To enter our little contest, just send an email to contest@crunchgear.com with the subject “PET JINGLES”, and include a picture or video of you and your pet sharing some holiday cheer. Whether it’s listening to Ol’ Blue Eyes croon some carols, or making a snowman together, or decorating the family tree, the cuter the better! The cuteness is strictly for our viewing pleasure, as the codes will be doled out first come, first served – so act fast. Your picture or video will be posted when we announce the winners, to help spread holiday cheer to all the CrunchGear readers!

And for those of you that have already bought the Pet Jingles app, or will buy it because you don’t win the contest, you can feel extra good about yourselves: a portion of every sale of Pet Jingles goes to the American Humane Association!

Features:

• Accommodating all laptops—including the 17-inch-wide models
• effortlessly folds down to 1/4-inch for exceptional storage and portability
• crafted from four lightweight, aluminum plates
• helps better dissipate heat to promote improved battery life and enhance machine longevity
• MSRP of $79.95

Pros:

• Super lightweight, easy to use, and easy to carry
• Helps make laptop use ergonomical and comfortable in any situation
• The included carrying bag doubles as a screen cleaning cloth

Cons:

• Pricey

Review
The AViiQ portable laptop stand is a lightweight aluminum stand that folds down to about the size of a standard ruler, and weighs five and a half ounces. Folded up, it takes up almost no space, and as such is extremely easy to pack into any laptop bag. It comes with a bag into which the folded stand can be stored, which helps protect the sharp edges of the stand from scratching anything inside your laptop bag. Plus, the bag doubles as a screen cleaner!

Unfolded, the AViiQ sports enough space to comfortably hold any laptop, large or small. The top portion folds over, and under, to create a twelve degree slant that is comfortable for prolonged computer use. I normally just throw my laptop on a desk, and then wonder why my wrists are sore after some period of use. With the AViiQ, I found my laptop usage to be much more comfortable for longer periods of time.

The feet at the bottom of the stand, and the little tabs that protrude through the slots, are rubber coated and do a great job at keeping your laptop in place on the stand, and the stand in place on the desk. I had no trouble with slippage or movement. The aluminum construction helps dissipate heat. If you’ve got some power hungry heat producing laptop, this is an important consideration.

Product Page: AViiQ Portable Laptop Stand

At the suggested retail price of $129, the PogoPlug offers a lot of bang for the buck.

Here’s the full press release, for your enjoyment:

Second Generation Pogoplug™ Unveiled Today

Next-generation Hardware Design and Software Provide Enhanced Storage, Multimedia and Social Media Capabilities

San Francisco, Calif. – November 20, 2009 – Cloud Engines, Inc. unveiled the second generation of the award winning Pogoplug multimedia sharing device today giving consumers more flexibility to store personal content safely in the home and access, manage, and share it from anywhere on the Internet. The new Pogoplug hardware sports a new design boasting multiple USB ports supporting up to 4 external drives for expanded data capacity. The new Pogoplug also gives users improved sharing capabilities, an easy drag-and-drop interface to create engaging multi-media slide shows, seamless media playback, and enhanced sharing with friends on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Pogoplug acts like a gateway from your home or office through the Internet. It allows you to access, share and even stream your personal digital media directly to anybody, anywhere in the world. Your content always remains physically in your home or office, making it secure, convenient and available on your terms. Pogoplug is perfect for those individuals with increasingly mobile lifestyles and small businesses in need of simple, inexpensive mobile data access solutions.

“The reaction to the Pogoplug has been incredible. By listening to user feedback and following our own product roadmap, we are bringing a great second-generation product that gives our customers access to a host of new features that both improve the function of the Pogoplug, and add to the fun of using it as well.” said Daniel Putterman, CEO of Cloud Engines, Inc. “We are committed to giving our customers the best way to access their data from anywhere in the world, pushing the envelope with both product quality and design aesthetic. The result is what you see here today.”

NEW HARDWARE
The new Pogoplug design retains the simplicity and ease of use of the original while listening to consumer feedback and adding the ability to directly connect up to 4 external hard drives at once. The resulting product boasts an improved design with greatly improved functionality for users with multiple drives and an increasing need for easy synching and sharing of their digital libraries. This upgrade turns the Pogoplug into an even more prominent feature in the modern digital home or small business.

