The TVNZ 7 Internet Debate, in association with InternetNZ involves four politicians quizzed on major areas of ICT policy with questions coming from you through the online chat, a studio audience, and experienced journalists.
The politicians are Labour’s Minister of Communications Hon David Cunliffe, National ICT Spokesperson Hon Maurice Williamson, ACT Leader Rodney Hide and Greens ICT Spokesperson Metiria Turei.
Broadcaster Sean Plunket will moderate the debate, with questions posed by experienced journalists Fran O’Sullivan and Russell Brown.
"Contemporary biographers of Tesla have regarded him as "The Father of Physics", "The man who invented the twentieth century"[3] and "the patron saint of modern electricity."[4]"Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Lika, Croatian Krajina region the then Austo-Hungarian Empire, To a Serbian Orthodox Priest father, and a Mother who invented Household appliances.
Charles Batchelor was a close a associate of Thomas Edison, and grew up in Manchester England, he himself is still regarded as a great inventor and was an early executive of the General Electric Company.
Thomas Edison is a very-well known inventor (in-part no doubt to the American ability to Celebrate their Heroes - which I think is really good and other countries should celebrate their historical heroes as much, however ironic that Edison was born a Canadian) most definitely his fame comes from his most well known invention, the long-lasting, practical Electric Lightbulb (no he didn't actually invent the lightbulb - infact a majority of his inventions were improvements on prior patented inventions). other inventions include the Phonograph and the Carbon Microphone.
" I know two great Men, One is you (referring to Edison) and the other is this young man (referring to Tesla)"
Tidbit: Direct current flows continuously in one direction, alternating current changes direction (usually 50 or 60 times per second)
the common term for this is hertz which is a measure of frequency, loosly defined as the number of events per second.
the formal definition as defined by the international system of Units (SI) is as defined as follows from Wikipedia:the hyperfine splitting in the ground state of the caesium 133 atom is exactly 9 192 631 770 hertz, ν (hfs Cs) = 9 192 631 770 Hz.[1]. Equivalently, 1 Hz = 1⁄9,192,631,770 ν (hfs Cs). This definition is derived from the SI definition of the second. The base unit for hertz is s-1 (also called inverse seconds, reciprocal seconds). As hertz
is commonly used to measure rotational speed, the base unit is sometimes represented as cycle/s.
- an organisation still around to this day, but known as IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) - www.ieee.orgas part of his paper titled "A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers", a copy of his paper is available online
" I will now proceed to show how this result was accomplished."
the tesla effect is defined in various sources as: "..term for an application of a type of electrical conduction. Through logitudinal waves, an operator uses the tesla effoct in the wireless transferl of energy to a receiving device."
[I have conceived] a means that will make it possible for man to transmit energy in large amounts, thousands of horsepower, from one planet to another, absolutely regardless of distance. I think that nothing can be more important than interplanetary communication. It will certainly come some day and the certitude that there are other human beings in the universe, working, suffering, struggling, like ourselves, will produce a magic effect on mankind and will form the foundation of a universal brotherhood that will last as long as humanity itself.
—Nikola Tesla,
Unfortunately this tower was torn down for scrap during World War One.Wardenclyffe Tower (1901 – 1917) also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early wireless telecommunications aerial tower designed by Nikola Tesla and intended for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony, broadcasting, and to demonstrate the transmission of power without interconnecting wires.[1][2] The core facility was never fully operational and was not completed due to economic problems. ...(from wikipedia - the rest of the article here
As expected, Research in Motion today unveiled the BlackBerry Bold, also known as BlackBerry 9000, a tri-band HSDPA 3G smartphone with integrated wi-fi and GPS and a 624MHz CPU with 128MB flash memory and 1GB of onboard storage memory.
The Bold features the highest-performing BlackBerry display, a half-VGA (with 480 x 320 resolution), colour LCD screen. Although not a touchscreen like the iPhone, and a lot smaller than the iPhone's 3.5-inch display, the Bold's screen has the same pixel resolution so images look much sharper on it than they do on the iPhone. RIM declined to comment on whether the company was working on a touchscreen BlackBerry.
Another highly visible change is its "desktop-style" browsing experience with an enhanced web browser and a trackball that can mimic a conventional mouse. Users can switch between the full HTML content display or the mobile version. Also new is support for streaming videos with the addition of the real-time streaming protocol.
Plus if you've been craving iTunes as well as email on your BlackBerry, the Bold now delivers. The new BlackBerry Media Sync application lets users sync iTunes music collections with the phone. A USB 2.0 port enables high speed file transfers with a PC.
The device's wi-fi adapter supports 802.11a/b/g connections. RIM is offering what it dubs "Push Button Setup" to make it simpler for users to connect to protected wireless LANs. Integrated GPS can feed location data to applications such as BlackBerry Maps.
The Bold will be available worldwide in the next few months.
Full details of the BlackBerry Bold can be found online at blackberry.com/blackberrybold. RIM says the removable-rechargeable 1500 mAhr battery delivers about 5 hours of talk time and 13 days standby time.
John Cox
Asus today launched the Eee PC 900, a bigger brother of the original Eee PC. the 900 sports a larger 8.9-inch screen, and 12 or 20GB solid state disk storage options, but it still weighs less than a kilogram.
