Everything else in the economy may be shrinking, but there's one thing that's getting bigger: the ball that drops on New Year's Eve, according to a recent report.

Taiwan LED makers, including Epistar Corp., Everlight Electronics Co. and Opto Tech Corp., are hopefully to benefit from LED backlight notebook PCs sales boom with increasing popularity of LED backlight notebook PCs to generate demand for 1.5-2 billion LED chips in 2009.

Energy Focus Inc., a maker of LED lighting based in Solon, Ohio USA, announced that it has installed LED lighting to retrofit the high-bay lighting in a hanger deck on board an Arleigh Burke class Destroyer.

During the economic downturn, many manufacturers are setting to reduce the output and dismiss workers at manufacturing lines. But, small and mid-size LED makers are busy running manufacturing lines.

Taiwan surface-mounted chip LED manufacturer Harvatek Inc. recently announces that it would start an automotive-LED partnership with Osram in 2009 after two years of effort.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first US city to go 100% LED, will join an ever-growing list of cities with its plan to take advantage of long-lasting LED street lighting, but NYC is going to take it all one step further with new streetlight poles.

Orient Lighting introduces its high power UFO LED grow lights. LED Grow Lights do not consume as much power, do not require ballasts and produce a fraction of the heat of HID lamps, which adopt ideal wavelength LED emits only Photosynthetically Active Radiation to grow plants effectively and affordably. Besides, they produce little heat and save Save 75% power over HID grow lighting.

On January 2, state-of-the-art lighting technology featuring 40,000 LEDs will illuminate the 5,100 sq-m glass facade of the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, to celebrate the opening of the exhibition, New Views of Humankind. This innovative facade illumination was planned and installed by Multivision, a Marchtrenk-based firm founded in 2002.

Cree Inc. has announced that it and Boston University have reached agreement with Bridgelux Inc. to settle the parties’ patent infringement litigation and to dismiss all claims and counterclaims in the suits. As part of the settlement, Bridgelux, a privately held company based in Sunnyvale, Calif., will pay royalties and license fees to settle litigation over patents held by Cree and Boston University.

As we know, light is so important to plant health, the purchase of grow lights requires a bit of thought and consideration. Fluorescent grow lights are very efficient and cool compared with incandescent bulbs, which are not a particularly good choice because of the heat generated.

It’s reported that LG will unveil the world’s slimmest LED LCD TV - “LH95” at CES in January in Las Vegas. The LG LH95 is expected to be only 24.8mm thick, which should be good enough to back the manufacturer’s claim. The LH95 will feature a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio screen and come with 240Hz TrueMotion Drive technology. It’s disclosed that this LED LCD TV will be the 2009 CES Innovation Award winner in the Display category.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center (LRC) has enhanced its outreach education by taking the LED Lighting Institute “on the road.” In addition to the traditional three-day seminar held each spring and fall at the LRC, a two-day LED Lighting Institute program option has been added, which will be hosted at a program sponsor site each year.

Recently, Luxmore introduces its new fashion LED product - LED dance floor. It is the first one in the world which has the sensitivity function to people's dance or steps. The tile will change color automatically according to when people step on it. In addition, it has more interesting functions such as SoundActive, Auto Run, easy computer programing (software free), IP65, easy mounting bracket, ultra bright LED, no dark area, MIDI input......

After several years of foundering holiday sales for energy-efficient LED lighting, LED manufacturers and retailers reported sales that were surprisingly brisk even during an economic downturn.

Hi Seoul Winter Festival 2008 was hold at Cheonggye Square in this Tuesday evening. Numerous lights along Seoul’s Cheonggye Stream brighten the dark winter sky.

Recently, Wyked Illuzionz introduces pink LED light for motorcycles. The new pink motorcycle LED lights are filling a demand primarily of the female rider market. Motorcycle owners have been able to purchase LED lighting in colors such as amber, blue, green, jade, orange, purple, red, white and a few other colors but pink, although often requested, has not been available until just recently introduced in the Stingerz line of products.

Look at the following photo that was shot at Nextreme Thermal Solutions Inc of the US. This is a demonstration in which the heat of a candle flame was converted into electric power to turn on an LED.

