Hasta La Gadget!

Tinkerers looking for a way to make their old speakers play nice with Apple’s AirPlay technology can now do so on the cheap, thanks to the Raspberry Pi, a neat hack made by Cambridge Engineering student Jordan Burgess and some free software.

The key component for Jordan’s hack is James Laird’s Shairport, an open source Airport Express emulator. Jordan also used the free Raspbian OS provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Here’s the hack in action:

The tinny sound isn’t just YouTube’s compression; Jordan reminds us that the Raspberry Pi wasn’t built with audiophile level technology, so you might want to get a USB sound card as well. Head to Jordan’s website for more details on the hack. I’m still hoping the AirBridge gets produced.

[via TechCrunch]

Intel is counting on lashings of cash to drive its living room ambitions, with a rumored budget potentially in the hundreds of millions helping convince conservative content owners that it’s a safe partner to bet on. The chip company has reportedly green-lit an IPTV investment well in excess of the “hobby” amounts rivals with similar cable-cutting ambitions have allotted, a show of force that has allowed it to negotiate new licensing deals of a sort so-far unseen.

The challenge Intel faces is just like every other company hoping to cater to viewers turned off by channel-swollen cable packages: persuading the content owners to relax their stance on only licensing huge bundles of dozens of channels. That strategy has proved lucrative so far, with cable subscribers forced to subscribe to many channels they don’t actually want in order to get a few they particularly watch.

Intel’s strategy, it’s suggested, is using its heft in chip production to demonstrate quite how committed it is to the home entertainment segment; “since Intel is used to betting billions on chip design, it has allocated a budget significantly larger than Apple or Google’s” Fortune reports. That investment supposedly looks more realistic to Hollywood negotiators used to $100m+ movie budgets.

The chip firm also has an existing legacy in working with, not against, cable providers. It inked a deal in 2011 to power Comcast’s next-gen Xfinity TV boxes, and has been producing STB chips for getting on for a decade. What technological advantages it plans to bring to the streaming TV segment has also been framed in terms of benefiting content owners, too, rather than consumers.

So, Intel is believed to be pushing a monitoring system that can deliver more accurate and detailed viewership data, including rough age range, gender, and a more precise number of how many people are actually watching. That same system is also being promoted among content owners as ideal for targeting advertising, picking more relevant promotions based on who is in front of the TV at any one time.

An evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach to pacify content providers, and more flexibility in choosing channels (or even pay-per-show), re-watching media from the past month with a “cloud PVR,” and throwing in apps and other web-enabled features to lure in viewers, could make the difference where Apple and Google have struggled. Fortune’s sources claim Intel will begin a small-scale beta to customers in March 2013, though the first-gen STB itself will be shown off at CES 2013 next week.

Money not merit is Intel’s web TV strategy is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

According to Japan’s Daily Yomiuri, NTT DoCoMo is parterning with Samsung to develop phones running the open-source Tizen operating system, with the first handsets reaching the market next year. According to the Yomiuri, other mobile carriers are also getting behind the development of Tizen because they “fear the hegemony” of Apple and Google. We’ve heard about Tizen as far back as September of 2011 — this Linux-based (and Intel-backed) software came about when Nokia’s MeeGo OS bit the dust, and we’ve already seen evidence of a Tizen-based Galaxy S III.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Daily Yomiuri

The ever popular health and fitness tracking iPhone app RunKeeper has been updated to version 3.0 today. The update includes an all-new design that aims to make the user interface cleaner and simpler to use, it also comes with new features that make it easy to share your progress with friends and family.

Indeed, the user interface is a lot cleaner this time around. The team behind the app ended up cleaning up a lot of the code by scrapping the bold colors and text for a cleaner design that’s easier to read and navigate. They also wanted to design the app to showcase more of your personal fitness story, and they hope that the new look motivates its users even more.

One of the main selling points of RunKeeper is that the app makes it easy to set a goal and track your progress towards that goal, while also interacting and competing with friends right from the app. They’ve made it even easier by adding a few more features to the app, such as in-app photo features that allow you to take pictures before, during, and after workouts and share those with friends on Facebook or Twitter.

You now also enable live activity tracking, which allows friends and family to follow your progress in real-time and cheer you on as they do so. The company has more plans in the future for the app, including an update for the Android version of RunKeeper, but the company says they’ll have more features to come in 2013.

RunKeeper is a free download, and the update is available now in the iTunes App Store.

RunKeeper for iPhone updates with redesign and live activity tracking is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Early experiences with WiFi 802.11ac will likely prove disappointing for those expecting a significant boost over existing 11n wireless, industry experts warn, with the soon-to-be-ratified standard taking a further generation before it lights up properly. “The new standard will be evolutionary, with two waves involved” Cisco’s Chris Spain tells Network Computing. ”Out of the gate, the increases in performance over 11n will not be tremendously impressive. The second wave – which will require a hardware refresh – gets far more interesting.”

Although initial suggestions around 802.11ac indicated throughput rates of up to 6.9Gbps, the initial products are more likely to top out at 1.3Gbps at most. “First-generation 802.11ac products will achieve up to 1.3 Gbps through the use of three spatial streams,” Aerohive Networks’ Andrew vonNagy explains, “80-MHz-wide channels (double the largest 40 MHz channel width with 802.11n), and use of better hardware components that allow higher levels of modulation and encoding (up to 256-QAM).”

In fact, it could be “another three years or so until 11ac becomes compelling” as a must-have upgrade to WiFi 11n systems, Spain suggests. Even then, rather than speed, it may be overall capacity that proves the biggest draw. All 802.11n hardware will have support for both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, helping shift devices out of the congested 2.4GHz range.

“What’s not being talked about enough is that 11ac clients will free up more 2.4-GHz space for clients that can’t upgrade,” Spain says, “and that advanced features like multiuser MIMO will provide wireless performance that is more switch-like compared to the shared media nature of 11n.”

As Qualcomm explained to us back in February, when the 11ac ratification was still around a year away, co-existing 11ac and legacy WiFi networks will also introduce a hindrance on speed; the biggest advantages will of course be seen when the network is 11ac-only. Routers supporting the new standard but working with b/g/n hardware will use a “round robin” distribution method in that case, rapidly connecting and disconnecting with each client in turn; each connection will negotiate the fastest possible speeds supported by router and client.

In contrast, 11ac supports concurrent operations, with a resulting increase in throughput. Nonetheless, it’ll be some time – even with early hardware getting the jump on sales pre-ratification – before 11ac is the dominant wireless system, and perhaps longer still before we see the key benefits from its on-paper potential.

[via Slashdot]

Prepare to be underwhelmed by first-gen WiFi 802.11ac warn experts is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.