In the internet’s early days, bottom-of-the-barrel bauds would choke on anything bigger than a byte-sized file. Today, bandwidth has opened wide enough to gulp down gigabyte-sized games and stream movies, enabling companies to provide access to your media and work files anywhere and any time you want it. If you are curious about virtual private networks, remote file access and cloud services, here is a nice friendly article that breaks it all down for you and includes a brief tour of the more popular options available.
Category Archives: Internet
The mouse that roared
Before the Internet, before personal computers and before he and William English invented the computer mouse, Doug Engelbart had a vision. It entailed putting a computer in every office, sharing ideas and resources across networks and raising the collective IQ of society through human-computer interactions. That dream drove him to design some of the foundational technologies that drive today’s information society – including a few that might surprise you.
You don’t know jack about optical audio
If the back of your entertainment system looks like a cross between mission control and a 1960s Manhattan switchboard, you could probably use a little help separating your composite from your component video. In this article, I’ll explain the oxymoronic mystery that is optical audio, with stops along the way to explore the evolution of inputs, outputs, standards and jacks that led to it. I’ll also tell you how this fiberoptic system stacks up against HDMI.
Molecular biologists bring gamers into the ‘fold’
Playing video games isn’t exactly rocket science but, thanks to a crowdsourcing computer game developed by University of Washington researchers, it can be molecular biology – and can offer hope to sufferers of tough-to-crack diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and HIV.
Like John Henry versus the steam hammer or Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue, Foldit players show that humans still have a thing or two to teach machines; unlike Henry, who died, or Kasparov, who lost in a rematch, protein-folding gamers still have an edge over the brute-force number crunching of supercomputers.
It’s the pictures that got small
When televisions first entered the marketplace, directors were faced with a challenge: How to develop a visual language that would translate to a tiny black-and-white screen. They couldn’t just borrow from film: When concentrated down to 3 – 12 inches (or, after World War II, 19 – 20), the compositions, symbols and set dressing of massive silver screen productions reduced to a muddle. The effect has only grown more pronounced in the smash-cut, hyper-kinetic summer blockbusters of today.
It would no doubt strike many movie directors as strange to see us with our heads down, staring at our hands and enjoying their bigger-than-life productions on smaller-than-your palm devices. Nevertheless, people want their movies, and they want them on their iPhones, Androids and other portable devices. Here are some of the best apps available for downloading, collecting, experiencing, sharing and playing games about your favorite movies.