NEW FEATURES
Automatically Synchronize Photos, Videos, Music and Other Selected Content
Users can synchronize their Pogoplug with their PC or Mac to automatically import new content from popular applications such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, and iPhoto. This feature allows Pogoplug owners to “set it and forget it” and always have access to new photos, videos and music from anywhere on the Internet.

Drag-and-Drop Music and Photo Slideshows
Users can easily create and share fun and engaging slideshows using their stored photos, videos and music. Creating a slideshow with Pogoplug is as simple as drag and drop, and sharing these slideshows is just as easy as ever. Once a user’s link is shared and viewed, their slideshow will immediately begin with the photos, videos and music they selected, playing seamlessly in the viewer’s browser.

Easier Sharing with Pogoplug Address Book
Pogoplug Address Book greatly improves the speed and ease of use of sharing with a user’s friends and family. Pogoplug automatically remembers all email addresses entered in a user’s previous shares – even if that share no longer exists – and makes them available in an easy to use address book to make sharing truly one click away.

Global Search Across Multiple Drives and Pogoplugs
With support for multiple drives on a single Pogoplug (and multiple Pogoplugs on the same account) Pogoplug has added “global” search support across all of a user’s Pogoplugs and drives. Search filters are now a distinct feature, allowing users to view all of their photos, videos and music in a single organized view, or to search for a specific file across all Pogoplugs and drives.

Organize Your Music, Photos and Videos
Pogoplug automatically displays music by Album, Artist and Genre, and shows cover art for quick access to a user’s favorite music. Photos are now displayed by photo timeline and videos are only a click away, including the ability to watch a preview in the thumbnail itself.

Play movies directly from my.pogoplug.com, or even to the iPhone
Pogoplug now supports the playback of videos directly from a Pogoplug, with support for the most popular cameras, video cameras and mobile phones. Movies can be shared and viewed directly from the Pogoplug website – or even from an iPhone!

Pricing and Availability
We are currently taking Pre-Orders for Pogoplug at www.pogoplug.com Units will ship before the end of the year – just in time for the Holiday Season. The Pogoplug has a suggested retail price of $129, with no additional service fees.

USEFUL LINKS

• Pogoplug web site: www.pogoplug.com
• Product photos: www.flickr.com/photos/pogoplug
• Twitter feed: www.twitter.com/pogoplug
• Pogoplug online community: www.pogoplugged.com

ABOUT THE POGOPLUG
The Pogoplug is a device that connects up to 4 external hard drives to the Internet. It is designed for consumers who have an external hard drive and have high speed Internet. Consumers can securely access and share all of their content [Files, Photos, and Video] from any Web browser or enabled mobile device with no additional monthly fees. Free your inner drive.

ABOUT CLOUD ENGINES, INC.
Founded in 2007 by experienced entrepreneurs from the digital media and security industries, Cloud Engines is located in San Francisco, California. The company was formed with a mission to change the way personal content is stored and distributed over the Internet. The Cloud Engines philosophy is that by making a product simple, open and affordable, the community will participate in making it better. For more information, please visit our Web site, www.cloudengines.com.

ReadWriteWeb ponders the question are smart grids undermining user privacy? The story observes that “the energy fluctuations of home appliances are so unique that a smart grid can tell the make and model of a user’s refrigerator.” Maybe that’s not a big deal to you, but it’s not too hard to extrapolate from there to a variety of more Orwellian possibilities.

The issue at hand currently is that there are no clear guidelines on how to collect user data in a smart grid. Left to their own devices, history suggests that companies involved with smart grid technology will not necessarily keep the privacy of consumers in mind as they pursue their business objectives. But maybe this is all much ado about nothing, and end-user privacy will in some way be sanctified and protected as more and more people become aware of the issue. What do you think?

Make your own Streets Clock at Fluid Forms.

The Two-way, NPR’s news blog, has a cursory story about the help NSA provided. Usually known as a spook organization intent on spying on people, the NSA is also “charged with protecting the nation’s national security computing infrastructure from online assaults.”

