Internet to Fail by 2010?

So it looks like we broadband users are quickly putting a strain on the multiple-decade old system we call the Internet. As we download videos, music, podcasts, and other multimedia, we are using up more and more resources. This has lead some people to wonder if the Internet could eventually break down from the strain.

From USA Today:

The Web will start to seem pokey as early as 2010, as use of interactive and video-intensive services overwhelms local cable, phone and wireless Internet providers, a study by business technology analysts Nemertes Research has found.

“Users will experience a slow, subtle degradation, so it’s back to the bad old days of dial-up,” says Nemertes President Johna Till Johnson. “The cool stuff that you’ll want to do will be such a pain in the rear that you won’t do it.”

I am pretty sure we have nothing to worry about as countries and business begin to upgrade the systems we use every day. New fiber optic cable is being run, new servers are being put in place, and other technologies to improve the Internet are being created.

What do you think? Will the Internet begin to slow as we continue to increase our high bandwidth activities, or will it continue to evolve to fit our needs as it always has?

[via forevergeek]

High Quality Videos Coming to YouTube Soon

Speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference Youtube Co-founder Steve Chen said that Youtube will at some time in future stream high quality videos. Although YouTube’s goal, he said, is to make the site’s vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer’s Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if they want it.

Steve Chen said that the high-quality streams will be available in the next months, but only for some of the videos. This is probably the reason why YouTube’s bulk uploader increased the size limit for a video from 100 MB to 1 GB.

YouTube probably has the lowest quality videos on the Web today thanks to the Flash 7 Technology. According to Wikipedia,

“YouTube’s video playback technology is based on Macromedia’s Flash Player 7 and uses the Sorenson Spark H.263 video codec. (…) [The video] has pixel dimensions of 320 by 240 and runs at 25 frames per second. The maximum data rate is 300kbit/s.”

Steve Chen also confirmed that in YouTube’s internal archive, all video is stored at the native resolution in which it was uploaded it. However, he said, a large portion of YouTube videos are pretty poor quality to begin with — 320 x 240. Streaming them in high-quality mode isn’t going to help much. So expect the rollout of High Quality Videos to be pretty slow from Youtube since the existing setup is working well for them, so this is just an experiment.

[via dailyApps]

PS3 Celebrates its First Birthday

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) today celebrates the first birthday of its PLAYSTATION 3. Launched one year ago in North America, PS3 has revolutionized the industry with its Cell Broadband Engine technology which gives the system tremendous computational power; Blu-ray Disc capabilities which provides state-of-the art graphics and unrivaled storage capacity; and free access to PLAYSTATION Network where PS3 users can experience online gaming, connect with other PS3 users as well as download games, movies and other content from the PLAYSTATION Store.
In its first year, more than 200 software titles have been released for PS3 and more than 60 million pieces of content have been downloaded from PLAYSTATION Network worldwide. Also, through the continued support of and dialogue with PS3 users, remarkable hardware advancements and features have been added to the system through firmware updates making it the most advanced computer entertainment system on the market today.
When we designed PS3 our goal was to introduce a system so technically advanced that it could stand the test of time and could take the industry in a whole new direction, which for PS3 was high-definition entertainment said Jack Tretton, President and CEO of SCEA. While we're excited by the progress we've made this first year, we know that like our other platforms, the best is still yet to come, especially given our new hardware and software line-up, and that PS3 will continue to take the industry to new heights for years to come. PS3 is the first gaming system to provide a disc capacity of 50GB thanks to its Blu-ray Disc functionality. Current PS3 first party games are currently in the 20GB range, well north of the threshold of HD-DVD or DVD, allowing for unmatched potential for games, movies and other media.

[via sohood.com]

Firefox 3 Beta Answers Some Questions, Raises Others

CRN Test Center downloaded Firefox 3 Beta 1 from Mozilla for a peek to get an idea of what users can expect when Firefox 3 is officially launched. Since this is a beta, the browser is intended for testing purposes only. While no one expects the browser to be production-ready now, if history is any guide, the likelihood of users going ahead and upgrading increases the longer the product stays in beta.

The beta was downloaded onto a Compaq desktop with AMD (NYSE:AMD) Athlon processor, a five-year old Dell (NSDQ:Dell) Inspiron notebook, and a three-year-old IBM (NYSE:IBM) Thinkpad T42 laptop. All three machines run Windows XP. Installation was painless and took less than five minutes on all machines. Bookmarks and profiles from both Firefox and from Internet Explorer migrated seamlessly. However, the browser didn't work well on all hardware configurations.

The Dell Inspiron originally had Firefox 1 installed instead of Firefox 2 because the memory leaks were so severe that the newer browser was practically unusable. Firefox 3 Beta 1 didn't seem to have any of the memory problems. It ran a little slowly, but that was a reflection on the hardware's age and not on the beta. Firefox 2 works just fine on the Thinkpad, but the beta was very sluggish and had moments of unresponsiveness. This could be an issue in the beta or in interoperability with other third-party applications. Hopefully, the uneven experience across different hardware will be resolved by the time the software comes out of beta.

