The apps were designed to meet curriculum needs for students ranging from seventh grade through college. The apps are able to offer all-in-one functionality for performing calculations in proper math notation. The apps also offer graphing and exporting functions, equations and inequalities, and the ability to construct and explore geometric figures.

The apps have a on screen keyboard that can toggle between math notation and QWERTY configurations allowing students to put notes beside equations. The applications also offer dynamically linked multiple representations of problems encouraging students to make personal connections by observing how the equations change as the student interacts with the shapes, graphs, and objects on the tablet screen.

The apps also have the ability to create and save documents and share them using e-mail, iTunes, and other sharing options. The app also takes advantage of the integrated camera of the iPad allowing students to take photos and import them into the app and overlay graphs and equations on those photographs to illustrate math principles using real world examples. The apps are available to download right now from the App Store for $29.99 each. Teachers can get a free one-year license to both apps with the purchase of one of the apps via the App Store.

[via TI]

See that little square dot? That’s TI’s next generation temperature sensor, sitting next to the old model and the CES award it won the company. 

But what really stands out in the TMP006 chip, is its ability to measure temperature outside the device. This is a first for mobile devices, and is will undoubtedly be included in future smartphones and tablets. The sensor was extremely sensitive; even when holding your hand close to it a change in temperature was noticed and calculated. It even picked up a temperature change when aiming it towards a window 8 feet away.

The sensors are extremely small at 1.6mm x 1.6mm, so they won’t bulk up any device that adopts the technology. The IR signal can easily pass through practically any plastic, so there are very few obstacles manufacturers will have to cross. A single TMP006 chip is now available for $1.50 each, in 1,000 unit quantities; the perfect price for kickstarting the chip into mass production.

TI has announced a new highly efficient boost charger IC for nano power energy harvesting that is able to harvest energy in the microwatts to milliwatts range. The IC can harvest energy from a variety of sources including solar, thermoelectric, electromagnetic, and vibration. That energy can be stored in things like batteries and super capacitors. The new IC is called the bq25503.

TI says that when the new IC is used in a solar panel powering a handheld device operating in indoor light conditions the new boost charger can increase the usable energy harvest by 30 to 70% compared to a linear regulator. That allows the size of the solar panel to be reduced making the products cheaper to produce and more compact. The IC is available now for $2.10 each in quantities of 1,000.

The Meta Watch features a touchscreen that can display information and updates synced via Bluetooth from your other mobile devices, such as your phone or tablet. The watch uses TI’s MSP430 microcontroller and comes with its own hacker-friendly open source SDK/API. This allows developers to customize what information gets displayed.

The watch has a water resistant stainless steel casing, leather strap, and mineral glass crystal display with 3-axis accelerometer, vibration motor and ambient light sensor inside. It’s available in both a digital and an analog version with the digital version having a 96 x 96 reflective display and the analog version having two 16 x 80 white OLED displays.

[via Engadget]

It claims that there was an issue with the watch programming chip that caused intermittent issues with USB connections. The programming clip is the part that connected the USB cable to the back of the case. The issue with the clip was severe enough that Fossil notes it had to take all the clips apart, re-flash them, test, and then reassemble.

The analog watch also had an issue with the quality on the black plating on the steel. Fossil reports that the watch was set to ship to Hong Kong on August 31 and those will now be shipped on September 2. An exact ship date for the US is unknown, though it’s interesting that the watches are shipping from TI in Texas to Hong Kong.

TI thinks that the acquisition will take six to nine months to complete. It would be safe to assume that time frame will depend on regulators that will have to eyeball a merger of this magnitude. Once combined TI notes that it will have 42,000 products covering a wide range of needs.

It will also have a sales force larger than any in the industry for better face-to-face support. TI also notes that the deal will expand its manufacturing capacity and bring the industry’s first 300mm analog capability.

According to TI, it expects to reinstate production at the plant starting with several lines in May and the factory should be back to full capability by mid-July with full shipment capability in September. However, TI notes that the schedule could be delayed if the power grid is unstable or complications arise when the equipment is restarted.

