N Y B B L E M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.04.08 Issue No. 187
Once in a while Nokia puts out a great phone. The E65 is one of them.
While most of my colleagues were getting the N73 multimedia phone, a
couple of us decided to go for the E-Series "business" phones even
though they have less features compared to the N-Series. The N73 is
truly one tricked-out phone: 3.2MP camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens,
front-mounted VGA camera for video calls, built-in stereo speakers,
FM stereo with Visual Radio support, MP3/AAC player, RealPlayer and
Flash players, direct upload to Flickr, QuickOffice, PDF viewer,
infrared, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, 2GB mini-SD card included, etc.
However, it lacks the one thing most E-Series phones have - 802.1g,
commonly known as Wi-Fi. This was the deal-breaker for me, that's why
I chose the E65. First choice was the E70 with the rotating screen and
fold-out full keyboard, but it just can't be found anywhere - even in
Manila. The Nokia Blackberry E61 is just too big for me, and it
doesn't have a camera, so E65 it is.
Two weeks after I bought the E65, I'm still lovin' it:
- 2MP camera, which is good enough for me
- QVGA screen with 16M colors, small fonts but awesome resolution
- 3G speeds and a full-featured browser makes for a pleasant browsing
experience
- 802.1g support, so I can do VoIP calls (fring, GTalk, Skype), IM
(all flavors), watch YouTube, listen to online radio stations, etc.
using my home broadband connection, instead of eating up my mobile
data package (I'm sure the boss with appreciate this)
- spring-assisted sliding action (love that thunk sound every time I
push it open)
- slim and sleek profile, metal and leather finish, tactile keypad
and controls, etc.
And I haven't even started customizing the themes and ringtones,
editing the playlists, uploading my OGGs and JARs, installing
applications, updating bookmarks, etc. Hmm, lots of fun to be had.
Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Samsung and
LG lovers about it. Thanks.
_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Apple iPod as Aircraft Black Box
* Speed of Light Broken
* Nanocoating Creates Non-Reflective Material
* Free In-Home Wireless Broadband from Google
* No S3x for 100 Million Years
* Tata's Compressed-Air Car
* Internet via TV Airwaves
* World's Most Secure Hard Disk
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh
_________APPLE IPOD AS AIRCRAFT BLACK BOX_________
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/02/22/212269/apple-ipod-set-to-swap-white-box-for-black-box-as-lopresti-launches-data-recorder.html
Vero Beach, Florida-based LoPresti SpeedMerchants, a light aircraft
manufacturer, announces that it will introduce Apple's iPod device in
the cockpit of its Fury piston aircraft as a flight data recorder
(FDR). The iPod, with suitable software, acts as a hard disk with the
ability to record over 500h of flight time data. It was not
immediately clear from the company's statement which parameters would
be recorded and for what purpose. Recorders are currently used to
collect data for maintenance purposes through system monitoring, for
post-flight analysis in training and safety-monitoring, and, when
suitably protected, for crash investigation.
Once certified, the iPod FDR could be deployed on other light
aircraft. It can also act as an audio recorder, and can be used to
capture two-way cockpit conversation and communication with air
traffic control.
_________SPEED OF LIGHT BROKEN_________
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2000/07/20/speedlight000720.html
According to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, nothing can go
faster then the speed of light in a vacuum, about 186,000 miles per
second. Scientists from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J.
seem to have broken that speed record. In an experiment, the
researchers manipulated a vapour of laser-irradiated atoms that boost
the speed of light waves causing a pulse that shoots through the
vapour about 300 times faster than it would take the pulse to go the
same distance in a vacuum. It raced so fast the pulse exited a
specially-prepared chamber before it even finished entering it. This
means that, when the waves of the light distorted, the pulse traveled
forward in time.
The experiment doesn't prove that Einstein is wrong though. It only
disproves the general misconception that nothing can move faster than
the speed of light. The scientific statement "nothing with mass can
travel faster than the speed of light" is an entirely different
belief, one that has yet to be proven wrong.
