In life, it helps to have someone who can hold you accountable for your actions. In the case of electronics companies, it seems that Greenpeace is their accountability partner. The organization has recently released the current company rankings in its Greener Electronics Scale. To find out how certain companies fared, get "green-minded" and turn to the full article after the jump.

The Develop Conference & Expo happens on the 24th to the 26th of July and developers are gearing up from all over the world to take part in one of the region's biggest developer gatherings to take place on an annual basis.

Headlining the shindig are top-brass companies Sony, Philips, Autodesk, and Nokia, who will be the prime movers and shakers in the event. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe will once again be the Platinum sponsor of the event while Philips and Autodesk are at Gold and Silver respectively. Nokia is the mobile sponsor of the gathering.

The event seeks to bring together the development community with European gaming market interests in a three-day conference where interests and demonstrations are exhibited for industry insiders, game media and the public. Top-caliber speakers from within the industry are invited to share their views and knowledge of the business.

Animazoo, artemdigital, Audiokinetic, Autodesk, Beyerdynamic, CRI Middleware, Develop Magazine, Emergent Game Technologies, gamesindustry.biz, Hansoft, IGDA, Instinct Technology, Mobile Entertainment, Nokia, Perforce Software, Philips amBX, Sony Computer Entertainment, Southampton Solent University, Tech Excel, Testronic Labs and Tiga will participate in this year's event to be held in Brighton.

Imagine a totally wireless future. We're not just talking about wireless internet and stuff, too. When we say wireless, that includes the power cords that are connecting your PC to your electric socket, giving it power so that you can read these words on this website right now.

It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but startup company Powercast is already starting to make leaps and bound in this field of research. According to a report from CNN Money, Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are already set to launch their first device powered by - brace yourself - electricity broadcast through the air. Here's how it works:

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product.

A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

The first joint product from Powercast and Philips is a wirelessly powered LED light stick which will hit the market this year. Powercast says it has also signed deals to develop products with more than 100 companies, including major manufacturers of gadgets ranging from cell phones and MP3 players to medical implants.

PCs and laptops could also be added to the list of Powercast-powered devices in the future. Right now, PC power consumption is still too high for the Powercast to handle, but these consumption rates are rapidly dropping.

Medical researchers in Philips and Intel are working closely together to make work easier for medical professionals worldwide by boosting the ability to record the conditions of patients who are undergoing treatment.

The device is much like a custom-built PDA which is intended for doing quasi-clerical tasks in the medical field. The device can take vital signs, validate blood transfusions, monitor the healing of wounds and even write charts.

Practitioners say that the handheld device has an edge to it- most PDA's are off limits in sterile rooms of medical facilities because of the simple truth that those gadgets can't be boiled or sprayed with disinfectants. This new device, however, is sealed, making it easy to get cleared to get around where it's needed.

The device is set to ship late this year, but as early as now, it may already have a big competitor in the making. A rival company called Motion Computing Inc. has earlier announced that it will launch a similar device priced at ,200.

Both devices aim to make relaying data in the local medical environment smoother by allowing information to transfer seamlessly from the patient to his or her file in direct fashion.

Through their spokeswoman Shanon Love, the Intel corporation expressed their faith that the health care industry is a "big opportunity" for the company.

If you're too busy or forgetful to even remember to charge your trusted cellular phone, then Philips may have something that we'll tickle your fancy. Recently, the company unveiled the Philips Xenium 9x9s - a sleek looking phone which could go for 30 days without charging. Yes folks, it's the Energizer Bunny of mobiles.

Aside from an uber-long battery life, there's nothing extraordinary about it though. It has the usual features like a 1.3 megapixel camera 18 MB of internal memory, an outside OLED display, and all that jazz. The reason for its long battery life is its 950 mAh (milliampere-hour) battery which, aside from getting by without charge for 30 days, could also give you roughly nine hours of talk time.

No word yet on its price tag and availability, but we'll surely tell you more about it as more info comes our way.

The days when we use our cell phones to call and send SMSs are so, so gone. Why you ask? Aside from the influx of smartphones and the recent unveiling of the iPhone, one of the world's biggest credit card payment scheme has launched a global system to turn mobile phones into wallets. Of course, we're talking about Visa.

Visa has entered in a deal with Nokia to let future users of this payment system, created with the help of IBM, to pay for groceries or other stuff by swiping a phone over a reader that electronically "talks" with a microchip on the phone. The owners would simply push a button, and voila, transaction complete.

