The Speed Test

E-readers are the future of the book industry. They have revolutionized the way we read and today, you no longer need to purchase books only to worry about storage space and how to get rid of them when you move to another location. Books can now be delivered to you wirelessly and when you want to get rid of them, you simply erase them from the memory. The two major players in the e-readers industry are the Barnes and Nobles Nook and the Amazon Kindle. While similar in many ways, they differ in six dimensions: price, weight, international download, color screen, memory and ease of navigation.

We shall start with price. In general, Nook is more expensive than Kindle. A new Nook sells for $217 while a new Kindle will only set you back by $189. In terms of weight, the Kindle is lighter by a few ounces and smaller. Such differences might not be significant if you spend most of your time indoors but they will matter a great deal if move around a lot.

While you can certainly read books that you have already downloaded regardless of your location, only Amazon Kindle allows you to download reading materials overseas. Thanks to the GSM network, you can now download reading materials from over 100 different international locations. Nook, on the other hand, only works within the US. Also, while Nook has the color screen option, Kindle does not. So, if you purchase the Amazon Kindle, you are only able to view your reading materials in black and white prints.

Next, we will discuss the memory capacity of both e-readers. In terms of memory capacity, Kindle can store more books than Nook. The former can store up to 3500 books while the latter can only store up to 1500 books. If you want to store more books with Nook, you will need to purchase additional memory slots. Last but not least, Nook is certainly easier to navigate with its touch screen navigation as opposed to Kindle’s push button navigation.

Based on all the facts presented above, it is clear that Amazon Kindle is the winner because it is cheaper, lighter, it stores more books and it allows international downloads. Regardless of your purchasing decision, both devices will prove to be excellent value for your money.

The iPad, just like all of the other previous APPLE products, is a revolutionary electronic device. Depending on the different needs of a person, the iPad can be used for many different tasks. With this high power device, many people will prefer to travel with this than carry a bulky laptop.

Battery and Hard Drive

One of the great features of the iPad is the battery power. With its lithium battery, the iPad can last of to ten hours of Wi-Fi web surfing, watching a movie or even listening to music. With the easy and efficient charging system, a person will likely never worry about not having enough battery life to last them the day. There are three different drive sizes, and depending on what a person will mostly be using the iPad for, the 16GB, 32GB or 64GB drive may be appropriate.

Video and Audio

Another one of the advantages of owning an iPad is the audio and video playback. With a high definition screen, the iPad produces an amazing 720p video resolution that is unrivaled by any other tablet or mobile device. With this tablet being able to handle many different video formats, watching ones favorite videos on the go is easier than ever. This the perfect choice for people that want to carry their favorite movies or TV shows, but do not want to lug around a heavy laptop.

3G and Wi-Fi

One of the best features that is available for the iPad is 3G coverage. This means that for a monthly fee, a person can have access to any online content and videos whenever and wherever they choose. This is perfect for people who travel a lot and like to read news or watch YouTube videos, but find it hard to carry around their laptop wherever they go. Like the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad offers owners the chance to surf the internet using any home or public Wi-Fi access point.

Overall, the choice of purchasing the iPad is dependent on what a person plans on using it for. While it does not offer the word processing that a Laptop or Netbook offers, all of the other common features that can be found in a Laptop are accessible through the iPad.

There has always been people coming up with new gadgets for just about anything that can be thought of. These are some of the latest gadgets to be put on the market.

Coffee Mug

A new way to tell if the coffee is hot or cold. The mug is coated with a type of paint that is sensitive to temperatures. When the coffee is hot the mug turns white and the word hot appears on the side in white lettering. If the coffee is cold the mug is black and the word cold appears on the side in white letters.

Thumb-cam Mini Digital Video Camera

The thumb-cam can record leisure activities while traveling. It is a pinhole video camera that is also a digital recorder, full color AVI video files, 720 by 480 resolution. It records at the push of a button or it can be sound activated. Using a USB 2.0 cable it can be plugged into a computer and transfer files via the micro SD card. The lithium battery recharges through the USB cable when it is connected to a computer. And can record for 1 hour per charge.

Pocket Rogue 02 Electronic Wine Breather

About the size of a chunky pen this gadget can aerate wine in about 30 seconds. It can be rinsed off and reused. The power supply for it is LR1 batteries.

Breath-key Breathalyzer

With the laws in many states it is very easy to reach the legal limits of drinking. It does not take much to be at the legal limits and risk getting a ticket for driving under the influence. The breath-key is about the size of a key-chain and has a life time battery. The FDA has certified the accuracy to be +/- 0.010 % blood alcohol content. It weighs less than an ounce.

Sleeptracker Elite Pro Watch

It seems that a person’s body has a certain cycle for sleeping. The sleeptracker can be set using a USB connection to a computer and then worn like a digital wrist watch. All that needs to be done is to set the watch for whatever the normal time an individual wakes and adjust the vibrating window for that time. The alarm will go off and wake the person when the body as reached it’s normal sleep cycle period.

If you liked the jawbone, you would really like this!

This is a repost from my main site but I am in the process of converting my whole site to this layout.

Setup notes on a 2.5 mile wireless point to point network using Ubiquiti Bullet2HP’s

I work for a Communications company that does Metro Ethernet in Oregon, Idaho and Washignton state.   One of the bennefits of being an employee is you get free internet access.  You can get that in one of two ways.

1) T1 connection 1.544 Mbps

2) Bonded DS0′s at about 10 Mbps depending on how far away from the Central Office you are.

Well I am a little to far from the CO to get the bonded ds0′s so I got the T1.  Now most of you know that T1′s were the coolest thing to have about 10 years ago and the only people that even had them were office’s.  Now they are slow espcially when trying to watch netflix at about 4Mbps streams that they push out.

