Wi-Fi technology is about to experience several significant upgrades.
“Technology upgrades we’ll see within the next year or so will make Wi-Fi much smarter and more efficient in how it distributes signals,” reports Ars Technica. “It’ll be so fast, and integrated into so many devices, that you may finally get to dump a lot of those cables cluttering your living room.”
The 802.11ac standard, which may be certified as early as December, will use the 5MHz band to enable 1.3 gigabits per second bandwidth. Moreover, it will include beamforming technology that focuses the signal to increase the range while also reducing the interference problem.
Coming later in 2013, the 802.11ad standard will operate at 5-7 gigabits per second over 60GHz. At this speed, one will be able to stream uncompressed movies.
Finally, the Wi-Fi Alliance industry group is also adding a Passpoint program to make it easier to connect to hotspots; Voice-Enterprise certification for enhanced voice quality; better power management features; and a standard that allows Wi-Fi to network with appliances, CE devices and automobiles.
Wired reports that we’ll finally see some flexible displays produced this year, but warns we should curb our enthusiasm since production will be limited, early displays will not be as “bendy” as the technology aspires to be, and “they won’t appear in Apple hardware as some news outlets have recently speculated.”
Samsung, for example, has announced it will mass produce flexible OLED displays and has already been receiving orders. Samsung’s display is thin but rugged, and is basically unbreakable since it uses a plastic called polyamide rather than glass.
The article suggests we should expect to see gently curved screens in the future and bendable phones or tablets enabled by the technology. “But that’s probably not on the horizon — especially Apple’s horizon — anytime soon,” comments Wired.
“It’s completely impossible to see any Apple product with flexible AMOLED this year,” suggests Jennifer Colegrove, NPD DisplaySearch’s vice president of emerging display technology. “However, I do believe Apple display engineers are constantly looking into new technology to put into their products, and OLED is one of the technologies they are looking at.”
Apple is more concerned about functionality than making something curvy for the sake of being interesting. Colgrove doesn’t anticipate a flexible display in Apple products until at least the 2013-2014 time frame, “with truly bendy iDevices appearing in 2015 at the earliest,” indicates the article.
David Carr of The New York Times observes how his own family uses TV, noting a dramatic downturn in the amount of time spent with live broadcasting.
He cites TV-related apps (especially for sports), Netflix, Hulu Plus and Apple TV as resources his family uses regularly.
“My 15-year-old has a television in her room, but it’s not even on the cable-broadcast grid; it is wired instead to a Web-enabled Wii,” explains Carr. “Like the laptop and smartphone that she never seems to be without, the television is just one more Web-enabled portal for content she controls.”
Live TV “seems very last century,” he writes. In fact, live ratings for network programs have declined for 14 consecutive quarters. In contrast, DVRs and video on demand each exist in nearly half of American homes. And online viewing with Netflix, Hulu and others has increased more than 46 percent over the last year.
“Outside of the professional football season or some breaking national news event, the television at our house has become uncoupled from the commercial-driven environment that drives the broadcast and cable business,” writes Carr. “We haven’t cut the cord so much as kinked it in a way that commercials rarely sneak through.”
Still, the big four broadcast networks and the CW will book some $9 billion in advertising revenue while the cable networks take in more than $9.6 billion during the upfronts. In spite of losing viewers, TV remains the mass medium of choice for advertisers.
Lenovo broke ground this week on a new facility in China that will focus on smartphone and tablet PC research and development. The company plans to spend $800 million on the effort.
The company also introduced an Internet-enabled television to the China market. “The TV is the first to run Google’s Android 4.0 and is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm CPU,” reports eWeek.
Independent software developers have already produced more than 1,000 apps for the smart TV, now available in Lenovo’s Le Store online storefront.
“Lenovo has also teamed with SMG’s BesTV to a create an ISmartv joint venture that already provides viewers with more than 300,000 hours of high-definition video resources, and the Smart TV will come with a ‘Sandwich’ user interface said to integrate ‘touch, voice, air mouse, gravity sensor, smart keyboard and [a] traditional television remote control in a ‘Six in One’ Smart Remote Controller,'” explains the article.
Researchers at Google have developed a technique called auto-directed video stabilization designed for recording video via smartphones and mobile devices with greater stability and improved image quality.
The technique mimics how motion is smoothly recorded in professional productions with dollies and tripods.
“The technology supports an algorithm that automatically determines the best camera path and recasts the video as if it were filmed using stabilization equipment,” reports MediaPost. “The research is being integrated into YouTube to support videographers.”
Microsoft Research, meanwhile, is developing motion technology that will enable a mobile device to function as a weapon in a game, such as a sword used to go on the offensive or to block the attacks of other players.
“Phone-to-phone mobile motion games must have the ability to calculate accurate distance and range from each other. Then range, speed, and accuracy are calculated,” explains the post. “The process works similar to Kinect, a fixed infrastructure motion capture system that supports game motion in real-time.”
Google launched Hangouts On Air this week, which is essentially an extension to Google+ group video chat that allows users to stream live to large audiences around the world.