_________NANOCOATING CREATES NON-REFLECTIVE MATERIAL________
http://www.physorg.com/news91978273.html
A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has
created the world's first material that reflects virtually no light.
With a refractive index of 1.05, which is extremely close to the
refractive index of air and the lowest ever reported, the new material
is an ideal building block for anti-reflection coatings. Window glass,
for comparison, has a refractive index of about 1.45.
Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers
deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top
of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material
used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the
films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with
the blades slightly flattened. The technique allows the researchers to
strongly reduce or even eliminate reflection at all wavelengths and
incoming angles of light.
The new optical coating could find use in just about any application
where light travels into or out of a material, such as high-efficiency
solar cells, brighter LEDs, optical interconnects, high-reflectance
mirrors, etc.
_________FREE IN-HOME WIRELESS BROADBAND FROM GOOGLE_________
http://www.google.com/tisp/index.html
Google recently announced their (beta) TiSP program to provide free
wireless broadband service to people everywhere. To tackle the
last-mile connectivity issue, other companies have used satellite
dishes, copper phone lines, TV coaxial cable, fiber-optic cables,
power lines, etc. Meanwhile, Google is delivering their broadband
service via the users' plumbing system, taking advantage of
preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic
data-transmission capabilities. The Toilet Internet Service Provider
(TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that
will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC
and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.
This is how it works. When a user signs up to TiSP, he gets a starter
kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless
router, installation CD, setup guide, and a pair of sanitary gloves.
Put on the gloves, then attach the sinker to one end of the
fiber-optic cable. While grasping both end of the spindle, flush the
weighted cable down the toilet. The cable should quickly unravel as it
navigates through the plumbing system towards one of the thousands of
TiSP Access Nodes, where Google Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs)
will remove the sinker and plug the line into Google's global data
networking system. On your end, attach the cable to the TiSP wireless
router. Insert the TiSP installation CD and run the setup utility,
which will automatically configure your computer's network settings.
That's it.
For best results, Google recommends you wash your hands before surfing.
_________NO S3X FOR 100 MILLION YEARS_________
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1539281.ece
A tiny creature that has not had s3x for 100 million years has
overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety.
Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic
data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of
natural selection.
The microscopic animals, less than four times the length of a human
sperm, are all female, yet have evolved into different species that
fill different ecological niches. Two sister species were found to be
living together on the body of a water louse. One of them specialised
in living around the louse's legs and the other stayed close to the
chest. Genetic analysis showed that the two creatures were distinct, a
fact backed up by observations that each type had differently shaped
jaws. The two species of bdelloid rotifer almost certainly arrived on
the louse as one species and later evolved to take better advantage of
the environment. Asexual animals and plants usually die out quickly in
evolutionary terms but the ability of bdelloid rotifers to diversify
may explain why they have survived so long.
_________TATA'S COMPRESSED-AIR CAR_________
http://gizmag.com/go/7000/
Tata, India's largest automotive manufacturer, has committed to
produce the world's first commercial compressed-air car. The MiniC.A.T
is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not
welded and a body of fibreglass. The heart of the electronic and
communication system on the car is a computer offering an array of
information reports that extends well beyond the speed of the vehicle,
and is built to integrate with external systems like voice
recognition, internet connectivity, GSM telephone connectivity, a GPS
guidance system, fleet management systems, emergency systems, digital
entertainment, etc. Microcontrollers are used in every device in the
car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights,
indicators, etc. There are no keys – just an access card which can be
read by the car from your pocket.
Most importantly, it is incredibly cost-efficient to run – according
to the designers, it costs less than one Euro per 100 kms (about a
tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the
most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a
factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of
motorists drive at less than 60 kms. The car has a top speed of 68
mph. Refilling the car will take place at adapted petrol stations to
administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of
approximately 1.5 Euros, the car will be ready to go another 200-300
kilometres. As an alternative, the car carries a small compressor
which can be connected to the mains (220V or 380V) and refill the tank
in 3-4 hours. Due to the absence of combustion and residues, changing
the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 50,000 kms.
At the moment, four models have been made: a car, a taxi (5
passengers), a Pick-Up truck and a van. The final selling price will
be approximately 5.500 pounds.
