Category Archives: LEDs

January 6, 2004 – Worldwide semiconductor sales continued to report solid gains in November 2003, posting growth for the ninth consecutive month and a solid double-digit increase from a year ago, according to data from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

Sales in November were $16.13 billion, compared with $15.43 billion in October and $14.45 billion in September, and were up 25.7% from November 2002. With one month to go in 2003, chip sales were 17.4% ahead of 2002’s mark, and SIA predicts sales for the full year will outstrip its earlier projection of 15.8% growth.

Leading end-market contributors in November were DRAM (up 4%) and microprocessors (up 3%), thanks to strong PC sales. The global wireless market also showed strength; flash memory was up 11.2%, and DSPs were up 3.5%. Sales of global consumer electronics showed typical seasonally-strong sales, thanks to the end-of-year holidays and demand for multifunction devices, including DVDs and digital cameras. This led to gains in non-PC technologies — optoelectronics was up 5.3%; MOS logic was up 4.8%; and application-specific analog was up 4.6%.

In what has become a repetitive statement, SIA president George Scalise expects broad-based strength in all markets, particularly in the computation, communications, global consumer, and automotive segments. Capacity utilization topped 95%, maintaining a level of “modest pricing power” in the industry, according to SIA.

Geographically, all markets reported sequential gains between 4%-6%, down slightly from October’s across-the-board growth of 6%-9%, the highest in more than a decade. Year-on-year, the markets slightly increased their double-digit growth rates, led by the Asia-Pacific region and Japan (32.3% and 30.7%), with Europe (20.8%) and the Americas (13.5%) continuing to post solid gains. For the moving three-month average, Europe increased its sales growth by 5% to 24.0%, followed by the Americas (17.1%) and Japan (15.8%), while the Asia-Pacific market dipped slightly to 19.1%.

Jan. 6, 2004 — Researchers have developed a new way to perform a type of lymph node surgery important in determining whether cancer is spreading to other parts of a patient’s body, according to a news release issued by Quantum Dot Corp.

The method uses quantum dots — nanoscale bits of semiconductor material — to illuminate lymph nodes during cancer surgery. The research was a collaboration between researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. It will be published in the January issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Jan. 6, 2004 — Royal Philips Electronics has developed a thin electronic-paper display using a process called “electrowetting,” a technology commonly used in labs-on-a-chip but is also fast enough to make electronic video paper possible.

“While the amount of information that we digitally process ever increases, more printers are sold each year. This contrast goes to show we still prefer reading from paper rather than from electronic displays,” said Peter Kurstjens, general manager of Electronic Ink Displays at Philips.

“But these last steps in the information chain, printing on paper and distribution, are also the most expensive,” he said. So, multinationals like Philips, Lucent, Xerox, and DuPont recognize the market potential for e-paper displays that keep the optical and physical properties of paper while combining them with the high-density storage capacity of electronic media.

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Stacked inside the Dutch electronics and semiconductor company’s prototype is a 100-micron layer of water with a droplet of colored oil, a 1-micron-thick hydrophobic (water repellent) Teflon layer, a 15-nanometer transparent indium tin oxide (ITO) patterned electrode layer and a white polymer background.

When the device is switched on, with 20 volts between the electrode and the water layer, the polar water molecules are electrostatically attracted to the Teflon layer, wetting its surface. Hence the name “electrowetting.” In this “on” state, water pushes the colored oil aside, making the pixel white. When the device is off, the water contracts to a low-surface-area droplet. That signals the colored oil to spread out over the pixel area to a layer of 10 microns, darkening it.

Philips launched its thin polymer organic LED (PolyLED) displays in 2002. But like liquid crystal displays (LCDs), they are still emissive — meaning you can’t use them in broad daylight. The goal is a display that is reflective, just like real paper.

Philips said it will introduce reflective e-ink displays in hand-helds based on electrophoresis — movement of electrically charged black-and-white ink particles — this year with Massachusetts-based E-Ink Corp. as the inventor and Philips with the license to produce. Meanwhile, Philips is also working on reflective LCD technologies.

Why look at yet another reflective technology like electrowetting? “Because currently this is the only technology that is fast enough for video applications, and at the same time allows color screens with brightness and contrast similar to real paper,” said Johan Feenstra, one of the electrowetting display’s inventors.

Ken Werner, president of Nutmeg Consultants and editor of Information Display magazine, called the electrowetting method “a clever idea” that’s still just a lab demonstration.

