HAPPY BIRTHDAY INTERNET

On 1 January 1983 the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (Arpanet) of the US Department of Defence - the forerunner of the internet - was switched to the TCP/IP protocol.

This enabled millions of computers to go online instead of the Network Control Protocol (NCP) which limited it to just 1,000 machines.

The TCP/IP protocol was designed by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn.

On the mailing list of the Internet Engineering Task Force, internet pioneer Bob Braden wrote: "The most logical date of origin of the internet is 1 January 1983, when the Arpanet officially switched from the NCP protocol to TCP/IP.

"Six months later, the Arpanet was split into the two subnets - Arpanet and Milnet [Military Network] - which were connected by internet gateways.

"There may still be a few remaining T-shirts about that read: 'I Survived the TCP/IP Transition'."

Braden added that some people would be surprised to discover that there were actually a few souls wanting to work on the TCP/IP changeover on 1 January. But they did

One Laptop Per Child: the dream starts to deliver

Low-cost computers meant to usher poor children worldwide into the digital age are being mass produced in China as US nonprofit One Laptop Per Child strives to deliver on its promise.

The first of the XO laptops being built at a Quanta Computer facility in Changshu are destined for Uruguay, marking a milestone for the charity group founded by Nicholas Negroponte in Massachusetts two years ago.


"Against all the naysayers ... we have developed and now manufactured the world's most advanced and greenest laptop and one designed specifically to instill a passion for learning in children," Negroponte said.

A challenge for the organization has been that governments have not backed effusive words of support with willing flows of cash to buy laptops for children inside their borders.

It is hoped that a "Give One Get One" (G1G1) campaign starting Monday will boost orders by providing an incentive to people in more prosperous countries

For every laptop donated for a child, the donor gets a laptop. The original price was to be 100 dollars (US) per laptop but nearly doubled as costs climbed after Negroponte launched the initiative in 2005.

Telecom firm T-Mobile USA is offering people a year of free access to its nearly 8,500 wireless Internet hotspots in the United States if they become G1G1 donors.
The world's largest video game maker, Electronic Arts in Northern California, said this week they are giving the original "SimCity" to OLPC to put on laptops for free.

The "SimCity" franchise debuted in 1989. Players build communities from scratch, laying out roads, housing, factories, shops, tax codes, power plants and more in order to create places where citizens can work and live happily.

Acting as virtual "mayors," players must be ready to deal with disasters such as earthquakes, fires and floods.

"Players learn to use limited resources to build and customize their cities," said EA vice president Steve Seabolt.

"There are choices and consequences, but in the end, it's a creativity tool. The game should prove to be an incredibly effective way of making the laptop relevant, engaging, and fun."

SimCity has been used in US schools.

The list of companies backing OLPC with cash, technology or other resources includes Google, Intel, eBay, Advance Micro Devices, and News Corporation.

XO laptop operating systems are based on free open-source software. The machines are designed to use less than a tenth the power than standard laptops and come with solar or hand-crank charging options.

XO laptops are billed as a "kids machine" designed for rugged environments. The computers have built in video and still cameras as well as wireless Internet connectivity.

OLPC will begin distributing XO laptops in Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Haiti, Cambodia and India by the end of the year, according to EA.

Negroponte is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is the younger brother of the US deputy secretary of state.

OLPC's stated mission is "to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are sufficiently affordable to provide every child in the world access to new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression."

The group envisions selling laptops to governments in developing nations, which give them to school-aged children and have stakes in supporting their use.

"Imagine the impact of every child owning a laptop computer that he/she can use in school and take home," OLPC said in a written release.

"By empowering children to educate themselves, a new generation will ultimately be better prepared to tackle the other serious problems (poverty, malnutrition, disease) facing their societies."

© 2007 AFP

Feedjit Customized Widget Shows Real Time SiteTraffic

The Feedjit traffic widget launched a month ago and is now claiming some fairly serious viral growth - 3 million impressions per week from the blogs that have added it. When installed on a blog, the widget shows people who enter and leave the site and, and where they are located. Neither the blog publisher nor visitors need to register for the service - the code just has to be on the site.

