Network

Wireless optical system offers one gigabit per second transmission

By Paul Ridden

19:31 January 28, 2010 PST

Sending and receiving data over a wireless network is generally undertaken via radio waves. But that's not the only method. Using the optical spectrum offers the advantage of better security and blisteringly fast transfer rates to boot. Engineers from Pennsylvania State University have now succeeded in moving data outside the usual line of sight restrictions at speeds of over one gigabit per second, more than double that achieved by Siemens recently. Read More

NEPTUNE Canada - world's largest cabled seafloor observatory goes live

By Ben Coxworth

20:00 January 26, 2010 PST

Deep-sea research is great and everything, but man, those submersibles can get pretty cramped. The other, bigger problem is that it requires going off and traveling on a ship, which is costly and can therefore only be done a few times a year. Fortunately, however, there’s now a way of obtaining real-time undersea data without leaving your office. NEPTUNE Canada, the world’s largest and most advanced cabled seafloor observatory, officially started going live to the Internet last December, giving anyone with an Internet connection free access to what will become an absolute mountain of data from the bottom of the sea. Read More

Wireless data transfer record smashed

By Ben Coxworth

21:41 January 25, 2010 PST

If you’re like most people, you probably think that 200 megabits per second for wireless data transfer is just too darn slow! What are we, cavemen? Not anymore, apparently, as electronic engineering company Siemens just broke their own record by achieving 500 Mbps using white LED light. Read More

ClickFree adds new ‘auto-backup’ network solutions to its range

By Paul Lester

19:52 January 7, 2010 PST

Most Gizmag readers should be aware of the importance of backing up data, and this is probably because at one time or another countless hours of work have been lost due to hard drive failure or any other of a number of disaster scenarios. Taking the hassle out of backing up would therefore seem a good idea, and Clickfree is back at this year’s CES with some follow-ups to its 2009 Transformer. Read More

Netgear unveils Wireless-N 300 router featuring automatic 3G/4G/WiMax failover

By Mick Webb

19:45 January 7, 2010 PST

Anyone familiar with a loss of internet connection will attest to the absolute standstill of productivity it can cause, and in an office environment it can near spell disaster if not dealt with swiftly. With a view to counteracting this issue and possibly gearing up towards the shift to increasingly cellular technologies, Netgear has unveiled the Wireless-N 300 router with DSL Modem Mobile Broadband Edition – or rather, the DGN 2200M. The router combines 802.11n wireless with an integrated ADSL+2 modem as well as optional cellular connectivity through an external 3G/4G/WiMAX modem. Read More

Iomega's US$100 iConnect Wireless Data Station

By Tim Hanlon

01:47 January 6, 2010 PST

Iomega's new iConnect Wireless Data Station is like a Pogoplug on steroids. Just plug in up to four of your existing USB storage devices, and connect it to your (wired or wireless) network, and you've got a web-accessible, Time Machine-compatible, UPnP-streaming, torrent-downloading and print-serving Network-attached storage (NAS) device - and it's only US$100. Read More

Ericsson demos 42Mbps HSPA on consumer products

By Gizmag Team

03:15 December 21, 2009 PST

Wireless technology is moving fast, and here's a reminder of just how fast. At the beginning of 2009 we were reporting on Australian Telco Teltra achieving a world record network speed of 21Mbps, now Ericsson has demonstrated its latest mobile broadband technology, HSPA Evolution, with lightning speeds of almost 42Mbps. Read More

TeliaSonera launches 4G network in Norway and Sweden

By Mick Webb

16:14 December 18, 2009 PST

Swedish telecommunications company TeliaSonera has launched the world’s first commercially available 4G mobile broadband network. While an international roll out of up to twenty five countries is planned in the next year, the network will initially be made available in the central parts of Stockholm and Oslo, and is designed to provide speeds up to 100Mbit/s - ten times faster than those of the existing 3G networks. Read More

Opera includes Unite feature with 10.10 browser release

By Paul Ridden

14:31 November 25, 2009 PST

Opera's powerful content sharing technology, Unite, has now been fully integrated into its desktop browser with the release of Opera 10.10. Opera lovers can also enjoy visual tabs to view thumbnails of pages in open tabs, a page-loading turbo boost, web navigation with mouse gestures and a customizable speed dial interface. Read More

