fiber

There's a "Wizard of Oz" joke to be made here: The city of Topeka, Kansas has unofficially changed its name to "Google" in an attempt to get on the Mountain View tech giant's radar as a test bed for new fiber-optic technology that would bring it Internet connections at top speed.

The Topeka Capital-Journal wrote that Mayor Bill Bunten signed a proclamation Monday that designates the town as "Google" for the duration of March, in an attempt to make it a more palatable choice for a test market than some of the … Read more

Is Google a friend or foe to Internet service providers? It's a question many broadband providers are likely asking themselves on Wednesday, after Google's announcement that it will build fiber networks in communities across the United States to test new broadband services and capabilities.

Google says the new ultrahigh-speed fiber networks it plans to build will be used as a test bed. But some broadband providers are likely suspicious of Google, as the Internet search giant once again creeps onto their turf.

Its announcement, Google said it plans to work with local and state governments to build fiber-based … Read more

Google, never satisfied with the pace of change, plans a test that will provide 50,000 to 500,000 people with fiber-optic broadband Internet access with a network speed of a gigabit per second starting as soon as this year.

"We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections," Google product managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly said in a … Read more

Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 28 percent last year, while upload speeds increased 16 percent compared with the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday by In-Stat.

The average broadband download speed in the U.S. is now 7.12 megabits per second, while the average upload speed is 2.42Mbps, according to the report "US Residential Broadband Speeds Accelerate," based on an In-Stat survey. In 2009, cable modem and wireless users saw the highest gains in bandwidth. The jump in broadband speed for cable subscribers was about double that for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) customers.… Read more

One of the more recent additions to Sunpak's tripod line is the 523PX Pistol Grip Tripod, an inexpensive, full-size carbon fiber tripod with a pistol grip ball head. Available for $199 from Best Buy, it's one of the cheaper carbon fiber tripods around and it's lightweight and very portable because of its carbon fiber construction.

The Sunpak 523PX Pistol Grip Tripod has seven-layer carbon fiber legs with a maximum height of 64 inches, and is 27.3 inches long when collapsed. It has three positions of leg angle locks for low-angle photography, with a minimum height of … Read more

Those who enjoy the beauty of a high-quality black-and-white print will appreciate Ilford's newest member of its Galerie line of inkjet photo papers, the Galerie Gold Fibre Silk. It's a professional-grade inkjet photo paper, with characteristics resembling a traditional fiber-based black-and-white print. Designed for use only with photo inkjet printers that utilize pigment-based inks, such as Epson's UltraChrome or Canon's Lucia inks. Professional photographers and anyone passionate about black-and-white printing, especially all those familiar with fiber prints from a darkroom, will enjoy the look and feel of it.

Ilford Gold Fiber Silk inkjet paper is a … Read more

As I continue to wind down Speeds and Feeds, I picked ruggedness as the topic for part 3.

In part 2 of this wrap-up series, I on Tuesday discussed reliability, suggesting that an increasing portion of the transistor budget in personal computers should be used to avoid, detect, and recover from hardware, software, and data errors.

Ruggedness, the ability of a PC to survive adverse physical conditions, complements reliability by further increasing the practical availability of a PC to do useful work.

As with efficiency in power management (part 1's topic), this is an area where PCs can learn … Read more

Most car guys know that carbon fiber is lightweight (and very cool-looking), but most don't know much past that. We stopped by well-known carbon fiber manufacturer Seibon's booth at the 2009 SEMA show to get the skinny on this miracle material.

The term "carbon fiber" can be used to describe microscopically thin fibers composed mostly of carbon atoms, the yarns composed of those fibers, or the fabric woven from that yarn. For our purposes, the term will be used to describe composite materials created from carbon fabric suspended in resin or plastic.

Carbon fiber parts are … Read more

In September, Intel showed off Light Peak as if it were the latest hot idea out of the labs. But the fiber-optic communication technology could well be coming to a computer near you next year, rather than in some distant sci-fi future.

A Taiwanese optical networking company, Foci Fiber Optic Communication, is well along the path of selling Light Peak cables and other fiber-optic components.

"We plan to have our pilot run ready by the end of November 2009, and ready to be in mass production in the beginning of year 2010," said Janpu Hou, the company's vice president of business development.

Foci is not some no-name manufacturer of commodity gear, either. The company supplied the optical networking components used in the Light Peak demonstrations at the Intel Developer Forum in September. … Read more