tingilinde

duckduckgo is the number 2 mobile search engine

Bigger than Bing. 

I mostly gave up on Google search two years ago..  (I still use YouTube a lot though)

 

 

urlology

urls - a technical dive into the mess

 

45 years of viral videos

In the beginning there a 45 foot dead whale had to be removed from an Oregon beach..

one of the classics

 

 

 

microphones for podcasting

Thinking about a podcast?  Marco Arment has an on-going microphone review section on his site. 

a hat tip to Jon

 

talking under the sea..

Underwater communications is a challenge.  Radio waves quickly attenuate and visible light doesn't penetrate very far.  To get high speed robust communications at any depth you need to be tethered by a cable.  Of course that is too limiting for many applications.

Acoustic waves can propagate for long distances and people have built acoustic modems for some time.  These are challenging to design and have tended to be application specific.  So it is interesting to see a commercial undersea modem modified to use an IP compatible protocol stack -- the Internet underwater... (pdf)

 

 

The Internet Underwater: An IP-compatible Protocol Stack for Commercial Undersea Modems

Yifan Sun Department of Electrical Engineering State University of New York at Buffalo

Tommaso Melodia Department of Electrical Engineering State University of New York at Buffalo

 

Abstract

 

Recent underwater sensor network research has focused on developing physical, medium access control, and network layer protocols to enable high data rate, energy-efficient and reliable acoustic communications. However, it is now essential to design and standardize architectures that will enhance the usability and interoperability of underwater networks.

This paper proposes a networking architecture to efficiently provide interoperability with traditional TCP/IP protocol stacks for commercial underwater modems. The proposal is based on an adaptation layer located between the data link layer and the network layer, such that the original TCP/IP network and transport layers are preserved un-altered to the maximum extent. The adaptation layer performs header compression and data fragmentation to guarantee energy efficiency. Furthermore, the proposed architecture includes mechanisms for auto-configuration based on router proxies that can avoid human-in-the-loop and save energy when broadcast is needed. The proposed architectural framework was implemented as a Linux device driver for a commercial underwater network modem SM-75 by Teledyne Benthos. Testing and simulation results illustrate that the architecture efficiently provides interoperability with TCP/IP. 

 

 

 

 

ambient backscatter

Very short range/low bitrate communication harvesting ambient rf power from the University of Washington (pdf).  Very early on and this version would be insecure, but it may be an interesting start to moving towards the Internet of things.  



The key finder towards the end is a more interesting example than the card reader..

 

moving beyond google

sort of...

I've been weaning myself from the large search engines - particularly Google - along with services like FaceBook for about a year.  I now mostly use DuckDuckGo for search - it isn't the best by a long shot, but I know how to form search questions and dislike the ads and being the product for a third party.  I recognize that I am never really free of being sold as a project online, but I try to minimize it where possible.

Apparently DuckDuckGo usage is up with the NSA kerfuffle..

Several mashups of a Pixar inspired parody of NSA appeared in the past day or so.  Here is one of the better ones (yeah  - I know YouTube was purchased by Google a long time ago.  That is the Google service I am most connected to) ... spitting into the wind perhaps...

 

 

netflix moves to higher quality

presumably 1080p class streaming on some titles.

Does your isp support it?

kickstarter 2012

Results for last year - nearly $275M collected...

skipped to a summary slide

lighting for video conferencing

Most people who use desktop video conferencing don't pay any attention to audio or video quality.   (I can't say I'm careful, but I know better).  There are any number of things you can do for audio quality (a good podcasting microphone or better can be had for $100 or so), but video quality often comes down to lighting.

Here is a DIY on the cheap project using $26 worth of kit ...

How to Light An Interview for $26 from stillmotion on Vimeo.