We covered this once before with an ethernet powered clock, but Power Over Ethernet or PoE as its called is getting even more popular. Today it was announced that even an entire computer can be powered by the Internet and not your wall socket.

“UK firm DSP Design has made a PC that gets electric power via a network cable rather than through a wall socket. Before now power via a network system has only been used for devices such as wireless access points, CCTV cameras and (Voip) internet telephone handsets. DSP said it expected their new PC to find uses where it was hard to lay any kind of cable other than computer network cables.

“The net-powered PC has come out of a project to create specifications for powering almost any kind of computer hardware through Ethernet cables. Ethernet is the name given to the most widely used way of connecting computers together into local networks.

“Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) works because when data is sent down network cables it is represented by voltages. Some PoE equipment uses spare wires in cables that link computers back to network hubs and pump power down these. Others pump power down the same lines as the data traffic. The current PoE specifications have an upper limit of 15.4 watts.

“This is enough for Voip handsets, network hubs, webcams, smart card readers and even video servers but it is far too low for most desktop PCs. But DSP Design has produced a PC, called the Poet 6000, that draws only 12 watts by replacing a monitor with a flat-panel screen and using low power components.

“The Poet 6000 has a touch screen and DSP expects it to be used in kiosks, at trade shows and other places where laying power cables would take too long, be too expensive or too difficult. Ordinary laptops could also soon be getting their power from network cables as work is starting on specifications for Power Over Ethernet Plus which will be able to deliver 30-35 watts. “Source: BBC News

File this one under yet another useless study that tells you things you can figure out on your own for free. This time, it involves your TV and the habit cable new channels got into post 9/11 of loading up the screen with weather, stocks, tickers, factoids, and so on. Come to think of it, they remind of of my own desktop. No wonder I can’t think!

From Kansas State University:
“We discovered that when you have all of this stuff on the screen, people tend to remember about 10 percent fewer facts than when you don’t have it on the screen,” (journalism/mass comm. professor Tom) Grimes said. “Everything you see on the screen — the crawls, the anchor person, sports scores, weather forecast — are conflicting bits of information that don’t hang together semantically. They make it more difficult to attend to what is the central message.”

“For their research, Bergen, Grimes and Potter conducted a series of four experiments that examined people’s attention spans regarding complex and simple cognitive processes.”The outcome of all of the experiments was that people were splitting their attention into too many parts to understand any of the content,” Grimes said.” via Boing Boing

Oh my…looks like the long-awaited Longhorn isn’t winning them over at my favorite conference, the Windows Hardware Engineering conference (or “WinHec” as it’s affectionately called.) And right on the day Apple’s Tiger OS launched too. Here’s the word from /.

“Longhorn beta 5048 was released a day before the start of WinHEC 2005, suggestive of the fact that it is not terribly impressive. Paul Thurrott (a Windows writer whose previously reported review of Mac OS X Tiger was updated after user feedback) confirmed this today in day two of his blog from WinHEC. Microsoft needed something big to kill the hype of competitors, but screenshots show minor visual updates from the last beta, and to quote Thurrot: ‘This has the makings of a train wreck.’” Source: Slashdot via ehomeupgrade

It’s interesting to note that Microsoft pulled the screenshot gallery. And from I see in the one screen I could find, the new look is pretty ho hum.

UPDATE

Chris Perillo of Lockergnome, has weighed in and he is no Longhorn fan now either:

“Even as I’m watching the 2005 WinHEC keynote right now , I’m screaming at my screen! The demonstration was faaaaaar from impressive, and left me NOT wanting more - but wanting to walk away altogether. Instead of watching with awe and wonder, I’m watching with a very confused look on my face. My brow is furrowed, and my fingers are slamming against the keys of my keyboard at this very moment… I’m growing increasingly impatient.

“Remember, I consider myself a power user - I’m not a developer.

“Arvind Mishra gave a high-level overview of some new features in the OS. First, he shows off a new way of launching Solitaire… yeah, it looked just as great as it did in Windows 3.1. Arvind continues with a joke about the dog in Windows Search no longer being there - and I couldn’t hear a single laugh coming from the audience. Why? Because it wasn’t funny when the pooch was foisted upon us in XP. Then, Arvind runs through the new Desktop search feature… which is nothing new to me, as I’ve been happy for months with something already far more elegant. In the “new” Explorer, the thumbnail options are just as ghastly as they have been in previous versions of Windows (what if I don’t want to have all my icons enlarged at the same time?). Oh, and I believe the thumbnail image representing folders (or their new paradigm, stacks) really needs to be redone. But I feel that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “

Most people are aware of browser battles (FireFox is my fav of course) but there’s also a battle for web standards that flares up now and then. From Active X and Java, Javascript, Flash, and XML to RSS and Atom and on and on, the battle for controlling what you see in your browser is also an ongoing tug of war, as well as a place where open source work can flourish.

