March 2008 Archives

Uploading digital photos from a camera to a computer is a task that lots of people (myself included) tend to put off since it takes time and requires digging for the USB cable. (Which drawer did I put it in again?) Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easier way to get photos from camera to computer hard drive—or better yet, directly to a bogging or social networking site?

 

A startup called Eye-Fi thought so, too. And they did something about it: developed the Eye-Fi wireless SD card. This is a 2B SD card that pops into a digital camera just a like a regular card. Only difference is, it’s got a built-in wireless transmitter. So instead of plugging in a cable, all you have to do is turn on the camera within range of your home WiFi network and grab the photos. 

 

The Eye-Fi card is also compatible with a variety of printing and sharing Web sites, including: Costco.com, dotphoto, facebook, flickr, Fotki, Gallery2, Kodak Gallery, phanfare, photobucket, Picasa Web Albums, RitzPix, Sharpcast, Shutterfly, SmugMug, snapfish, TypePad, VOX, Wal-Mart, webshots, and Windows Live.  

 

Here are a few technical specs: static WEP security, 90+ feet range outdoors (45+ feet indoors), compatible with 802.11g, b and backwards-compatible 802.11n networks.

 

I haven’t tried the Eye-Fi card myself (waiting till they come out with a version in xD format for my camera). If you do give it a try, let me know what you think.

I’ve long held the belief that driving while talking on a cell phone is dangerous, even if one is using a headset or switching on the speakerphone function. (Although I’m as guilty as the next person of talking while driving anyway.) Now some recent research adds more backing to that argument.

 

Marcel Just, director at Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, decided to find out the extend to which non-driving activities distract drivers from their primary task of steering a vehicle down the road.

 

In a March 9 report that’s been making the rounds online, USA Today explained what happened when 29 volunteer subjects were hooked up to an MRI brain scanner while engaging in a simulated driving exercise. Some of the volunteers were left alone to engage only in the driving exercise. Some were asked to decide, at the same time, whether a sentence they heard was true or false.

 

Results? The MRI scan recorded a 37 percent decrease in parietal lobe activity in the volunteers who were multi-tasking, USA Today said. (This part of the brain is associated with special processing.) There was also less activity in the occipital lobe, associated with processing visual information. Not surprisingly given the MRI results, the “drivers” who were multitasking veered off the virtual road more often than their single-minded counterparts.

 

“Certain activities in life are inherently multitasking, but driving and cellphone use isn't something Mother Nature thought about when she was designing our brains,” Just was quoted as saying in the USA Today report.

 

Just admitted that, while the results clearly indicate that driving and talking on the phone don’t mix, banning all use of cell phones in vehicles is too draconian a measure. It might work better, USA Today said, to instead cut down on accidents by forbidding cell phone use in certain situations—like rush hour or inclement weather—that require a fairly high level of concentration for safe driving.

 

The report noted that seven parts of the U.S. forbid the use of handheld phones when driving: Connecticut, New York, California, New Jersey, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. No jurisdiction, however, forbids using hands-free devices.

 

Jonathan Adkins, spokesperson for the Governors Highway Safety Association, thinks hands-free devices lure people into a false sense of security. In the USA Today report, he said there is no evidence that bans on handheld phones have helped prevent accidents.

 

Where do you stand on this issue?

WiMAX is hot and getting hotter. That’s essentially the conclusion reached by Infonetics in its recent WiMAX and Mesh Network Equipment and Devices report.

 

Just how hot? During 2007, the WiMAX market grew sequentially 46 percent (for the year), with worldwide sales (fixed and mobile) just shy of $800 million. That number was reached thanks to deployments in more than 80 countries around the world.

 

Infonetics predicted that commercial WiMAX network deployments will continue growing during 2008 and beyond—with market value projected at $7 billion by 2011.

 

What’s driving the WiMAX market? Here is Infonetics analyst Richard Webb: “Among the most significant developments: Cisco's acquisition of mobile WiMAX vendor Navini Networks, the market entrance of specialist ASN gateway vendor WiChorus, the launch of WiMAX phones and Ultra Mobile PCs, and the new Open WiMAX initiative, which promotes disruptive, all-IP open WiMAX architecture, and should lead to best-of-breed solutions with inter-vendor interoperability.”

 

Attaching vendor names to WiMAX market growth, Infonetics reported that, for 2007, Alvarion led the worldwide fixed WiMAX equipment market in terms of revenue, followed by Airspan. In the mobile arena, the number one and two spots were held by Motorola and Samsung, respectively.