TI is moving to change its production to other fabs and has found alternate sites for about 60% of the wafer production that was conducted at the Miho plant and the company is working to increase the capacity in other areas by moving the production of additional products. The Miho plant has damage to the infrastructure systems that deliver chemicals, gasses, water, and air to the manufacturing facilities and repairs will take about three weeks. Impact to some systems is still unknown with power still unreliable in the area. The Miho fab produces DLP chips and some analog chips.

Texas Instruments has announced that it has released the industry’s first Qi certified chipset and development tools for designing Qi wireless power devices. The new dev kit will allow developers to design all sorts of gadgets with wireless power integrated. The kit is aimed at designers of digital cameras, smartphones, MP3 players and lots more.

TI calls the dev kit the bqTESLA kit and it includes a single channel transmitter, a direct-charge receiver, and the associated magnetic for applications that need 5W of power or less. There is no software required for the system and TI is selling the dev kit now for $499.

The DSPs are constructed with multiple 1.25GHz DSP cores and deliver the first 10GHz DSP with 320 GMACs and 160 GFLOPS of combined fixed and floating performance on a single device in the industry. TI claims that the performance of the new DSPs surpasses that of all other devices in the industry.

The new DSPs are aimed at a wide range of uses with the parts being appropriate for public safety, defense, medial, high-performance computing, and core networking uses. The DSPs are all based on the TI KeyStone multicore architecture to maximize on chip data flow. The new DSPs are offered in three pin compatible designs in two, four, and eight core versions.

The gestures are viewed by the camera of the device and then convert the gestures into actions on the screen. Rather than swiping a finger across the screen the user would just swipe a finger in the air above the screen and the gesture would be recognized. The control system uses a single low-resolution camera like the ones used in devices for video conferencing already.

The system is able to recognize single or multiple finger gestures with point, click, drag, scroll, zoom, and rotate. Using the TI and XTR solution the users of a smartphone coupled control the device while walking, driving, or control a smartphone connected to their TV from across the room. When we can expect this sort of device to hit the market is unknown.

The chips will provide new out of the box solutions for the control of all manner of entertainment devices in the home like TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and other home theater gear. TI will also be offering free software with a RemoTI protocol stack offering reference designs to make it faster for makers to get the new gear to market.

Features of the CC2533 SoC include on-chip memory with 64KB and 96KB of programmable flash optimized for ZigBee RF4CE applications. The SoC also offers four flexible power modes with the lowest consumption around with a 1uA sleep mode for up to ten times longer battery life than a comparable IR-based remote. The SoC is in production now and will start at $1.99 in 10K unit quantities.

The processor supports full HD 1080p H.264 encoding and is usable for video applications like HD cameras, DVRs, and HD video communications. TI promises that the processor will boost performance by 40% with advanced APIs.

Multiple video formats are supported by the new processor including VC1, MPEG2, MPEG4, MJPEG and H.264 at up to 1080p 30 fps resolution. The processor also supports multi-format decode, multi-rate multi-stream, and HD multi channel decode. The DM360 video processor offloads all video encoding and decoding from the processor. TI is offering the video processor now for $29 each in quantities of 1000.

Instead, the rumors suggest that the N97 will be “as fast or faster” than the Nokia E71, with the ARM11 chip clocked higher than in previous devices.  Although that means it will likely be the quickest Nokia smartphone available, it raises questions about whether the N97 could be considered a MID replacement.

The TI OMAP 3 processor runs at 800MHz but requires just 750mW under load, while in deep sleep mode there’s practically no current draw whatsoever.  That means extra-long standby times and the ability to withstand intensive use on a single charge.  Nokia are quoting up to 430hrs GSM standby (400hrs WCDMA) or 6.6hrs GSM talktime (5.3hrs WCDMA) for the N97.

[via UMPC Portal]

Check out the presentation video after the cut

Compared to an x86 chipset such as Intel’s Atom, which requires 3 to 5W in a worst-case power consumption, the TI integrated OMAP 3 processor, at 800 MHz, requires just 750mW.  Meanwhile, when the OMAP 3 processor is in deep sleep mode it draws almost no current at all, whereas an x86 based product draws between 80 and 100 mW in power-saving mode.

Combined, that adds up to a TI powered MID that can be used for a full day on a single charge, or alternatively left on standby for a full week without expiring. The company has not given details on when we could expect to see products taking advantage of all these features, but the new Archos PMPs are already using OMAP 3 processors.

[via UMPC Portal]