Kodak OLEDing the Way Again

Kodak, once the leading light in the photography biz were famously caught by surprise by the speed at which digital photography took. Despite launching some useful digicams, it has never really come close to regaining its former status. Now, however, they’re leading the way once again, this time with the world’s first consumer photo frame using OLED or Organic Light Emitting Diode technology.

OLEDs, in case you didn’t know, are super thin, and unlike LCDs, do not rely on a backlight. They also offer superior contrast ratios and although not a factor in this application, can be made to be flexible. The display used in this frame is 7.6 inches (measured diagonally); it’s a widescreen format with 800 x 480 pixel resolution and it boasts a contrast ratio of 30,000:1. The viewing angle – another OLED advantage – is 180 degrees. Read More »

Increase Your Torrent Speed

This PDF explains how to get up and running with bit torrent technology efficiently. It shows how to battle ISPs throttling bit torrent speed and other ways to get the best optimization of your bandwidth.

This is a step by step tutorial guide on setting up uTorrent. It details all the steps from downloading to optimizing your settings. Many people have used Bit Torrent and think they are running with optimized settings, even then, it is advised to read through this guide and see what you may have missed to better optimize your settings. Read More »

The Technology Of DVD Media

A Digital Video Disc or DVD is one of the most popular forms of storage media nowadays. It is an optical disc and mainly used to store videos. However, data in any form can be stored on a DVD. The dimensions of a DVD are generally the same as a common compact disc but the amount of data that can be stored is six times greater.

The different variations of DVD are based on the way data is being stored on it. A DVD-ROM has pre-written data that can only be read. A DVD+R and DVD-R are the ones on which the data can be written only once; and on a DVD+RW the data can be written and erased more than once. The lasers used to read DVDs are typically of 650 nm wavelength.

The terms DVD-Audio and DVD-Video discs are DVDs with suitably structured and formatted audio and video content respectively. Other types of DVDs are called DVD-data discs. Read More »

Ultimate Disk Reader

We’ve all seen those nifty little multi card readers that plug into your PC’s USB port, well, here’s the granddaddy of them all. Not only does it read all of the usual SD, MMC, XD, CF cards, Memory Stick, USB pen drives, you can stuff a whole 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA hard drive into a slot on the top and read and write data. The SATA HDD Multi Function Dock works with PCs and Macs and costs around £40. We’re not aware of any UK distributors just yet but knowing the speed at which these things take off it shouldn’t be too long, so keep your eyes on Amazon and the usual gadget sites.

The Right Mixxx

I have to say straight away that the last time I did any DJ-ing, record players still had a 78rpm speed setting. I freely admit to being a bit out of touch with current trends, but I’m reliably informed that this free Open Source program, called Mixxx is just the job for all of you hep cats out there who enjoy mixing your tunes and generally fiddling around with musical tracks. Key features, so I’m told, include the ability to read new fangled music formats, like MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Wave (something to do with turntable speed, I suppose…), it can import M3U and PLS playlists, whatever they are, and it has Beat Estimation and Pitch Independent Time Stretch features, which is probably a good thing. Read More »

Don’t Watch This Space

Microsoft, Google. HP, Philips, Samsung and Intel are amongst the big names behind the White Space Coalition, which is looking at ways to provide high-speed wireless Internet access using the gaps between TV channels. The gaps, which are designed to stop channels clashing with one another, are essentially wasted space, but until recently it was thought that any attempt to use them would result in interference and broadcasters are naturally against the idea. Read More »

High Speed Hector

Hats off to HECToR, now officially the fastest super computer in the UK. Hector or to its close friends, High End Computing Terrascale Resource is has been built for the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Computing Facility and is capable of processing 63 trillion calculations or teraflops each second, rising to 250 teraflops later next year. Read More »