Posts Tagged ‘Internet’
60 GHz Wi-Fi Products Now Possible 7Gbps
Wi-Fi and WiGi are teaming up to bring three spectrums to consumers, including 7 Gbps transfers.
Monday the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) jointly announced a cooperation agreement that will allow Wi-Fi equipment to access the 60 GHz frequency band, and to provide better speeds in the current 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Devices that will support all three bandwidths will be able to achieve up to 7 Gbps although the range will most likely be limited to in-room transfers. Still, this is good news for consumers who want to stream Blu-ray movies to a living room HDTV.
“60 GHz device connectivity will be an exciting enhancement to the capabilities of today’s Wi-Fi technologies,” said Wi-Fi Alliance chief executive officer Edgar Figueroa. “It will expand the utility of Wi-Fi, used by hundreds of millions of people every day. From its inception, the WiGig specification was designed to work on a wide variety of devices, making it a compelling input as we begin to define our certification program for 60 GHz wireless.”
In a separate announcement, WiGig said that it published its unified wireless specification for the unlicensed 60 GHz spectrum. It also launched its royalty-free Adopter Program which allow members to develop products that use the spectrum “to deliver multi-gigabit-speed wireless communication.” Cisco, Hitachi, Panasonic, and Toshiba have already jumped on board, and may have tri-band products ready by the end of the year.
“With this announcement today, and with our new partnership with the Wi-Fi Alliance, we are one step closer to fulfilling our vision of a unified 60 GHz ecosystem,” said Dr. Ali Sadri, WiGig Alliance president and chairman. “We welcome all companies to join with us as we continue to drive the industry forward.”
Internet Users to feel Physical Contact while Chatting Soon
Internet chatting could soon turn more humane as users will be able to reach out and hug one another- thanks to a new wearable robotic device that creates the sensation of physical contact.
The iFeel-IM device is capable of distinguishing nine emotions including joy, fear, interest, guilt and anger
Created by Japan-based scientists, the device simulates sensations such as heartbeats, hugging, stomach butterflies and spine tingles among those wearing it.
Dzmitry Tsetserukou, an assistant professor at Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan, described how his iFeel-IM robotic device was designed to add a human touch to the ethereal world of cyberspace.
“We are steeped in computer-mediated communication – SMS, e-mail, Twitter, Instant Messaging, 3-D virtual worlds – but many people don’t connect emotionally,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
“I am looking to create a deep immersive experience, not just a vibration in your shirt triggered by an SMS. Emotion is what give communication life,” he added.
Designed after five years of research, the new device – whose name stands for I Feel Therefore I Am – consists of a complex collection of sensors, motors, vibrators and speakers woven into a series of straps.
Alena Neviarouskaya created the software that can decode emotional messages embedded in written text, triggering the appropriate touch response within the robot.
The device can distinguish nine emotions including joy, fear, interest, guilt and anger with 90 per accuracy resulting in corresponding physical sensations such as squeezes and increased warmth in the user.
While the scientists wanted to add a mechanism for sexual desire, they opted against it to avoid distracting from its emotion-based focus.
The creation was among a string of futuristic interactive devices showcased at the first two-day Augmented Human International Conference held in the French ski resort Megeve.
Reminiscing the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar, the new robot was tested during the conference on the three-dimensional environment Second Life, where on-line personas gave and received hugs physically felt by their human controllers.
Google to Build High-speed Internet Network
Google Inc plans to build a super-fast Internet network for up to half a million people, a project that could pressure telecommunications companies to loosen their control of Web access in the United States.
The Internet company has locked horns with the likes of AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc over the issue of net neutrality: Google wants telephone companies to permit consumers to run any Web application they want, while carriers do not want to lose control of networks they have invested billions of dollars to build. In building the test network, Google wants to demonstrate a carrier could easily manage complex applications that use a lot of bandwidth without sacrificing performance. Google said on Wednesday it does not plan to build a nationwide network and its goal is only to develop a trial service at a “competitive price” to 50,000 to 500,000 people, offering Web speeds of up to 100 times faster than most consumers get today. “In a big way, this is about Google wanting to make a case for net neutrality,” said PRTM consultant Daniel Hays, adding that Google wants to “demonstrate these services can be provided profitably at satisfactory levels of performance.” In a blog describing the new network, Google imagined a doctor discussing and looking at three-dimensional medical images with a patient far away, students joining a class from various locations in 3-D, or someone downloading a high-definition movie very quickly. Google said the network would run on fiber optic lines to homes, but declined to give more details.