“More and more, we find that protecting national security systems demands teaming with public and private institutions to raise the information assurance level of products and services more broadly,” Schaeffer said.

The dominance of Microsoft Windows as a general-purpose computing platform means that the NSA has a vested interest in making it as secure as it can. The alternative is to enter into the OS development market to make GovOS, the only sanctioned operating system for use on U.S. government PCs. That’s impractical, to say the least.

Oh, and while the NSA is providing consultative services to the security models used in Microsoft operating systems, it can also surreptitiously insert backdoors to make it easier to spy on us. :)

Archerfish Quattro Launches on Amazon.com

Interactive video monitoring and recording system now available on leading e-commerce site

Reston, VA (PRWEB) November 19, 2009 — Cernium announced today that Archerfish Quattro™, a 2009 CES Design & Engineering Award Honoree in the Integrated Home Systems category, is now available on Amazon.com. Consumers will be able to purchase the interactive video monitoring and recording system, as well as additional cameras for system expansion from Amazon.

Unlike motion detection-based video monitoring systems, Archerfish Quattro has Homeland Security-grade technology built in that analyzes video content in real time. When Quattro sees something of interest – whether an expected event or an unanticipated intrusion – it immediately sends a notification to your mobile phone or email.

“Archerfish Quattro provides homeowners and business owners with the video monitoring solution they thought they’d been getting with other products,” said Craig Chambers, CEO of Cernium. “We’re very pleased to bring a smart, complete solution to Amazon customers.”

Amazon.com shoppers are eligible for a special Black Friday – Cyber Monday promotional offer when they purchase an Archerfish Quattro Interactive Video Monitoring and Recording System from the site:

• Systems purchased between November 26, 2009, and November 30, 2009 ship with an additional free camera (retail value $229.00); and
• For a limited time, each Archerfish Quattro system also includes a free 3-month Archerfish SmartPortal™ Subscription. Complete details are available at www.myarcherfish.com/subscription.

To purchase Archerfish Quattro and accessories on Amazon, please visit http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_electronics?ie=UTF8&search-alias=photo&field-brandtextbin=Archerfish.

About Cernium
Cernium Corporation develops innovative, high-value products that employ video to deliver useful and timely information for better lifestyle management, communications and security. Cernium has brought advanced video technology to customers worldwide, from residential and small-medium business consumers to Fortune 100 manufacturers, government, healthcare, transportation, hospitality, education, entertainment and major cultural institutions. Cernium’s product portfolio includes Archerfish®, the first interactive video monitoring and recording solution for consumers; Perceptrak®, video surveillance software for medium-large enterprise; and ExitSentry®, passenger flow monitoring for airport checkpoints and exit lanes.

For more information on Archerfish, visit:
www.myarcherfish.com

There’s been work going on inside Microsoft for years to try to pare down the Windows system, to tame the beast so to speak. Dubbed “MinWin“, the effort aims to make a successive series of layers, with each layer depending only on the stuff immediately below it. So one layer might handle file system access and network protocols. The Internet Information Server would depend on that layer, but nothing in any of those sub-layers would depend on anything inside IIS. In a similar way, the Explorer shell and Internet Explorer can be more easily separated, so that you don’t need to have MSIE installed on every single server you run.

There are lots of changes associated with the MinWin project, and even though initial efforts are available for public viewing, the long-term payout is still quite a ways away. Some of the elements of that long-term payout include a more customizable installation footprint with an easier-to-update system, since you’d only be updating those components you’re actually using for your server; tighter system security; and enhanced system integrity, since faults in applications ought not be affecting lower level routines.

There’s an excellent write-up of MinWin at Ars Technica. It’s definitely worth a read. This quote, regarding system security, really caught my attention:

Fully two-thirds of the security patches released for Windows Server 2003 offered no actual increase in security for dedicated servers, but still required software to be installed and reboots to be performed on a near-monthly basis.

What’s ironically funny to me is that this entire initiative is, in many ways, a validation of the UNIX mentality that’s been driving Linux development since the very beginning. Microsoft has touted the superiority of it’s GUI, and the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and its snap-ins, as the best and easiest way to manage complex services. I think we can all agree, now, that that’s more than a bit of hyperbole: GUIs and the MMC make some administrative tasks easier, while simultaneously making other tasks much harder. The resurgence of command-line administration in MinWin, and the Server Core installation option of Windows Server 2008 (original, and R2 flavors) is clear indication that a GUI is not the end-all-be-all of systems management.

