High-Purity Recycling from Mitsubishi.

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation of Japan has announced it has developed a technology to sort three kinds of plastics - polypropylene, polystyrene and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene - from mixed plastics with purity levels of more than 99%. The new process, named "Large-Scale High-Purity Plastic Recycling", will allow the company to recover and reuse plastics from waste household appliances to make new products. Mitsubishi set up a household appliances recycling plant in 1999 and since then has recycled 600 tons of plastics per year into new products. However, due to the inability to separate different types of plastics, the actual amount of recycled materials is only 6% of the total weight of scrapped plastics. The company will now separate PP from PS and ABS based on the difference in specific gravity, and then separates PS and ABS from each other based on the difference in charging characteristics. This will allow the total amount of plastics recovered to increase to 7,000 tons per year. According to Mitsubishi, the new process will also cut annual greenhouse gas emissions by 6,700 tons by curbing production of new plastics. The company said it expects the new recycling process to be launched fall 2009.

Olympic Gold for NBCU.

Shattering previous 'Olympic' records, NBC Universal has logged 200 million viewers during the first 11 days of the Beijing Olympics. Topping the 2004 Athens Games viewer number of 188 million and the 1996 Atlanta Games impressive 196 million, 83% of all households in the U.S. have tuned into NBC's coverage of the current Games. According to Nielson's People Meter, ABC, CBS and FOX all recorded record lows in total viewer averages last week. NBC said that page views on NBCOlympics.com has totaled 18.7 million since the games opened. This number is up 63 percent from the Athens Summer Games in 2004 and up 400 percent from the Salt Lake City games in 2002. "We found that the more content we make available, the more buzz we create," said Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics. "There's an audience for the consumption of media that's super-strong in front of the TV and also strong when people are not. We have to make sure our content is made available to people wherever they are." The Games end Sunday, August 24.

Studio City - America's Largest Independent Broadcast Agency Processes with Markertek !

Valley Village, CA - Markertek is the broadcast industry's instant technology solution source for signal processing equipment. We just supplied Studio City with some important audio solutions at its main production facilities in Valley Village, CA. Founded in 1995, the agency has created results-driven on and off air marketing spots and campaigns for nearly every major studio in the entertainment industry. Operating in the California media epicenter between Burbank and Hollywood, Studio City remains one of the most important links in the chain for film and television marketing. Working with impeccable "A" list marketing plans, with such clients as "American Idol", "South Park", "Tyra", and dozens more, Studio City is one of the world's most respected entertainment agencies. Markertek is honored to work with such benchmark clients as Studio City to bring motion media to the planet with technology driven solutions.

Getting the Picture with TinEye.

Toronto-based software company, Idee, has announced the launch of TinEye image search engine. Unlike traditional search engines, TinEye allows users to search the web for images using an image not text. Instead of using tags or keywords as you would do with Google, for example, TinEye allows you to use an actual photo, or an image from the web, to quickly find almost anywhere that image has appeared on websites from all over the Internet. Users upload an image to be searched for, or direct the engine to a images file's URL, TinEye then conducts a pixel by pixel search across the internet, flagging up all instances of that image even if it's been cropped, merged or digitally altered in some way. According to Idee, the engine can currently search close to half a billion images and is regularly crawling the web and indexing images based on their individual digital signatures or ‘fingerprints’. “With years of experience in developing visual search algorithms, we have made a number of key breakthroughs in image search that go well beyond what anyone has done before.” said Paul Bloore, CTO and co-founder. “TinEye shows that we can scale our search technology and these are early days for us. We have already started web wide indexing of all digital multi-media content, including video.” Although currently in beta, you can find out more about the new search engine and try it out yourself here.

TecNec Announces New Tuffcat Cables.

Cable maker, TecNec, has unveiled its new, super-tough CAT5e field deployable cables. Dubbed Tuffcats, these industrial strength cables feature Belden 7923a DataTuff ® Twisted pair cable with rugged, CAT5e connector boots offering additional protection to the RJ45 connector ends. Tuffcat series cables are perfect on location for audio / video transformer balun applications, or anywhere a heavy-duty CAT5e cable is needed. Andrew Barth, Vice President, Tecnec said "Recently, we have seen a growing trend in the popularity of baluns and the transmission of audio and video over CAT5e. The Tuffcat series cables offer a robust and reliable solution for deployment in the field, or anywhere else for that matter". According to Barth, Tuffcat cables are currently available in a variety of popular lengths, and customs lengths are also available.

Intel Releases USB 3.0 Spec.

Chip giant, Intel, has released the draft specification for the next generation of USB eXtensible Host Controller Interface. USB 3.0 - also known as SuperSpeed USB - is expected to enable transfer speeds of up to 4.8Gbps, 10 times the 480Mbps supported by the current USB 2.0 specification. Designed to be backwards compatible with older generation interfaces, the 3 specification also supports the use of optical connectors. Originally announced last September, the draft specification is now available under royalty free licensing terms to all USB 3.0 Promoter Group members. Promoter Group members include HP, Microsoft, NEC, NXP Semiconductors, Texas Instruments among others. Phil Eisler, corporate vice president at AMD said, "Lifestyles filled with [high-definition] media and digital audio demand quick and universal data transfer. USB 3.0 is an answer to the future bandwidth need of the PC platform. AMD believes strongly in open industry standards, and therefore is supporting a common xHCI specification." Intel said the new technology should become widely available in 2010.

CEA Considers Portable Device Standard.

The Consumer Electronics Association has announced that it is currently assembling a group to consider establishing industry standards for portable devices. Standardization of products such as MP3 players and GPS devices would ensure support for autos, home appliances and other portable devices without the need for manufacturers to work individually with other makers. Brian Markwalter, CEA vice president, Technology and Standards said "In many cases consumers would like to attach these devices to other CE products to enhance their experiences. CEA wants to explore whether industry technical standards might enable more robust connectivity between portable devices and other products, and whether such connectivity might help to grow consumers' interest in such products." The 2008 CEA Industry Forum runs from October 19 - 22, 2008 in Las Vegas, NV.

Markertek Welcomes to the Family this Week:

Teleconnect Communications
Noritek
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
BBC - Beijing Field Unit
WWFM
Applied Materials
Skyworks Solutions Inc.
Air Force Space Command
Broward College
Shidler College of Business
Discovery Center
WBKI-TV
The Golf Channel - Field Ops
New Mexico State Univ.
Corp Roadie Productions

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