Sharp is presenting an environmentally friendly way to watch television at this year’s IFA electronics show in Berlin.

The company says solar-panel and LCD (liquid crystal display) television technology is at the stage where a single panel can provide enough energy to power the TV for four and a half hours per day with no additional electricity required from the grid.

Sharp is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of solar panels for electricity generation and on its stand at IFA it’s showing a polycrystalline-type panel that is capable of generating 200kWh (kilowatt hours) per year of electricity. That corresponds to the same amount of energy used by its LC-52XS1E television, a 52-inch model that was introduced at IFA, if it’s used 4.5 hours per day, which is the average amount of time a Japanese household spends watching TV each day.

At IFA the TV and a solar panel were set up together on Sharp’s stand but were not actually connected. The lack of sunlight inside the exhibition hall meant it wasn’t something that could be demonstrated at the show, a Sharp spokesman said.

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Intel Corp. has acquired Opened Hand, a London-based company which specializes in mobile Linux development and services.

Opened Hand will focus on participating in the Moblin Software Platform community, which is developing a Linux software stack for Intel’s Atom processors. The software will be optimized for low-power Netbooks and “mobile Internet devices.”

“Opened Hand brings great expertise and technology in the area of user-interaction frameworks, improving Intel’s ability to address the unique challenges of enabling cutting edge UIs for these new class of devices,” a spokesperson for Intel told ZDNet.co.uk.

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Google’s Android Challenge has brought in lot of new type of application to android. Check this new innovative way of typing into mobile phone with touch screens

Quite contrary to rumors AMD scrapped its plans to bring dual-core K10 parts to the market, the chip maker may have already begun selling the line to its partners on the sly.

Here are the specs:

AMD Phenom X2 GE-6600: 2.30GHz, 1MB L2 cache (2x 512 KB), 2MB L3 cache

Phenom X2 GE-6500: 2.1GHz, 1MB L2 cache (2x 512 KB), 2MB L3 cache

Phenom X2 GE-6400: 1.90GHz, 1MB L2 cache (2x 512 KB), 2MB L3 cache

As covered earlier, the chips will be fabbed at 65nm and join the tri-core Phenom X3 and quad-core Phenom X4.

Of course, the details should still be taken with a grain of salt at this point. AMD has previously denied canceling Kuma, and as usual, when we contacted the company, it refused to comment on unannounced silicon.

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Privacy advocates think the next version of Internet Explorer, the program that connects most of us to the Web, is a step in the right direction.

Advertisers? Well, they’re not so sure.

The advertising industry is bracing for trouble from the next version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, details of which were announced today, because it will offer a feature that blocks some ads and other content from third-parties that shows up on Web pages.

Most online advertising is served to Web pages by advertising networks — third parties. Blocking the ads would cut into the money Web publishers rely on. While other ad blockers have been around, this feature worries some because it would come built into the world’s most popular Web browser.

A Microsoft spokesman said that the feature, to be known as "InPrivate Blocking," was never designed to be an ad blocker, though "there may be ads that get blocked."
Instead, it was designed to stop tracking "pixels" or pieces of code that could allow third-party sites to track users as they move around the Web.

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A virus-ridden computer without a noticeable battery might not sell on Ebay, but that’s exactly what researchers at MIT could build, thanks to a new advance in battery technology.

By pouring a mixture of the harmless, genetically engineered M13 virus and the metal cobalt over stamped silicon film, Angela Belcher and her colleagues created a flexible, microscopic battery that could be cheaply mass produced.

In theory, it could turn virtually any surface — from large computers to tiny implanted detectors for cancer or heart disease — into an energy-storing device.

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