The good news is that you can purchase and download books and store them on your PC until the eDGe does actually ship.

The full press release, for your reading pleasure:

ENTOURAGE SYSTEMS™ LAUNCHES E-BOOK STORE, ENTOURAGE EDGE™ USERS GAIN ACCESS TO MILLIONS OF POPULAR TITLES
Partners with Google, LibreDigital and Ingram Digital

McLean, VA – enTourage Systems, Inc.™, creator of the world’s first dualbook™, the enTourage eDGe™, today announced the launch of its e-book store at www.entourageedge.com. The enTourage eDGe is a dual-screen e-reader that is comprised of an e-paper and LCD screen, merging the functionalities of netbooks, notepads and audio / video players and recorders, into one powerful solution.

To easily download past and present book titles, enTourage eDGe users can take advantage of more than one million free public domain books digitized by Google. enTourage Systems has also inked a deal with Ingram Digital, an Ingram Content Group company, that will provide enTourage eDGe customers access to hundreds of thousands of professional and trade e-book titles. Additionally, enTourage Systems, Inc. has partnered with LibreDigital to provide thousands of books and over 175 popular periodicals, which will allow users to easily carry their favorite magazine or newspaper.

“We wanted to give our customers the ability to enjoy all of this content at their fingertips, no matter where they are,” said Asghar Mostafa, CEO and president of enTourage Systems, Inc. “These partnerships with Google, Ingram Digital and LibreDigital will ensure our customers always have quality content they can download and take on-the-go.”

“Today’s digital consumers demand easy access to their favorite content whenever and wherever they decide to read,” said Russell P. Reeder, president and CEO of LibreDigital, Inc. “We work with the world’s largest publishers to ensure that these consumers, including enTourage eDGe users, have even more freedom and fun reading their favorite books, newspapers and magazines than ever before.”

“We understand the immediacy with which consumers digest content, and are delighted to offer enTourage eDGe users quick and easy access to one of the broadest selections of professional and trade book titles in the industry,” said Andrew Weinstein, vice president and general manager, Ingram Digital. “This device is a further indication of the innovation at work in the marketplace to help propel the consumption of book content on a wider and more diverse selection of electronic devices with varying consumer features.”

These partnerships are the next step in establishing enTourage Systems’ eco-system – which will give customers a comprehensive environment for all of their digital needs. In the coming weeks, enTourage Systems will announce additional deals that expand the enTourage eDGe user environment further.

The enTourage eDGe consists of a 9.7” diagonal e-paper screen to read e-books and take notes, and a 10.1” LCD screen to easily surf the Web, watch videos and send emails and instant messages. The product has a built-in camera and microphone to capture audio and video content, such as lectures, and play them back later. The enTourage eDGe runs on the Google Android operating system for access to numerous popular Android apps, and backs up all content on enTourage Systems’ servers. The device folds a full 360 degrees and orients its displays horizontally or vertically, to view as a book, single screen, or prop up laptop style.

The enTourage eDGe will be on display at 2010 International CES in the e-Book TechZone, Central Hall booth #12140. As a CES Innovations Design and Engineering Award honoree, the product will also be on display at the Innovations Design and Engineering Showcase in the Grand Lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Center and will also be featured at CES Unveiled: The Official Press Event of the International CES on Tuesday, January 5.
The enTourage eDGe is available for pre-orders now, and will be fully available in February 2010 online at www.entourageedge.com for $490. For more information, please visit this site or the enTourage eDGe Facebook page and @entourageedge Twitter handle.
About enTourage Systems, Inc.
enTourage Systems, Inc. is a provider of a new interactive dualbook that improves the way we learn, do business and entertain. The company’s flagship product, the enTourage eDGe, is a comprehensive netbook, notepad, e-reader, video player and audio recorder that allows users to easily manage their digital needs from a central device. enTourage Systems, Inc. is headquartered in McLean, VA. For more information, visit www.entourageedge.com.