Today, I thought you’d like to learn about a long forgotten technology called “Ajax” that has made a stunning debut in Google’s mapping service, Google Maps. The Wall Street Journal did a great piece about it some time ago. I have included an excerpt here for those of you who do not have a subscription, because it is very interesting stuff.

“Meet Ajax, the technology powerhouse. For years, it has been living indolently on your computer, never really doing much of anything. In the past few months, though, computer programmers, most notably those at Google, have begun to wake up Ajax and put it to work. And as a result, the computer industry may never be the same.

“Ajax is a recently coined name for a dense mouthful of software technologies that are built into Web browsers. The most important of them are JavaScript, a computer-programming language; dynamic HTML, which is a way of displaying information on a screen; and XMLHTTP, a procedure a Web browser can use to very quickly get information from a central server. To see what they are capable of, go to maps.google.com, zoom into a location, click inside the map and then drag the image around. It’s Ajax that is moving the map for you, scrolling it much faster than you’re probably used to on the Web.

“Browsers have been getting and displaying information since the Web began. What’s new is that Ajax lets them do so in a speedier way. In the past, to change even a small part of a Web page required reloading the entire page. But Ajax knows to fetch only the part of the screen that needs changing — like the edges of the Google map window as you move around.

Because less information is being sent from the main server, things move more quickly. That takes Ajax applications a big step toward the Holy Grail of having the kinds of speed and responsiveness in Web-based programs that’s usually associated only with desktop software, like Microsoft Office.

Sealing the Ajax deal for many programmers is the fact that everything required for it is standard, generic software that isn’t owned by any company and that exists in every browser. It’s as if someone discovered how, just by doing a little welding in a car engine, you could double the car’s gasoline mileage.

The term Ajax was coined last month by Jesse James Garrett, of the San Francisco Web consulting firm Adaptive Path. He came up with the pseudo-acronym in the shower while searching for a shorthand way to explain to clients how the recent offerings by Google can perform so robustly. Google, notes Mr. Garrett, isn’t the first to use Ajax. Pieces can be seen on Netflix, the film-rental site, and Flickr, a photo-sharing site. But Google has done the most with it, betting the farm on Ajax not only for Maps but also for its Gmail free e-mail service and several other offerings. (Not all Google software uses Ajax; its popular Toolbar, for example, doesn’t.)” Source: Wall Street Journal Online

I’m not a jogger so I cannot attest to the technical validity of this news item, but it does sound like running shoes are about to make a giant leap forward. (Couldn’t resist!)

“These shoes are no gimmick. Adidas engineers spent three years developing them in secrecy at the company’s North American headquarters in Portland, Ore. Each shoe contains a microprocessor capable of making 5 million calculations per second. A magnetic sensor in the shoe’s heel measures its compression on impact, taking 1,000 readings per second.

“A secret algorithm (Adidas engineer Mark Oleson says they intentionally omitted it from the patent) then decides on the optimal amount of cushioning required. To achieve that, a tiny electric motor, spinning at 6,000 rpm, turns a metal rod that adjusts the hollow plastic heel. All of this is powered by a replaceable 3-volt battery said to last for 100 hours.

“I have to tell you, “It works.” Just don’t expect spring-loaded leaping power that will with empower you with Steve Austin-like propulsion. And don’t expect any special torsion control. These shoes are about cushioning.” Source: Yahoo News via AP

Our Question: Can you imagine trying to get through an airport security line with these?! Not a chance. And what OS powers this shoe? Linux?
Price : about $250.

File this one under, more open source/open media things launching all around us. This week the Open Media Network launched. With heady founders like browser boy Marc Andreesen and others, the “OMN” is based on the following concepts:
—————-
OMN is a free public service designed to help you enjoy a broad selection of movies, public TV and radio, video blogs and podcasts while protecting producer’s copyrights.

Free: Broad selection of free public programs.
Easy to Find and Use: Simple TV-style program guide.
Secure Downloads: Secure, virus-checked background delivery using Kontiki Grid Delivery technology, proven secure, fast and reliable with more than 20 million users.
Personalization: Select your own Season Tickets for automatic deliveries and enter personal Tags to organize programs in your own categories.
Sync: Automatically move programs to iTunes/iPod, Windows Media Player/WMP devices and Tivo.
Source: Open Media Network
————–
Our Take: Sounds great buy just like the ho hum Google Video, this is a great platform hampered by boring or unknown content. But as a glimpse of video s l o w l y moving into the online world (which is my idea of the true on demand platform) this is another first step at organizing content and syncing it up with digital devices. Now we just have to wait for the studios to open up the real content or find some way to distribute it with a fee and get on with things! Meanwhile, three cheers to the many blogs who get to take over the airwaves.

