for using outdoors.

Still, I soldered on – and you should’ve seen how happy the shopkeeper was when I bought that Cornetto! Definitely the first Cornetto he’s sold in 2008. Made his week.

So there you go. A stunning victory for the Portege R500, with its modern…

CES 2008: Dell debuts monster 30” WQXGA display with DisplayPort

Oh gawd. Just when you think that everyone’s agreed on a set of connectors, you find they’ve been off agreeing something new behind your back. I’ve only just noticed that most PC monitors are connected using DVI now and sort of expected that might shift to HDMI once Blu-ray and HD DVD started appearing on more PCs. Not so apparently. DisplayPort is the future now and has been endorsed by Video Electronics Standards Association as the next standard of digital display interface for broad adoption in PCs, monitors, and projectors.