Filed under: Wireless
Everybody is sworn to silence until the auction is over, so we won’t be seeing much more information about this until it’s all over in the spring of next year, but for now it’s still fun to speculate. Business Week is doing quite a bit of that speculating as well, with word that DoCoMo, KDDI, SK Telecom and even China (through the T-Mobile and Global Tower invested Blackstone Group) could be chipping in a few billion here and there to spice things up for Google and friends in the 700MHz C Block auction. DoCoMo, which got burned in the US a while back with pre-Cingular AT&T Wireless, mentioned to Business Week that it’d be interested in partnering with Google for its wireless network, and the other carrier might not be talking but have to be at least considering the possibility of being involved in US wireless data in a big way, and KDDI has a history of being chummy with Google in Japan. The word is that average North American data service bills are less than $10 a month, and are expected to grow to $38+ a month by 2012 — and who wouldn’t want in on that action? As growth slows in Europe and Asia, it seems only natural for the innovators over there to head over here and kick things into gear, but we’ll try not too far ahead of ourselves.
[Via The Inquirer]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Paul Miller on December 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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No sooner than the XO-1 (OLPC) laptops started shipping then people are arguing the merits of the scheme.
Specifically US opinionated journalist John Dvorak, who has dismissed the laptop as a “little green computer that changes nothing” and argues that sending food would be better. Obviously he has never heard of the “Give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life” parable!
I just love this quote from Bill Thompson:
Perhaps Dvorak’s just afraid that a Nigerian school child, empowered by the technology entrusted to them, will take him to task for his patronizing attitude, or perhaps even turn out to be a better journalist.
The project has enough issues with the Nigerian government still not sure whether to fund it, Intel and Microsoft offering cut-price hardware and discount operating systems in an attempt to keep this remarkable machine, with its Linux operating system and AMD processor at bay, so the last thing the project needs is someone like Dvorak making his typically ignorant opinions!
Via [BBC]
Written by Chris Marshall for Gadgetell, 2007. |
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Filed under Laptops, Computers.
Written by Chris Marshall on December 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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Filed under: Features, Home Entertainment
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.
Imagine a history in which broadcast television programming was not sent directly to television sets. Rather, it was sent to another, more expensive device in the home with a smaller screen. If you paid $40 per month, you could access at best only about 10 percent of the shows you really wanted. These shows were available on demand, but under ideal conditions needed a few minutes before you can start watching them. Furthermore, to watch them in the comfort of your living room, you had to rely on a slow, unreliable connection between the box and the TV set.
This bleak situation characterized the state of much broadband video at the debut of Vudu earlier this year. Vudu’s $400 glossy black box sports a curvy perimeter that is a bit taller than an Apple TV. It delivers instant access to about 10,000 movies using a slick and sophisticated combination of local caching and distributed computing. Rent or buy the movie and it starts playing. Vudu just introduced its first high-definition movies — the Bourne movie trilogy, offering the high-definition media-free version of The Bourne Ultimatum for sale for the first time.
The physical version of that movie is available exclusively on HD-DVD, but with Vudu you don’t have to worry about the alliances of studios or video rental chains. The company has struck deals with all major studios and the Vudu device is hundreds of dollars less than dual-format high-definition disc players from Samsung and LG Electronics. On the other hand, nearly all of its content is more of a quality match for the dirt-cheap and universally-supported standard DVD player today.
Continue reading Switched On: Vudu starts on its to-dos
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Ross Rubin on December 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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InformationWeek brings word that an Iranian university has apparently been able to put together a cluster of 216 Opteron server processors apparently in defiance of U.S. export controls, which the country will allegedly use for weather forecasting.
The U.S. forbids the export of high-performance microprocessors like the Opteron, which means that how Iran obtained its processors could be the subject of an investigation.
For its part, AMD has reportedly said that it “fully complies with all United States export control laws, and all authorized distributors of AMD products have contractually committed to AMD that they will do the same with respect to their sales and shipments of AMD products.”
At the Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) the university claims:
“The scientists of Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center (IHPCRC) managed to design and implement the most powerful supercomputer of Iran. The system employs 216 Opteron cores in cluster architecture. The system enjoys 860 Giga operations per second as theoretical peak performance, and is going to be utilized for weather forecasting and meteorological research.
