Headworx

The introduction of the Thunderbolt port on the new MacBooks was one of the top news of the past week. The technology behind the Thunderbolt is called Light Peak and comes from Intel as a potential replacement of the aging USB standard. Thunderbolt is fast, up to 10 Gigabits full duplex, or some 20 times the speed of the current USB 2.0. More than an order of a magnitude. To put the number in some context: a 60 frames per second, 24-bit color full HD video stream is 2M pixels times 24 bits times 60 fps, what equals to about 3Gbps. So using the Thunderbolt we can have two such video streams (for fast, high resolution, stereoscopic video) and we still have 4Gbps of bandwidth to spare for things like a gigabit Ethernet and about six high speed USB 2.0 streams, whatever they may carry. All using a single cable. Thunderbolt differs from USB in one significant aspect. USB is a master - slave protocol. Usually the computer is the master, controlling the connection and peripherals are slaves. ...

Systems rule the world. For almost every task, function, and process we have systems. Unfortunately very rarely they are aware of each other. Living in disconnected domains. In my car I have a built-in navigation system. It has a nice feature of being able to select points of interest near the currently active route. I often use this function to find a gas station ahead. I have a Shell fleet card, so naturally Shell is my preferred station. The navigation lets me "spell" the name, it is enough to enter "SHE" and all Shells ahead of me are presented. Very nice. The car also has a fuel gauge (of course) and the onboard "computer" calculates the consumption and available range. But this data does not interface to the navigation subsystem, so the driver is responsible for selecting a station at an appropriate distance. Now, wouldn't it be nice to have the two talking together. I enter the destination. Be it Rome. Shouldn't this clever computer already ...

What is the difference between an iPhone and an iPad? Size. Anything else? Well... really not that much. The same processor, the same communication interfaces, similar storage space. So why we have the two? Because one is small and on is not so small. Sounds funny. But yes. An iPhone is just more comfortable to carry. Can go with us everywhere we go. In a pocket or a small purse. On the other hand an iPad is more comfortable to use. Bigger screen. Bigger keyboard. Only the physical factor differing the two. But how important one, that it created a whole new market of tablet computers. So now when we have the two devices - a smartphone and a tablet. The pros are clear, mentioned above. But there are cons. Many of them, but probably the most important are the two separate identities. Two sets of storage. Each holding different data. Imposing on us the burden of synchronization. And sharing, which by the way is a disaster by Apple (take some pictures with an iPhone and try to display the...

Several weeks ago I asked the question whether humans could survive without the Internet . Today I am happy to report I have proven we can. Well, may be not entirely and not for a long time. But for a couple of days on a thin life supporting pipe it is possible. The experiment was like the Gemini 7 mission - not to launch a naked man into Space, but to provide a minimal life supporting environment to test the endurance. Instead of a space suit and fuel cells, I spent a week long vacations only with my Blackberry and the Kindle. I am sure you will laugh at this point. Both Blackberry and Kindle can access the Internet over any 3G mobile network or a WiFi, so what was the deal? Well... sure they can, but as I was roaming, I tried to keep the use of cellular data on the Blackberry to a minimum. This meant just looking at the primary email account to see if there were any fire alarms to be handled. I also posted a few photos on my Facebook profile, but this was a one-way communication. I ...