The bigger screen has resolution of 1024 x 600, which means you can view an A4 page without having to scroll left or right. New FingerGlide technology makes it possible to use two simple finger movements on the touchpad to scroll up and down for easier document viewing or zoom in and out of pictures.
To suit differing user requirements, the Eee PC 900 is available with Windows XP or a Linux operating system.
The Eee PC 900 is available this month with a recommended retail price of NZ$749 inc GST. The XP version will be available through selected retailers and the Linux version will be available through computer resellers.
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Creative has been hawking its X-Fi sound enhancement technology hard in the last couple of years, putting it in everything from sound cards to headphones -- and now in a portable AV player. Aside from the usual voice recorder, FM radio, expandable storage, and audio/video playback, the Zen X-Fi is the first player from Creative to offer built-in WiFi. Like Microsoft's Zune, the X-Fi lacks a Web browser, which is a major stumbling block for a WiFi device, but it also lacks the Zune's wireless sync. It does, however, offer limited chat capabilities and AV streaming via LAN.
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Read MoreSky TV today launched its high-definition offering dubbed My Sky HDi. The first channels out of the blocks with HD content will be Sky Sports 1 and 2, Sky Movies and Sky Movies Greats.
And, throwing the cat amongst the pigeons in the free-to-air space, TV3 will also be carried in HD on the new service.
Existing My Sky subscribers will be able to upgrade to the new service, and the new set top box, for $49.95. The new My Sky box has twice the hard drive storage of the existing My Sky box and an additional tuner so you can record two programmes at once and watch a third.
If you are a Sky subscriber but not currently a My Sky subscriber you have two options. You can join the new service and have your old box taken away for a joining fee of $599 (remember too that you do not own the My Sky box, you are just renting it). You will then pay $10 a month for HD service on top of your current subscription.
Alternatively, you can go for the multi-room option where you keep your old box as a second box for another room and get the new MY Sky HD box, for a fee of $599. You will then get a multi-room subscription free for four months (a multi-room subscription is normally $25 a month on top your usual subscription).
Output to your TV will be via HDMI and all high definition broadcasts will be at 1080i resolution. This means Sky TV here will film all its own high-def content at 1080i and all overseas shows to be broadcast in high-def will be scaled to 1080i.
The "i" in HDi stands for internet and the launch of IPTV with the new MY Sky box featuring an Ethernet connection built in. No details were available on this service and it is currently about a year away.
Sky chief executive John Fellet said high definition would be " the biggest change in television since the introduction of colour in the 1970s". He went on to say that the TV business had always been a race between the broadcast delivery technology and the TV sets themselves. Lately, he said, the TV sets had been winning. An analogue picture on an HDTV looked atrocious, a digital image helped, but a high-def image was what was needed.
Sky's director of Sports Kevin Cameron said the first high-def offerings would be events they covered themselves. To this end, Sky has built a multi-million dollar outside broadcast unit into a huge semi-trailer truck using Sony high-def equipment. This unit has been at work filming in high-def for the past few months and a further three trucks are on their way.
Starting from launch next month until the end of the year, Sky would broadcast 104 sports events in high-def that it had covered itself, and there would be further high-def content from offshore.
Sports fans can look forward to seeing high-def rugby (Tri-Nations and NPC), soccer (English Premiere league and Australian A-league), cricket (England vs South Africa), tennis (US Open), rugby league (NRL and UK Super league) and Nascar.
By August, said Cameron, their would be 500 hours of high-def sports per week and 90 hours on the weekend alone.
Further down the track, Sky has secured the rights to both the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. These two events would receive saturation coverage with the London Olympics having 22hrs of high-def coverage per day on the Prime channel, backed up by a further eight Sky channels boradcasting 24 hours a day.
By the time, there would also be offerings in the mobile TV space and video on demand.
In terms of movies, director of entertainment Travis Dunbar said 60% of movies would be available in high-def on launch, and up to 90% by January of next year. He also said that the gap between theatrical release and movies appearing on Sky was rapidly decreasing and Sky's movies were becoming more current as a result.
As you might expect, the first movies to get HD treatment will be blockbusters like Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: World's End and The Bourne Ultimatum. These movies, said Dunbar, offered those who had invested in a home theatre system the most bang for their buck in terms of image and surround sound.
John Fellet also pointed out that sports in high-def was about the audio as well as the picture and Sky would be working hard to deliver sports events in Dolby 5.1 too.
In technical terms, high-def content will be delivered at bit-rates of about 14Mbits/s as opposed to 6-8Mbits/s for standard definition, and it certainly looked crystal clear in the demos featuring the Super 14 semi-final and the Black Caps one-dayer against England.
A spin off benefit will be that the newer, fatter pipe for bringing in high-def content from offshore will mean that images need to be less compressed before they are sent here, resulting in an improved image at this end for both high-def and standard-def broadcasts.
The Skeleton case is exactly what it sounds like; a barebones open-air case designed for modders, gamers and hobbyists. Antec says it’s the first of its kind in the world, and while we’ve seen some home-brew versions of this, we’d have to agree.
The case weighs in at just over seven kgs, and supports graphic cards up to 27cm in length. It features the standard USB and Firewire ports on the front of the case. The top fan is a massive 250mm, cooling a horizontal, standard ATX-sized motherboard.
We haven’t confirmed any pricing for this unit yet, but it should be available from Antec shortly.