Feedjit offers two types of widgets.First widget FEEDJIT gives you real-time traffic data on your blog. No registration required and it's completely free. See where your visitors are located in the world, which websites they're arriving from and what they're clicking when they leave your site. The second widget, The FEEDJIT Traffic Map shows the locations of the last 100 visitors to your website. Hover your mouse over any point on the map to see a detailed place name.

Television, Internet... what's next?

Humans can see in three dimensions soon after birth. The brain converts the two-dimensional images supplied by each eye into a single spatial image. To watch a film in 3-D, viewers have hitherto needed a pair of special glasses. Cinemagoers may be happy with this, but at home nobody wants to sit in front of the TV or PC wearing a pair of 3-D glasses.

The Multi-User 3-D Television Display developed by the European consortium MUTED eliminates the need for those annoying glasses. It reproduces natural vision for three to four people.

“The display always needs to know exactly where the viewers’ eyes are,” explains Klaus Schenke from the HHI, who is responsible for the exhibition stand at the IFA. “The eye positions correspond to the two viewpoints from which the three-dimensional image is scanned or computed. At the IFA we will be showcasing our head-tracking system. This represents a major contribution to the 3-D television display because it replaces viewing aids of any kind.”

To date, the display has been geared to a maximum of six eyes, in other words three viewers. The main application is aimed at private use, “particularly 3-D television,” says Klaus Schenke. “In future, though, it will also be possible to use the display in the medical arena, for minimally invasive surgery.” It will track the various positions of the surgeon, intern and nurse, for instance, so that all three can follow the operation simultaneously on the same screen with three-dimensional images.

In addition to 3-D viewing without glasses, the HHI will also be presenting a contactless touchscreen at the IFA.

“Conventional touchscreens are only suitable with a small screen. Viewers need to see all the information at close range so that they can touch the screen, like the ticket machines in train stations,” is how Klaus Schenke describes the challenge.

But the HHI is looking further ahead and aims to provide travelers with more information, such as location maps and sights worth seeing, on a larger screen. To do this the Institute has developed a “virtual” touchscreen, the iPoint Explorer. The “i” stands for “information”; this information is retrieved by pointing a finger. The gestures are captured by cameras on the display. “As a result, the user can stand up to 1.5 meters away and even view screens with a 62-inch diagonal,” says Klaus Schenke. A further advantage is that, not being touched by thousands of people, the iPoint Explorer is more hygienic.

Another HHI research area presented at the IFA is video encoding. Although downloading videos from the Internet is nothing unusual nowadays, the numerous digital transmission paths and devices on which the audiovisual data can be transmitted still present a technical challenge. Wireless home networks in particular are becoming increasingly powerful and important. But not all content is equally suited to large-screen and pocket formats. The video material needs to be adapted accordingly to provide optimum image quality. Under the existing encoding standards, all the parameters, such as image resolution or size, are precisely defined from the outset and must be fully downloaded.

The HHI has now managed to make encoding scalable. “There is a choice of multiple resolutions, different image frequencies and variable image quality within the same bitstream,” explains Karsten Grüneberg, scientist at the HHI and member of the European Union’s ASTRALS research project. “Users decide themselves which parts of the bitstream they want to transmit, depending on the transmission path or terminal device.”

The HHI will also be presenting other developments in tomorrow’s media world such as a virtual mirror for augmented reality and the pocket PC photo browser.

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

What's Next for DVD ?