So I started thinking one day when I was on my back deck looking down to my office about 2.5 miles away.  What if I could shoot a wireless signal from the office to my house?  Would that be reliable enough?  Would it work?  If it worked, would it be fast enough?

I decided to go out on the internet to do a little research.  I found some guys were able to make this work with pringals cans and some modifications to antennas.  I knew that it could work because we do wireless shots in the licensed spectrum all the time at my place of employment.

Enough said. I decided to do it. With much research on the web, I found a fairly new company that was saying that they had the most powerful 802.11b/g radio out at the time.  This would be unlicensed radio spectrum.  I wanted something cheap since I would have to front the cost.  The raido’s that I decided on was the Ubiquiti Bullet2HP’s from UBNT.com.

I ordered two of these guys.  One for the office and one for the house.

I also ordered the power supply to go with it.  (you have to order these seperate).

Then it was time to find an antenna to go with this bull2hp. Long range is what I was going for.  2.5 miles to be exact.  I found this distance by using google earth.

I knew I wanted a directional antenna so I could get as much of the signal back and forth and I had good line of sight.   I went to streakwave.com and started looking at antennas. I ended up going with the 14dBi Panel Antenna (product number PANL-A0005 from poynting. Using google earth I found that most of the signal would make it where I needed to go.  You can download the manual here.

The above picture is the antenna mast at work that I will mount my radio and antenna too.

This is the view from work to my house.  I am 2.5 miles directly past the right of the green towers.

These pictures are from my house back to work.  I just mounted it using a satelite arm.

As you can see from the above pictures, the airos is great.  I found the network speed test to be pretty acurate when comparing it to my iperf results.

I connected the office side directly into the Cisco 6509 backbone switch.  I now have a 10Mbps internet connection up/down with no bandwidth limitations or port’s being blocked.  Best of all.  I did all of this for under $400.00.

The United States no longer owns the world’s fastest supercomputer.

A computer called Tianhe-1A, unveiled on Wednesday at a conference in Beijing, China, can run calculations faster than the previous speed leader, a computer at a U.S. lab in Tennessee.

The new computer set a performance record by crunching 2.507 petaflops of data at once. The previous leader, a computer called Cray XT5 Jaguar and located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, completed 1.75 petaflop calculations.

Analysts say the new record underscores China’s place as a global tech leader.

According to Nvidia, the computer technology company, the world’s fastest computer will be operated as an open access system and will be used for large scale scientific computations.

Supercomputers, which essentially are many computers strung and networked together, fill entire rooms and even small warehouses. They are often used to processes huge amounts of scientific data. Climate models, for example, are run using the supercomputing power that’s found in U.S. national labs.

Google Test Car (Toyota Prius)

Google has really been putting their maps and navigation technology to the test.  A highly secret but in the open testing of a car that can drive itself.  The problem?  The laws are written that a “human” must be in control of the vehicle at all times.  That seems like a small hurdle compared to all the technology it must take to have a computer drive a car for you.

Google has been testing their technology with a Toyota Prius.  Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google said  “It’s a bug that cars were invented before computers,” he said. “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense.”

 The New York Times says a total of seven cars have driven 1,000 miles without any human intervention (the 140,000 mile number includes occasional human control, apparently). These cars are a modified version of the Toyota Prius — and there is one Audi TT, as well.

So how does this work? The automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors, and a laser range finder to locate everything around them (these are mounted on the roof). And, of course, they use Google’s own maps.

The most important peice that makes it all possible is google’s data centers filled with very accurate map data and GPS.  Google is able to process the information quicklt and effeicently.

Google says it gathered the best engineers from the DARPA Challenges (an autonomous vehicle race that the government puts on) to work on this project. They also note that these cars never drive around unmanned in the interest of safety. A driver is always on hand to take over in case something goes wrong, and an engineer is always on hand in the car to monitor the software. Google also says they’ve notified local police about the project.

They have dirven well over 100,000 miles and have only had one accident.  The accident was not there fault.  Someone rear-ended one of these Google cars at a stop light.  Pretty impressive for a trial in my opinion.

Google notes that 1.2 million people are killed every year in road accidents — they think they can cut this number in half with the tech. It will also cut energy consumption and save people a lot of time. 

I can only see one problem with this.  I want this now and by most estimants, it wont be available for about eight years.

You might be asking why google is interested in vehicles?  I had the same question.  It appears that they are interested in it for two reasons.  One is obviously money.  There is a possabilty that other comapnies will want to purchase some of the engineering work before the eight year prediction.  The other major reason is to go green.  If computers can drive the car instad of humans, accidents would be few and far between and therefor cars could loose weight that is currently built in for protectiion in case of accidents therefor reducuing fuel consumption.   I am thinking, wow, no more need for a designated driver!

According to this blog post it is…

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/13/google-tv-officially-launching-october-17th/

YouTube, the online video site owned by Mountain View Internet juggernaut Google, is testing a live streaming platform today and tomorrow with programming broadcast at specific times from four content providers: Howcast, Next New Networks, Rocketboom and Young Hollywood.

Before the World Wide Web, we had something similar: broadcast TV. However, YouTube’s platform takes advantage of the Internet’s interactivity. “Included in the test is a ‘Live Comments’ module which lets you engage with the broadcaster and the broader YouTube community,” YouTube product manager Joshua Siegel and product marketing manager Christopher Hamilton explained today in a post on the site’s official blog.

For now, this is only a test. “Based on the results of this initial test,” the post said, “we’ll evaluate rolling out the platform more broadly to our partners worldwide.