Google to feature Twitter updates in search

By Dario Borghino

17:35 October 26, 2009 PDT

Since it was founded three years ago, Twitter has quickly grown into a social phenomenon used by presidents and bloggers alike for breaking news, political protests, marketing and personal blogging, offering a unique real-time cross-section of today's society. In a recent announcement made by Google's VP of search products and user experience, Melissa Mayer, the search giant said it had reached an agreement with the microblogging service and would soon be able to integrate status updates with its standard search results. Read More

Microsoft launches long awaited Windows 7

By Mick Webb

20:13 October 22, 2009 PDT

After much anticipation and speculation, Microsoft has finally released its long awaited Windows 7 operating system. Aiming to make it easier for users to “do the things they want to do on a PC”, Microsoft’s successor to the largely ill-conceived Vista brings a host of new features to the table. Read More

A cheap way to increase capacity and improve download speeds of strained broadband networks

By Darren Quick

23:19 October 18, 2009 PDT

A new technology that applies the same principles used by ADSL to improve the capacity of data transfer over copper and wireless broadband could potentially increase the data capacity of optical fiber cables tenfold. It’s creators say the technology, known as optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (oOFDM), offers an inexpensive way drastically boost the capacity of increasingly strained broadband networks and improve download times around the world. Read More

Cyber 'ants' patrol PC networks against computer worms and other threats

By Dario Borghino

00:46 September 29, 2009 PDT

In looking for highly efficient ways to solve complex problems, we've often seen researchers mimic the solutions found by nature over billions of years: smart fabrics inspired by pine cones, spectrum analyzers modeled after the human ear and powerful search-and-optimization genetic and evolutionary algorithms, to name just a few. The latest piece of news comes from Wake Forest University, where the group dynamics of ant colonies have inspired security software to fight computer worms and other threats. Read More

Belkin Home Base: the box that does it all

By Paul Ridden

16:49 September 17, 2009 PDT

Wirelessly sharing devices such as a printer over a home network has just been made a mite easier with the introduction of Belkin's Home Base. This handy 802.11b/g/n compatible do-it-all box allows connection and access of up to four USB devices, can automatically back up files and share pictures on Flickr or Picassa accounts, and painlessly shares files between computers on an existing wireless network. Read More

Smart Grid City now online

By Paul Ridden

16:18 September 16, 2009 PDT

Boulder, Colorado has just become the world's first city to benefit from an intelligent power supply monitoring system. The Smart Grid City system aims to make outages easier to predict and/or prevent, manage power flow throughout the infrastructure and give customers greater access to energy information and more control over how much they use. Xcel Energy constantly monitors the grid network for any irregularities, allowing the company to fix problems before they happen. Read More

IEEE ratifies 802.11n amendment (at last)

By Paul Ridden

21:29 September 15, 2009 PDT

Seven years after starting to talk about it, and six years after introducing the first draft, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) has finally ratified the 802.11n wireless local area network (WLAN) amendment to the base standard. This effectively means that the super-fast routers we've been using in our home networks and for internet access for the past couple of years are now amongst those officially recognized by the IEEE. Read More

Reality Mining: Tomorrow’s forecast predicts humanity’s needs

By Darren Quick

23:54 July 29, 2009 PDT

Researchers will one day be able to accurately predict such things as the economic and social effects of billions of new Internet users in China and India, or the exact location and number of airline flights to cancel around the world in order to halt the spread of a pandemic, says Indiana University’s Alessandro Vespignani. This capability will be possible thanks to “reality mining”, which involves the collection of data from machine-sensed sources to provide knowledge about aggregated human behavior. Read More

Samsung's all-in-one HD video conferencing monitor

By Darren Quick

22:08 June 18, 2009 PDT

Video conferencing offers businesses a way to save time and money on travel expenses while providing that all-important face-to-face communication. Samsung, partnering with RADVISION, has developed the VC240, a new all-in-one solution that integrates all the components required for high definition desktop video conferencing into a single unit. As well as operating as a standalone desktop HD video conferencing device without the need of a PC, it can also be used as a high-resolution monitor. Read More

