Tech Gadgets Reviews

This year’s big winner at the SXSW was Sched.org. Tauted as this year’s Twitter, Sched.org is a simple scheduling app that was developed in a mere 14 hours by Florida developers Taylor McKnight, a 24-year old web designer, and Mehta, 27, an IT consultant.

Last year, Twitter proved to be a success and still continues to be a winner, with its micro-blogging feature. Users are allowed to post and receive simple updates wherever they are via their laptops or phone. And this year, Sched.org proved just the same by posting a more organized schedule of the conference.

Sched.org is a calendaring service that solves schedule management. This year being first used at the SXSW, geeks and participants are updated of the next conference happenings, as well as know who is attending. 

The application’s developers and Blogger and Chime.tv founders, Mehta and McKnight, worked on the program using an Ajax interface. McKnight worked on the app first while on a vacation in Mexico, thinking about how the schedule of the upcoming SXSW could be organized. He built a simple kit and sent it to Mehta before his vacation was over. Sunday, McKnight showed the kit to Mehta and they both decided to finish the program.

To be used during the SXSW, the two brilliant developers had to enter all the conference schedules, both official and unofficial, but had to enter by hand the unofficial ones. Mehta even hoped that they could have worked on the Sched a bit earlier so everything was automated.

More than 1,900 users have already signed-up and are currently utilizing the website, most are from the SXSW crowd. Creating a “sched” of one’s own event will be possible in the very near future according to the website. But for now, only SXSW and Austin activities are posted.

Read [Wired]

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Oyster cards, the high-tech RFID swipe cards used to gain access to the London Underground, have been pwned.

Pro crackers have unlocked the card’s cryptography system, which turns out to be garbage of the "security through obscurity" order. Bruce Schneier asks, "when will people learn not to invent their own crypto?," a question which might echoed by anyone else dumb enough to have licensed Mifare.

All the researchers had to do was examine the chip’s conductive pathways, as one might do to an old arcade chip to get it emulated in MAME.

"The research team was able to obtain the card’s proprietary encryption scheme by physically dissecting its chip and examining it under a microscope. They then photographed various levels of its circuitry and used optical recognition software to produce a 3D representation of the entire chip. By examining the logic gates in great detail, they were able to deduce the proprietary algorithm, which NXP dubs Crypto1."

Perhaps peer review won’t be too hard for this particular paper, if dodgy market stall operators catch my drift.

Microscope-wielding boffins crack Tube smartcard [Register via Scheier]

According to a new report by IDC, 2007 was the first year that we managed to create more digital information than we manufactured storage space to house it.

The EMC sponsored report is entitled “The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth through 2011″ and was written by a team of researchers headed up by project director John F. Gantz.

The report contains a number of interesting facts about the explosion of digital information over the past few years. Here are some of the highlights:

• In 2007 the digital universe was 281 billion gigabytes large, but the available empty space on hard drives, tapes, CDs, DVDs and volatile/nonvolatile memory was 264 billion gigabytes
• That 2007 figure was 10% bigger than expected due to better than expected digital peripheral sales such as cameras and TVs
• By 2011 the size of the digital universe will be 10x the size it was in 2006
• By 2011 half of all digital information created will not have a permanent home and will just get transferred around
• Approximately 70% of the digital universe is created by individuals, but enterprises are responsible for 85% of security, privacy, reliability, and compliance

The amount of storage space being smaller than the amount of data created is not an immediate problem. That is because not all information is stored, rather just viewed without storing. Longer term it does become a problem, however, as the difference is set to increase, and new methods will be required on how to store that information efficiently.

Another interesting fact is that even though we all create digital content directly–e.g. YouTube videos, e-mails, blogs–a lot of the information relates to our digital shadow. This shadow consists of banking records, camera surveillance footage, Web search histories, and data backup.

Read more at InfoWorld and view the IDC report (PDF).

Matthew’s Opinion

If you want to see just how quickly new digital information is being created just head over to the EMC website where it has a real-time counter. It’s incredible how fast the information is being created.

Something I have never really thought about before is this idea of information that has no home, yet requires a moving amount of storage. The best example I can think of is when you watch a YouTube video. The video is actually stored on Google hardware somewhere in the world, but when you choose to view it that video information needs to travel and temporarily sit in storage somewhere on your machine. Thousands of people could be watching the same video at the same time creating thousands of copies and upping the storage required for that information, however temporarily.

With online services becoming more media rich, you can see why the amount of storage required is going to increase. Storage is cheap, though, and I don’t think we actually have to worry about running out of physical storage space any time soon. The biggest concern is ensuring the networks can cope with this growing transferable storage phenomenon.

Posted Mar 14th 2008 12:10PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Storage

Looking for that perfect weapon of mass destruction to pair with The Button? This USB Bomb designed by Joel Escalona should fit the bill nicely. Unfortunately, it’s just a concept at the moment, but we’re sure with a little bit of Styrofoam and a whole bunch of black crayons you could get yourself on the FBI watch list in no time.

[Via technabob]

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve looked at enterprise opportunities for Apple vs. Microsoft.  I’ve looked at how Apple may be trying to leverage the iPhone machine into more enterprise sales and we’ve looked at the costs to do so.  This week, it is all about Mobile.

Today
RIM outsells everyone, 41% of smartphones purchased in the US were Blackberries (Q4 ‘07 data ).  Apple surprised many by getting 28% of the market to agree to an iPhone.  Windows Mobile came in at 21%.  What does this mean for enterprise?

blackberry isn’t going away.  Their phones are super handy and are entrenched in big business.  Personally I find the UI dated and feel under-dressed whenever I pick one up.  RIM has seen some service issues as of late causing many to think about alternatives.

