dynamics

Powerhouse Dynamics expects its first customers this week to receive its eMonitor home energy manager, a product that enters a crowded market for tracking where energy goes in the home.

There are dozens of companies working on in-home energy displays or home energy monitor systems, many of which will be tested as part of utility smart-grid programs.

Newton, Mass.-based Powerhouse Dynamics, by contrast, plans to sell through resellers, such as online retailers, energy auditors and contractors, or solar installers. So far, the company has more than 30 dealers signed up, according to CEO Martin Flusberg.

Many energy monitors are … Read more

So recently we've gotten a look at BMW's xDrive all-wheel traction control system, both in theory and in action. Not surprisingly, German manufacturer Audi thinks its vehicles run and handle better on snowy and icy roads to the point that the company is hosting an event known as the Audi Ice Experience; it's a racing-track-based high-performance practical driving education event that's been around for more than 20 years now. And today we've got video from the most recent Experience held this year in Finland.

The Audi Ice Experience is a winter-specific course that is usually … Read more

All-wheel traction control systems can make a trip on snowy and icy roads an easier time on you and your car. On Monday we got a brief glimpse of the innovative BMW xDrive traction system in action, and in today's video blog we dive into the deeper details of the technology involved and how BMW xDrive works.

For those of you just joining the conversation, BMW's xDrive is an "intelligent" electrical all-wheel traction control system that through Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) sensors can redistribute power between the axles depending on what is felt on existing road … Read more

I was on the phone with my mom yesterday, and she was telling me that she made the trek from Ohio to New Jersey to visit my brother. Apparently, she was not aware that the East Coast was about to get hit again with yet another blast of snow, and according to Mommy Dearest, Jersey got smacked with 20 or so inches in this latest winter storm, and they had to drive through it. (No offense, Mom, but better you than me).

Even though it's technically March now, Old Man Winter has still got a lot of the U.… Read more

Although the worst seems to be over, many of us across the country are still digging out of "Snowmageddon" and having to deal with nasty winter driving conditions. And although showing this video to you kinda makes me feel like an old-fart driver's ed instructor, I feel it is my social responsibility to present this Web clip from Cars.com for those of us not fortunate enough to know about and/or possess an automobile with these features. So here we go with today's vid, which will tell us all about winter driving safety technology for … Read more

The enterprise has long favored Java and .Net, but PHP and other dynamic programming languages have left their infancies and are rapidly closing the gap on their more stodgy competitors.

That's the message I got from Bart Copeland, CEO of ActiveState, the "dynamic languages company," in a conversation this past week. I wanted to find out how the Vancouver-based "old school" open-source company is faring in building business solutions and developer tools around Perl, Python and Tcl.

Quite well, as it turns out (and as described by Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond). But the story is … Read more

Dynamic range compression and lossy file compression are completely different things. What's the difference?

Dynamic range compression squashes soft-to-loud volume shifts. This form of compression has been used by recording, mixing and mastering engineers for decades.

Other than bona-fide audiophile recordings, most of the music you hear has been dynamically compressed--which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as dynamic range compression adds punch, presence, and impact to music.

It's just that over the past decade or so the trend is to overcompress dynamics, so not only has music lost most of its natural soft-to-loud dynamics, but nuance and subtle detail are missing as well. The loud-all-the-time aesthetic is boring.

Recordings with less compression have lower (quieter) overall volume, so if you go from listening to maximally compressed contemporary recordings to something with less compression you need to turn up the volume to compensate for the difference.

As a consumer of music, you don't have the option of buying uncompressed music. If the engineers squashed the soft-to-loud dynamics out of the new Lady Gaga record there's no way of getting them back. Once sound is compressed, you can't decompress it. If you want to hear music with less compression, buy original pressings of 1960s or 1970s LPs. Yes, some of those will be compressed, but less than contemporary recordings. … Read more

Unless you follow Casio's camera developments closely you probably don't know what the company's Dynamic Photo feature is. Hell, there's a good chance that even if you know about it, you're not entirely sure what it does or why you'd want it. But Casio must be getting some kind of good feedback on it because they've added the feature to three more cameras.

The quick explanation is that the cameras--the EX-H15, EX-Z2000, and EX-Z550--are capable of creating a motion image from a burst of shots. The moving subject can then be clipped from … Read more

Dynamic Draw provides a great set of free tools for creating flow charts and other designs. Although its layout can be confusing, the end product makes it worth a little trouble.

The program's interface takes a while to get comfortable with, and it took us several minutes of studying and experimenting to get going, though everything felt natural after that. We were able to understand and make use of its scattered collection of commands and tools quickly enough, thanks to a great tutorial and onscreen pop-up instructions. Once initiated in Dynamic Draw's idiosyncrasies, you'll be creating interconnected … Read more