Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Mobile

2010년 9월 1일 수요일

Why Only Mac Users Can Watch Apple's Event Tomorrow

You can watch a live stream of Apple's fall event tomorrow, the company has announced - but only if you're using an Apple device.

Apple will broadcast the event using its internally-developed HTTP Live Streaming Protocol, which requires either a Mac running Safari on Mac OS X version 10.6, an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 3.0 or higher or an iPad. It's not because Apple only wants its fans watching, however.

"QuickTime X, a major leap forward that advances modern media and Internet standards"
-Apple

The HTTP live streaming protocol is a feature of the latest version of Apple's multimedia player and framework, QuickTime X. The new protocol lets users stream audio and video over HTTP. This makes things easier for broadcasters, who can use a standard Web server instead of a special media server to stream in almost-real time. Apple claims the protocol also avoids common problems with other streaming protocols.

2010년 8월 31일 화요일

How an App Store Could Revolutionize the TV Industry

Samsung’s next Bada device announced: the entry-level Wave 723

Are you in the market for a different smart phone operating system? Sick of the mainstream players? Perhaps you have a fondness for immature OSes that are only supported by one manufacturer?

Well, I’d initially recommend the Wave — Samsung’s original Bada-powered smartphone — but I know you’re a bit more budget minded than that. Who wants Super-AMOLED anyway?

Samsung hear ya, buddy, as today they announced their third-ish (fourth, I suppose) Bada-powered phone: the entry-level S7320E Wave 723 (henceforth known as just the Wave 723).

The most obvious feature is the built-in leather case, but other than that, the phone rocks a 3.2″ WQVGA (240×400) TFT display, 5MP camera with LED flash and QVGA (read: gross) video recording, Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi N, GPS, quad-band 2G, dual-band 3G, 3.5mm headphone jack, 90MB on-board storage, plus a MicroSD slot, and will measure just 109.5 x 53.9 x 11.8 mm.

The phone should be out in September, and, while pricing hasn’t yet been announced, expect cheap.

Check some more pics in the gallery, below.

Motorola: Droid X’s HDMI Port Is Only Active In Gallery App

The Droid X’s vaunted HDMI out seems to be of extremely limited utility at the moment, as a Motorola developer has said that it is only ever active within the Gallery application on the phone — essentially limiting it to media recorded on the phone, or media you’ve managed to slip in there. Wait, what about using a Netflix or YouTube app? And what if you want to watch a .MOV or .AVI off your SD card?

While it’s not exactly a crippling issue, it is bothersome in phone the tagline for which is “Droid does.” Not as bad as that refresh rate cap issue on the EVO, though. That would have really bugged me.

Of course, you’ll likely be able to get around it once a safe and reliable workaround or root method is distributed (contrary to early reports), but it still sucks for the end user who doesn’t want to have to worry about this kind of thing.

Samsung Epic 4G Gets Naked For FCC

With the Samsung Epic 4G launching very soon, here’s an interesting alternative view of the device. If you dig around enough on the FCC website, you’ll be able to find nude pictures of almost every phone. Sometimes they are barely legal shots, like this Samsung Epic 4G.

Wireless Goodness found these shots, and has a much more comprehensive idea of exactly what’s going on with the various circuits then I do. For example, the shot up above is of the main board and CPU: a Samsung Hummingbird processor running at 1GHz. The Hummingbird is a not so distant cousin of the Apple A4 processor, as both are made by Samsung. You can also see the NEC MC-10170 chip, which is the same video processing chip found in the Galaxy S devices.

What We’re Reading About the Cloud

In today’s cloud news we’re tackling the Large Hadron Collider and its petabytes of data as well as the importance of knowing where your apps will eventually run with so many diverse client devices out there. HP is also attempting another cloud play.

The Seven Secrets of Successful Data Scientists (From Dataspora Blog) At least in terms of building the infrastructure, this seems like solid advice. You can’t do all the fascinating analysis attributed to true data science if you have a faulty foundation.

Hybrid Apps: The Art of Being in Two Places at Once (From TechNewsWorld) This is both a good guide to buildings apps and a good lesson in strategy. Consumers use apps on a variety of devices, sometimes not online, so how/where the apps run needs to adjust accordingly.

Charge Your iPhone 4 With Sunlight

While we’ve been trying to beam the idea of a solar-embedded iPhone into Steve Job’s head (so far successfully), a design company called Frostfire is helping out. The company has created an iPhone 4 case that has a rechargeable lithium-ion battery at the base with a small solar panel embedded on it that can extend the battery life of your iPhone 4 while on the go.

Twenty minutes of direct sunlight shining on the so-called “Mooncharge” case will buy you an extra 50 minutes on standby mode, or 5 minutes of chatting, so, yeah, not a whole lot. The battery can be charged via a USB cord, as well, and fully charged, will provide the user with 315 hours on standby or 5 extra hours of talk time. The case costs $70.