Like your average teenager, AT&T has recognized the power in using two phone lines to cheaply extend its reach and influence. Pair bonding technology expands U-verse's reach by sending the signal over two copper phone lines at once and was supposed to roll out back in '08. No word what caused the delay, but that it's a cheaper option than putting more "shovels in the ground" should keep costs down and Randall Stephenson happy. According to AT&T, that extra distance (about 1,000 to 2,000 extra feet from neighborhood nodes) will help expand availability to 30 million households by the end of next year, so if you've been waiting for some Total Home DVR / Xbox 360 Mediaroom / mobile U-verse (once the latter two actually launch, of course) action but live a block or two too far outside the radius then things are looking up. The bad news? It won't add bandwidth for the compression issues or lack of additional HD streams Home Theater Review noted, and definitely won't help you score concert tickets during the top 8 at 8.
AT&T bonds two phone lines to extend U-verse's reach, ensure it is the 98th caller originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Two years after Opera first attempted to get their browser on the iPhone, and it's here. Sort of. Wired UK has seen it, gushed over it, and proclaimed it as being fast, yet missing that all-important pinch-to-zoom.
Instead, users have to adopt the double-tap method to zoom in on webpages, which will be a sore point for iPhone owners I'm sure—although Wired says "we didn't find ourselves missing the feature at all."
"Scrolling through webpages is silky smooth, with nary a glitch or stutter regardless of the size of the page. The interface is instantaneously responsive as well, just as you'd expect from the iPhone."
Unlike Opera on other platforms, such as Symbian, the iPhone version actually remembers which website you were browsing last—it's not news to non-Opera users, but the legion of fans will obviously want that feature incorporated on their phones.
While the hands-on experience seems to be overwhelmingly positive, they do acknowledge that there's a good chance Apple will never allow it onto the App Store. It's seen as a competitor to Safari, yet Opera told Wired "we are confident that Opera Mini will meet the requirements," due to issues with their compression technology not rendering "rich, content-heavy documents like Safari does," and because it doesn't render HTML, instead using "a custom binary representation of the website."
It sounds like they're saying it could co-exist quite comfortably with Safari on the iPhone, with the user choosing between the two based on what site they want to visit. Until Apple actually allows Opera onto their handset though, this is just the stuff of dreams sadly. [Wired UK]
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Opera Mini On iPhone Is "Fast," Though There's No Pinch To Zoom [IPhone Apps]
Jörg M. Colberg, an accomplished astrophysicist and photographer, created a series of images entitled "American Pixels" in which he applied a self-made compression algorithm to his own photographs, turning them into artworks of the digital age.
But Colberg's works aren't just commentaries on the state of images in an age of lossy file types. He designed his own compression algorithm that responds uniquely to the contents of each photograph.
For Colberg, the compression becomes part of the creative progress. He explains:
A computer that creates a jpeg does not know anything about the contents of the image: It does what it is told, in a uniform manner across the image.
My idea was to create a variant that followed in the footsteps of what jpegs do, but to have the final result depend on the original image...adaptive compression (acomp) is a new image algorithm where the focus is not on making its compression efficient but, rather, on making its result interesting...As computer technology has evolved to make artificial images look ever more real - so that the latest generation of shooter and war games will look as realistic as possible - acomp is intended to go the opposite way: Instead of creating an image artificially with the intent of making it look as photo-realistic as possible, it takes an image captured from life and transforms it into something that looks real and not real at the same time.
The American Pixel renders are intended for hanging on walls, allowing the viewer to study the different layers of pixelated detail by move closer and farther away from the work.
To see the whole set of these fascinating works, head over to Colberg's collection. [Jörg M. Colberg via Kottke]
Link:
"American Pixels" Series Makes Art of Artifacts [Compression]
With a name like Gorilla Glass, we aren't surprised that gadgets with such a display are pretty hardy in nature, at least they won't just crack in half during their maiden drop to the floor. Just for your information, among the devices in the market that sport Gorilla Glass include the Motorola Droid, Dell Adamo laptop and Cowon S9 portable media player. Gorilla Glass works very much differently from normal glass because it enables "larger ions to penetrate the surface more deeply to increase the compression tolerance and tolerate deeper scratches." This is made possible thanks to an aluminum-composite composition which is extremely thin and light due to its strength.
Permalink: Gorilla Glass makes things tough to break from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nokia Booklet 3G Review
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Gorilla Glass makes things tough to break
mg src="images/l/cn-spia40-dvr.jpg" alt="Micro DVR with Built-in 2.4" LCD Monitor" title=" Micro DVR with Built-in 2.4" LCD Monitor " width="250" height="250" style="float: left; margin: 0px 8px 8px 0px;" border="0" />
Micro DVR with Built-in 2.4 TFT Monitor
MIC Built-In
peaker Built-In
MPEG4 Compression Format Audio Video Input/Output
Built-In 2GB Mini SD RAM &Micro SD Card of any size
Same size as a Credit Card
Built-In USB
Built-in flash2GB
Specification:
Internal : Built-in Lithium-ion Battery (5V 800mAh)
External: 5V DC power adaptor
Consumption: Typical 300mA (+-5%)
LCD:2.4 inch TFT
Dimension:83.5 x 50.2 x 12.5 mm
Net Weight:190g
Operation Temperature:-10 degree C ~ 55 degree C
USB port:USB
Signal to noise ratio:90dB
Earphone output rate:5mW+5mW
Output frequency range:60Hz-16KHz
Compression:MPEG4
Storage Device:Built - in 2GB Mini SD RAM & Micro SD Card of any size
Image Resolution:Record 320x240 MPEG4
Video Playback:NTSC:30 fps/sec, PAL: 25 fps/sec. (ASF,AVI,3GP,MP4 file format)
Audio/Video Input:Built-in MIC/LINE IN(with DC power for camera)
Audio/Video Output:Composite AV output x1(Phone Jack 3.5mm). Built-in speaker.
Video System:NTSC / PAL
Sample Price: 69.0000
Model: CN-SPIA40
Link:
Micro DVR with Built-in 2.4" LCD Monitor