“The question that always needs to be answered for a new display technology is whether its special characteristics are sufficiently compelling to overcome the already developed and very good transflective LCD technology, and the rapidly developing OLED (organic light-emitting device) technology, both of which have a substantial infrastructure in place to support them, and both of which, especially LCD, are very cost-effective,” Werner said. 

He said that while it’s too early to tell whether the technique is commercially viable, “my personal feeling is that the electrowetting technology is deserving of further work, but I would not want to bet that I will see it in a cell phone or eBook any time soon.”

The technology that most closely resembles actual paper comes from E-Ink Corp. “But first-generation displays are still rather slow,” Kurstjens said. “It takes almost one second to attract the charged ink particles to the front electrodes to build up the image.” Typical video applications require an image refresh rate of 25 frames a second; the electrowetting display switches in 10 milliseconds, allowing 100 frames a second — four times faster than the average VCR.

“More importantly, at the moment the route to full color E-Ink screens is not yet clear. We lose too much brightness with the straightforward approach using color filters,” said Kurstjens.

Philips’ latest prototype is the size of a postage stamp, with 160-by-50-micrometer pixels. Feenstra said it is “difficult to say” when can we can expect electrowetting displays on store shelves. “Every self-respecting display company is working on a reflective technology, so I’m sure it’ll arrive eventually. But it’s too soon to determine which one, or which ones for that matter, will win.”

Then there is the manufacturing issue. “Current prototypes are made using similar lithographic processes as in the LCD industry. By doing so, we reduce the costs of introducing our technology,” Feenstra said.

“Often, discussions on new flexible e-paper technologies concentrate on integration of pixels and thin film transistors (TFTs), forgetting that the required materials are far from off-the-shelf,” said Bill MacDonald, researcher at DuPont Teijin Films, a company that makes polyester for flexible displays. These materials must meet strict demands. They must, for example, keep their dimensions even when heated to 300 degrees Celsius, have a smooth surface and shield active components from oxygen and humidity — the two main evildoers that limit the lifetime of these displays.

“With the integration of switching electronics and pixels, ideally, you would like to make the TFTs from semiconducting polymers using cheap inkjet printing to put them down, but that’s still under development. I don’t expect commercial displays of this type before 2005,” McDonald said.

Philips also has a down-to-earth view of the market and doesn’t expect electrowetting to hit the market within five years. “You have to be realistic, ” said Krustjens. “Sometimes, the press writes about new e-paper technologies as if they’ll become available next month.” So, we need to hang on to our printer for a little while longer.

Jan. 6, 2004 — Fluidigm Corp., a South San Francisco, Calif., developer of microfluidic products, announced it has raised $21 million in Series D financing.

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EDB Investments Pte ltd, the wholly owned investment bank of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and Invus LP led the round. Existing investors also participated.

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The funds will be used to expand international sales and marketing efforts for the company’s Topaz product line.

Jan. 6, 2004 — psiloQuest Inc., an Orlando, Fla., manufacturer of specialty polishing pads for use in semiconductor manufacturing processes, closed on a $7 million Series B round of financing.

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NGEN Partners led the round. New investors DuPont, Air Products and Chemicals and Cycad Group also participated alongside existing investors Aurora Funds, Grace Venture Partners and Greyhound Fund LP.

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psiloQuest’s pads are used for chemical mechanical planarization as well as other processes crucial for semiconductor manufacture. The company will use the funds to expand manufacturing capability and build a larger sales and marketing infrastructure, among other purposes.

December 29, 2003 – Leave it to the folks at Xerox subsidiary PARC — the place that gave birth to the concept of the graphical user interface, among other things — to come up with another fascinating contribution to technology. The organization’s newest brainchild: a prototype flat-panel display circuit, using a modified inkjet printer and a new polymer-based semiconductor “ink.”

The inkjet process, co-funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), patterns and prints the components of each transistor layer in a single step, instead of the multiple photolithography steps currently used. Key to the technology is a computer vision system ensuring precise measurement and placement of each layer, even if the substrate is slightly warped during the process.

The new technology is expected to work with both rigid and flexible substrates. Possible applications include wall-sized TVs, unbreakable displays for cell phones, and computer displays and electronic paper that roll up like a tube.

The PARC research, including the semiconductor polymer ink, is part of a joint R&D effort involving Xerox, Motorola Inc., and Dow Chemical Co., co-funded by NIST’s Advanced Technology Program.

