The Internet died two deaths over the weekend

 Internet News, Tech News  378 Responses »
Jul 022012
 

The Internet died two short deaths this weekend. On Friday, a thunderstorm near Washington, D.C. knocked out Amazon’s servers (which also hosts Instagram and Netflix). Last night, a leap second knocked out a good bit of the Internet.

The thunderstorm story is pretty obvious. A storm knocked out a bunch of servers and left 1.5 million in the D.C. area without power.

The leap second story is more interesting.

Once in a while, all the atomic clocks across the world pause for one second. This time it was at 12:00a Greenwich Mean Time that all the atomic clocks paused, something that has happened 24 times since 1972. Not exactly common.

A lot of electronic devices link to the atomic clock, and these devices aren’t used to seeing the same second twice. And last night, when they did, things went to hell. Many sites, including Yelp, Reddit and the Gawker family were down.

One notable one wasn’t, though. This one inevitably prepared for months for a leap second no one else even knew about. This one is obviously Google.

MORE: The Internet died two deaths over the weekend | DVICE.

 

Get a TruConnect MiFi hot spot for $74

 Tech News  523 Responses »
Jul 022012
 

Enter TruConnect, a company that offers no-contract service and pay-as-you-go rates.

The hardware normally costs $99, but here’s a Cheapskate exclusive: the TruConnect MiFi for $74 when you use coupon code CNET2012 at checkout. Shipping adds around $6.

Like similar products that bear the MiFi name (this one is fairly popular and made by Novatel Wireless), TruConnect’s pocket-size gizmo lets you connect up to five devices to its secure, self-contained Wi-Fi network. Service is provided via Sprint’s 3G network, here promising download speeds of up to 1.4Mbps.

TruConnect doesn’t require any kind of contract, though it does charge $4.99 per month to keep your account active. From there you pay 3.9 cents per megabyte of data used — meaning this is not the service for you if you’re looking to stream Netflix. But for everyday stuff like e-mail and Web browsing, you should be able to operate for a lot less than what you’d pay, say, Verizon (which charges a minimum of $50 per month).

According to a TruConnect rep, its users consume an average of 300MB per month, which works out to just under $12.

MORE: Get a TruConnect MiFi hot spot for $74 | Marketplace Blog – CNET Reviews.

 

New $74 Android mini computer is slightly larger than a thumb drive

 Tech News  344 Responses »
May 182012
 

Chinese retailers have started selling a miniature Linux computer that is housed in a 3.5-inch plastic case slightly larger than a USB thumb drive. Individual units are available online for $74.

The small computer has an AllWinner A10 single-core 1.5GHz ARM CPU, a Mali 400 GPU, and 512MB of RAM. An HDMI port on the exterior allows users to plug the computer into a television. It outputs at 1080p and is said to be capable of playing high-definition video.

The device also has a full-sized USB port with host support for input devices, a conventional micro-USB port, a microSD slot, and an internal 802.11 b/g WiFi antenna. The computer can boot from a microSD card and is capable of running Android 4.0 and other ARM-compatible Linux platforms.

SOURCE  New $74 Android mini computer is slightly larger than a thumb drive | Ars Technica.

 

VLC Offers a Free DVD Player, Why Can’t Microsoft?

 Tech News  399 Responses »
May 082012
 

We’ve recommended VLC on more than one occasion, and for good reasons. It’s the swiss army knife of the video playback world. It supports more formats and codecs then we can count, installs quickly, and is updated frequently. With the upcoming release of Windows 8 however, it will start offering a new killer feature most people probably didn’t care about before – DVD playback. Microsoft’s decision to not support DVD playback in Windows 8 unless you shell out the extra cash for media center has created a ton of vitriol in comment feeds around the web, but also a pretty obvious question. If a free and open source app can offer the feature, why can’t Microsoft? ZDNet blogger Ed Bott set out to answer the question, and his findings may surprise you.

Before we get to the answer it is important to understand that DVD playback is made possible by way of two core software components. First you need an MPEG-2 decoder, and second you need Dolby Digital audio support. The cost of adding these to Windows 7 is estimated to be somewhere in the range of $2-$3, so how does VLC do this for free? It helps to be French.

SOURCE: Maximum PC | VLC Offers a Free DVD Player, Why Can’t Microsoft?.

 

Does “Mastered for iTunes” matter to music? Ars puts it to the test

 interface, Internet News, Tech News  509 Responses »
May 012012
 

Some musicians and record executives have recently bemoaned the fact that what ends up on a fans iPod or iPhone is of arguably much lower quality than what is laid down on tape or hard drives in the studio. While some players in the industry have pushed for higher resolution downloads, Apples current solution involves adhering to long-recognized—if not always followed—industry best practices, along with an improved compression toolchain that squeezes the most out of high-quality master recordings while still producing a standard 256kbps AAC iTunes Plus file.

Shepard applauded Apples technical guidelines, which encourage mastering engineers to use less dynamic range compression, to refrain from pushing audio levels to the absolute limit, and to submit 24/96 files for direct conversion to 16/44.1 compressed iTunes Plus tracks. However, he doubted that submitting such high quality files would result in much difference in final sound quality. Shepards conclusions led CE Pro to claim that Mastered for iTunes is nothing more than “marketing hype.”

