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: Computing
Hobbled Horses Under the Hood – and How to Get Them Running Again
Does it feel like lately your car has exchanged horsepower for hamster power? If so, you might have a power problem, but good luck nailing it down; the same intricate fuel systems that mostly conquered vapor lock also introduced a slew of failure points, and pinpointing which one is responsible can try the patience of a shade-tree saint.
Thankfully, there are some clear signs to look for, so get the banana out of your tailpipe and read…
How It’s Made: Crystal Edition
In physics, the term “crystal” designates a solid substance with internal symmetry and a related, regular surface pattern. But such a dry description cannot capture the intricacy and variety of materials found in snowflakes and crown jewels, or that power stereos and ultrasound machines, or that flavor our food. Nor can it convey the delicate dance of temperature, pressure and time that crystal growth requires.
Historically, growing crystals was as much art as science. Today, it requires precise technologies and technologies to control growth, often on a molecular scale.
Weighing in on Digital Scales
Whether they are weighing train cars, big rigs or vegetables in your local grocery, scales are the engines that drive global commerce. Without them, there could be no trade, and laboratories and pharmaceutical companies would have to dream up other ways to assay, mete and dose. Yet most of us are oblivious to the physical laws and clever engineering that go into these pivotal devices. It’s time to weigh in on…
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.