Dec. 23, 2003 — Sometimes the fiercest of competitors can be the closest of allies — that is, when they have something in common.

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Apparently, that’s the case with the biggest companies in the U.S. chemicals industry. And what they have in common is the promise of nanotechnology, the threat of foreign competition and a tough message for academia.

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Earlier this month, an industry consortium released a 92-page nanomaterials road map (PDF, 3.75 MB) designed to help the U.S. chemicals industry commercialize nanotech.

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The idea is to help companies move faster by eliminating redundancies — the precompetitive work that everybody needs to do but from which no one gains any competitive advantage. The result, the consortium says, will give the United States an edge — or, perhaps more correctly, help it keep its edge — in an increasingly global market for chemicals and specialty materials.

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“Every new science goes through a very ripe discovery phase,” said Sue Babinec, a Dow Chemical Co. scientist on the road map’s 13-person steering committee. “There comes a point where you say, ‘Let’s get more organized.’ “

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The plan, officially titled “Chemical Industry R&D Roadmap for Nanomaterials By Design: From Fundamentals to Function,” says that products would move to market sooner if the industry set up a standard system of understanding the basic properties of nanomaterials. The report urges that standard techniques be developed in fundamentals like materials characterization and software modeling, as well as compiling a knowledge base of nanomaterials themselves. If the U.S. chemicals industry will be more competitive in the coming years if it collaborates on these efforts, the report says.

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The U.S. system, itself, also comes under “constructive criticism” in the road map.

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“The road map is really saying that the way that research is funded has to change,” said Melissa Eichner of Energetics Inc., who coordinated the effort. “That’s the ripple that this road map is going to make in the water.”

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The report also calls into the question the intellectual property policies of U.S. universities, which it says “put American companies at a competitive disadvantage.” The report does not come right out and say it, but Babinec and Bill Rafaniello, another Dow scientist on the steering committee, told Small Times that it takes much more time and paperwork to deal with U.S. universities than it does abroad, and that the terms of domestic deals are worse. Other company representatives expressed similar concerns. As a result, they said, firms often choose to work with foreign academics.

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The report calls for a “culture change” in information sharing, including annual policy reviews, revised technology transfer protocols and a nanotechnology working group within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as additional formal discussions on how to adapt the system.

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The road map was prepared by the Chemical Industry Vision2020 Technology Partnership and was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office.

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Even though the road map was originally solicited by the government in 2002, its future use by the government is not guaranteed. “We have suggestions on how much money to spend” and how to spend it, Babinec said. But that’s all they are: suggestions. It remains up to government agencies to decide whether to use them.

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The industry is planning a follow-up effort. The next step, according to steering committee Chairman Jack Solomon, of Praxair Inc., will be creation of a separate project composed largely of the same companies but with a separate steering group. The group plans to produce an economic opportunity report, and educate corporations and government organizations like the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology about the report’s conclusions. Solomon said it should take at least six months to produce the opportunity report.

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Editor’s Note: Small Times magazine, in its January/February cover story, will report on how the Vision2020 nanomaterials road map is one collaboration effort among many taking place in the chemical industry. Industry heavyweights are also forging deals with startups and labs. These relationships, executives say, are as important to the industry’s success as the technology itself.

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EWING, N.J., Dec. 22, 2003 — “See the light!” declares a sign in the company’s entryway. Universal Display Corp. (UDC) expects its screen technology to see the light of commercial day sometime in 2004.

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OLED stands for organic light-emitting device, and screens based on UDC’s technology are composed of several ultrathin films of special molecules that glow when excited by an electric current. The OLED approach boasts brighter colors and wider viewing angles than those based on current liquid crystal display (LCD) technology. They also promise to be more power-efficient and deliver smoother video than LCD. Because OLED molecules emit their own light, displays based on them could be cheaper, simpler and thinner than LCD screens that require backlighting.

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First-generation OLED screens from RiTDisplay Corp., Samsung NEC Mobile Display Co. Ltd. and SK Display Corp. have already begun to appear in a few digital cameras, cell phones and car stereos. Pioneer says its new display will employ UDC’s phosphorescent material for the red pixels in the red, green, blue medley required for full color.