The company has already used this for special broadcasts by David Beckham, the Muppets and President Obama. Moreover, it is training media companies like The New York Times and Wired to run their own broadcasts.
“This is a much more efficient and pervasive way to organize a conversation,” Hangouts product manager Nikhyl Singhal told AllThingsD. “Maybe I needed satellite trucks and switchboards for something like this in the past.”
To initiate, users simply flip the “enable Hangouts On Air” switch, and the video chat converts from private to public view — and not only for an audience of Google+ users. Hangouts On Air can be embedded into Web pages and even a YouTube channel.
Google will be leveraging YouTube’s methods for addressing copyrighted content, hate speech, illegal activity and pornography.
At the end of 2011, Amazon sold 4.8 million Kindle Fires, showing it was the “right product at the right price at the right time,” ReadWriteWeb suggests. But the online retailer’s luck stopped there.
“According to IDC, Amazon’s share dropped from nearly 17 percent of the tablet market to 4 percent, with fewer than 700,000 units sold compared to Apple’s 11.8 million,” explains ReadWriteWeb.
While Amazon still beats out Barnes & Noble’s Nook by a fair margin, it now sits in third place, lagging behind Samsung Android tablets and Apple’s iPads.
The first quarter of 2012 was good to Apple, which increased its market share to 68 percent (up from 54.7 percent in Q4) with the sale of its new iPad and continued success with cheaper versions of older models.
Overall however, the tablet market has slowed quite a bit. “IDC had predicted overall tablet sales to be 1.2 million units higher than they were this quarter, with the shortfall mostly attributed to Amazon’s slip,” the article states. “Tablet sales have grown 120 percent from last year, but were still lower than IDC’s predictions. Whether tablet sales continue to slow in Q4 will be interesting to see.”
IDC predicts Amazon will try to come back with a larger-screened model. Android continues to stagnate at about one-third of the market, unable to reproduce the same adoption it has secured in the smartphone sphere.
Researchers from Disney Research, Pittsburgh University and Carnegie Mellon have collaborated to develop Touche, a touch-sensitive technology that has the potential to turn anything from doorknobs to kitchen appliances into touchscreens.
“The technology uses Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing, or SFSC, which lets objects interpret the body position and how it is being touched and reacts accordingly,” reports Mobiledia. “Users can coat the surfaces of ordinary objects with transparent conductors programmed to respond to the body’s electronic frequencies, making them touchscreen-enabled.”
“This might enable us to one day do away with keyboards, mice and perhaps even conventional touchscreens for many applications,” suggests Munehiko Sato, one of the researchers.
Touche has the ability to revolutionize smart home technology with the ability to convert regular devices into smart devices. It may also shake up the gaming industry, turning practically anything into a controller.
ESPN has incorporated Twitter’s Web Intents into their website offerings. Web Intents provide pop-ups for users to access Tweet, Reply, Retweet, Follow and Favorite functions.
“For each article ESPN shows a visitor, they have implemented a scrolling/following sidebar that contains its Twitter sharing widget,” reports the Twitter Developers site. “As a user scrolls through an article, the container follows the position on the page.”
“At any point, a user can click the Twitter bird logo to invoke a Tweet Intent to enable a customized sharing experience,” adds the site. “A Tweet box with text pre-loaded by the ESPN editorial staff pops up, enabling a user to quickly share the news with their followers.”
ESPN readers are generating some 1,250 Tweets per day amounting to 10 percent of all Tweets containing ESPN links. These Tweets resulted in an average of 15 clicks back to the website.
The sports site has also developed customized MLB and NFL widgets that highlight Twitter conversations from top writers and allow fans to interact with the writers directly on the page.
In response to consumers who have been quick to embrace the tablet PC, there is a push to make the television experience more like the tablet experience. We’re seeing rapid development of apps from video providers, cable channels and broadcast networks.
“While still in its early stages, the idea has taken off among tech-loving consumers, and companies are trying to satisfy them,” reports The New York Times.
“Already, apps for Hulu Plus, Netflix and Wal-Mart’s Vudu streaming service, among others, are built into Internet-enabled televisions,” explains the article. “Devices like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the streaming video player Roku let viewers watch apps that mimic channels. New sets by Samsung and others come with built-in apps loaded with television shows, movies and sports.”
However, how these apps will impact the TV experience is not yet known.
“The question that hasn’t yet been answered is whether television viewing will consist of a single app that mimics the pay TV bundle or a series of different apps that together form a content experience,” suggests Jon Miller, chief digital officer at News Corp.
“A model built around TV apps, however, could let viewers use favorite apps on the screen on an á la carte basis, thus bypassing cable subscriptions and all the extraneous channels they don’t watch,” adds the article. “And therein lies the tension that has the television industry delicately assessing how to balance the current system with an Internet-based future that some feel is inevitable.”
Regardless, development of TV apps is expected to increase. “I’ve told my bosses, ‘This is beachfront real estate. Buy in now,’” says Lisa Hsia, executive VP of digital media at NBCUniversal’s Bravo channel.
