Search Results for: "DATA"

Bluetooth 4.0 Available This Year

June 1, 2023 by noemi

Good news for enthusiasts of mobile devices – Bluetooth technology is stepping up! Before the year is over, we will be able to use mobile devices with Bluetooth 4.0. Version 4.0 was just recently approved by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. This means that the manufacturers of mobile devices will now have access to the necessary tools to use the technology in their products.

What are the advantages of Bluetooth 4.0 over the current version? Perhaps the biggest attraction of this technology is the fact that it uses considerably less power than the previous versions. The implications of the low power consumption are immense. For one, concerns about using electronic devices in sensitive areas due to potential interference can be forgotten. With the amount of power being used by the technology, it will not really be a problem. Batteries are also going to be much smaller – just like coin-cell batteries for little devices such as wristwatches and the like.

More than that, in spite of the low power consumption, 1 megabyte of data can be transferred at a time using Bluetooth 4.0. Of course, it also comes with the same capabilities of Bluetooth 3.0, such as sending as much as 25 megabytes of data via Wi-Fi 802.11.

In spite of the very recent approval of the technology, it will soon be available. It may not mean much to the average consumer at this point, but once manufacturers incorporate Bluetooth 4.0 into more devices, it should catch on.

Liquid Crystal Technology Offers Better Storage Option

May 28, 2023 by noemi

Storage is always a problem for us, isn’t it? Remember the days when all we had were hard disks with a few megabytes of storage? The days when we marveled at the floppy discs? It is amazing how technology has evolved in the past decades, really. Now, we have hard drives that can contain up to terabytes of data. How cool is that? Even flash disks can contain gigabytes of information!

Of course, it seems that in this area, we just can’t get enough – both in quality and quantity. And, if a group of researchers in Tokyo are fully successful, we just might see another generation of storage devices.

Eureka Alert just featured the work of Hideo Takezoe and his team of researchers. Apparently, they have been working on liquid crystal technology – the same technology being currently used in televisions and computer monitors. Who would have thought that they could have made progress in using this technology for data storage?

How does it work?

The group of researchers has taken advantage of a property of liquid crystals called anchoring transition. In simple terms, this property can be used to write, erase, and rewrite data by using laser beams. The liquid crystal molecules, which are rod-like in nature, are aligned by the application of these laser beams. The result? Rewritable data storage!

Even better, the liquid crystals are bi-stable, meaning that the orientation is retained in one of two directions. The practical implication is that the storage material does not need power to retain images. Imagine the potential of this technology!

AT&T Security Breach: iPad Users Beware

May 26, 2023 by Admin

Boy, am I glad that I am not using an iPad right now! First of all, I really want the iPhone 4 (I think I have posted enough about that baby for now). Second, and more importantly, there seems to be a breach in AT&T’s security system which has affected countless iPad users.

What happened was that the e-mail addresses of some iPad users were exposed. Take a look at this image.

So what happened? There’s this group called Goatse Security, which is composed of hackers and security experts. The Examiner shares what these guys did:

Goatse Security used a PHP script to compile a list of the SIM card IDs in iPad 3Gs. Because the SIM card IDs are sequential, the script helped Goatse Security to determine which were legitimately being used by iPad 3Gs by going down a list of all possible numbers. Then, using additional scripts to masquerade as an iPad-like user agent, Goatse accumulated email addresses and the associated SIM card IDs for many iPad 3G users.

Just how many people have been affected? The estimate is more than 10,000 users! To make it worse, some high profile people were included in the list. Think White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Then there are other well-knonw people like Diane Sawyer, Harvey Weinstein (movie producer), and Janet Robinson (New York Times CEO).

AT&T has already taken action, and says the breach has been fixed, but no doubt, this will cause a big stir – if it hasn’t already.

Apple’s Announcement At WWDC 2010

May 25, 2023 by Admin

I know everyone’s holding his breath for what Apple has to tell the world at today’s WWDC event. I know I haven’t been able to sit still since yesterday! We all have to wait for a couple more hours before the announcement is made – which is supposed to be at 10 a.m. local time. The event is being held in San Jose, California. For those of you who are in other parts of the world – just stay up a little bit longer. The news should be worth it!

So what are we expecting?

No doubt, Steve Jobs will be talking about the Apple iPhone 4G, which is supposed to best the iPhone 3GS by miles. It’s supposed to have a much better screen resolution, a front-facing camera, and a better performing battery – at the least. Needless to say, the new iPhone will be able to support 4G data transmission, which means we can transmit data wirelessly at more satisfying speeds.

Of course, more interesting to some people is how Steve Jobs will approach the leak that happened recently. Remember when someone at Gizmodo leaked details about the new iPhone? I wonder if Jobs will even mention it! Personally, I think he’ll mention it but take it lightly. He’ll probably drop a bomb or two that we aren’t expecting at all. But that’s just me.

What are you expecting from the keynote later on? Do you think that the guys at Apple have something else up their sleeves that will take our breaths away or do you think that there’s nothing they can do to impress us anymore? Hang on to your seats folks!