CeBIT demos hi-tech gadgetry

The world's biggest hi-tech fair opened to the public on Tuesday as the IT sector sought to rebound from a terrible 2009 by wooing consumers with trendy gadgets to make life easier and more fun, writes The Sydney Morning Herald.

'Connected Worlds' is the theme of this year's CeBIT fair, with companies aiming to showcase energy and labour-saving devices that use wireless technology to communicate with each other and with users far away.

A host of mind-boggling futuristic devices will be on display, from mobile phones that can open the front door to 'silent sound' devices that measure the movements of a user's lips and transform them into sound.

A software error prevented users of some Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles worldwide from gaining access to the PlayStation Network, which offers downloads of video games and movies, reports The New York Times.

Users trying to log in had received a cryptic error message, while some games could not be played even when the console was taken offline. Sony says the network had been restored in the US, 24 hours since the first connection problems were reported.

The entertainment company says the failure was caused by a flaw in the system's clock, with the result being that the date on the consoles was reset to 1 January 2000.

Panasonic has released a design which it claims will increase lithium-ion battery capacity by 30%, states Geek.com.

Where most Li-Ion batteries use a graphite anode, which limits the capacity of batteries to around 3.1Ah, Panasonic found that by switching to a silicon alloy anode that capacity can be pushed much higher, around 4.0Ah.

Silicon alloy anodes have proved problematic due to the high risk of structural collapse during the charge and discharge of a battery. Panasonic has managed to overcome the problems by adjusting the way it manufactures the battery with silicon alloy, which led to batteries that retain 80% charge even after 500 charge / discharge cycles.