Sony has announced plans to introduce its cloud-based Music Unlimited service this year, featuring a catalog of 15 million songs.
“Music content could be a key factor to revive Sony,” said Takashi Watanabe, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group in Tokyo.“The time is over where an electronics company can excel just because it has a good device. You have to have a very good platform to capture your clients within your system.”
Content from Sony’s own music units includes songs from artists such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen. The catalog offerings also include tracks from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
Apple’s iTunes currently offers approximately 20 million titles, while Spotify offers more than 16 million songs.
“Music Unlimited lets users stream songs via Web-connected Bravia televisions, some Walkman models, PlayStation game players, personal computers and Android-based mobile phones. The service was expanded to the PlayStation Vita in March after being enabled on Sony Tablets and other Android-based tablets in October,” according to Bloomberg.
While Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that his company is in good shape, Wall Street has its doubts. That concern resulted in Netflix shares dropping 16 percent to $85.45 directly after its first quarter numbers were announced.
Netflix added 1.7 million new streaming subscribers in the first quarter — considered only light growth for the second straight quarter.
Growth for Q2 is predicted to be lower. “During the analyst call, Hastings appealed for calm and said the problem was temporary and seasonal. The second quarter is typically tough on Netflix,” reports CNET. “Skeptics, however, worry that the problems could be more lasting and have more to do with the company’s inability to secure film licenses and growing competition in the streaming-video sector.”
In order for Netflix to remain competitive and elite, it has to secure more content to encourage subscriber growth. “But licensing costs have gone through the roof,” CNET notes, and “Netflix failed to renew a licensing agreement with Starz, the pay-TV cable service that supplied Netflix with films from Disney and Sony Pictures.”
In the meantime, the competition is growing stronger as Hulu, Amazon and HBO Go continue to expand, along with Comcast’s new Xfinity Streampix service.
Google has revealed the results of their work to re-architect their internal network infrastructure around OpenFlow.
Google’s network, which is described as equivalent to “the second largest ISP in the world,” consists of a user-facing network and a second network that interconnects its worldwide data centers.
OpenFlow is a key part of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach that separates network equipment from the overall management. The result is the capability to manage the network fabric as a whole and dramatically increase its efficiency.
Moreover, Google which began working on an OpenFlow network in 2010 has actually been designing and building its own network gear as it was not yet available.
The result is a network that operates at almost 100 percent utilization, rather than the 30-40 percent of other networks.
Google is revealing their OpenFlow work with hopes that equipment vendors will begin manufacturing gear that supports it. Google is a member of the Open Networking Foundation, which promotes OpenFlow. Other members include Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Verizon and Deutsche Telekom, and Nicira.
Software Defined Networking as represented by OpenFlow is a fundamental change in thinking of complex digital networks that promises to remake the entire network industry, impact how companies and governments manage their networks, and enable new kinds of network applications.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) hopes to fight potential cyberattacks by enabling companies and the federal government to share cyber threat intelligence with each other.
Although the bill has been supported by many big Internet players, the Obama administration is now expressing some hesitation, suggesting CISPA “fails to adequately protect critical national infrastructure, such as electrical grids and water supplies, and could threaten individual privacy and civil liberties,” reports Digital Trends.
According to Caitlyn Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, cybersecurity legislation requires strong safeguards. “Legislation without new authorities to address our nation’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, or legislation that would sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security, will not meet our nation’s urgent needs,” she said in a statement.
Some civil liberty and privacy advocates criticize the bill’s broad language, which could “allow companies to hand over private information about their customers and users to the federal government without sufficient oversight or consequences for mishandling the data,” explains the article.
The “Stop Cyber Spying” campaign against CISPA also raises concerns that the shared information could be given to spy agencies with little public oversight.
Although the White House has not made any plan to veto the bill, there is definitely some question as to whether the proposed legislation will do much to protect against cyberattacks.
Nicira, “the most intriguing startup in Silicon Valley” according to Wired, has created a network virtualization technology that enables companies to program their networks as they do with server virtualization.
The technology runs on top of any network hardware which is used only to move network packets. The network virtualization software provides all the intelligence allowing one to reconfigure the network infrastructure. Thus, rather than be locked into a specific network configuration, the entire network architecture can be altered in software rather than hardware to fit the current requirements.
Nicira’s Open vSwitch goes beyond OpenFlow, which requires vendors to incorporate the protocol in their hardware. It can work with any network gear, even inexpensive hardware.
Companies like Google, AT&T, eBay, NTT, Fidelity and Rackspace are already using Nicira to manage their networks.
“We have hundreds of thousands of customers, and that translates into multiple hundreds of thousands of network or network segments that customers want to create,” says John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, which is currently using the Nicira platform for a beta version of its cloud service. “Nicira gives us the ability to put any customer, any end point, any location on one common virtual network.”
Google is already buying inexpensive network hardware from Taiwan and China, thus bypassing more expensive options from Cisco and Juniper. Martin Casado, Nicira’s CTO, thinks over time that network hardware will become less important compared to the network software.
Wi-Fi technology is about to experience several significant upgrades.