Archive for March 2010

April Fools Pranks and Gadgets

April Fools Day is not too far away. It is celebrated in most parts of the world people either hate it or love it, but they just can’t ignore it. Top 100 April Fools Pranks and Gadgets gives you a lot of ideas for preparing for all the wonderful pranks and that that cool gadgets

Light for Communication between Computer Chips

New advances in optical communications are always interesting. IBM Scientists Create Ultra-Fast Device Which Uses Light for Communication between Computer Chips and IBM jumps ‘last hurdle’ to on-chip optical communication articles tell that IBM scientists few weeks ago unveiled a significant step towards replacing electrical signals that communicate via copper wires between computer chips with

New server in use

ePanorama.net is now running on a new more powerful web server. Things should be now running more smoothly. Enjoy the new speed. Report if you see any problems on the new server.

Is H.264 a legal minefield?

H.264 use isn’t all free all the time. MPEG-LA is the industry group that licenses the H.264 patent portfolio to the likes of software companies, optical-disc duplicators, Blu-ray player makers, and others who have need to use H.264. MPEG LA licenses a portfolio of more than 1,000 H.264-related patents on behalf of 26 companies that

Take advantage of open-source hardware

It does not always pay to design everything from ground up. Basing your product on a reference design or demo board can speed time to market. And on hobby projects using ready designs can help you so that you can concentrate using your time on the most interesting parts instead spending most of the time

Electrolytic capacitor failures

The most common reasons that modern digital electronics devices fail seem to be a bad electrolytic capacitors. Bad electrolytic capacitors cause frequent failures of switch mode power supplies. It seems power supplies are often the weakest link in many modern electronics devices. Since there is tremendous price pressure on PC’s and other consumer electronics devices,

Ecosia green search

Green his the web. Ecosia is a new Internet search engine backed by Yahoo, Bing and the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). According to site description it basically works like any other search engine but, it gives most (80%) if it’s advertising revenue to a rainforest protection program run by the WWF. Ecosia users

Design by Community Smartphone

Do you want to help create a smartphone concept device of the future? Between March and May 2010 Nokia wants to harness the collective thoughts of the Conversations readership to map out a concept device of the future. It is a six-step process where you get to vote for the features and functions you think

Unshielded RCA cable is bad design

Here is a bit long article about HIFI system interconnect cables. There are pages promoting use of different unshielded cable constructions for HIFI systems interconnections. But the truth is that unshielded RCA cable is bad design and should be avoided. This article tells the truth about unshielded RCA cables, why they are bad and how