Headworx

We have not revisited Otoy for a while. I am told they are doing extremely well. But still not much is visible to the outside world. Apart from the ORBX.js . The pure HTML5 / JavaScript 1080p60 codec. Decoding FullHD video in a browser is an impressive achievement and solves a variety of problems, especially for companies like Netflix or other video streaming services. But the Holy Grail of Cloud video processing has been online gaming, not video streaming. Which brings me to the question that matters: what is the lag of an online game rendered and encoded in the Cloud, and decoded on the client (in JavaScript)? ORBX.js may cope with 60fps, but nobody says how far behind those 60fps are? Online gaming is about fast reaction to the actions. If you could not dodge the bullet, it's not you, soldier, it's the lag . Lag is the nightmare of today's Internet. We have buffers at every level. And there is one thing buffers do perfectly: generate lag. While 4G/LTE may seem as ...

For the next three weeks I plan to be unplugged. I prepared four bog posts in advance, to keep to the established weekly schedule. Obviously the posts won't touch on the latest developments, but I do hope my faithful readers will find them interesting. In the ongoing preparations for holidays trip, I tested the camera backup solution I proposed several weeks ago in the Adopting Foveon post. Unfortunately it did not work well. I furnished my Sigma cameras with Lexar 64GB SD cards. Then I bought a Transcend 128GB USB memory stick. And several USB-OTG (On-The-Go) hubs / card readers. The first problem was formatting the cards. Every card larger than 32GB comes formatted with exFAT filesystem, which is not supported by stock Android. Fortunately Samsung adds exFAT drivers to their package, so the cards work when connected to my Galaxy Note (but do not when connected to the Nexus 10 Google tablet). Theoretically there is an option to reformat the card with FAT32, but I've read ...

Fifteen months ago I reported the Intel - based mobile phone presented at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress 2012 was the top news from the show . At least for me. But it somehow went unnoticed. Playing with the phone I was amazed by the speed it offered. I could not test the power drain and was expecting it to be much higher than the average of the ARM-based competitors crowd. Last week I read the test / teardown report by ABI Research . ABI tested the Lenovo K900, the 5.5 inch "phablet" powered by 2GHz Clover Trail + Z2580 Intel processor. This was the original Lenovo phablet design I mentioned back in 2012, but upgraded from Medfeld to Clover Trail+. And obviously the news is not the speed of the Intel processor, outperforming the rest. The news is the Intel chip won the race consuming only HALF the power the competitors did. And this is huge news. This simply means Intel can take the smartphone and tablet market by storm. Especially the most lucrative p...

It is official: I've adopted Feedly as my primary Google Reader RSS reader. The Google Reader shutdown was a shock for me and initially I panicked. But then I immediately realized I was not alone. After all GR was one of the most popular Google service. So somebody must have tapped such opportunity to grab the audience.  Initially I tried the Google Currents app but it was far from giving me the Reader experience I was used to. So I decided to wait and follow the wisdom of the crowd. At the time of writing it seems the crowd has elected Feedly to be the next RSS reader of choice. It took me a while to adjust but after using it for a week I have to say it is very similar to the original Reader. Feedly also proves my earlier point on the Apps versus the Web: it exists as an app for the mobile operating systems and as a Web app for desktops. There are many theories on why Google decided to shut down the Reader. I heard they did not have a lawyer responsible for the product. I ...

ARM versus Intel has probably been one of the most important technology battles in the recent years. Well, may be not that recent in fact. Intel has been around since 1968 (45 years) and ARM officially since 1990, with Acorn dating back to 1978 (35 years). For years both companies have been serving different markets. ARM wan inside small devices like cellphones and Intel was powering computers. Now when a phone is a computer, ARM and Intel are direct competitors. Industry analysts argue the pros and cons of each company and the underlying architectures. ARM has historically been less power hungry and Intel more powerful. With the advance of smartphones in the post-PC era, and especially with the rise of tablets, ARM and Intel fight for the same spots. ARM has been on a continuous rise and Intel has been steady at best. There is a bet that the Haswell, the latest CPU from Intel is about to change that. And not waiting for the Haswell, Samsung is reportedly already in with the latest...