Headworx

Nikon's release of the mirrorless Z-series back in August was greeted with mixed opinions. Most were pointing out that Nikon was "late to the mirrorless party" and "lagging behind Sony" who had the head start. And most were comparing autofocus and battery life performance against the competition. While the comparisons were not bad for Nikon, the fact is that they are not that meaningful. Sure, comparing the A7R-III vs the Z7 shows the latter still needs some homework to be done in the autofocus or battery department. But that all can be fixed. In this model, by improving the software, or in later models by improving teh software and the hardware. What most people seemed to overlook was the importance of the new Z-mount. The lens mount is by far the most difficult part of an interchangeable lens camera to change. You cannot do it every year. Well, you even should not be doing this every 10 years. Actually the Z's predecessor, the F-mount was introduced ...

So Apple keeps calling the high end iPads "Pro" and people again try making the case that this can really be a laptop replacements. Unfortunately it cannot. One way of dealing with this is to stick a finger into a pencil sharpener. The other is to use a mouse. Or a trackpad. When they are finally supported by iOS. Controlling a cursor precisely with a finger is exactly where tablets fall short. Regardless of improvements the vendors try to include. Even discoveries like this one do not come close to selecting text with a mouse. Like we all do on laptops or desktop computers. Lets face it: the iPad continues to be the best content consumption device. I personally use it for several hours every day. And even more when airborne. My favorite apps are: Feedly: the best selection of news I follow; Pocket: works great with Feedly - whenever an item grabs my attention I "pocket" it (note "to pocket is used as a verb here - not many apps get to that level!...

With the advent of IPv6 we have been promised the native Internet technologies reaching each grain of sand. Which is a great vision. Unfortunately, as in real life, there are significant engineering challenges that prevent that vision from becoming a reality. I should even say that this is not an engineering problem. It all can be done. It just costs too much. Like carrying shipping containers on board of cargo planes . IP-based protocols are by nature heavy. Or should I say - heavier. Heavier to operate and heavier to manage. Simply speaking a "grain of sand" end node may not have enough resources to fully participate in an IP-Based network. One example of such a resource is a real time clock (RTC). It is necessary to provide proper IP security, as certificates, that are the foundation of IP-based security, require the nodes to have a notion of time. An RTC is not a problem for a laptop, or even for a smartphone, but it is a significant added cost compared to a sub-d...

The news of the first batches of commercially available Bluetooth mesh devices working seamlessly together have circled the world recently . This is a powerful demo indeed. Two independent products from two competing companies who never met before, taken off the shelf, work seamlessly together. It seems simple, while it is not. Actually, this is the first time ever, it happened. The details can be traced down to the two Bluetooth listings: the D038467 by LEDVANCE GmbH (who make the Sylvania light bulbs based on the Cypress Semiconductor module and stack) and the D039781 By Nordic Semiconductor (who offer a Bluetooth Mesh Profile subsystem loaded on the NRF5 development kit). These are totally independent implementations of the Mesh Specifications. And the products "just" work together. Some may say we had this before, with Z-Wave. This is true, but only to some extent. Z-Wave really succeeded as a standard facilitating interoperable products, but with two caveats: ...