Overall, Firefox 3 looks identical to Firefox 2. The visual differences between the two are fairly minor " most of the changes seem to be under the hood. Some menu options have been removed entirely, or renamed. For example, Text Size in Firefox 2 under View is now called Zoom under Firefox 3. Firefox 3 comes with a DOM inspector, which is very helpful for developers looking at scripts.

READ MORE...

[via crn]

Orange to sell 49 eur/month iPhone contract-paper

PARIS, Nov 23 (Reuters) - French telecoms operator Orange will offer a two-year service contract for a minimum of 1,176 euros ($1,754) with the Apple (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) iPhone, which it will start selling in France on Wednesday evening, Les Echos said.

The newspaper said on Friday Orange had briefly leaked details of its terms of sale for the music-playing, Internet-browsing device on its Website.

France Telecom (FTE.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) unit Orange declined to comment.

Apple sold 1.1 million iPhones in the United States between the end of June, when it first went on sale, and the end of September, beating analysts' forecasts. Thousands of customers queued for days to be among the first to buy one.

The company aims to sell 10 million of the devices by the end of 2008, representing about 1 percent of the total mobile phone market, but industry watchers are unanimous that the iPhone's impact is far greater than its market share suggests.

As well as raising the bar for other handset makers with the iPhone's many media features, Apple has broken with tradition by making exclusive deals with one carrier in each country, beginning with AT&T (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in the United States.

In Germany, Apple's exclusive sales partner T-Mobile (DTEGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) was forced by a court this week to offer customers iPhones that are not locked to the T-Mobile network.

But the 999 euro price at which it will offer unlocked phones, compared with 399 euros with a contract, makes the move almost meaningless.

In France, Orange will also offer the iPhone without a service contract but Les Echos said the price, like in Germany, would be significantly higher. Orange has said the starting price with a contract will be 399 euros.  Continued...

[via Reuters]

1,400 Wii consoles sold in ten minutes on Amazon

It's the Wii console's second Christmas out and there a strong sense of déjà vu in reports that talk of internet-breaking sales as punters go mental for Nintendo's console.
Amazon apparently sold 1,400 consoles in just ten minutes, when stock was renewed last week. A similar picture is painted at retailers across the country, as the widely sold-out Wii becomes harder to find with every passing day.
The craze has predictably pushed up prices of the console - some are selling on eBay and Amazon (second hand) for over £300. Just as Reggie said would be the case, there just aren't enough consoles for everyone.

It's not that Nintendo isn't making many - on the contrary the company is said to be pumping out 1.8 million units a month. That's not enough to satisfy demand, but retailers are pretty happy about it.
The chief executive of Woolworths, Trevor Bish-Jones, told the Telegraph: "There is a steady flow of Wiis into the country between now and Christmas. It will not be enough to meet all consumer demand but is sufficient for retailers to enjoy good levels of sales in the run-up to Christmas."
We at CVG could only find select shops that still had Wii consoles in stock, and that was because they were bundling the console with fives games (that you probably don't want) for £400. No thanks.

[via computerandvideogames]

iDesktop.tv the new YouTube?

So what is iDesktop.tv?

iDesktop.tv is an incredibly cool dynamic web 2.0 application, with a terrific modern design, for searching, watching and downloading videos from the richest online video archive, YouTube.
This is basically adding functionality and experience to what "should be" there. The possibilities of the site reach far beyond that. It gives you the chance to create your own environment for watching video clips, saving them and sharing them with friends.

What makes iDesktop.tv unique?

Designing iDesktop.tv we followed one primary idea - to bring normal desktop application experience to the browser - windows that can be dragged, resized, minimized in a tray, drag'n'drop of videos between players and results, standard menus - all with one goal - to make the richest web application for viewing and managing video content! You will be amazed by the flexibility and fabulous design of the website. It is user friendly and easy to navigate but also has great functionality.

Hack Attack : Get Windows XP SP3 Through Windows Update

Well If you have read my previous Hack Attack on How you can download Windows Vista SP1 through a Hack and it worked for you then here is another Hack that will allow you to download Windows XP SP3 RC1 directly from Microsoft. Windows XP SP3 will be the final service pack that we will see for the World’s biggest Operating System from Microsoft. SP3 will bring a host of bug fixes and some new features borrowed from Vista.

Well here is how you can download SP3 straight from Microsoft. Follow the instructions carefully and you’ll be running Windows XP SP3 in no time. Grab yourself a cup of Coffee as you do this..

Don’t fret too much, this won’t take much time. I can assure you that..

• Download this file ( WindowsXPSP3Hack.cmd ). Once you have downloaded the file, login as administrator and run the file by double clicking it. Wait for the Confirmation Message on screen.
• The Above file adds a few entries to the Windows Registry that makes Microsoft think that you are a part of the Private beta program.
• Check for new updates on Windows Update. You should now see Windows XP SP3 listed in the available updates.
• Download and install it. Reboot whenever necessary.

Please note this hack is the exact way Microsoft expects its beta testers to try Windows XP SP3 out, so you don’t have to worry too much about Microsoft catching hold of you.

I tried this on Windows XP Machine and this hack worked like a charm. Let me know if this works for you.. If you can’t wait for Microsoft to release SP3 officially then this hack is for you.

Spread the word around, so that many more people can download the 3rd Service Pack.

[via dailyapps]