It may not be the most talked-about wearable, but the Smartwatch 2 continues to benefit from feature updates and a growing apps ecosystem.
Two consortiums—VESA and the MIPI Alliance—published a new video-compression standard for mobile devices on Tuesday. Display Stream Compression (DSC) 1.0 is designed to extend the life of some current video connectors by reducing the bandwidth requirements of 4K and higher-resolution video by more than 60 percent. VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) adopted DSC 1.0 for its embedded DisplayPort 1.4 standard, while the MIPI Alliance (a group that develops standards for hardware and software interfaces in mobile devices) has embraced DSC 1.0 for its MIPI Display Serial Interface (DSI) Specification version 1.2. DSI 1.2 is used for embedded video in some smartphones, tablets, and laptops. While today’s announcement involves primarily mobile devices, VESA said it anticipates the DSC standard will also be used for external display interfaces to computer monitors and televisions. (Although without the participation of the HDMI Licensing consortium, it’s anyone’s guess if DSC will make its way into the more consumer-oriented HDMI standard.)
If the U.S. Supreme Court rules that streaming video provider Aereo violates the copyrights of TV networks, it may also put cloud storage services at risk, a lawyer for the company argued Monday. