Saturday, October 17th, 2009
California regulators may place a ban on big, power hungry TVs. Similar regulations were set with refrigerators, air conditioners and other products. Commissioner Julia Levin stated that such regulations will not hurt the economy. TVs and related devices consume 10% of California’s power supply.
Such regulations will not eliminate 50 inch TV sets. The goal is to make them far more efficient and encourage the development of clean products and a clean industry.
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Microsoft’s Genuine Windows team has decided on a new approach to stop the distribution and use of counterfeit Windows copies. Microsoft will now block users of counterfeit Windows copies from receiving security-oriented downloads like patches or defensive software. This decision did not come easy to the Microsoft team, as one possible outcome of this decision may aid the spread of viruses and malware.
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
Intel is working on an optical interconnect, called Light Peak, that could use light waves to connect devices such as monitors and storage up to 100 meters away. This technology would also allow connection speeds of up to 10Gbits/sec. For instance, you would be able to transfer a full Blue-ray film in under 30 seconds. In addition, the technology would empower mobile devices to perform more tasks and work with more connections because Light Peak allows it to run multiple protocols simultaneously.
Friday, September 18th, 2009
When you conduct a search on Google, there is a link just above the search query results that says “Show Options.” Clicking on that link will display a left sidebar to provide filters for the search results before you. The filtering options include: images, videos, dates, etc.
Google has been committing serious investment in its Books program–from legal defense to the purchase of companies that own potential enhancement technologies.
The latest update for Google’s Book program is the introduction of the filter “Books” under “View options” filtering tools.
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
Google purchased reCAPTCHA–a company that provides security measures for forms that require users to type bitmap, distorted letter/numbers to prevent robots from completing the forms.
Google’s interest in reCAPTCHA was that it uses scanned archives to provide the distorted looking text. The company then uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to change the scan to text. This technology will help Google in both its Google Books and Google News Archive Search programs.
Friday, September 11th, 2009
Netbooks are small, light and inexpensive laptop computers, and they are very portable. Built for web access and basic office applications, netbooks are not high powered tools. Their low cost has helped popularize netbooks during this recession–in fact the netbook market was the only PC sector that experienced growth this year.
In the first half of 2009, 13.5 million netbooks were sold globally. Even phone companies have jumped into the market, and telco deals may have helped in the popularization of netbooks. Some 50 telco operators began selling netbooks and aiming their huge marketing budgets towards the advertising of netbooks.
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Apple released “Snow Leopard” its new version of OS X, which it states will be “faster, more reliable, and easier to use” and contains some new updates to core technologies. Some new additions include Grand Central, OpenCL, full 64-bit mode, QuickTime X, and Exchange for Mac users.
To upgrade from a previous version, Snow Leopard will cost $29.
