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• Posted Aug. 29, 2014, 9 a.m. - 10 years, 3 months ago

Tech Round-Up – August 2014

The new, the not-so-new and the updates – a roundup of technology August 2014.

 

New DSA2LS from Shuttle

 

The DSA2LS from Shuttle is a small form factor desktop running on Android. Completely fanless, it can run 24/7, as it has an idle power consumption of just 4 watts, as well as a 1 GHz dual core processor, 1GB of RAM and 4GB internal storage. Low end this machine may be, but perfect for tasks such as playing media, monitoring and automation.

 

Record Breaker – 43 Tbps data transfer speed from the folks at DTU

 

Those researchers over at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) are known for breaking records, having already set the precedent for the highest transmission speed in the world of 1 petabit p/s previously, they have now also broken the record for the speed of data transmission, reaching an amazing 43 terabits p/s speed. This was made possible using a new optical fibre from NTT (based in Japan) that has 7 glass thread cores instead of the usual one.

Should this technology ever become available on a widespread scale, it will impact the speeds at which both B2B and B2C users can use the Internet, as well as cutting energy consumption.

 

Bluetooth Beacons on the London Underground

 

Wayfindr, developed by a partnership between the RLSB Youth Team and design firm ustwo, is the newest system being trialled on the London Underground to help blind people navigate their way through the system. Using iBeacon Estimote modules, the technology utilises Apple devices with an app and bone conduction headphones to actually calculate where the user is in relation to the beacons and speaks to them via the headphones (which operate by sending vibrations through the cheekbones) to help with navigation.

 

Google Chrome – 64 Bit

 

Wanted by many for quite a while now, Google have finally released a stable 64 bit version of Chrome for the masses. Labelled as Chrome 37, it is faster than the 32 bit version and features DirectWrite Support, as well as faster tasks such as decoding HD videos on YouTube.

The downsides? It’s currently only available for Windows, although a version for OS X is in development, and some 32 bit NPAPI plug ins are not supported, although the biggies, i.e. Flash, Java etc., have all been updated to 64 bit.

BitWanted by many for quite a while now, Google have finally released a stable 64 bit version of Chrome for the masses. Labelled as Chrome 37, it is faster than the 32 bit version and features DirectWrite Support, as well as faster tasks such as decoding HD videos on YouTube. The downsides? It’s currently only available for Windows, although a version for OS X is in development, and some 32 bit NPAPI plug ins are not supported, although the biggies, i.e. Flash, Java etc., have all been updated to 64 bit.

 

Image credits

http://bit.ly/technology-man

http://bit.ly/Ibeacon

http://bit.ly/optical-fiber

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