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The research group DisplaySearch predicts that the OLED market will grow to $3.1 billion by 2007. But UDC’s progress has been almost a decade in the making. Kodak scientist Ching Tang first reported carbon-based materials that glowed when electrified in 1987. UDC was founded in 1994 to market the OLED research going on at Princeton University and the University of Southern California.

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UDC counts Sony, Samsung, DuPont, Motorola, Toyota and the U.S. Army, in addition to Pioneer, among its strategic partners. Such alliances are critical because its business model is to license its technology rather than make OLED screens.

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Kimberly Allen, director of technology and strategic research at Stanford Resources, a market research firm, said that UDC is well-positioned to succeed as OLEDs mature, but she noted that there are also a number of new players, such as Covion Organic Semiconductors GmbH, in Frankfurt Germany, with similar technology.

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“The market will have to sort out who has the best phosphorescent materials for the best price,” said Allen. She noted that Hitachi and Casio have also joined the fray, showing off full-color active matrix at recent tech conferences.

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UDC went public in 1996 with a $7 million stock offering and has raised more than $100 million more since then through investors, partnership programs and grants. In November, it was awarded $730,000 in Small Business Innovation Research Phase II funding to develop a flexible display on metal foil for military applications.

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Janice Mahon, the company’s vice president of technology commercialization, said that UDC is developing flexible and transparent OLED displays as well as working toward full-color, active-matrix screen technology that might find applications in larger displays such as laptops, computer monitors or small televisions. Flexible screens could, for example, be used on curved surfaces such as vehicle dashboards or for displays that roll up like a small movie screen. Transparent screens could enable displays on windshields or windows.

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Mahon said that UDC’s approach employs phosphorescent material, while its chief competitors, Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Eastman Kodak use fluorescent materials.

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The practical difference, said Mahon, is that the phosphoresent OLEDs require significantly less power.

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Mahon said the company is working with its partner, Aixtron AG toward a second-generation production process, organic vapor phase deposition, that offers advantages over current thermal evaporation techniques. In contrast, CDT’s OLEDs are made with a liquid polymer that could be sprayed onto a surface with a low-cost process akin to inkjet printing. DuPont Displays is working to blend UDC’s performance advantages with the low cost of CDT’s “printable” approach.

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Company file: Universal Display Corp.
(last updated Dec. 22, 2003)

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Company

Universal Display Corp.

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Ticker symbol

Nasdaq: PANL

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Headquarters

Princeton Crossroads Corporate Center

375 Phillips Blvd.

Ewing, N.J., 08618

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History

UDC was founded in 1994 by Sherwin Seligsohn to commercialize the OLED research going on at Princeton and USC. In 1996, UDC took a $7 million IPO. In 1999, the company moved its operations into what is now a 20,000-square-foot facility in Ewing, N.J. During 2003, UDC helped fund MIT’s research into the use of quantum dots in OLEDs.

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Industries served

Computing, consumer electronics, vehicle displays, military communications

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Employees

45, with at least 25 focused on R&D and technical development

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Small tech-related products and services

Rather than developing and marketing its own products, UDC develops and licenses its organic OLED technology to other companies.

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Management

Sherwin I. Seligsohn: chairman of the board and chief executive officer

Steven V. Abramson: president and chief operating officer

Sidney D. Rosenblatt: executive vice president and chief financial officer

Julia J. Brown: vice president, technology development

Janice Mahon: vice president, technology commercialization

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Revenue

$2.4 million in 2002

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Selected strategic partners and customers

  • Pioneer Electronics
  • Aixtron AG
  • DuPont Displays

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    Selected competitors

  • Cambridge Display Technology
  • Eastman Kodak Co.
  • Covion Organic Semiconductors GmbH

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    Barriers to market

    In order to be useful in devices meant to last more than a few years, OLED technology will need to make significant advances in lengthening the working life of materials, especially blue emitters. UDC’s small-molecule process also needs to achieve certain economies of scale in order to become competitive within an established LCD infrastructure.

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    Relevant patents

    Sealed organic optoelectronic structures

    Protected organic optoelectronic devices

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    Recent articles

    DuPont, UDC link on flat panel display technology

    OLEDs get ready to light up the market for flexible screens

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    Contact

    URL: www.universaldisplay.com

    Phone: 609-671-0980

    Fax: 609-671-0995

    E-mail: [email protected]

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    — Research by Gretchen McNeely

    Dec. 22, 2003 — The National Science Board, the 24-member policy advisory group for the National Science Foundation, has authorized a fund to create a National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) composed of 13 university sites that will form an integrated system of national facilities for nanoscale science and research.