So, we set out to delve deeper into the technical aspects of Mastered for iTunes. We also attempted to do some of our own testing to see if there was any difference—good or bad—to be had from following the example of Masterdisk.

SOURCE: Does “Mastered for iTunes” matter to music? Ars puts it to the test.

 

Energy-saving L Prize bulb goes on sale Earth Day

 Tech News  59 Responses »
Apr 202012
 

To its credit, Philips managed to make most of these things happen. Its new L Prize Pro bulb puts out 93 lumens per watt while using only 9.7 watts, it should last 30,000 hours (20 years of four hours per day of use), and the light is natural and warm. The one thing that Philips didn’t quite get right is the price, which currently stands at a rather ambitious $60 per bulb.

It’s certainly true that on average, a bulb like this will save you about $8 worth of electricity per year over an incandescent, meaning that the bulb will pay for itself in savings in just eight short years and the rest of its lifespan is gravy. We’re not really wired to think about things in the long term, though, and most people are probably going to find the $60 entry price hard to justify.

Philips says that its plan all along has been to have utility companies subsidize the up-front cost of the bulbs by $20 or $30, and Philips itself has decided to knock $10 off the price right away for consumers.

SOURCE: Energy-saving L Prize bulb goes on sale Earth Day | DVICE.

 

iPhone 5 to Be Made of ‘LiquidMetal’, Arrive in October [REPORT]

 Design, Tech News  101 Responses »
Apr 202012
 

Another report Thursday focused on what materials Apple will be using to build that redesigned body. Computerworld claims Apple will be using an exotic material known as LiquidMetal to create the phone. Apple spent $30 million acquiring the rights to use LiquidMetal in 2010.

Rumors have circulated before that it plans to use the alloy to build a phone, however, recent reports indicate that the company will make good on those rumors with the release of the iPhone 5.

LiquidMetal is a mix of several different metals, allowing the phone to be more durable while giving it a liquid-like exterior feel. Light like plastic but durable like aluminum, LiquidMetal would allow the phone to weigh less and have a thinner profile.

SOURCE: iPhone 5 to Be Made of ‘LiquidMetal’, Arrive in October [REPORT].

 

Google Drive to Launch Next Week With 5 GB of Free Storage [REPORT]

 Internet News, Tech News  520 Responses »
Apr 182012
 

Google‘s foray into personal cloud storage, Google Drive, is about to launch next week, according to a report from The Next Web.

Citing a draft release from one of Google’s launch partners for the service, TNW claims the service will initially be free, giving out 5 GB of storage to every user.

The details on how, exactly, Google Drive will integrate with your PC are scarce; “desktop folder” integration on Mac and Windows machines is mentioned, but not explained.

The launch date could very well be real. In February 2012, a report (with screenshots) said the service is already live for some users, which usually means the official launch is coming soon.

SOURCE: Google Drive to Launch Next Week With 5 GB of Free Storage [REPORT].

 

We’re ’99 percent sure’ we discovered life on Mars in 1976

 Tech News  247 Responses »
Apr 132012
 

New analysis of an experiment performed by the Viking landers suggests that evidence of microbial life in the Martian soil may have been detected 36 years ago. As one of the authors of this new paper puts it: “on the basis of what we’ve done so far, I’d say I’m 99 percent sure there’s life there.” Whoa.

The experiment that the researchers looked at has been a controversial one for a very long time. It was called the Labeled Release (LR) experiment, and it was one of a set of four different tests that the Viking landers carried to try to detect life on Mars. In the LR experiment, the lander scooped up a sample of Martian soil and dumped it into a chamber which was then sealed up. A drop of a slightly radioactive nutrient solution was added, and then the air above the soil sample was monitored so see if there was anything alive in the soil metabolizing those nutrients.

To the surprise of everyone, the LR experiment detected a steady stream of radioactivity coming out of the soil after the nutrient solution was added. Something was definitely going on. However, the other three experiments didn’t come up with anything at all, and the consensus back in 1976 was that the LR result was just some chemical reaction caused by rocks as opposed to any sign of microbial life.

New research published last month in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences has taken a fresh look at the Viking LR experiment results, and the authors of this paper seem confident that the best way to explain the data is through the existence of microbial life after all.

READ MORE:

via We’re ’99 percent sure’ we discovered life on Mars in 1976 | DVICE.

 

MIT scientists explain when we’ll have fusion power

 Tech News  211 Responses »
Apr 132012
 

Back in March, we posted about how this could be the year where the National Ignition Facility breaks even with laser fusion, reaching the point where as much power is generated as is input. This doesn’t mean we’ve got a fusion power plant around the corner, though, and researchers have come clean about what the hold-up is.

Fusion power is what you get when you take two lightweight atomic nuclei and fuse them together into one heavier atomic nucleus, releasing energy in the process. It’s far cleaner and far more efficient than fission power, and the only reason that we’re not taking advantage of it right now is that it requires temperatures and pressures on the order of what you’d experience at the center of the sun to get it to work.

At MIT, they’ve been working on getting fusion to happen inside a Tokamak (called the Alcator C-Mod, pictured above), which is a piece of equipment that uses intense magnetic fields to confine and heat plasma to the point that fusion can be initiated, which is something on the order of tens to hundreds of million of degrees.

READ MORE:

via MIT scientists explain when we’ll have fusion power | DVICE.

 

 Older Entries  Newer Entries