“There are lots of scientific and industrial applications that engage complicated calculations; obviously, they are not feasible without access to supercomputers,” the site adds. “The samples of these applications can be found in Oil industry, Drug Discovery industry, Auto industry, Aerodynamics industry, Petrochemical and Polymer industry. Cluster Technology can fulfill all these applications.”
I’ve sent email to the staff at the supercomputing center, and I’ll report back if I hear anything.
Written by Mark Hachman on December 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Although we were able to get the BH200 to pose for a few glamour shots back at CEDIA, the recently released player has just now got around to checking in for a review. According to Home Theater Mag, the BH200 exhibited “stunning” image quality from both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles, and moreover, the video processing (DVD upconversion included) was “as good as any it had seen in a disc player.” Unfortunately, the (high) praise essentially ended there. First and foremost, it made little sense to the reviewer to pay such a high premium ($999) for a dual-format unit unless you place a great deal of value on size and convenience. Beyond that, the player really dropped the ball on high-resolution audio playback, as HTM couldn’t even get it to output Dolby TrueHD in multichannel form from “any output, at any resolution.” Overall, the BH200 turned out to be a mixed bag, and while strict videophiles may find nothing to kvetch about, its inability to handle certain audio codecs was viewed as a “serious shortcoming.” Nevertheless, there’s much, much more where this came from if you’re in the market, so head on over to the read link to catch the full spill.
[Via AVSForum]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Darren Murph on December 11th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Computers, Mobile Computers, Hardware, Laptops and Hardware and Otterbox and computer workstations and defender and fruit and logo and rainbow and scratch and teletype.
Toshiba’s plan to market ultra-thin TVs with organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays in 2009 or 2010 will be delayed indefinitely because it is very expensive to mass produce them.
Although its competitor Sony has already started selling 11-inch OLED TVs last November, the development costs remain very high thereby limiting its shipment to only 2,000 units each month.
Toshiba did not specify any timetable for the availability of OLED TVs. Instead, their spokesperson said they will monitor the market trends and will wait until there is a way to mass produce these TVs at a very reasonable cost.
Still, the company remains committed to market small screen OLEDs for mobile phones starting next year.
Read [Reuters]
Written by Leo Blanco for Gadgetell, 2007. |
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Filed under Home A/V, HDTV, Audio / Video.
Written by Leo Blanco on December 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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Filed under: Wireless
It looks like the cellular signal-sharing
Junxion Box is back and just as green as ever, this time with some new firmware and a few fairly significant upgrades. Among other things, the new JB-120 model (and updated 2.0 firmware) adds support for 802.11g WiFi with WPA Enterprise, so-called “GRE tunneling” to allow for more flexibility in establishing enterprise VPNs, a 50% faster boot time, a slightly modified enclosure that can accommodate more cellular antennas and, perhaps most notably, HSUPA support for some improved 3G action. If that’s enough to convince you to upgrade, you can apparently grab one now $700, with a WiFi-less version also available for $600.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Donald Melanson on December 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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Even with the introduction of blast-proof fabrics like Zetix, it would still be more reassuring to the modern world to be able to avoid explosions altogether rather than expect to survive them. Now a simple and inexpensive analytical technique called Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), has made it possible to detect explosives from up to 60 feet away! Think how helpful that could be in this unfortunate age of terrorism and suicide bombers. Maybe Superman and Wonder Woman can live again, but inside all of us instead of cartoon characters!
This technique, which was developed by the US Army Research Laboratory in Maryland, may become commercially available in the very near future. The system detects explosive residues using LIBS to identify the elemental composition of molecules. It still needs to be refined and standardized and according to researchers, when this occurs, this technique will fill a growing security and military need.
Jennifer Gottfried, leader of the Army research team said:
“Currently there are no proven technologies that can accomplish residue explosives detection at a distance in a real-world scenario. Although the technology still needs to be “verified and validated in real-world applications, we expect that this technology will be available commercially very soon.”
It would appear to be just a matter of time as now there is a race on from other laboratories to perfect the process. Let’s hope that in their haste they don’t blow each other up!
Read [CNET]
Written by Marjorie Dorfman for Gadgetell, 2007. |
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Written by Marjorie Dorfman on December 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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