Differences between Blu-ray and HD-DVD

Blu-ray technology is supported by electronics giants such as Sony, Samsung, Phillips, and Panasonic. The storage capacity of Blu-ray media is at least 50 gigabytes (GB), which is six times higher than any existing DVD.

Blu-ray DVDs can store a 13-hour normal-quality video or 2-hour high-quality video. HD-DVD, which is supported by Toshiba and NEC, and is compatible with the current DVD standard and cheaper than Blu-ray. HD-DVD’s storage capacity is about three times that of the DVD disk (4.7 GB), which is 15GB for single-layer discs and 30GB for double-layer discs. It can support recording and playback of existing CD or DVD discs. You can enjoy high-quality video at 1080p resolution, which is about six times sharper than the existing DVD. Blu-ray’s advantage is its huge storage capacity, whereas HD-DVD is comparatively cheap. So these two products are leading the market with equal influence

Super-digital-highway

Looking at the title, one might think that the content is about some expressway which has some sophisticated infrastructure. Well, it is not. Super-digital-highway is a concept thought about by ITU (International Telecommunications Union) during the early 2000s during 3G technology planning. I came across this in one of the telecom forums.

I was amazed by the cryptography that they planned. Unfortunately, it is still not implemented. To say in an understandable terminology, it is a technology to cram 11,000 phone calls onto one optical fibre and extract them again.

Well, they say this concept got saturated slowly due to the telecoms crash during 2001 and more business based ideas later. Whatever the reasons might be, hats off to the extensive R&D done by the engineering organisations and companies, where they go to an extent which even makes techies feel “wow”. This is why research, patience and standards are given utmost importance in telecom industry to make it strong, which IT is definitely lacking and making itself more volatile.

Symbian S60, What is it?

Since its introduction in 2001, the S60 platform has been the world’s most popular smartphone platform. By early 2007, more than 100 million S60 devices had been shipped by six platform licensees. The first S60 device, the Nokia 7650 smartphone, introduced a comprehensive range of features, including personal information management (PIM), browsing, imaging, and music. Since then, S60 devices have become increasingly sophisticated, with high-resolution cameras, full Web browsing, stereo music, mapping, and voice over IP
(VoIP), to name just a few of the features now available. The range of S60 devices has also evolved, offering distinct collections of device models for consumers, enterprises, and other specific market niches.

One key factor in the success of the S60 platform is that it enables users to add features to their devices by installing third-party applications and content. At first, the platform supported third-party applications written in the Java and native Symbian C++ programming
languages. As the platform has evolved, an increasing number of development options have become available. Application developers can now choose from Symbian C++, Open C, Java platform, Micro Edition (Java ME), Python, Flash Lite from Adobe, Web Run-Time, and
Scalable Vector Graphics Tiny (SVGT) technologies. At the same time, Web content developers have been provided with support for standard Web technologies — such as HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript,Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), Flash Lite, and
SVGT — to enable S60 devices to browse their websites

Critical IE Bug! Patch it immediately!

This is a new critical security exploit in IE7 using mshtml.dll redirect disclosure. Ensure you quickly apply patch or use alternate browsers like Firefox or Chrome.

To patch your machines:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-078.mspx

News:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10124702-83.html

Feel da game!

Sorry for a boring social article . Now let us watch a video about ultrasonic gaming. Whoa! Sounds great, right? Now it is the time to feel it!

Like it when your game controller vibrates? You’re part of the majority that ought to be impressed by all the goodness that haptic technology has to offer. Takayuki Iwamoto and his team at the University of Tokyo have developed a device that uses ultrasound waves to create invisible surfaces that you can feel, which means that eventually, you’ll be able to poke your enemies in the eye, and feel the squish against your finger.

Called the Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display, the device can only create fake surfaces in the vertical plane, and can’t go beyond a certain intensity, lest it bust your eardrums. Eventually, though, the researchers hope to create a device that will let you interact with objects as you would in reality–squash soft stuff, bonk against hard surfaces, that sort of thing.

Watch it @:
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=hSf2-jm0SsQ&eurl=

Good Work, ‘Chrome’

The hourly tracking of Chrome on Market Share has revealed that Chrome passed 0.5% in just 2 hours. By midnight (EDT) it had surpassed 1% of the market share. By next day 4 a.m., it actually hit 1.48% share, after which it continued at 1% for the rest of the day.

Source: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39174/118/

‘Cyclic Redundancy Check’ error; What does it mean?

There are plenty of technical resources on the Web that discuss cyclic redundancy checks (CRCs). Most times you won’t need to worry about this technobabble. That is, until one it day it suddenly appears and you think – what the hell does that mean? In simple terms, a CRC is bit of mathematics used to ensure that your data is OK when being transfered. It’s a checking procedure that quickly identifies when data has been damaged. If you get this message, it means that the file being read by your PC or software is corrupted. However, it does not mean all the data is lost forever. When data is transfered, it is usually in small blocks and each block is given a CRC value. If something goes wrong with the data between the time it leaves the source and arrives at its destination, the CRC sent at the source will no longer match the one that is calculated when the data arrives – this is when the cyclic redundancy check error will appear.
The most common time you will see the cyclic redundancy check error message is when trying to read data from a damaged CD or DVD. Just before it appears, your CD/DVD drive will probably grind and whirl away – your PC may also become a little slugglish.

Less frequent causes are the result of system crashes, and buggy software (hello Microsoft), incomplete downloads (often identified by the misleading message ‘This is not a valid Windows file’, ‘This is not a valid win32 application’ or ‘Corrupt Zip file’). If this problem happens frequently with downloads, try using a download manager.

For CDs and DVDs, the problem is a little different. Normally, when CD/DVD drives get a CRC message from a disc, they try to read the disc again – hence the grinding sound. After several failed attempts, they give up and display the redundancy check error. The problem can be hardware (loose cables, failing drive), software or damaged media. In most cases checking and cleaning the disc is the easiest way to overcome the problem. If different clean discs produce the same error, it is likely to be a hardware issue (check the discs in another drive). Another common cause of these errors is poorly burnt CDs and DVDs – especially those that had numerous or severe buffer underuns. USB burners suffer from this problem when the burn speed is too high (generally above 4X-8X)

If the discs are damaged, you’ll probably need a recovery tool to get back your data.

Wi-Fi’s Advantage to Bluetooth

The popular wireless technology known as Bluetooth could get a lot faster in the coming years by taking advantage of Wi-Fi technology already built into many gadgets.

Linking Bluetooth and Wi-Fi may make it easier and faster to transfer large amounts of music between computer and cellphone, or send pictures from camera phone to printer, or video from camcorder to TV.

Some products, like laptops, already combine Bluetooth and Wi-Fi functions, but they work off separate chips. Most likely, manufacturers will use single chips still under development that combine Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities.

The combination devices might use the regular low-power Bluetooth radios to recognize each other and establish connections. If they need to transfer a large file, they will be able to turn on their Wi-Fi radios, and then turn them off to save power after finishing the transfer

The new technology doesn’t have a name, and it isn’t clear how consumers will be able to tell it apart from Bluetooth-UWB devices, which the industry group still supports.

While it started out as a specific radio technology, Bluetooth is turning into an umbrella standard for a variety of different radio technologies. Apart from the high-speed flavors, the SIG has incorporated an ultra-low-power wireless technology developed by Nokia Corp. and previously known as Wibree.

Products such as watches and pedometers that use the same technology are also expected to hit the market next year.