Media attention these days focuses mostly on the high-definition Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats. Yet in this interim period--while high-def adoption ever-so-slowly ramps up--standard DVD continues to see updates and new products. Here's a wrap-up of the most interesting (and the more pedestrian) DVD players and burners that have crossed my desk this summer.Multipurpose Burners March OnSony recently began shipping the latest iteration of its stand-alone DVD burner, the DVDirect. The $230 VRD-MC5 is no ordinary external drive--it's intended for use independent of your PC.In fact, that's the first major change in this version: The DVDirect can no longer even connect to a PC. According to Sony, the capability was removed because the company's research showed that 97 percent of DVDirect users didn't bother with a PC. Gone, too, is support for PictBridge, which let you slot in a memory card and output a photo via a PictBridge printer.And no wonder, as DVDirect's strength lies in what it allows you to do without being tethered to a computer. The unit boasts memory card slots (for Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Pro Duo, SD Card, xD-Picture Card, and CompactFlash media) on the right side, and composite, S-Video, and analog audio inputs on the left. It also has four-pin FireWire and USB 2.0 inputs for connecting to camcorders. On its top surface, the DVDirect has a 2.5-inch LCD screen for playing back discs created by the unit, as well as for previewing video and image content.One of the coolest abilities of this product is that it can easily create DVD photo albums (with up to 2000 photos) directly from a memory card. The discs can act as photo slide shows, and you can even choose an MP3 for background music during the show. Another nifty new ability: The VRD-MC5 can transfer high-def 1080i video from Sony AVCHD camcorders to DVD; the unit encodes the resulting video in H.264, an efficient high-definition video codec. Sony says you can get up to 95 minutes' worth of HD video on a DVD, and the disc should be playable on most Blu-ray Disc players.Other improvements include support for DVD+RW media, a bizarre omission in the previous MC3 model; a stop-record timer (in 30-, 60-, and 90-minute increments); and the ability to detect and record all (or just new) content on a camcorder. Pixela's Portable BurnerThe Sony DVDirect is clearly intended for use in a home; by contrast, Pixela's PIX-BU010-P01 DVD Burner targets the mobile camcorder user with its slick, slim-line, portable design.The $300 Pixela DVD Burner puts a slot-loading DVD drive inside an easy-to-tote, 1.3-inch-high chassis. The unit has a mini-USB input for attaching SD Card- and hard drive-based camcorders, including models from JVC, Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba (see the full list of models), as well as for attaching digital cameras or SanDisk's SDDR-89-A15 memory card reader.The product is very simply designed. All you need to do is connect the video source, specify whether you want to create a DVD-Video movie disc or a data disc (for a raw data dump of your files), and then press the green-ringed start button.The concept is certainly a viable one, and Pixela executes it well. I could see how this device would work for transferring files in a hotel room without having to bring a laptop along for the ride. It's pricey, however, and I find its usefulness somewhat limited by its lack of a display option--at the least, outputs for TV (which might be limited anyway, given how Fort Knox-ified most hotels keep their TVs these days). Personally, I'd prefer something with a screen, like the DVDirect, so I can preview what I've transferred to disc to make sure the transfer went smoothly. Burners Get Cheaper, FasterIt's a familiar tale: faster write speeds, cheaper prices. I've seen some DVD burners priced at $30 in weekend advertisements--a clear sign of just how commoditized DVD burners have become. But that hasn't stopped manufacturers from refreshing their product lines. Sony, for example, recently rolled out its internal $70 DRU-840A and external $110 DRX-840U drives, which support writing at 20X on 16X DVD±R media. Though many vendors are slowly shifting their drives to the newer SATA interface, Sony's internal model still uses an IDE interface. (The SATA advantage for DVD drives has nothing to do with speed; rather, the cabling for SATA drives is simpler, which translates into better airflow inside your PC.)This year marks Sony's entrance into the slim-line competition with the $130 DRX-S70U, due to ship in September. Although desktop burner write speeds have managed to creep up over the past few years, slim-line portables such as this 0.87-inch-high model remain stuck at just 8X (maximum) for writing to single-layer DVD±RW.Earlier this summer, LG and Plextor both introduced new models. LG released a new drive that offers SecurDisc, a hardware-software one-two punch from LG and Nero that's designed to protect burned data. SecurDisc is a feature in the internal, $80 GSA-H55LI and the external, $120 GSA-E60L; both are multiformat drives that max out at 18X for single-layer DVD. The internal model uses an IDE interface. SecurDisc also appears in LG's slim-line model, the GSA-E50L.Finally, Plextor shipped its newest internal and external 18X burners earlier this summer. The external $140 Plextor PX-810UF has both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces. The internal version, the $90 TurboPlex PX-810SA DVD Super Multi Drive, uses SATA to connect to a PC motherboard; this model complements another 18X model that uses IDE.
Source : Yahoo! News