Google asked cities and states interested in joining the experiment to apply to Google by March 26 and said it eventually would build the network in a number of U.S. locations. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski immediately hailed the move, saying “big broadband creates big opportunities.” The FCC is about a month away from submitting a national broadband plan to Congress. Google’s “significant trial will provide an American test bed for the next generation of innovative, high-speed Internet apps, devices and services,” Genachowski said in a statement. Google has long argued it can sell more Web ads — the way it makes money by encouraging Internet use.
Analysts said they did not think Google would end up competing directly with carriers as it would cost the Internet company hundreds of billions of dollars to build a nationwide broadband network from scratch. “If somehow they were able to widely deploy this, it would be bad for the cable and telecom folks. I’m skeptical the economics will work to allow them to deploy it widely,” said Hudson Square Research analyst Todd Rethemeier. A Verizon spokesman described the Google move as a “new paragraph” in the “exciting story” of Internet development. AT&T declined to comment. Google has had mixed success in previous attempts to become an Internet service provider. In 2006, it partnered with EarthLink Inc in an attempt to provide free wireless Internet access to the entire city of San Francisco. The plan fell through in 2007 over financial concerns. At the same time, however, Google built a free wireless network across its headquarter’s city of Mountain View, Calif. Each of those attempts, however, leveraged wireless broadband access. This time, Google is dealing in hard lines.
Oppenheimer & Co analyst Timothy Horan said he suspected building out the trial broadband network would cost Google about $1,000 to $2,000 per subscriber if it bought unused fiber lines already underneath many cities. “They can buy a lot of this stuff fairly inexpensively that’s out there already,” he said, adding that communications service providers, such as Level 3 Communications Inc, would have lines to sell to Google. Google said it would pay for building the network itself without seeking financial partners or government subsidies and then charge consumer and business customers. “We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections,” Google product managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly wrote in the blog. Google said it wanted the project to become an open-access network, enabling products such as Internet telephony. “I think there are a lot of partnership opportunities and we are definitely interested in having those discussions,” Ingersoll said.
Surf the Internet Anonymously With Ixquick
Metasearch engine Ixquick and its U.S. brand, Startpage.com have released a new proxy service that allows users to surf the web with complete privacy.
The proxy lets users browse websites safely and anonymously, without passing on any private, personally identifiable information to the websites they view.
The Ixquick proxy is a free service that works in conjunction with the Ixquick search engine, available at www.ixquick.com. When users perform a search, they will find a clickable “proxy” option below each search result. When this option is selected, Ixquick acts as an intermediary to retrieve the page and display it in a privacy-protected Ixquick window.
The proxy offers anonymity, since the user never makes direct contact with the third-party website. The user’s IP address is invisible to the viewed website. In addition, the website cannot see or place cookies on the user’s browser.
Ixquick does not record IP addresses, make a record of users’ searches, or record details about proxy usage. The company’s data collection practices are third-party certified with the “European Privacy seal”.
The proxy service is being launched today, January 28th, to celebrate international Data Privacy Day.
Get Ready for the Big Internet Crunch
The internet as we know it is reaching its limits.
Within 18 months it is estimated that the number of new devices able to connect to the world wide web will plummet as we run out of “IP addresses” — the unique codes that provide access to the internet for everything from PCs to smart phones.
“The internet as we know it will no longer be able to grow,” Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC, the organization that issues IP addresses in Europe, told CNN.
“That doesn’t mean it will cease to function, but entry could be limited to new devices.”
Some estimate that by September 2011 the last large batches of addresses will be issued, meaning that months after that date there will be no new addresses available.
But while this sounds like a complete disaster — another Millennium Bug — it need not be, and there is a solution, if we all act quickly enough.
Currently the internet is built around the Internet Protocol Addressing Scheme version 4 (IPv4), which has around four billion addresses — and they’re fast running out.
Four billion no doubt seemed a huge amount when the system was designed in the 1970s, but few then could have predicted how the internet would take off, and how many billions more connections would be needed.
However, there is a replacement, IPv6, which has trillions more addresses available and ready to go. The problem is that businesses are proving slow to adapt their technology to IPv6, leaving experts fearful that we might be heading for a crunch within 18 months.