January 29, 2013
by sjvn01
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So you think you’re a big-time hacker huh? Well Google invites you to show up at the CanSecWest security conference on March 7 in Vancouver, BC to see if you can crack your way into Chrome OS. And, to make it worth your time, Google is offering a pi worth of cash rewards. That’s a total prize package of $3.14159 million. I thought that would get your attention.
January 29, 2013
by sjvn01
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I’ve been using Apple TVs (ATV) since day one and I have to say most of its operating system upgrades have been as dull as used dish-water. The Apple TV 5.2 upgrade, however is a real sparkler.
The big upgrade is that, with an ATV2 or ATV3, you can finally use a Bluetooth keyboard with it. If, like me, you’ve spend far too much time searching for shows by the “hunt and peck” method of typing on a remote, this may be the best upgrade ever.
January 28, 2013
by sjvn01
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The blame game for Windows 8’s market failure has already started. Microsoft blames OEMs. OEMs blame Microsoft. The bottom line is that Windows 8 has sunk below Vista levels of failure. The surprising winner in all this? Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS.
I thought Chrome OS had a shot at the big-time. I didn’t expect it a major PC OEM, Acer, to introduce a Chromebook in late 2012 and a few months later have it account for 5 to 10% of its US shipments. At the same time, as Acer CEO Jim Wong said “Windows 8 itself is still not successful.“
January 27, 2013
by sjvn01
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I use LibreOffice as my main office suite every day on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. So, when I saw that there a new major release due in early February LibreOffice 4.0, I was excited. It turns out though that while there will be some improvements for users like myself, the significant changes will be for developers.
LibreOffice 4.0: The big changes will be under the hood. More >
January 26, 2013
by sjvn01
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Last year, many people dismissed Google’s Google+ social network as a “virtual ghost town.” That was then. This is now. According to GlobalWebIndex, Google+, with 343-million active users, has become the second largest social network globally. As Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior VP of engineering, observed, “That is a lot of ghosts”
January 25, 2013
by sjvn01
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4K TV sounds great, but it has this one big problem: 4K video content is honking huge. An answer may be at hand. The ITU has just given first-stage approval to a new, much more efficient video codec: High Efficiency Video Coding’ (HEVC).
How much better is HEVC? According to the ITU, HEVC video “need only half the bit rate of its predecessor: ITU-T H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 ‘Advanced Video Coding’ (AVC). That, in turn, means that 4K TV broadcasting becomes possible over bandwidth as slow as 20 to 30Mbps. It also means that HDTV over the Internet may be watchable at DSL speeds of 4 to 6 MBPS.
High Efficiency Video Coding will help bring 4K video to Internet TV. More>