About Ingram
Ingram Content Group Inc. provides a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry. Ingram’s operating units are Ingram Book Company, Lightning Source Inc., Ingram Digital, Ingram Periodicals Inc., Ingram International Inc., Ingram Library Services Inc., Spring Arbor Distributors Inc., Ingram Publisher Services Inc., Tennessee Book Company LLC, Coutts Information Services, and Ingram Marketing Group Inc. For more information, visit www.ingramdigital.com or www.ingramcontent.com.

About LibreDigital
LibreDigital makes it profitable to manage and market digital content, providing a web-based warehouse and distribution platform for six of the top ten book publishers and over 175 newspapers and periodicals. The LibreDigital solution allows publishers to store and secure digital content in any form, and to deliver content on-demand to any marketplace, consumer, or device. LibreDigital serves the world’s top firms in over 120 countries including HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster. Backed by Adams Capital Management, Triangle Peak Partners, Noro-Moseley Partners, the New York Times Company, and HarperCollins Publishers, LibreDigital partners with a number of industry leaders, including Baker & Taylor, to provide a full range of solutions. LibreDigital is based in Austin, Texas, with offices in New York City and the United Kingdom. http://www.libredigital.com Twitter: @LibreDigital.

When the TwitterPeek’s battery ran out, John became very sad:

Nerd-a-thon! That guy was doing live speed tests of the phones in front of him.

We had a great time meeting everyone, and we hope those that joined us had as much fun as we did. Let’s do it again soon, Columbus!

From the VentureBeat review:

The paperback-sized device is aimed at 55 million people in the U.S. who have eyesight problems and don’t want to be dependent on others for the pleasure of reading a novel, looking at a restaurant menu, or reading web site pages. It comes with a 5-megapixel digital camera that can be used to snap pictures of book pages. Foss said he was able to scan a 262-page book in a half hour and listen to the first chapter of the book while he was doing it. The device can read text in the DAISY format, plain text, as well as MP3 music files.

Can the Kindle or Nook help a vision-impaired individual order from the menu at a restaurant? I think not. The ability to scan and read custom text makes the Intel Reader something very different from the current offerings of e-book readers. This is clearly a multi-purpose device designed to enrich the life of its user, not just be a portal to selling electronic books. The Reader can speak the menus aloud to the user, and the instruction manual comes as an audio CD, making this extremely friendly to visually impaired individuals.

An optional book scanning system, the Intel Portable Capture Station, can be purchased, to allow home users to digitize books with ease. A lot of time and effort has gone into researching the ergonomics of the Reader and its accessories, since the target audience isn’t your normal fully-abled young-to-middle aged person.

The Intel Reader boasts some custom made parts, but is otherwise fairly run-of-the-mill in terms of capacity and performance:

The device has an Intel Atom microprocessor and two gigabytes of flash memory storage. It runs Linux software and some third-party software for scanning and reading aloud. With a fully charged battery, the device can read aloud for four hours. It can last for days on standby power. It can store about 500,000 pages of text or 600 pages of scanned book pages.

Here’s a video of the Intel Reader in action:

I think this is a terrific use of technology, and it demonstrates an impressive commitment from Intel in terms of research spending. I think this will create a lot of opportunities for the people who can afford to purchase it, and Intel deserves a lot of praise for cooking this thing up.

But I think that we, the general Internet population, can do a lot more. Listening to books read aloud by crappy digitized computer voices doesn’t really do justice to a lot of printed materials — especially novels. When I read a book, I hear in my mind’s ear distinct voices for each character. I read faster during tense or exciting scenes. I experience the story in a way that the monotonous drone of a computer voice can never reproduce.

Something like Project LibriVox can breathe real life into stories. We, the general Internet population, can donate a couple of hours of our leisure time to read a chapter — or a complete work — of a book so that others can enjoy the story in the dramatic manner in which it was intended. It’s a lot of work, I know: I recorded Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. But it’s also a lot of fun, and a very rewarding experience.

Before I get started, I think we should break out protocols that one uses intentionally, and those ancillary protocols that get used in the normal execution of your other protocols. For example, every time I visit a web page I intentionally use the HTTP protocol. But unless I’m manually keying in IP addresses, there’s an awful lot of DNS traffic taking place, too. I don’t intentionally use the DNS protocol: it happens behind the scenes as I’m using my web browser. So with that out of the way, here are the protocols I intentionally choose to use on a regular basis:

HTTP
No surprise here. I write for CrunchGear, so I use HTTP (TCP port 80) to access the WordPress back-end to compose stories. I visit product web pages. I watch videos at YouTube and Hulu. I compose email at GMail. HTTP is the king of protocols.

SSH
As a systems administrator, I use the Secure Shell protocol (TCP port 22) daily to access the variety of Linux systems I maintain. Whether for my day job, or my personal web server, I’d be dead in the water without SSH. I also use SSH as a SOCKS proxy so that I can access a variety of resources using my home IP address. This is particularly useful when I’m using an untrusted wireless network: the link from my laptop to my proxy server is encrypted, shielding my traffic from anyone snooping that wireless network.

IRC
I use Internet Relay Chat to communicate and collaborate on a number of projects. It’s also a terrific way to get ad hoc support on open source programs that I use. I’m usually idling in one or two channels. I prefer IRC over IM, usually, but can’t really give a good explanation as to why.

X
As a Linux user, I use the X Window protocol all the time. Sometimes it’s to display applications running on my local machine; and sometimes it’s to display applications running from one of the server I maintain.

Some of the lesser used, but still important, protocols I use include

• DNS: as mentioned above, the Domain Name System is a supporting protocol that makes our use of the Internet vastly easier. It’s really the backbone of the modern Internet, if you think about it. It uses TCP and UDP ports 53.
• SMTP: like DNS, Simple Mail Transport Protocol is one of those things that keeps the Internet alive without being in-your-face all the time. Every time you send an email — whether you use Thunderbird, or Outlook, or GMail, or Hotmail — the messages travel back and forth using SMTP. It uses TCP port 25.
• ICMP: the Internet Control Message Protocol is one of those protocols people use without even thinking about it. Every time you ping a host to see if your Internet connection is working, you’re using ICMP.
• BitTorrent: I don’t use it too much, but I know a lot of people who do. BitTorrent easily accounts for a large percentage of daily Internet traffic today.
• FTP: the File Transfer Protocol is still heavily used today. Downloading drivers and patches is the dominant use, but it’s still a handy tool for getting any kind of file transferred.
• Telnet is something I still use when I must, though I try hard to avoid it since it has basically no security at all. I use telnet to manage some Ethernet switches at my day job.
• NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol, is used for accessing Usenet. I’ve never dipped my toes into the dark waters of Usenet, though John and Nicholas have. I envy their bravery.

But these are all modern — or at least currently utilized — protocols. What about the stuff from yesteryear? As I mentioned in my Gopher post yesterday, I started using the Internet by way of a SLIP, and later PPP, connection. Prior to accessing the Internet, I was using Bulletin Board Systems, which had their own suite of protocols:

• ZMODEM was the very first piece of software I ever bought. I paid for a license for the shareware file transfer protocol so that I could download files from the various BBSes faster.
• Before ZMODEM, I was using XMODEM to download files. Surprisingly, I still occasionally use XMODEM to transfer switch firmware to an Ethernet switch I manage!
• A dabbled with BiModem for a bit, in order to streamline the simultaneous sending and receiving of files.
• FidoNet is one of those supporting protocols from which I benefited, but never really used directly. It allowed the BBSes I used to communicate with other BBSes, thereby increasing the number of people with whom I could connect. I spent most of my time on systems running WWIV, which had it’s own protocol for inter-board communication called WWIVnet.

So how about you? What protocols do you use regularly? Which protocols from days of yore do you miss?

Ars Technica has a nice retrospective of the Gopher protocol. It’s a no-nonsense information presentation mechanism that places content squarely at the forefront. No pictures-of-text or confusing and inconsistent navigation elements to slow you down: navigating one Gopher site is the same as navigating any other Gopher site.

Firefox provides native support for the Gopher protocol, and the Overbite project provides an enhanced add-on for Firefox, as well as an Adobe AIR standalone Gopher client. Old protocols die hard, I guess. There’s even a Twitter-over-Gopher solution (although everyone knows that Twitter-over-IRC earns more geek points).