Satellite radio is getting a lot of press these days, (I actually wrote a column on Satellite for ZDNet back in 2000) but not many people are writing about what it means to actually take the plunge and install and use one of these services. Yesterday, I placed my order online for an inexpensive receiver that can do double duty as a home and auto unit, plus the corresponding home and car kits, and a year of service. Here’s what happened next so you can follow along at home:

1. Placing the Order.
Sirius re-tooled its website and broke the task of getting hooked up into three easy pieces; picking a radio, ordering service, and then activating your radio when it arrives by mail. I chose the Sirius Starmate essentially because it was small and cheap (hey, this is my own money after all) and I am not ready to go the complete carve up the car dash and integrate multiple units route just yet. For experimenting, the unit seemed small and easy to work with and very affordable. I also sprang for the home kit so I could use it at home and in the car. Here are the details from the manufacturer:
==============
Starmate Complete Car and Home Package $139
This is our smallest plug and play radio yet at just 4″ wide and slightly over 1″ thick. It features a very clear 3 line display that shows artists, song titles, and other channel information. You’ll be able to use it in your vehicle - a car kit (which features a suction-cup mount, a roof-mount antenna, and a DC power adapter) is included in the package. A wireless remote is also included for convenient system operation.

More Details:
# Unique channel toggle switch
# Integrated connectivity for antenna, audio/headphone out, FM out and power
# Headphone volume control
# Compact 3-line display
# 30 channel presets
# S-Seek
# Wireless remote control
# Integrated FM transmitter with 100 frequency selections
# Package includes car kit accessories:
* Car antenna
* Suction cup mount
* Cigarette lighter power adapter
# Optional home kit
=======================

2. Order Confirmation
Ouch! Even though I was being frugal, the costs sure did add up. After taxes, the hardware came to $151.88. Add to that a year of service at $142.45 and we’re talking nearly $300 to get set up. I think that will be the hardest thing for consumers to stomach. When you added cable to your TV set, you already had the set, so the monthly service and usually free installation made the move palatable. If you had to go out a buy a TV set, and the cables and connectors and then add in a year of service, then I think we’d all be singing a different tune with cable.

I have not yet been billed for the service and I got a month free by ordering a year up front, but I also don’t remember a monthly billing option. Today I went back and looked at the website and you can go month-to-month at $12.95, and you can also do $499 and keep the service for life. I did that with TiVo in its first year and really saved as the fees went up, but at this point, I just picked the one year option.

Stay tuned for Part Two: When the Hardware Arrives. I heard that you have to put the antenna on your roof or near a window which may be a nightmare to do by myself, and something no one really talks about, so stay tuned. I’ll be taking pictures of the whole process and giving you the lowdown on signal quality, plug and play ease, and of course, the actual service - is it worth $300? Let me know what questions you have in the meantime. –Alice Hill

By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews.com

Those Wacky French Dept: The Inquirer has been following a court case in France that has come to a very interesting conclusion. The case involves the copy protection schemes found on all DVD’s that are supposed to prevent pirates from copying them (yeah, right). Interestingly, while here in the States it’s legal to make fair-use copies of things like DVD’s and CD’s, it is technically illegal to “break” the copy protection (so how would one legally make a backup of a DVD, you might ask? Good question).

Anyway, the case was centered around a man who wanted to watch one of his DVD’s with his mother at her house. However, she did not have a DVD player to play it on. The French court ruled that the copy protection that prevented the DVD from being copied was actually illegal because it violated the right of the man to make personal copies of his DVD. On top of fines, the court gave the offending companies (Studio Canal and Les Films Alain Sarde) one month to remove the copy protection from their DVD’s.

I wonder what kind of effect this will have on the DVD market worldwide, since it would be very easy to import French DVD’s to any other country and copy them at will. I suspect there will be a large market for these new unprotected DVD’s. Keep in mind, though, that France is in Region 2 (Europe) so you can’t play DVD’s from France on most DVD players sold in the US. It is, however, very easy to find region-free firmwares for PC DVD drives and use software such as DVD Region Killer to make Windows believe that your drive is still protected. Source: The Inquirer via P2Pnet.net