Miscellaneous

Cisco launches new video initiative

The online video revolution has begun, and Cisco Systems says it has designed a new strategy complete with new products to help its customers meet the demand.

On Monday, the company, which makes devices that shuttle traffic around the Internet, will announce a new architecture and strategy to help its customers better handle video traffic on their network. CEO John Chambers will be pushing the new architecture and initiative at the company's annual C-Scape press and analyst conference in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday.

It's no secret that Cisco thinks that video is a big deal. The company … Read more

Recovering photos from bad flash memory

A little while back, a friend IM'd me with a problem. Their digital camera wouldn't read from its SD flash memory card. Naturally it was almost full of photos that hadn't been copied off to a computer yet. Bottom line is that I was able to recover just about everything. Here's how I did it.

First of all, I had her take the card out of the camera and mail it to me. I think that's generally good advice. (The taking it out of the camera part--not the mailing to me part.) If you have … Read more

Wii leads the way on healthy Black Friday

Update 2:03 p.m. PST: Added NPD and Apple paragraphs.

Black Friday proved to be a relatively bright light in an economy largely characterized by dark, gloomy reports.

Overall, retail sales for the day after Thanksgiving were up 3 percent from the same day in 2007, with preliminary estimates putting total sales in the U.S. at $10.6 billion, according to Shoppertrak RCT. (Shoppertrak derives its retail benchmark from a wide range of categories, including consumer electronics, sporting goods, apparel, and general merchandise.)

Web shopping saw an even larger percentage gain for the day, with traffic up 11 … Read more

Intel rethinks Netbooks: 'Fine for an hour' but...

The Netbook, take two: When Advanced Micro Devices said it wasn't going to focus on Netbooks, as Intel and its partners defined them, maybe it was on to something.

Intel is re-evaluating the Netbook market as possibly not The Next Big Thing. This from the company that makes the Atom processor and accompanying silicon that go into most of the Netbooks sold today.

At a recent Raymond James IT Supply Chain Conference (streamed via this Intel page), Stu Pann, vice president in the sales and marketing group at Intel, said his company sees the Netbook differently now.

"We … Read more

Video: A jet-pack flight over a Colorado gorge

It's the stuff of science fiction and James Bond. Strap a jet pack to your back and fly like a bird--sort of. But jet packs are science fiction no more.

It's 1,500 feet across from cliff to cliff, and more than 1,000 chilling feet down to the bottom of the Royal Gorge on the Arkansas River near Canon City, Colo.

"You're going to see me on the other side. This isn't an 'Evel-Knievel, get-a-lot-of-media-out-and-just-screw-it-up' gig, you know," stuntman Eric Scott told CBS station KCNC-TV correspondent Rick Sallinger prior to the flight. … Read more

Blogging from 25,000 feet

Update at 7:35 p.m. PST: Photos from the flight and a few extra observations have been added.

For an aviation geek like me, the simple act of flying is more then enough reason to get on a plane.

So when sassy airline Virgin America offered CNET the chance to test its new Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi service, I jumped at the chance. And yes, I'm writing this 25,000 feet or so (we're still climbing) above the Northern California coast. We're cruising on an hour-long demonstration flight out of the San Francisco International Airport. Check out … Read more

Verizon finally has its answer to the iPhone

Verizon Wireless may have found its iPhone killer.

On Friday, Verizon will be the first and only wireless carrier in the U.S. to offer Research in Motion's new BlackBerry Storm. The device, which costs $199 with a two-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate, is the first phone that could give Apple's iPhone--offered exclusively on AT&T's network for the same price--a run for its money.

I checked out the new touch-screen phone this week and have been playing around with it for a few days. My first impression is that it's pretty … Read more

IBM to buy Transitive

Transitive, the company best known for powering the emulation layer that helped ease Apple's transition to Intel chips, announced Tuesday that it is being bought by IBM.

In addition to helping Apple create Rosetta, Transitive eased a number of different architecture transitions in the tech world, including SGI's move from MIPS to Itanium processors as well as an effort by Intel to woo Sun Microsystems customers. IBM was also a customer, using Transitive's tech to allow x86 workloads to run on Big Blue's Power processor-based servers.

IBM didn't say how much it would pay to … Read more

Space Station residents to drink recycled urine

If you're the kind of person who wants to do research on the International Space Station, it appears that you may need to cross some boundaries of taste many of us wouldn't even consider.

According to a BBC News story Friday, the crew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Friday afternoon, will be handing off to their Space Station colleagues a water regeneration system designed to, among other things, recycle urine for reuse as fresh water.

The system, which will ionize, filter, distill, and oxidize wastewater, "will … Read more