Black Friday is quickly approaching. The comfort of a Thanksgiving meal with family and friends, an afternoon of football and naps on the couch are followed by utter chaos on the city streets as men and women scramble to pick-up the best bargains for holiday gifts this season. Electronic retailers, department stores and outdoor equipment shops will all be hyping up their best gift buys. The unfortunate part will be that you and a hundred other people will all be diving for that same item.

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Sports fishermen and hunters throughout the Northwest will now be able to purchase their licenses and tags online using the new Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Online Sales site. Hunting and fishing licenses, juvenile licenses, angling tags, controlled hunt applications and game bird permits can all be ordered and purchased on the new site. Hunters should still plan ahead as the final document will still need to be sent to you by mail in most instances. Printable temporary tags and licenses are available and will be acceptable during the interim.

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Looking at flat panel TVs this Christmas? mcelettronica.com has a great article on their site by Diego Villa that goes through the history, technology, pros and cons of OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) TV technology. For most readers, you will remember that OLEDs are created when an LED device produces light from organic materials placed between two layers, anode and cathode. More televisions are popping up on tradeshow floors using OLEDs in their screens (Sony has one on the market now).

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Great report form the DOE this week on a Gateway demonstration project conducted at the Providence Portland Medical Center in Portland, OR. The project is a study of commercial LED lighting usage in various locations, comparing the light source with other traditional fixtures. The report came to some great solid statistics comparing high pressure sodium (HPS) luminaires with LED light sources in the medical center’s parking garage. An existing LED version out on the market since 2007 as well as a newer model were both used in the study which was compiled by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

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US-based LED manufacturer, Cree announced their research and development division achieved an efficacy of 161 lumens / watt with a white high-power LED using a 1×1mm chip. This is the highest value reported to date by any LED developer in the industry. The tests were done under standard LED test conditions.

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