2008 February | best tech news

Feb 26 2008

Sony’s face detection feature for camcorders

Posted by: admin in All Tech

Here’s a demo of the face detection feature that’s been so popular with digital camera manufacturers. This’ll be available or already is available on many of Sony’s new camcorders. One interesting part of it is called “bit allocation” wherein the camera sensor pushes more bits to the areas containing people’s faces and subtracts bits from […]

Here’s a demo of the face detection feature that’s been so popular with digital camera manufacturers. This’ll be available or already is available on many of Sony’s new camcorders. One interesting part of it is called “bit allocation” wherein the camera sensor pushes more bits to the areas containing people’s faces and subtracts bits from less important things in the background that are going on.

Feb 26 2008

FCC ready to step in for Net Neutrality

Posted by: admin in All Tech

Net Neutrality is important, and the FCC is rattling its sabers at ISPs like Comcast who’ve taken part in “traffic shaping” schemes, or favoring certain packets over others. At a hearing at Harvard, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said, “The commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary to correct any practices that are […]

Net Neutrality is important, and the FCC is rattling its sabers at ISPs like Comcast who’ve taken part in “traffic shaping” schemes, or favoring certain packets over others.

At a hearing at Harvard, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin stated, “The commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary to correct any practices that are ongoing today. It’s tough speak, but I’ve met the Chairman and he’s a no-nonsense kind of guy.

Hopefully it doesn’t come to litigation, but if it does, the FCC will win. Then our cable bills might go up slightly, but our data will be safe.

FCC ready to curb ISP traffic management [Yahoo! News]

Feb 26 2008

GPU programming, now on OSX

Posted by: admin in All Tech

So you’ve got this massive, powerful video card stuck to your computer, just sitting there on idle unless you’re playing a game or rendering something. Why not put it to work? Nvidia has made it possible to take advantage of the carefully engineered parallel architecture of today’s graphics cards through its CUDA (Complete Unified Device […]

So you’ve got this huge, powerful video card stuck to your computer, just sitting there on idle unless you’re playing a game or rendering something. Why not put it to work? Nvidia has made it possible to take advantage of the carefully engineered parallel architecture of today’s graphics cards through its CUDA (Complete Unified Device Architecture). Macs have missed out, though, firstly because there was no OSX version of CUDA, and secondly because there are only a few macs with compatible video cards (8-series and QuadroFXes). Well, now the former of those problems has been fixed (there’s a beta for OSX now), so I expect to see an idle-GPU-using I know not what kind of program, generating random praise for Steve Jobs or something.

GPU Programming Comes to the Mac [Wired Gadget Lab]

Feb 25 2008

Sony opens up Mylo 2 developer community

Posted by: admin in All Tech

Sony is lifting the floodgates on the developer community site so begin making all those widgets and share with others or learn how to make some. On top of the community generated widgets, Sony will release additional widgets on a regular basis for the Mylo 2. Mylo 2 ShareThis

Sony is lifting the floodgates on the developer community site so begin making all those widgets and share with others or learn how to make some. On top of the community generated widgets, Sony will release additional widgets on a regular basis for the Mylo 2.

Mylo 2

Feb 25 2008

A 3-year-old recaps Star Wars

Posted by: admin in All Tech

My own little Jawa is currently in a stage where he tells all kinds of tall tales, adding and embellishing here and there for effect. This kind of reminds me of him except that this wee bairn actually makes a lot of sense. I suspect she might be brought on to handle continuity for the […]

My own tiny Jawa is currently in a stage where he tells all kinds of tall tales, adding and embellishing here and there for effect. This kind of reminds me of him except that this wee bairn actually makes a lot of sense. I suspect she might be brought on to handle continuity for the final three episodes.

Emotiv to sell world’s first brain-controller for $299
Unboxing the Swiss chocolate iPhone
Microsoft giving away Zunes
Alternative ratio method in discussion at popular BitTorrent tracker
Nintendo goes Bapey with Bape designed DS
Ikea trash-can light tent

Feb 25 2008

CrunchGear Week in Review: Weirdo Characters Edition

Posted by: admin in All Tech

Emotiv to sell world’s first brain-controller for $299 Unboxing the Swiss chocolate iPhone Microsoft giving away Zunes Alternative ratio method in discussion at popular BitTorrent tracker Nintendo goes Bapey with Bape designed DS Ikea trash-can light tent ShareThis

Feb 24 2008

Department of Warcraft

Posted by: admin in All Tech

Having found Ossama bin Laden, making Iraq a safe place to live, and winning the war on conventional terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security is going after terrorists in the last place they can hide: World of Warcraft. Your tax money is going to the Reynard project, where US intellegence agents are scouting out Azeroth for […]

Having found Ossama bin Laden, making Iraq a safe place to live, and winning the war on conventional terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security is going after terrorists in the last place they can hide: World of Warcraft.

Your tax money is going to the Reynard project, where US intellegence agents are scouting out Azeroth for “suspicious behavior”, most likely Orks in turbans.

U.S. Spies Want to Find Terrorists in World of Warcraft [Wired blogs]

Feb 24 2008

Zatz likes the CradlePoint MBR1000 EVDO router very much

Posted by: admin in All Tech

We might be seeing more hubs like this in the near future. As wireless broadband gets less high-priced and technologies like WiMAX get competitive, 3G routers will start popping up. They’re relatively cheap and a great way to share a high-speed connection with multiple users in areas where you can’t get regular Internet access. Dave Zatz […]

We might be seeing more hubs like this in the near future. As wireless broadband gets less pricey and technologies like WiMAX get competitive, 3G routers will begin popping up. They’re relatively cheap and a great way to share a high-speed connection with multiple users in areas where you can’t get regular World wide web access.

Dave Zatz likes the CradlePoint MBR1000, going so far as to advocate it might be the best EVDO router ever. We haven’t used it, so we can’t say, but it certainly sounds impressive; he was able to get it unpacked, configured, and running with his gear in less than five minutes.

But I’m not one to gush about tech I haven’t experienced myself, so pop over to Dave’s excellent site and have a look for yourself.

CradlePoint MBR1000: Ideal EVDO Router Ever? [Zatz not funny]

Feb 24 2008

Japan’s WINDS launched; set to bring Internet access to outlying areas

Posted by: admin in All Tech

While the USA is busy shooting satellites out of the sky, Japan is launching new Internet service birds. It just orbited the WINDS, or Wideband Internetworking Engineering test and Development Satellite. Clever acronym. The goal of the spacecraft is to deliver high-speed access to far-flung corners of Asia where traditional, wired Internet access can be […]

While the USA is busy shooting satellites out of the sky, Japan is launching new Internet service birds. It just orbited the WINDS, or Wideband Internetworking Engineering test and Development Satellite. Clever acronym. The goal of the spacecraft is to deliver high-speed access to far-flung corners of Asia where traditional, wired Internet access can be difficult to come by.

Not everyone thinks it’s needed though, as 95% of Japan is covered by conventional connectivity. The real question, critics say, is whether or not a digital divide in Japan exists. If so, the satellite addresses it. If not, it’s a waste of metal and plastic.

New WINDS satellite to deliver superfast Internet in Japan [Blorge]