Miscellaneous

Juniper revs Ethernet to 100Gbps

Juniper Networks has announced the industry's first 100Gbps Ethernet router interface card.

The networking company unveiled the 100Gbps Ethernet interface on Monday. The card will be sold as part of Juniper's T1600 core router, which is a high-performance product aimed mostly at telecommunications providers, but also usable by cloud-infrastructure companies and others rolling out large-scale virtualization.

"[100Gbps Ethernet] has always been inevitable, it has just been a question of when--now trends such as cloud computing, data center consolidation and virtualization are making the need for [100Gbps Ethernet] more acute and urgent than ever before," Opher Kahane, … Read more

Valley investor and Google adviser Rajeev Motwani mourned

This post was updated on Monday, June 8, with Motwani's correct age, as well as the cause of death and names of surviving family members.

Condolences are pouring out over the Internet as news spreads that Rajeev Motwani, a Stanford University computer science professor and well-known Silicon Valley angel investor, was found dead in his backyard swimming pool Friday. He was 47.

Motwani, who friends say did not know how to swim, was a special adviser to Sequoia Capital and invested in companies including PayPal and Google. But he may have been best known for mentoring numerous Stanford graduate … Read more

Week in review: Gaming's front in motion

The battle between video game console makers is in motion--literally. The three big console makers announced separate efforts this week at the E3 conference that focus on how gamers control their games.

For those of you who have been waiting for some really big news to come out of the video game industry, Microsoft answered your call with its innovative "Project Natal," a hands-free motion-sensitive controller system. Announced during Microsoft's annual E3 press conference, Project Natal seems almost certainly to be the culmination of several years of work by an Israeli start-up called 3DV Systems, which Microsoft … Read more

Does Opera outperform iPhone's Safari browser?

The problem with statistics is that it's too easy to jigger data down to numbers that prove in the end how quickly the exercise can resemble art as much as science. Take the latest stats regarding Opera's mobile performance, for instance. StatCounter's Tuesday graph showed proof of Opera's climb above the iPhone's Safari browser for the month of May.

Yet the claim that "Opera took 24.6 percent of the worldwide market compared to 22.3 percent for iPhone" is quickly followed by the admission that one only needs to calculate page views … Read more

Parents beware: Bing previews video porn

Microsoft's new Bing search engine has a highly touted feature that some parents may find troublesome. Bing's video search tool has a preview mode that lets you view and listen to part of a video simply by hovering over it with your mouse. Trouble is, it works with porn as well as "family friendly" videos.

I tested this feature quickly and with great caution on board a Virgin America WiFi equipped flight, being careful to shield the screen from fellow passengers and crew.

When I searched for a word that was sure to bring up porn, … Read more

Cisco developer contest drives great applications to Linux

In December 2008, Cisco decided to pay developers to stick a finger in the Microsoft eye with a $100,000 bounty for writing Linux-based applications for its AXP (Application Extension Platform) and Integrated Services Routers (ISRs). Nine hundred registrations and 75 countries later, Cisco has announced its 10 finalists.

What's intriguing about the contest is the diversity of the participants, most of whom are individuals, though there are a few two- or three-person teams. The finalists hail from North (three) and South (two) America, Europe (three), and Asia (two).

Perhaps this diversity lends itself to explaining why the applications … Read more

Acer to sell Android phones, Netbooks

Acer announced on Tuesday a version of its Aspire One Netbook that will run the Android operating system.

The manufacturer made the announcement at the Computex show in Taiwan, promising a release for the Android-based Netbook in the third quarter. Android was originally intended as a platform for smartphones, but recent months have seen great interest in porting the system over to small, cheap sub-notebooks.

"Netbooks are designed to be compact in size and easy to connect to the Internet wherever you go," Jim Wong, Acer's president of IT products, said in a statement. "The Android … Read more

Why your next phone could have Swype's keyboard

Keyboard technology may not seem as exciting as faster microprocessors, massive displays, or ever-decreasing form factors, but in many ways it's just as important to computing. Seattle-based Swype is trying to leave its mark on the evolution of user input by making "pecking" at keys obsolete.

Instead of having to find and press on-screen keys one by one, Swype simply has users slide (or swipe) their fingers across the screen. Its algorithm does its best to figure out what you were trying to write, then fills it in for you. With a growing number of handsets shipping without a physical keyboard, this software could boost typing productivity and data usage by mobile phone users. Best of all, it doesn't have to replace the existing keyboard paradigm, meaning users can still peck if they like.

However, one big hurdle in the race to get Swype on every new handset is competition from all sides. Big companies like Apple, Palm, Google and RIM have invested in their own software-based keyboard solutions, while some competitors have working versions that accomplish what is effectively the same thing. Those companies also have their own patents and algorithms that help the software figure out what word you were really trying to type in. Swype's creators think they have found the sweet spot of having a product that's ready for mass market now, and that can evolve with its users over time.

Touch and go Swype's technology was originally envisioned as a way to improve text input for disabled users. Those with limited dexterity are able to use Swype's system more easily than a traditional on-screen keyboard. It's also set up to support gesture tracking using Web cams, and with pointing devices like infrared remote controls, meaning it can be used on most hardware built within the last 10 years.

Swype's co-creator Cliff Kushler concocted it as an out-of-retirement project, and a follow-up to his previous co-invention T9--the text prediction algorithm that can be found in more than three billion mobile phones. Swype is trying to go beyond that though; following mobile phones the company has set its sights on tablet PCs, in-store kiosks, gaming devices and even televisions--basically, anything without a physical keyboard.… Read more

Week in review: Microsoft making moves

During a busy week of high-profile tech conferences, Microsoft delivered a double shot to steal the media spotlight.

Microsoft announced its plans to take on the iPod Touch with a new, touch-screen Zune that will be able to surf the Web, play high-definition movies, and tune in to digital radio. The Zune HD, which will be available in the U.S. only starting this fall, features an HD Radio tuner as well as an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) touch screen, Microsoft said. It is based on Windows CE and will use a version of Internet Explorer customized for its touch … Read more