I used Gopher at my university’s library, where the entire card catalog was indexed in a Gopher space. It was, at the time, remarkably obtuse and hard to use; but then again I was still fighting SLIP connections on my home dial-up to access the “Internet”. Everything was a little kludgey back then.

Given Gopher’s limited resurgence in popularity, what kind of Gopher site would you create today?

Remember, remember, the 9th of November! Gadgets, technology, and beer. I see no reason why gadgets and tech should ever bring little cheer.

A two-and-a-half year study of DRAM on 10s of thousands Google servers found DIMM error rates are hundreds to thousands of times higher than thought — a mean of 3,751 correctable errors per DIMM per year.

So starts a summary over at ZDNet. The study (PDF) is available for the reading. A large-scale analysis like this hasn’t been performed (at least publicly) yet, so the findings are pretty shocking. A hearty “thank you” goes to Google for taking the time to analyze this situation, and for publicizing the results.

Basically, the majority of DRAM chips on the market are far more error-prone than previously considered. And the consumer-grade mainboards are just as culpable — if not more so — for hard memory errors than the DRAM chips!

So what might a memory error look like? Darn near anything. Remember that inside your computer, everything is ones and zeros. If one of those ones becomes a zero, who knows what might happen? Maybe nothing, maybe a little stutter in your game, maybe a corrupted file saved to your hard disk, or maybe a complete system lockup.

It’s not all gloom-and-doom, though:

• Temperature plays little role in errors – just as Google found with disk drives – so heroic cooling isn’t necessary.
• The problem isn’t getting worse. The latest, most dense generations of DRAM perform as well, error wise, as previous generations.
• Heavily used systems have more errors – meaning casual users have less to worry about.
• No significant differences between vendors or DIMM types (DDR1, DDR2 or FB-DIMM). You can buy on price – at least for the ECC-type DIMMS they investigated.
• Only 8% of DIMMs had errors per year on average. Fewer DIMMs = fewer error problems – good news for users of smaller systems.

ECC memory usually commands a hefty premium, so it’s no surprise that many people choosing to save money cut that cost first. But maybe it’s time to think long-term about the value of your next purchase.

A group from University of California, San Diego use a pair of antennae aligned with the laser to automatically detect the traffic control transponder on every airplane. “One antenna has a broad beam, the other a narrow beam.” In this way, airplanes can be detected as they approach the laser. Using the ratio of the signal from both antennae, the distance of the aircaft from the laser can be measured. If its “too close” then the laser is automatically shuttered, preventing any catastrophes at 35,000 feet.

Initial test are positive, though there are of course still a few kinks to work out. Chalk another one up for science!

Via Technology Review.

The Core System
The Eos core bundle contains a speaker with integrated iPod dock, a remote control, and an additional wireless speaker. You can buy wireless speakers individually, and pump music to up to four speakers from a single base station, for a total of five rooms filled with music. The base station is not too big, with ample room in the dock for the entire gamut of iPods and iPhones. On the front of the unit are plus and minus buttons for volume control, a wireless on/off toggle, a source input button, and a mute button. There are two LEDs on either side of the base: the one on the left is labeled “iPod” and the one on the right is labeled “AUX”. Obviously, pressing the “Source” button will toggle the audio source between a docked iPod and the line-in connection on the back of the unit.

Aside from the line-in jack, the back of the base station has a power port, a toggle switch for the Range Extended feature, and a link button which is used to set a unique ID for your Eos base station. In the unlikely event that your neighbor also buys an Eos, you can use the link button to make sure that your wireless speakers only play music from your base station.

The remote control is small, and the kind of thing I’d lose pretty quickly. I confirmed that the remote would operate a docked iPod, and then never touched it again. Maybe I’m an anomaly, but I usually just listen to my music on “shuffle”, and don’t have any need to interact with the iPod once the music starts playing.

The speakers in the base station were good. Speaker reviews are always a little tricky, because listening to music is such a subjective experience. So I won’t linger too longer here other than to say that I was entirely satisfied with the audio quality and the richness of the sound produced.