According to a Visa statement at the CES, consumers will also be able to control and manage their payment accounts and funds, using only their cell phones.  A Near Field Communication (NFC) chip is the wireless standard used to link phones with payment systems in stores. This NFC mumbo-jumbo is developed by Philips chip unit, NXP and Sony. The initial version of the mobile payment system launched last Monday and future plans include remote payment and person-to-person payment.

There's no word on what happens when your mobile-payment-enabled cellphone gets lost or stolen. Most likely, you could cancel it the same way you do with stolen credit cards.

If the European Commission had its way, MP3 player owners in Europe would be facing a  tax revision that will jack up the iPod's price by a wallet-burning 25 euros ( USD).

The law, already under fire from companies like  Nokia and Philips Electronics, was introduced back in the 1960s on tapes to compensate musicians for privately copied music. It's undergoing revisions this year, and would include blank CD's and MP3 players (phones included, since they can store tunes, too) in its revised itinerary.

Dirk Visser, attorney for the electronic industry, had this to say regarding the revision. "This will lead to double or triple taxation. Soon, a consumer will pay rights to the artists when he buys on iTunes, then again when he buys a blank disc, and undoubtedly it will be extended to mobile phones which can also store music."

The law is expected to collect 1.57 billion Euros (roughly billion USD) in its corresponding states this year, and a further 4.67 euros (roughly $ 6 billion) next year. Some countries like Britain are yet to implement these taxes. The European Commission is expected to publish their views by the end of the year, though countries like Denmark are already going through the motions of implementing the tax law.

For some years now, people have been trying to make things as small as possible. It's not necessarily to cut down the size of the product to insane levels. Rather, with all that freed space, manufacturers can add more things in the same space, meaning more bang for the buck.

And cellphones see the best of these technologies. I have a MotoRAZR v3i and I love it simply because it's so effin slim! Now I know that it's a bit old and I've been looking for a worthy successor to my lovely phone. And well, looking at these images, I think I'll just delay my cellphone-shopping for a few months.

 
 

LG and Philips now offer the slimmest cellphone screens, with a thickness of only 1.3mm! The general thickness of these screens is around 1.9 to 2.9mm. So these new screens offer a 30% reduction in thickness! Well, let's just hope these cellphones make their way to shops soon enough; I can't wait!

An Israeli company called Compulab built a computer that fits a complete PDA into a device just two-thirds the size of a credit card. At only 4.4 x 6.6 cm, the CM-X270L makes even a 6.0 x 4.4 cm MiniPCI wireless card look big.

The CM-X270L almost breaks the law of physics by fitting an Intel XScale chip that runs Windows CE or Linux, half a gig of flash memory, 128MB of RAM, AC’97 sound and a Philips 802.11b wireless interface inside its body. That's not all, it even found enough room to cram other features not found on PDAs, such as a PCI bus, four USB host ports, and wired networking.

The wireless wonder costs about $47 which is really cheap. But the company only accept minimum bulk order of 10,000 units so stick to your humongous PDAs for now. They're harder to lose.

The Amsterdam-based, electronics giant Philips is prepping to reduce its ownership share in its Semiconductors division in the course of the second half of 2006 to a minority stake through an initial public offering of the company and/or sale of shares to financial investors, while continuing to evaluate industry consolidation opportunities.

In December 2005, the company announced that its Semiconductors division would be legally separated in order to generate value to Philips’ shareholders and to provide better ability to the division to achieve its business renewal objectives and become a stronger company. It seems like the Philips' camp is prepping for an all-out war with semiconductor giants like AMD and Intel.

In an e-mail from Philips’ President and CEO Mr. Gerard Kleisterlee, he mentioned that "the future deconsolidation of Semiconductors is a further step for Philips in moving away from a focus on high volume electronics and implementing a strategy to build a Healthcare, Lifestyle and Technology company with a strong market focus around the brand promise of Sense and Simplicity." In English, they are widening their horizons and trying to branch out to other fields.

The new semiconductors company will continue its business renewal strategy as well as consider additional measures to strengthen its portfolio in Mobile & Personal, Home, Automotive & Identification and Multi Market Semiconductors. The new company's name will be announced in the coming months and preparations for a separate stock exchange listing have started. With that, let the semiconductors showdown begin.