→ Smart Credit Cards

by Michael in

Smart Credit Cards

Ars Technica's Ben Kuchera (normally their game journalist) takes a look at some smart credit card technology being shown off at CES that could allow for security on our cards or using one card for multiple accounts.:

The technology is impressive. The cards look and feel much like existing credit cards, and can be kept in your wallet and bent without harming the internal electronics. The difference is that an empty screen replaces a section of the numbers on the card's face, and you have to tap in a key using five built-in buttons before making a purchase. The LCD screen is then filled with a unique credit card number, and the magnetic strip on the back is coded with that number for use in the transaction. Once the transaction is over, the numbers leaves the face of the card, and the magnetic strip returns to its blank state.

Apparently the batteries included should function for 3 years. Could be a practical way of improving a system we have which works but is prone to abuse.

→ Nielsen: State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report 2011

by Michael in

Nielsen: State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report 2011

Some interesting numbers:

Apparently Americans of Asian ethnicity are the only group which statistically have iPhones more than Android based devices. Smart phones are still less than half (43%) of the American cell phone market.

Only 5.7% of broadband users only have broadcast television (don't subscribe to satellite or cable television). Surprisingly 30 Million Americans watch television on their cell phones. I always assumed that was simply something that was advertised as a feature but no one actually did.

There are a whole lot more interesting numbers in the report, so go check out how the world's changing.

→ Video Problems in the new Xbox 360 Dashboard

by Michael in ,

Video Problems in the new Xbox 360 Dashboard

Richard Leadbetter at Digital Foundry:

Unfortunately, reports that the dashboard video player's 1080p mode has been nerfed appear to be on the money. Video calibration tools put together by the AVSForum demonstrate conclusively that, while the Xbox 360 has no problem whatsoever decoding 1080p video, it is no longer being rendered in native resolution. To illustrate the issues, here we see the same full HD video being run on an older NXE dash at 1080p, and the new Metro offering at both 720p and 1080p. As you can see when clicking on the thumbnails, just about all the detail is being resolved on the older front end, but the Metro dash's 720p and 1080p images are effectively identical in terms of core resolution.

Compounded with earlier accurate reports that the new Xbox dashboard is displaying colors incorrectly for video, this is a bad problem users recognized in the beta that Microsoft has refused to acknowledge so far.

Worse:

Other services appear to be artificially limited in the new video marketplace apps. For example, streaming service Vudu offers 1080p24 movies via its "HDX" service but in its FAQ it mentions that "Xbox 360 is limited to HD only (720p)."

Once again, the 720p limitation was reported during the dashboard preview programme and in common with the video levels issue we have reports that Microsoft deleted threads that referenced it.

So Microsoft is limiting third parties to 720p video now.

The obvious conclusion is that the SDK Microsoft is believed to have supplied to third-party video partners is limited to 720p only, leaving Microsoft's host service with a clear quality advantage. The message we draw from this is that the platform holder wants to expand the take-up of the Xbox 360 as a media-streaming device, but very much on its own terms with its own content getting the best quality, and the user's "homebrew" media not being given much importance at all.

Incorrect video levels are obviously a bug, but blatantly downgrading resolution looks very much like part of a strategy. As it is, the new dashboard's preview programme ensured that the issues were brought to Microsoft's attention. Now we wait to see whether anything will actually be fixed.

We'll se. In the meantime, Microsoft has hurt the Xbox's video playback such that I'd actually use my PS3 to watch video instead--the first time this has been true. Making your product a worse one than it was already is never the right move. It seems Microsoft has been taking lessens from Sony's repeated downgrading of users' PS3s.

→ Why quad-core iOS devices could launch within the next year

by Michael in

Why quad-core iOS devices could launch within the next year

Chris Foresman at ArsTechnica shows some references from within iOS for upcoming quad core devices as well as a few arguments for why they're probably coming.

9to5Mac believes that Apple may have designed the A6 to be quad-core all along, and could introduce it to the iPad 3 expected in early spring. The reasoning is that ASUS has already shipped its Transformer Prime convertible Android tablet featuring a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, and Acer and Lenovo have plans to ship Tegra 3 tablets in early 2012, so Apple won't want to appear to be behind the competition. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Apple will immediately follow suit—several dual-core Android smartphones shipped well before the iPhone 4S and Apple still managed to sell record numbers of the single-core iPhone 4 in the interim.

My take: I predict Apple will put out a quad core processor in their next iPad, but they won't do it because of what their competitors are doing. The iPhone 4 with its single core 800MHz CPU was still responsive than nearly every Android phone in existence when they were bearing dual-core 1+GHz behemoths. Apple doesn't bump the specs just for the sake of bumping specs. It bumps product specs according to how it wants its specific devices to perform with specific software. This is the advantage of its integrated in-house hardware and software.

Apple will put a quad core processor into their next iPad if it is necessary to get the device to perform as they want it to. If the "retina" quad-resolution display iPad everyone claims to be coming does come out, there's probably no escaping the necessity of a massively more powerful CPU and GPU.

Caveat to my prediction: If there's no retina display,  there's no quad core cpu in the iPad.