Word: microchip
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...initially had its own Big Brother rap to beat. Bar codes identify a category of products. All Gillette Mach 3 razor blades, for instance, have the same code. With RFID tags, each packet of Mach 3 blades would have its own unique Electronic Product Code (EPC) embedded in a microchip no bigger than a piece of glitter. Projections vary wildly, but analysts say today's $1 billion worth of RFID sales could hit $4 billion by 2008 and $10 billion in a decade...
Integrated Circuits In 1958 Jack Kilby fashioned the first microchip out of a single slice of silicon (it had one transistor); in 1959 Robert Noyce figured out how to get all the electronics on a chip talking. The invention spawned Intel, along with a thriving computer industry...
...Apple started things rolling in 1999 with its Wi-Fi system, known as AirPort, and in January unveiled a speedier upgrade called AirPort Extreme. Last month, in a bid to boost demand for laptops (and Intel processor chips), Intel released Centrino, a mobile technology that features a new microchip and a built-in Wi-Fi receiver...
...idiotic. So the PC stayed in the living room, a disappointed Microsoft renamed WebTV as msn TV in 2001, and convergence was relegated to the Internet-boom graveyard, next to Pets.com and retiring before 30. Pass the remote. Sometimes, you can't keep a good buzzword down. The microchip is once again creeping toward the living room. And this time, thanks to a wave of new products and digital-appliance advances, convergence seems ready to take hold. Your TV viewing - indeed, your entire home-entertainment experience - may never be the same. A Miami-based company called Alienware makes a custom...
...developed by Spheral Solar of Cambridge, Ontario, work by embedding silicon beads in an aluminum and plastic mesh. Each bead works like a tiny solar cell, turning light into electricity. And the material not only produces energy cleanly, but the silicon used is itself a waste product of the microchip industry. The flexible solar cells come into production next year. "The new material is far more robust than normal glass-based solar cells," says Dan Davies, an engineer at Solar Century, a London-based renewable energy company, "and it could also lead to a new flexibility in building design...