_________INTERNET VIA TV AIRWAVES_________
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/12/AR2007031201395.html
A coalition of big technology companies wants to bring high-speed
Internet access to consumers in a new way: over television airwaves.
The coalition, made up of Microsoft, Google, Dell, Hewlett-Packard,
Intel and Philips, wants regulators to allow idle TV channels, known
as white space, to be used to beam the Internet into homes and
offices. But the Federal Communications Commission first must be
convinced that such traffic would not bleed outside its designated
channels and interfere with existing broadcasts.
Proponents liken the idea to so-called WiFi signals, which provide
wireless Internet access from phone or cable companies to users in
airports, coffee shops and elsewhere. Several analysts said a
TV-spectrum system might make the most sense in rural areas, where
high-speed Internet access via phone or cable lines is expensive to
deploy. Small companies might build some towers, beam white-space
spectrum to farm homes and cabins, and connect it to an Internet provider.
_________WORLD'S MOST SECURE HARD DRIVE_________
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=8227
Two years after first being announced by Seagate, the world's most
secure hard drive is now set to be put on sale in a real laptop, ASI's
C8015+, costing US$2,150.
As well as on-the-fly encryption integrated into the drive itself
using chip acceleration, the laptop also features a trusted platform
module (TPM), and fingerprint reader, security add-ons that have added
roughly 20 percent to the cost of what is otherwise a mainstream Intel
Core 2 Duo laptop. The drive included is the 80GB 2.5 inch Momentus
5400 FDE.2, but 100Gb, 120Gb and 160Gb versions are also waiting in
the wings.
The main cleverness of the Momentus FDE.2 lies in the way the drive
reads and writes have been tightly entwined with 128-bit AES-based
encryption right down to DriveTrust firmware level. The user has the
power to set a password to access the drive during system boot, but is
otherwise unaware that all data at rest is being encrypted and
unencrypted transparently. Data is never in clear text except when it
is being used by an application. Seagate claims the performance hit
for what is usually a CPU-intensive process is only a couple of
percent thanks to onboard processing, and that the user would not be
aware of any read or write drag.
_________NYBBLETS_________
* NZ TV station 45 South uses $10 kitchen wok as transmitter instead
of paying for a $20,000 commercial link
* South Korean government drafting an ethical code for human-robot
relations for the coming robotic age
* Duke graduate designs a remote-controlled fridge that can toss a
beer up to 20 feet
* Stephen Hawking says that the universe spontaneously popped into
existence from nothing
* Bill Gates, as Harvard University's commencement speaker in June,
to finally receive his Harvard degree
* To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Yahoo will be offering unlimited
email storage starting May
_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
The Geek's Guide to Getting Free Stuff
http://www.rewardprograms.org/thefreegeek/features/the_geeks_guide_to_getting_free_stuff.html
LibriVox
http://www.librivox.org/
Audiobooks for free
Search Clock
http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/searchclock/
Visualizing searches over time
4k Java Games
http://javaunlimited.net/games/
Listen to a Movie
http://power.listentoamovie.com/index.php
For the cubicle workers of the world
Everything You Need to Know about IPv6
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ipv6.ars
_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
How do those dead bugs get into closed light fixtures?
_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.
~ Sir Winston Churchill ~
_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What did table tennis have to do with champagne?
Table tennis was originally played with balls made from champagne
corks and paddles made from cigar-box lids. It was created in the
1880s by James Gibb, a British engineer who wanted an invigorating
game he could play indoors when it was raining. Named "Gossima," the
game was first marketed with celluloid balls, which replaced Gibb's
corks. After the equipment manufacturer renamed the game "Ping-Pong"
in 1901, it became a hot seller.
Source: Arcamax Trivia
_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
I got this powdered water -- now I don't know what to add.
~ Steven Wright
_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Yahoo!Go 2.0 (gamma)
http://mobile.yahoo.com/go
Yahoo! on your smartphone
gSyncit
http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/
Freeware Outlook plug-in to keep Microsoft Outlook and Google calendar
in-sync
That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.
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