The Centennial Bulb, the longest burning light bulb in history which has been burning for the last 108 years at fire station No.6 in Livermoore California, has yesterday been replaced with an energy efficient LED bulb.            

The NOKIA 1661 will come out on T-MOBILE USA later this year. The phone is economically priced, and is ridiculously simple, while the amazing built-in LED flashlight will be the biggest attraction to all. With a built-in speakerphone, FM radio and flashlight, consumers can stay well connected when away from home or the office. With the built-in LED flashlight, consumers won't be left in the dark again as the Nokia 1661 easily lights the way.

In spite of the global economic downturn, demand for LED lighting will continue growing in the next year, forecasted Cree CEO Chuck Swoboda in a Tuesday interview with Reuters.

Energy Focus, a fiber-optic and LED lighting provider, said Tuesday it would develop LEDs for the U.S. Army to replace rockets flares which are used to provide infrared light to soldiers wearing night vision goggles on the battlefield.

Last year in San Jose, California, the local government had turned off streetlights in some district to meet the environmental goals, while this year, more LED lamps could be installed in the next few months to get the same result. To reach Mayor Chuck Reed's Green Vision aim of powering the city's 62,000 streetlights with renewable energy, the city’s Transportation and Environment Committee will come up with some steps on April 6.

Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Inc. yesterday launched its new ConnX-VLEDPSTM automatic ball bonder. Before this official announcement, ConnX-VLED had made its first appearance during March 17-19 at SEMICON China 2009 in Shanghai. As an extension of the company’s leading ConnXPSTM ball bonder, ConnX-VLED also comes with high brightness and high-power LED lamps generally featured by devices specifically designed for vertical LED applications, offering a best solution for diverse LED applications.

Broit Light, a company based in Wayzata, Minnesota, USA has last week launched its initial production of LED bulbs at its production facility in Long Lake. The start-up company has claimed to have come up with a line of more energy-efficient and adaptable light bulbs.

These Pimpstar rims we’ve never seen before have been newly invented by Dub Custom Wheels. These Pimpstar rims can display images as you roll down the street, and they are programmable using a Wi-Fi equipped laptop.

A new LED light bulb which is claimed as “the best light bulb in the world” has been released on Friday by the Fortuna-based C. Crane Company in Humboldt County, California.

In New York, in the center field of the new Yankee stadium which has cost $1.3 billion to build, now stands an immense 103 foot LED HD scoreboard which is six time larger than the screen at the old stadium. The 103-by-58 foot, 1080p HD scoreboard is a Mitsubishi Diamond Vision LED product. Embedded with 8,601,600 LED lamps, for a total of 5,925 square feet, the scoreboard can throw up as many as four simultaneous images, with picture-in-picture capabilities. At that enormous size, the puckered, sweat-oozing pore of your famous pitcher will be the size of a real human.

TXU Energy has just had its parking garage retrofitted with LEDs to reduce energy costs. Lighting Science Group Corporation announced yesterday the completion of the retrofit after replacing the existing 175 watt metal halide light fixtures with state-of-the-art 78 watt light-emitting diode (LED) low bay parking garage fixtures for the garage.

Lime Energy Company and Nexxus Lighting, Inc. have recently announced their cooperation to install the new Array™ Lighting LED of Nexxus in numerous projects of Lime Energy to provide customers with energy-saving and environmental-friendly products.

A one year program to evaluate the use of LED outdoor street lights has been launched by the town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Duke Energy Carolinas.

A DOE researcher has achieved a big progress in his research on organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) by partly solving the problem of weak blue diode in white OLED lights.

Sarnoff Corp. has launched a new company to focus on the thriving LED lighting market. Lightscape Materials Inc., which is the name of the new venture, has received $3 million in Series A funding from Wisepower Co. Ltd. and Foosung HDS Co. Ltd with the two companies joining Itochu Corp. which is an early stage investor and distributor in Asia for Lightscape Materials.

Diodes Incorporated, a leading global provider of semiconductor products, has recently released a family of LED driver ICs which require the support of only four components and operate at switching frequencies up to 600kHZ, which makes possible the use of fewer and smaller external components to be required by driver circuits.

LED flashlight technology has recently for the first time been added to a wristwatch as in the new digital watch product recently released by iBEAM. New features and applications have been essential factors for watch brands to win the market. So iBEAM has made sure to have a hit with consumers and retailers with this new adoption of LED flashlight to its new product.