The following is a LED placemat. The 11 inches by 16.5 inches are treated with Scotchgard for simple spot cleaning. The Fiber-optic LED placemat illuminate and decorate any family gathering space, from the kitchen to the dining room. They’re fun, bright, and festive. Just push a button to activate, and enjoy the ambiance as the lights gently twinkle.

One of America’s largest holiday light shows, the Winter Festival of Lights at Oglebay in Wheeling, West Virginia, started converting to LEDs this year. The energy-saving LED lights will be used in all new displays including the Mountaineer Christmas Display, added to the show this year. The conversion of all existing displays to LED lights begins in 2008 and the entire show should be LED by 2012.

Recently, Marktech Optoelectronics, Toshiba's optoelectronic partner in the U.S. expands its LED driver product family with two new high-performance devices from Toshiba - TB62777FNG and TB62778FNG. Their constant current LED drivers delivering a continuous current that can be regulated for superior illumination in the back-lighting of LCD panels, TV displays and notebook PCs, as well as light control for large RGB panel LED displays.

MAGA Essense Ltd. is promoting its LED light bars and T8 LED lighting fixture. The light bars are ideal for stairway lights, parking lot lights, showcase lights, cove lights, and fridge lights while the T8 fixture is made for offices.

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors announced that its series of Golden DRAGON LED has been chosen by Advanced Thermal Devices, Inc (ATD) for its LED illumination projects in Taiwan. Integrating the cutting edge chip technology and fitted with a silicone dome for greater light extraction efficiency, OSRAM’s Golden DRAGON and Golden DRAGON Plus LEDs provide high quality lighting solution for outdoor illumination. Both of them are characterized by an exceptionally long lifetime. There are two LED illumination projects ATD has been working with OSRAM.

It’s reported that University of Florida materials science and engineers have achieved a new record in efficiency of blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which is a step forward towards better and efficient lights. Because blue is essential to white light, the advance helps overcome a hurdle to lighting that is much more efficient than compact fluorescents, but can produce high-quality light similar to standard incandescent bulbs.

According to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)’s recent study, the emerging solid-state lighting that replaces incandescent and fluorescent bulbs with LED can reap enormous savings in cost, natural resources and pollution. The firm claims that over the next 10 years, savings of more than $1.8 trillion will eliminate the need to burn almost a billion barrels of oil in power plants that would otherwise produce 10 gigatons in the carbon dioxide emissions.  

It’s reported that Nexxus Lighting, Inc. has begun production and sale of its new Array Lighting brand of LED lamps including Array Par 30, Par 16, G4, MR16 and GU10. The new Array Lighting Par 30, Par 16 and G4 LED are the first bulbs to begin production and offer direct replacement for conventional incandescent, halogen and CFL Par/R light bulbs and T3 bi-pin bulbs.

This holiday season more and more consumers choose energy-efficient LED Christmas lights to save money and show their support for the environment, according to the market source. Consumers are discovering the benefits of LED lights, namely the considerable cost savings and durability they offer over conventional lights. Part of the upswing in popularity is that LED lights are now cheaper than when they were first introduced, motivating more consumers to try them out. California's state capital has also created a large holiday display using LED lights.

UK government-funded sustainable technology research project has chosen High Technology Lighting (HTL) to develop world-leading ecologically sound lighting practice across the UK construction sector. The Leeds-based lighting design specialist has been awarded a major grant to develop prototype LED luminaries in partnership with the School of the Built Environment at the University of Salford, the UK's premier school in its field.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has announced that its easy-to-use intelligent lighting solutions support DRAGON LEDs from Osram Opto Semiconductors.

Rohm Co Ltd has developed the SML-L1 and SML-J1 series of side-view and top-view high-output surface-mount LEDs designed to provide autofocus flash functionality and auxiliary lighting in low light conditions for increasingly compact digital still and video cameras.

Artist Leo Villareal has completed a light sculpture along the walkway connecting the East and West buildings of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The work, called Multiverse, uses about 41,000 LEDs that run along the 200-foot-long corridor.