Sunday, May 25, 2008

Using Your Eee PC as an e-Book Reader

Posted by ttblogger • 6 Comments • Permalink
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To be honest, both the reader and the geek in me would love to get their hands on a Kindle, Amazon’s e-book reader. Unfortunately, though, the Kindle isn’t available in Canada. So, if I want to read my ever-expanding library of electronic books while on the go, my choices are limited.

I could print out the books, but I’d have trouble justifying such a waste of paper. Or, I could lug my laptop computer with me, but that’s not a great solution on a crowded train or bus. But, if you’re like me and you own an Eee PC, then you have a great way of reading e-books no matter where you are. Best of all, you don’t have to shell out any more money for additional hardware or software. Everything that you need is already on the device. 

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Hi-Def DVD Part III:  The War of the Discs

Posted by ttblogger • 5 Comments • Permalink
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When we last saw our intrepid hero, DVD, in 2002 or so, it had risen in just five short years to become the undisputed king of all physical distribution formats.  VHS had gone the way of the Old Republic, and tapes were relegated to the closeout bin and garage sales.  Falling prices and rapidly-improving technology was fueling consumer demand for High Definition (“HD”) televisions, and consumer electronics manufacturers were racing to develop a new physical distribution format capable of storing the vast amount of data required by HD.  UCSB professor and Millennium Technology Prize Laureate Shuji Nakamura had made this possible with his invention of the blue LASER diode.

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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Hi-Def DVD Part II:  Blue LASER Boogaloo

Posted by ttblogger • 4 Comments • Permalink
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In our last episode, we learned a little about probably the most famous “Format War” of the past – surely no one would make that mistake again… right?  We’ll get to that shortly, but first a brief flashback… flashback… flashback…

In 1993, near the height of VHS’s popularity, two high-density optical storage formats were being developed; one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density (SD) disc, supported by Toshiba, Time Warner, Matsushita Electric (better known as Panasonic), Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC.

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Sunday, May 04, 2008

Blu Ray, HD DVD, Format Wars, Sony Strikes Back

Posted by ttblogger • 9 Comments • Permalink
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As you may or may not remember, there was a battle going on in 2006 and 2007.  A battle fought largely on US soil.  A battle to win the hearts and minds of the US Consumer.  If you weren’t really paying attention, though, you might have missed it—this battle wasn’t featured nightly on the evening news.  While the economic and technological fight was real enough, the battle of HD-DVD v. Blu-ray to determine the physical content distribution format for high-definition video became, in many ways, the Format War that Wasn’t.

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