LED streetlights are to illuminate the dark in a most crime-ridden block in the city of San Francisco. And the Mayor Gavin Newsom will visit the section today to test the energy-saving light source by lighting four street lights using his iPhone. LED street lights consume much less power than traditional streetlights. And the lights with computer chips are networked over power lines thus can be shut off when no one is around. Besides, LED lights require far less maintenance and are tough to break. But these are not the most important for this weirdest section in the city.

Endicott Research Group (ERG), Inc., has created a European office, naming Roland Knuchel as European Sales Manager. ERG, based in Endicott, NY, is the leading manufacturer of DC-AC inverters and LED Drivers for powering LCD backlights.

On the St. Louis Regional FIRST Robotics Competition held in Missouri, USA on Saturday, the robots from Baxter Bomb Squad not only had beaten the rival in the matches, but also received the Rockwell Innovation in Controls Award for its camera-tracking LED system. This camera-tracking LED system was implemented in the Baxter Bomb robots to track the goals of robots in the opposite team. And the proximity of their robot to the goals was displayed in red, blue and green LEDs, said Steve Hatch, one of the team's sponsors.

Two new PhlatLight LED modules for entertainment and architectural uses are introduced by Luminus Devices Inc. in Billerica, USA. And the products has been planned to enter the markets from 2H09. Claimed as the first multi-color LEDs by the company with individually controllable color channels, the new modules based on PhlatLight (Photonic Lattice) LED large-chip architecture can produce over 2500 lumen of total light output from a optical area of merely 6mm x 8mm.

An estimated unencapsulated light-extraction efficiency of 73% has been reached by a photonic-crystal structured blue-emitting LED created by researchers of Philips Lumileds (San Jose, CA) and Philips Research(Eindhoven, The Netherlands).

Grote Industries, a leading manufacturer and marketer of vehicle lighting and safety systems, has disclosed its development of a new flexible LED strips product. With a thickness of merely 1mm and 98 percent material saved in the manufacture process, the LightForm can be twisted, bended and even cut into shape. It will also be self-adhesive to vehicles through the elimination of brackets, fasteners and drilling.

Philips Color Kinetics has been awarded for “Significant Achievement in Solid-State Lighting Research & Development” by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which is recognition of its exceptional progress in the development of the highly efficient LED PAR lamp.  

It’s reported that Molex Incorporated has added fully-automated LED bonding capabilities in China. Molex also bonded its 500,000,000th LED on a membrane switch using the latest high-speed SMT processes and bonding technology. Molex has been applying LEDs to flex circuits for over 20 years through two innovative methods to bond and encapsulate the components for robust electrical and mechanical reliability, providing customers with a low-cost interactive user interface.

California Micro Devices (CMD) has unveiled LuxGuard family of protection devices for ultra high brightness (UHB) LED lighting applications. The LuxGuard family of protection solutions includes both LED submounts that deliver robust ESD protection and enhanced thermal management capabilities and side mounts which offer superior ESD protection for customers that utilize ceramic submounts.

Kinetic Lighting is reportedly to be one of the first lighting companies to offer the new ColorReach (TM) Powercore for rent in Southern California. The LED flood fixture, one of Philips Color Kinetics’ newest and most powerful LED fixtures, outputs more than 5,000 lumens, projects light up to 500 feet and only consumes 290 watts at full intensity. The company says it is an incredibly bright floodlight suited for both indoor and outdoor use.

It’s reported that Cooper Industries has acquired Illumination Management Solutions, Inc. (IMS) of Irvine, California that specializes in optics and system design for LED fixtures. Cooper did not reveal the purchase price or other details. Optics are critical to improving the energy efficiency of LED fixtures and creating lighting patterns that improve safety and customer comfort, according to Ron Holder, IMS president.

Recently, LED giant Cree, Inc. has launched the Product Characterization Tool (PCT), an interactive LED design tool that simplifies the task of translating nominal LED performance to real-world conditions. The online tool, accessible via cree’s website, Cree notes PCT allows users to easily characterize any XLamp® LED over a wide range of operating conditions, including drive current, flux bin, price and junction temperature. It also calculates metrics such as lumen output, lumens per watt, lumens per dollar and more.

Bright Green Technology introduces an LED backlight system - Bright Green Matrix™. The company says it is designed to illuminate large format signs and billboards in retail, commercial and advertising environments and it is equally suited to retrofitting into existing boxes or incorporating into new designs.