New Models Support MP3 and AAC formats

Sony today took the wraps off two new Walkman® players that not only support audio – but for the first time in the United States – video.

The new NWZ-A810 and NWZ-S610 series of Walkman digital music players will support an open platform, providing more choices for downloading and managing music and video collections online.

The devices have a standard user interface that makes it easy to enjoy songs, videos or pictures. The video players have a large Quarter Video Graphics Array (QVGA) LCD screen that displays video at 30 frames per second. QVGA is a display mode for small screens in which the resolution is 320 pixels vertically by 240 pixels horizontally.

The battery life allows up to eight hours of video playback for the NWZ-A810 series and nine-and-a-half hours for the NWZ-S610 series. The battery also provides up to 33 hours of music playback for both series.

The players support security-enhanced Windows Media Audio (WMA), as well as non-secure AAC and MP3 music formats, plus JPEG files for photos, in addition to the AVC (H.264/AVC) Baseline Profile and MPEG-4 video codecs.

Users can download movie trailers, music videos, podcasts and video clips from the Internet and use readily-available shareware to convert the clips for use with the Walkman video players. Sony Pictures Entertainment has also provided video content for both of the new players, which is hosted at www.sonystyle.com/walkman.

The top-of-the-line Walkman video players (NWZ-A810 series) have a 2-inch QVGA (320 by 240 pixels) LCD screen (measured diagonally). This series of players comes with higher quality Sony ear-buds (model MDR-EX082).    

The NWZ-S610 series has a 1.8-inch QVGA (320 by 240 pixels) LCD screen (measured diagonally) and includes an FM tuner with 30 presets.

The Walkman video players store up to 1,850 songs on the 8GB models, 925 songs on the 4GB models, and 440 songs on the 2GB models, for songs an average of four minutes in length at 128kbps in the MP3 format.

Excerpt from MIT Technology Review….

IBM and the Beacon Institute, a nonprofit scientific-research organization in Beacon, NY, have announced a collaboration with several other research institutions to create an environmental-monitoring system for New York’s Hudson River. Their plan is to turn all 315 miles of the river into a distributed network of sensors that will collect biological, physical, and chemical information and transmit it to a central location, where it will be analyzed by IBM’s new data acquisition and analysis system. According to John Cronin, CEO of the Beacon Institute, the project is now in its “design phase,” which should be complete within a year and a half to two years.

The network’s sensors will be deployed in a variety of ways. Some will be mounted on a new robotic underwater vehicle developed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, both collaborators on the project; the vehicle will be powered by solar cells and can operate either autonomously or under human remote control. Other sensors will be suspended from buoys or fixed in place along the riverbed.

“In terms of having an integrated network of sensors, and given the magnitude of it for the Hudson River, this project is without a doubt a huge advancement and on a much larger scale than anything that has been done before,” says Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer, director of the Darrin Fresh Water Institute at RPI and a member of the science-research committee at the Beacon Institute.

The scale of the network and the variety of its sensors will demand a massive new data-analysis system, which IBM will provide. Comprising both distributed-processing hardware and analytical software, the system is designed to take heterogeneous data from a variety of sources and make sense of it in real time. The software learns to recognize data patterns and trends and prioritizes useful data. If some data stream begins to exhibit even minor variations, the system automatically redirects resources toward it. The system will also be equipped with IBM’s visualization technologies; fed with mapping data, they can create a virtual model of the river and simulate its ecosystem in real time.

Excerpt from ZDNet News:…..

EarthLink’s scaled-back municipal Wi-Fi business has jeopardized many cities’ plans to bring free or low-cost broadband to low-income residents.

A day after EarthLink announced a massive restructuring that would essentially put almost half its employees out of work, the company wriggled its way out of contracts with Houston and San Francisco to build their citywide Wi-Fi projects. For each of these cities, providing free or low cost wireless broadband was the main reason for building the networks.

Over the past few years, blanketing cities with unlicensed Wi-Fi signals has been viewed as a cheap solution to bringing affordable or even free broadband access to cities. Politicians and community leaders have rallied around the technology as an economic development tool that could help bring low-income individuals into the bustling economy of the 21st century.

But as the economic reality of building a network primarily to serve up low-cost broadband access settles in at EarthLink, the company’s top brass says the strategy isn’t viable. And as a leader in this industry, cities are now scrambling to find alternative ways to finance their Wi-Fi dreams.

Several cities have already reacted to EarthLink’s change of heart by canceling or putting their projects on hold. Chicago, whose main objective was building a network to provide ubiquitous and affordable broadband access, said earlier this week that it has halted its plans for a citywide Wi-Fi project after it couldn’t come to terms with demands made by AT&T and EarthLink, which were both bidding for the contract. And in addition to Houston and San Francisco, Alexandria and Arlington, Va., and St. Petersburg, Fla.–all EarthLink Wi-Fi cities– have also put their projects on hold.

“It’s easy to talk about digital inclusion when you’re not paying the bill to build the network,” said Craig Settles, an independent wireless consultant. “So I’m sure some cities that likely weren’t really serious about it in the first place won’t pursue it. But for cities that are serious, they’ll push forward and either lay down some bucks themselves or find other alternatives for funding.”

On Wednesday, EarthLink said it would pay a $5 million penalty to the city of Houston to get a nine month extension on its contract. Later that same day, EarthLink also said it was killing plans to build San Francisco’s citywide network.

San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, has pledged to continue to pursue free Wi-Fi for all San Franciscans. Houston’s chief information officer, Richard Lewis, also said the city is committed to building a wireless network.