Cisco PVC300 Internet camera brings Big Brother to small companies

By Alan Brandon

17:06 June 11, 2009 PDT

Cisco’s new PVC300 Pan Tilt Optical Zoom Internet Camera provides a suite of surveillance features aimed at small companies who want to keep a watchful eye on their employees and business property. Designed to operate on existing wired networks, the PVC300 provides two-way audio, motion activated recording, automatic alerts and full-motion live video that can be viewed from virtually anywhere on an Internet-enabled PC or mobile phone. Read More

Movie studios look at the big picture (and small) with Epix service

By Paul Best

20:10 June 10, 2009 PDT

A triumvirate of major movie studios – Lionsgate, Paramount and MGM – is planning to launch a new TV service called Epix that will screen recent catalogue titles in HD. But what’s interesting is the group's move to bundle it with a Hulu-like on-demand, commercial-free service that streams the same films in 720p HD. Read More

Healthmap.org – charting global public health threats

By Mike Hanlon

01:03 May 15, 2009 PDT

Tapping the Internet – including personal Web searches, news reports, blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites – is fast becoming a way to get a complete, up-to-the-minute view of public health threats, say researchers from the Informatics Program at Children’s Hospital Boston (CHIP) in a Perspectives article published Online First by The New England Journal of Medicine on May 7, 2009. In an accompanying sidebar, they describe the use of HealthMap.org – a freely available Web site that aggregates, categorizes, filters and displays real-time information on emerging infectious diseases – in tracking the current H1N1 swine flu outbreak.


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Golden-i Bluetooth headset with virtual PC display

By Darren Quick

23:04 May 11, 2009 PDT

Mobile phones and laptop computers have made traditional 9-to-5 workdays a thing of the past for many workers. That ability to work from any location, however, can be a double-edged sword. The flexibility to be freed from the office also means that work is increasingly encroaching on people’s recreation time, as they find they are never really off the clock. That situation looks set to worsen, or improve, depending on your perspective, with the introduction of the Golden-i from Kopin Corporation. The Golden-i is a Bluetooth headset that provides a 15-inch virtual display with a hands-free, natural-speech-recognition interface for wireless remote control over a range of devices including mobile phones, PCs, company networks and wireless systems. Read More

LaCie releases new high capacity network storage drives

By Darren Quick

22:27 May 7, 2009 PDT

With the advantage of freeing up a server to concentrate on tasks besides file serving, Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices have become an increasingly popular option for small offices and home users over the last few years. LaCie has two new high capacity NAS solutions for anyone considering going this route – the Big Disk Network and d2 Network. The d2 Network supports up to 1.5TB capacity, while the Big Disk Network combines two drives in a RAID 0 setting, for up to 4TBs of storage. Read More

AOL’s Socialthing aims to simplify your digital life

By Darren Quick

22:24 May 4, 2009 PDT

Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are designed to make keeping in touch with friends and family easy, but as the list of such sites continues to grow, the task of keeping up to date with all that data can quickly lead to information overload. "Lifestreaming" applications designed to simplify the process by aggregating data from multiple sources are now emerging. AOL's Socialthing is the latest lifestreaming app to join the ranks of FriendFeed, Tumblr.com and the recently announced Vine from Microsoft. Read More

Greener computers talk in their sleep

By Darren Quick

23:48 April 27, 2009 PDT

Computers are often left running so they stay connected to a network or the Internet – be it to ensure remote access, availability for virus scans and backup, maintaining presence on instant messaging (IM) or voice-over-IP (VoIP) networks, or for file sharing and downloading. Although such tasks mean the PCs are relatively idle, they remain in awake mode and draw more power than they really need. Now computer scientists at UC San Diego and Microsoft Research have created a plug-and-play hardware prototype for personal computers that induces a new energy saving state known as "sleep talking", which provides much of the energy savings of sleep mode and some of the network-and-Internet-connected convenience of awake mode. Read More