Expansion
Adding speakers is super easy. Just plug the speakers in and turn them on: they should find the base station automatically. Each speaker has its own volume control, so you can set sound levels on a per-room basis. Unfortunately, this is an entirely manual process: you need to turn the knob for each speaker on the speaker. There’s no centralized volume control, a la the Sonos system.

The speakers sounded as good as the base station: no complaints on audio quality.

The wireless speakers are billed as an all-in-one design, such that you plug the whole thing into the wall. You can certainly do that, but I find them to be a little too big for that kind of use. The power plug can be removed from the speaker, allowing you a little more flexibility with placement. I found that to be a really handy feature, though the power cord was, in most cases, just a little too short to allow me to place the speakers where I wanted. Also, removing the power plug from the speaker is a somewhat daunting process. The instructions — and a sticker on the speaker itself — says to “press down hard”. They’re not kidding. You have to really exert some force to get the plug free. Also, the power plugs are gigantic wall warts. Don’t expect to share an outlet with any other device, regardless of whether you use the all-in-one design or remove the plug from the speaker.

GigaWave Technology
The secret sauce in the Eos system is the GigaWave technology:

To avoid interference, Eos™ GigaWave uses proprietary frequency hopping digital spectrum technology (FHDSS). The special communications algorithm used in our GigaWave technology will not interfere with WiFi networks or digital products like Bluetooth and cordless telephones. This same technology allows Eos to stay clear of interference cased by with by other products that communicate in the 2.4 GHz , 5.8 GHz and the new Dect 6.0 cordless telephone frequency range.

I didn’t notice any interference or static, despite the countless WiFi and Bluetooth devices I have on at any one time. The speakers inside the house all worked fine, and it was fun to rock out to music through my abode without having to make any single source obscenely loud.

The range is listed as 150 feet. I put a speaker in my garage, which is maybe 75 feet from where I had the base station. In the default configuration, the signal would drop out pretty frequently. There was no static, and no faded signal: either it played, or it didn’t. I then enabled the Range Extender feature, which was surprisingly well-explained in the user manual:

To maintain a solid, interference free link the Eos system incorporates an advanced proprietary error correction scheme. Error correction is done by creating a slight delay between the transmitter and Wireless Speaker. Using this delay, Eos can confirm that the audio packets arrived at the Wireless Speaker/receiver. If the audio packet is not received, the Eos base station can resent it. Eos’ default delay (Range Extender Off) is 20 ms.

Turning on the Range Extender Switch increases the delay to 64ms. The increased delay allows Eos to resend more audio packets due to distance from the transmitter or ambient interference.

The Range Extender feature didn’t make for a perfect transmission to my garage, but it did make it noticeably better. There were still brief outages in my music playback, but there were far less and they were far shorter than when the Range Extender was off.

Uses
The intended primary use for the Eos is clearly to play music from an iPod or iPhone. Alas, this device isn’t specifically for iPhones, so you get that annoying screen: “This accessory is not made to work with iPhone” and are then prompted to turn on Airplane mode. Even though the Eos system is WiFi-friendly, I was repeatedly unable to stream last.fm music to my iPhone while it was in the base station.

If you want to manage your music, you’ll either need to deal with the ergonomics of using an iPod in the dock, or use the remote control. And remember, there’s no volume control with an iPod. As the manual states, “iPod volume jog wheel changes the headphone volume only and has no effect on the Eos base station volume.” So you’ll need to manually adjust volume on a per-room basis.

Perhaps a better solution is to connect the Eos base station to your Apple TV, or that home media PC that stores all your music. If you’re using iTunes, you can use the iPhone Remote app to control the music and the master volume from your phone.

The Bottom Line
I’m not the kind of guy who regularly wants to listen to the same music in more than one room of my house. I usually want music in only one room, anyway. If you’re the kind of person who would like to listen to the same music in multiple rooms, then the Eos may be a good choice for you. Or, if you can’t (or won’t) run speaker wire through your walls, the Eos would be worth considering. The Eos plays extremely well with other wireless devices, so you ought not have anything to worry about.

The retail price for the Core system (base station + one speaker) is $249 USD. That strikes me as a little much. It looks like there’s a sale going on right now, though, making that Core bundle only $199. I’m still not sure that’s a good price, but hey, it’s $50 you get to keep.