Tuesday, June 22, 2010

New laser shoots beams of night

A laser that doesn't produce light would ordinarily be a failure. After all, the first two letters of laser stand for light amplification, not light reduction.

But a new laser created by scientists at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado at Boulder, shoots beams of night instead of beams of light. The "dark pulses," as the NIST scientists ominously call them, create areas absent of light. more......

40G/100G Standard Ratified

40G/100G Standard Ratified
IEEE, the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology, today announced the ratification of IEEE 802.3ba 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s Ethernet, a new standard governing 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s Ethernet operations. An amendment to the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard, IEEE 802.3ba, the first standard ever to simultaneously specify two new Ethernet speeds, paves the way for the next generation of high-rate server connectivity and core switching. more....

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=193449

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Best Buy video service links streaming, consumer electronics

Can a consumer electronics big-box retailer be a player in over-the-top video? Best Buy is putting its best foot forward in this market, launching its CinemaNow service for renting and buying TV shows and movies online. Web-based buying via CinemaNow has been available for awhile. What’s new this week are plans to make the service available via the same electronics products that Best Buy sells in its stores — basically a “connected devices” play by one of the bigger real-world outlets for the device part of that equation. more ..........

Monday, March 1, 2010

Wal-Mart buys Vudu; enters OTT delivery fray?

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) has agreed to acquire over-the-top (OTT) content provider Vudu, according to a New York Times report today. Terms of the acquisition weren’t released, but the Vudu screen shot companies reportedly informed Vudu’s Hollywood studios and TV manufacturers of the deal today. The acquisition could make Wal-Mart, already a leader in DVD sales, a formidable competitor in OTT service delivery as well. more ............