Conventional lightning rods attract lightning, but Lightning Suppression Systems’ PDCE lightning rods are actually able to prevent lightning strikes.
“Ordinary lightning rods collect the ground charge and cause it to discharge between the ground and the thundercloud. Our products prevent the ground charge from coming up to meet the lightning as it comes down from the cloud, and so prevent lightning from striking in the area around the device.”
Major examples of their application include the Great Buddha Statue at Ushiku and the Chikyu, a drillship used for deep earth exploration. The Chikyu is fitted with a superstructure that rises to a height of 120m above sea level and has the potential to attract lightning. Because the drillship is engaged in boring the seabed, it is unable to move away from a thunderstorm. For this reason, a PDCE lightning rod is attached to the top of her superstructure to prevent lightning strikes.
“This depends on the height at which the device is mounted, but if the device is mounted at a height of 1, lightning will not strike inside a cone with a radius of 5. If the device is attached to the top of a concrete telephone pole, at a height of 20m, lightning will not strike within a radius of 100m.”
The products are already commercially available, and are priced between $25,000 and $37,500. Lightning Suppression Systems is planning the commercial development of products for home use, and for mounting on disaster prevention wireless system masts and outdoor surveillance cameras, to be priced at around $6,000.
[Source here]
Fujifilm decided today to bring its latest compact tough camera, the XP50 in Japan.
Fujifilm XP50 comes with a 14Mpix sensor, with 5x optical Zoom, 1080p HD video support as well as being waterproof to a depth of 5m and shockproof from a height of 1.5m and capable to withstand cold weather up to -10 degrees Celsius.
The estimated price for the compact camera is 20,000 Yen .
[Source here]
The Interactive Plasma Display, a 65-inch digital blackboard developed by Panasonic, enables four people to write simultaneously in different colors.
“With models from other companies, errors occur if your sleeve touches the screen. But this model works by using pens alone, so you don’t get errors. Young children write by placing their left hands on the screen. But the left hand doesn’t act as a sensor, so they can write using pens.”
The Digital Pen System was newly developed for this Interactive Plasma Display. It uses a feature of plasma display panels: the pixels themselves light up at high speed. So this system detects and displays the pen position 60 times a second, on each pixel in a full high-definition (HD) picture.
“This display can be used for small-group discussions in schools and universities. It’s also useful for business presentations. If several people are giving a presentation from different PCs, they all need to be connected through cables. But with this display, there’s no need for that; you can use wireless connection.”
In addition, the digital pen has a multipurpose button. You can use this button to switch to the drawing menu display, without using the toolbar on the screen.
“This 65-inch model will be released in July. We also plan to release larger versions by the end of the year. They’ll be 85- and 103-inch models.”
Panasonic expects demand for displays like this will reach 350 million sets worldwide in 2015. So, it plans to keep developing big-screen plasma displays.
[Source here]
Sports fans stand up! If you’re the owner of a Toshiba Smart TV, laptop or tablet, then you can enjoy the best and latest sports news and highlights right now using Toshiba Places, courtesy of the great new LiveSport.TV online service.
Bringing unmissable content, video clips, news and highlights from more than 35 different sports and over 5,000 events to your Toshiba device every year, LiveSport.TV is the perfect way to enjoy the action at home.
And from British favorites such as football, cricket and rugby, to basketball, motor-sports and mixed martial arts, among many others, LiveSport.TV brings the very best in world sports right to your screen.
Available now on all Toshiba Places, including the new Toshiba RL933, RL953 and TL963. LiveSport adds to the already extensive content available via our great online service, including the likes of Acetrax Movies, BBC iPlayer, YouTube and Facebook.
And you don’t even need to update your TV to get started. Just fire up Toshiba Places and LiveSport.TV will be right there for you to enjoy, with its intuitive interface giving you quick and easy access to your favourite sports.
The best part is that all video on demand content via LiveSport.TV is completely free, letting you catch up on any of the latest sporting highlights you may have missed, without having to pay a penny for the privilege.
[Source here]
Shunkosha currently has FeliCa NFC-enabled straps installed on the Ginza and Marunouchi train lines for a trial period which started yesterday, and will extend to June 3rd. Users simply need to touch their phone and obtain the embedded URL for the website being promoted by the ad campaign. For now, the travel agency HIS will be the advertiser in this initial phase.
It looks to be a process marginally easier than scanning a QR code, although I wonder how many people will actually use it after the novelty has worn off.
I still think that gaming might be a better way to advertise to people than by sending them to a URL. Perhaps some kind of real-life card collection game, where you can only obtain certain cards in specific locations as with the Japanese location-based game Colopl.
That would certainly be something I’d like to see the Japanese Tourism Agency get behind, for domestic tourists as well as those from overseas, especially Korea and China.
[Source here]
NTT Docomo has developed an experimental display with touch panels on both the front and back, hoping to use it for games or other applications in the future.
An NTT Docomo representative said, “We have offered a new idea for the operation of touch panels, which have widely spread because of smartphones.”