Windows Mobile is perceived as stodgy, cumbersome and largely responsible for making the gaping whole Apple was able to walk into and supply something Windows Mobile users would love to have: ease of use.  Windows Mobile phones are cheap, available on every network and do the job.  This is the second time I am writing this today, “it is hard to beat free”.

Apple’s SDK announcement included Windows Exchange support.  Coupling Active Sync Exchange support with an SDK for 3rd party business apps (Salesforce.com etc) will put iPhone on the table.  The question is, at what point does an iphone app become better than an app on another phone?  Anyone have that answer?

But will IT support it?  As if they have a choice.  When the guy who signs your paycheck says,”I am getting an iPhone and you are going to support it”, your choices are rather limited.  This will be a top down drive into enterprise as no one is going to pick a $400 phone to spread to the staff.  Think small to medium companies.

What?  $400 you say?  This is business, we expect discounts and I am sure Jobs has something behind his confident, “we will hit our sales target” which he repeats now like a talking Woody whose string is constantly pulled (bask in my nifty Pixar reference, which Jobs in on the board of).  I suspect an iPhone business discount will come into play here.  Here is the iPhone Enterprise tariff only from AT&T, another sticking point:

For the higher ups who actually get to decide, enterprise will bite.  For us worker drones, I guess we can hope for Win Mo 7?  Or we can prey Android will have some business functionality?

What is your take?

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Posted Mar 14th 2008 1:13PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: cellphones, Handhelds

It’s not the first time Nokia’s teased us with a research effort it’s working on, but unlike some other recent examples, the company’s so-called noBounds project likely isn’t decades away from becoming a reality, although that’s not to say it’s not impressive. As you can see in the video after the break, the project aims to let you pair a cellphone or handheld up with virtually any type of display, and deliver full HD video at 30 frames per second over USB or WLAN. That’s apparently also done with “very low power consumption,” and would work either with displays with a built-in USB or WLAN connection, or any other display with the addition of a dongle. Needless to say, there’s no indication as to when we might see such a system let loose, but you can be sure we’ll be keeping our eye out for any further developments.

The Panasonic SDR-SW20 can be a good option for the people looking to buy a waterproof digital camera. It has an “average” price - $380 - but it comes with a good specifications.

In addition to being waterproof with a limit of 5 feet, the Panasonic camera is also shockproof to 4 feet. On the technical details of the camera itself, it has a 10x optical zoom that can be viewed in the 2.7-inch LCD screen, and an audio input for a microphone.

All the data is stored into memory cards - SD or SDHC - and besides the usual photos on JPEG format, the Panasonic SDR-SW20 has the ability to record videos.

Product Page

via

Posted Mar 14th 2008 2:15PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Though not quite as awe-inspiring as Meridian’s all new MF10, Knoll’s April-bound HDP460 is a far cry from being a slouch. This 1080p DLP projector boasts the oh-so-coveted TI DarkChip4 along with a 5,000:1 contrast ratio, Pixelworks DNX 10-bit video processor, 1,600 ANSI lumens, HDMI 1.3, ISF day / night presets and built-in scaling support for 2:35:1. Unfortunately, Knoll’s being a little stingy in the imagery department, but those who can just imagine this beamer sitting pretty in their den / home theater can phone up the company in order to get a presumably large dose of sticker shock.

[Via AboutProjectors]

Asus has launched its newest 24-inch lcd monitor. The Asus MK241H boasts native HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) support for full HD 1080p video playback. It is equipped with a 1920×1200 16:10 high resolution panel that delivers multi-channel audio and uncompressed digital video. Translating these into layman’s terms, the Asus MK241H would give gamers and multimedia users the ultimate gaming and multimedia experience.

Asus has even upped the ante of the MK241H by integrating a plug-and-play built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam for high-resolution video and array microphones for the much needed push towards optimum video and audio pleasure. The webcam, microphone array, stereo speakers and earphone jack makes the MK241H useful for video conferencing as well.

The MK241H’s resolution is something to look forward for as it utilizes an exclusive Color Rich Technology that enhances video performance with higher-color-gamut and an extra 130% color space. High quality video output is made possible by the splendid video intelligence technology that fine tunes color, brightness, contrast and sharpness of the image display. This image display technology can be adjusted via hotkeys representing 5 different video modes, scenery, theater, game and night view modes. Each of these video modes gives new meaning to what is actually displayed on the LCD monitor.

Looks like Asus has pretty much covered all possible shortcomings of an LCD monitor as big as the MK241H. Even the problem of delayed image display and low response time has been addressed by Asus. The MK241H delivers 2ms (GTG) quick response time that ensures smoother video display and eliminates image delay and ghosting when playing video games.

Read [Asus]

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YouTube can be fun, and very occasionally brilliant, but a lot of its content is, let’s face it, Amateur Hour. Not so Hulu.com, which just opened to the public. It features real TV shows and even movies. For free - so long as you’re willing to watch ads too, of course. (Hulu estimates its ads at about 2 minutes per half-hour’s entertainment, less than commercial television.)

I was one of Hulu’s beta testers, but I didn’t get the big head because there were 5 million of us. I only checked in a couple of times, partly because the selection was limited and partly because I’m spoiled by my fairly big TV screen - not to mention haunted by many hours of programming languishing unwatched on my DVR.

Some of Hulu’s offerings are top-drawer. TV shows include “The Simpsons,” “30 Rock,” and “The Office” (US version). Among the movies are “Sideways,” “Ice Age,” and “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” - plus several golden oldies. There is, of course, also dreck. Exhibit A: “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.” I can tell it’s dreck without having watched a minute of it. Don’t argue.