The folks over at the FireWire consortium are no doubt cracking open some bottles of champagne, ahead of the long weekend. The 1394 Trade Association announced this week that two billion of the not-quite-ubiquitous ports have been shipped internationally since Apple first introduced the IEEE 1394 High Speed Serial Bus to the world, back in 1986.
The association’s chairman sent out a pretty moderate statement regarding the many zeroed milestone, saying, “FireWire will continue its steady, stable growth.” As CNET points out, that rate of inception pales in comparison to that of USB, which current has 10 billion ports on products that have made it beyond the shelf (that number is closer to 1.2 billion for the FireWire folks).
After an exhausting and exhilarating week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, the Gadget Lab is back with a full report on what was hot at the show.
Motorola and Research In Motion hogged the media spotlight with their tablet offerings. Due for release in the middle of this year, Motorola’s Xoom will run Honeycomb, a version of Android tailored for tablet devices. The problem was we didn’t get to try it, because Motorola isn’t done making the Xoom yet.
RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, on the other hand, was a real, working product. Dylan got his hands on the tablet and was very impressed.
I personally found the new Android smartphones to be the coolest part of the show, namely the Motorola Atrix 4G (even though I had some trouble dealing with Motorola). It features an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor that makes it very powerful. Even more interesting, it plugs into a dock that turns it into a desktop-like computer that you can control with a mouse and computer.
We close the podcast with a quick peek at Apple’s next operating system upgrade for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: iOS 4.3. We gained access to a developer beta, and the coolest new feature is multitouch gesturing to multitask on the iPad. (Don’t forget to read our close look at iOS 4.3 beta.)
Twitter officially arrived when Captain Sullenberger sent US Airways flight 1549 splashing down into the Hudson. Instagram’s moment was last week, when forty-nine states—fully ninety-eight percent of American states—were doused with snow. More »
Stanford develops Biotic Pinball, POND PONG, and a soccer game called Ciliaball, in which a player’s actions influence the behavior of living microorganisms in real time.
If you’ve been waiting on the edge of your seat for the new Firfox to come out, relax, today’s the day. The latest Firefox 4 Beta is now available for testing out. Get get it.
The Mozilla Blog says that new version has a fresh new look and features like App Tabs and Panorama for easier Web navigation. It also claims the Firefox 4 Beta everythign will be fast, from start-up time to page-load speed and the performance of Web applications and games. With Firefox Sync integrated into the browser, you can access your Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs and passwords across computers and smartphones. For developers, the new version also has full support for HTML5 features, including WebM and HD video, 3D graphic rendering with WebGL, hardware acceleration and the Mozilla Audio API to help create visual experiences for sound.
There are a bunch more new features. So, go ahead. Be one of the first to have it. Download the beta, and test it out for yourself. Make sure you’re giving feedback (I know, it’s kind of annoying), or what’s the point?
Hello, inevitable. It simply had to happen, and now, it is. As Comcast, NBC and the FCC attempt to work out stipulations over Comcast’s proposed 51 percent buyout of NBC Universal, a smattering of major media companies are paying close attention to the play-by-play. Naturally, the precedents that are set from this deal will affect future agreements of this caliber, and lobbyists for both Disney and News Corp. (as well as Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes) aren’t standing over on the sidelines any longer. All three outfits have reportedly been “voicing their concerns this week with the FCC, worried that such conditions could undermine their own efforts to profit from the nascent online video industry.”
We’re told that the media mega-corps are worried that the rules — if hammered down — could interfere with ongoing negotiations with online video providers, and in turn, give them less leverage to monetize and control their content on the world wide web. In other words, if NBC Universal is forced to provide content fluidly to all ISPs (and not just Comcast), what’s to say other content makers and internet providers wouldn’t also be forced into similar deals, regardless of whether or not they’re involved in takeover negotiations? Needless to say, we’re nowhere near the end of this journey, and while the nuts and bolts are pretty dry to think about, the outcomes could have a serious impact on our future viewing habits.
ZDNet Blogger Dancho Danchev has been missing in since August. The security writer disappeared mysteriously in his native Bulgaria. Some information about his disappearance has surfaced, and fellow Zero Watch blogger Ryan Naraine fittingly refers to it as “troubling.”
The company has reportedly made several failed attempts to contact Danchev, who wrote his last post for the blog on August 18. A source in Bulgaria wrote ZDNet last month to report that “Dancho’s alive but he’s in a lot of trouble.”
Danchev, for his part, wrote the aforementioned “troubling” letter to a fellow member of the security community,
As I consider you as a trusted colleague, and someone who understands the big picture of cyber crime and cyber espionage, I’m attaching you photos of the “current situation in my bathroom”, courtesy of Bulgarian Law enforcement+intell services who’ve been building a case trying to damage my reputation.
The letter includes images of what may be a monitoring device installed in his home. Zero Day is asking for any information anyone might have on Danchev’s disappearance.
Most of the tablets released in 2011 will be Android-based, but a few stalwarts are sticking with Windows.
We recently got a closer look at two tablets shown off in Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s CES 2011 keynote: The Acer Iconia and the Asus Eee Slate EP121. Together, they show the potential — and the limitations — of a Windows-based tablet strategy.
It’s not that surprising to see Windows tablets, given that computer makers have been making them since 2001. In a sense, the Tablet PC never went away.
But in another respect, these tablets show just how wrong-headed Microsoft’s plan to use Windows for everything is. The company recently announced plans to create versions of Windows for ARM-based processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon and Nvidia Tegra 2, which are found in a lot of upcoming tablets and high-end smartphones.
Microsoft division president Steven Sinofsky, speaking at CES last week, pointed to a convergence between the hardware requirements for Windows (the desktop OS) and most smartphones. Windows 7 requires no more resources than its predecessors, Windows Vista (in fact, slightly less) and he anticipates that its hardware requirements will remain level. Meanwhile, smartphones are gaining features previously found only in PCs: dual-core processors, gigabytes of RAM, heavy-duty graphics-processing capabilities.
“This convergence is pretty interesting to us as we think about the next generation of Windows,” Sinofsky said.
But the hardware convergence is only part of the story. The fact is, the Windows interface is not designed for touchscreens, a fact that was immediately obvious after spending a few minutes with the Asus and Acer tablets.
Above: The Acer Iconia is an unusual, dual-screen laptop. Its design echoes that of last year’s twin-screen Toshiba Libretto, except the Acer has two 14-inch displays, making it a full-size notebook.
iPhone and iPod Touch users who make music may already be familiar with Akai’s SynthStation 25, designed as an iPhone and iPod Touch dock that also serves as a keyboard MIDI controller. Now iPad users who use the SynthStation App for iOS can get in on the action with the Akai SynthStation49 Keyboard Controller for iPad.
The SynthStation 25 is a full-sized keyboard with 49 pressure-sensitive keys, nine customizable drum pads on the left side of the controller, USB connectivity to a Mac or PC, and a wealth of professional audio outputs so you can record and mix the music you make with the rest of your audio gear. If you have an iPad and want a keyboard MIDI controller that will give you a music studio in a small space, the SynthStation49 is perfect for you. Pricing and availability have yet to be announced unfortunately.
Key-shaped USB drives are fairly popular lately. LaCie’s iamaKey flash drive looks like something that would fit right in on your keychain next to your house or car key, but the Fredflare Skeleton Key takes a more whimsical approach, and looks a little more fun sticking out of one of your computer’s USB ports.
The Skeleton Key comes in three colors: white, black, and pink, and only one size: 2GB. It’s available now directly from the manufacturer, and retails for $58 USD.
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Key-shaped USB drives are fairly popular lately. 