6. March 2008 by Aidan.

Take a look at the “Eazzzy Camera” from South Korean designer Sung Woo Park . So simple. No viewfinder, focus settings, anything. Point, shoot and plug it into your USB port to see what you got. Great idea.

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6. March 2008 by Aidan.

I attended the SEMI  ISS Conference in Malta this week. This conference is a good opportunity for all of the key people from the European Semiconductor industry to get together and discuss the current status and future for the industry. A couple of key topics that came up for the industry were the problems due to the Euro:$ exchange rates and the decisions some companies are making to cut back on Capital spending. Since the European  industry incurs most costs in Euro’s but sells most products in US$ then the margins are closing because of the weakening US$. This is happening at the same time as the ASP’s (Avg. Selling Price) are declining, which is adding to the problem. The other problem is the reduction in Capital Spending by Semiconductor Manufacturers. There are many reasons behind this but one of the key issues worldwide is that because of the problems with the world markets everyone is looking at the balance sheet now. This forces a short term outlook. In the short term you can improve your balance sheet by delaying or postponing capital spending. However the problem is that this will delay ramping of your output and R&D efforts that will have a lot term effect. It’s incredibly that a lot of the pressure is coming from Financial Institutions, who themselves lost more money in Q4′07 than the total Semiconductor Cap Ex for 2 years! 

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