    The NNIN, expected to launch in January, will be led by Cornell University. Other member universities are Georgia Institute of Technology; Harvard University; Howard University; North Carolina State University; Pennsylvania State University; Stanford University; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of Michigan; the University of Minnesota; the University of New Mexico, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington.

    Goals for the network go beyond academic research. They will also include educational efforts involving students from kindergarten through high school as well as industry outreach activities.

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    Dec. 18, 2003 — A group of about 25 recently gathered from around the world to watch their host build a water molecule and attached it onto the tip of a carbon nanotube.

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    With the molecule bonded in place, they observed as measurements were taken of how the enhanced nanotube will perform as a transistor in a display.

    All of this, of course, happened virtually. The demonstration was an online “Webinar” that Accelrys Inc. put on to showcase its molecular modeling and simulation software.

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    Accelrys’ Webinar is part of surging trend in business communications.

    The Yankee Group predicts that corporate spending on Webinars and Webcasts, which was $169 million in 2000, will reach $5.9 billion by 2005. Frost & Sullivan estimated in April 2002 that worldwide Web conferencing revenues alone would hit $2 billion by 2008. And Gartner Group research predicts that one of the fastest-growing uses for online presentations and meetings will be for marketing, advertising and product launches.

    The Accelrys Webinar, for example, featured a demonstration over the Internet of software that can measure how a pharmaceutical nanopill would perform based on varying the concentration of polymers, the size of particles and other parameters.

    This particular Web conference, hosted through Webex Inc., was essentially a 30-minute communal slide presentation with the Accelrys hosts audible via a toll-free conference call. Participants could also chat online with each other and pose questions.

    In August, Evident Technologies produced a video Webcast of a symposium featuring speakers including Alex Ekimov, one of the fathers of quantum dot science.

    Steve Talbot, Evident’s vice president of marketing, said the company opted for an online event because it was a cost-effective way to reach a global audience in an era of reduced travel budgets and terrorism fears. More than 200 people tuned in to the Webcast, which the company is also now selling as a DVD for $25.

    The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Distance Learning Program is also selling six 90-minute Webcasted videos on nanotechnology featuring people such as the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s Mike Roco and University of Maryland’s Avi Bar Cohen.

    Talbot noted that the Webcast, put on with the help of Siena College and Time Warner Cable, was a unique way to attract potential customers and create wider awareness of Evident’s products. It also was a strategy that made simple economic sense.

    “Think in terms of what it would’ve cost to send a group to make presentations on even three continents,” he said. Talbot said that Evident is looking to put together another Webcast conference.

    While Webcasts are becoming almost commonplace extensions of physical conferences, what then are some of the keys to a successful interactive Webinar? Lisa Neal, editor in chief of eLearn magazine and an expert on Web conferencing, recommends rehearsing. “Go over everything that could go wrong and plan on how you’ll handle it.”

    In the Accelrys Webinar, for example, some participants hadn’t been told they had to log into a conference call to hear the hosts. Fortunately, the ability to chat with other visitors enable that critical information to circulate.

    Neal also suggests getting the virtual audience involved interactively, perhaps by asking people to say where there from or posing a poll question that will warm them up.

    She also recommends that you have a second moderator who can field questions from the audience during the course of a presentation that can be answered during a later Q&A session.

    “This is becoming a very common way for businesses to communicate,” noted Neal. “It can be particularly effective if the presentation is from someone who is very notable or distinguished.” Your audience will have a greater sense of having ‘been there’ even if they’re experiencing the event from the other side of the globe.

    Indeed, one of the most prominent features of small technology is its global scale. In the Webinar world, Webex is the current king, but Microsoft has recently gotten into the game through their purchase of Placeware Inc. and marketing campaign for the company’s new Live Meeting service. Cisco Systems announced Nov. 12 it was acquiring Latitude Inc. for about $80 million.

    For larger companies looking to invest in frequent intra-company online presentations, board meetings and events, Interactive Video Technologies Inc. offers an innovative software suite for quickly and easily integrating video, slides and other elements together.

    Finally, Neal, who discussed how to run a successful Webinar at the eLearn 2003 conference in Phoenix this November, noted that for cutting edge businesses like those in small tech, a web conference “is a more engaging way to make news or create connections” than simply sending out a press release or e-mail newsletter.