“EarthLink’s decision to scale back its municipal Wi-Fi has put the entire muni wireless market in a state of flux,” he said. “But I believe wireless is the future. So in the grand scheme of things, this just means that our wireless infrastructure won’t go in as early as we had hoped.”

From a Sony press release….

Sony has announced the development of a bio battery that generates electricity from carbohydrates (sugar) utilizing enzymes as its catalyst, through the application of power generation principles found in living organisms.

Test cells of this bio battery have achieved power output of 50 mW, currently the world’s highest level2 for passive-type3 bio batteries. The output of these test cells is sufficient to power music play back on a memory-type Walkman.

In order to realize the world’s highest power output, Sony developed a system of breaking down sugar to generate electricity that involves efficiently immobilizing enzymes and the mediator (electronic conduction materials) while retaining the activity of the enzymes at the anode. Sony also developed a new cathode structure which efficiently supplies oxygen to the electrode while ensuring that the appropriate water content is maintained. Optimizing the electrolyte for these two technologies has enabled these power output levels to be reached.

Sugar is a naturally occurring energy source produced by plants through photosynthesis. It is therefore regenerative, and can be found in most areas of the earth, underlining the potential for sugar-based bio batteries as an ecologically-friendly energy device of the future.

Press release here

Excerpt from BBC News….

It has been called the vehicle of the future and the ultimate way to beat the rush hour commute.  It is the M 200G, otherwise known as a “flying saucer”, which is being built by a company in Davis, California called Moller International.

It says the futuristic contraption will go on sale in a few months and hopes to expand production to 250 a year.  Company representatives say it is easy to operate, with plenty of leg room and space for a passenger.

But customers may still have a while to wait.

So far, the flying car’s inventor has been hard at work for more than four decades - and despite frequent assurances that success is just around the corner, the vehicle has yet to get anywhere near the mass market.

Capable of vertical take-off and landing, the craft - so far a one-off prototype - hovers like a helicopter up to 10ft off the ground. Any higher and the driver would need a pilot’s licence.

It is the brainchild of Dr Paul Moller, an aeronautics engineer who envisions a “highway in the sky” which he believes could cut conventional commuter traffic in half.

“We have this wonderful natural resource above us,” Dr Moller told the BBC.

“Look at the sky above us - how many aircraft do you see? It’s a great space that is not being utilised. That is what we plan to use. Cars are finished as a means of getting around. It’s only a matter of time.”

The flying saucer is powered by eight engines which can run on petrol, diesel or even ethanol.

Dr Moller and his team say they have already conducted more than 200 test flights and say the flying saucer could prove useful to rescue teams as well as landowners.

Press release here

Video here

M200G brochure

Excerpt from PC Magazine article… 

Microsoft on Wednesday released details about its first service pack (SP1) for the Windows Vista operating system, an update that features security upgrades, improved performance, and support for emerging hardware and standards.

Microsoft released Vista to the general public in January and SP1 marks the first major upgrade to the operating system since its debut.

SP1 will be released to a “moderate sized audience” in the next few weeks and will be available to the general public by the first quarter of 2008. An exact date for release will be set after Microsoft evaluates customer feedback from SP1 beta.

“A later pre-release of SP1 will be available to a larger group of testers via MSDN and TechNet subscribers,” White said.

Vista SP1 will be available in three forms: express, stand-alone, and slipstream. The express version allows users to download a pared down version of SP1 online. It will take up approximately 50MB for x86-based operating systems and will only send the changes needed for a specific computer.

The stand-alone option is recommended for computers with limited Internet connectivity, according to Microsoft. It packs a larger download size than express, but users can apply a single package to any Vista version and language combination within a given platform. Users must have administrative access to install stand-alone.

Microsoft recommends that systems installing express or stand-alone have a minimum of 7GB of free disk space for x86 based operating systems and 12GB of space for x64-based systems.

Security enhancements in Service Pack 1 include an upgrade to the BitLocker Drive Encryption to allow for more secure user authentication. Customers will get a startup key stored on a USB storage device as well as a user-generated PIN.

On the hardware front, Vista SP1 incorporates support for emerging standards like the extended file allocation table (exFAT), a file system for Flash drives. It will also support Secure Digital (SD) advanced direct memory access (DMA) in an effort to improve transfer performance and decrease CPU utilization.

Computers running x64-based operating systems will be able to boot using the extensible firmware interface (EFI), which is considered an upgrade to BIOS.

Vista SP1 will support Direct3D 10.1, a 3D API, so gamers can utilize more advanced graphics hardware. Finally, the upgraded OS will support the Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP), a remote access tunneling protocol that provides full-network VPN remote access that passes through firewalls and proxy servers.

Microsoft also promised increased reliability in terms of using new graphics cards, using external displays on laptops or networking-configuration scenarios, upgrading from XP to Vista, working with a variety of printer drivers, and entering or resuming from sleep mode.

Performance issues were also an issue and SP1 includes updates intended to improve problems associated with: copying and extracting files; delays associated with opening the file dialog box of domain-jointed PCs; Internet Explorer 7 CPU utilization; battery consumption; and delayed log-on experiences, according to Microsoft.

For administrators, SP1 will allow BitLocker Drive Encryption to encrypt additional drives. They will encounter changes, however, when it comes to managing the group policy. In an effort to simplify policy management, downloading SP1 will uninstall the group policy management console (GPMC). This means users will no longer have access to GPMC and must download an out-of-band release until the new, enhanced version of GPMC is released.

The service pack will also include all previously released updates for Windows Vista.

Microsoft will also release the third service pack for Windows XP in the next few weeks, but the company said it should not significantly change the XP user experience.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta Overview here….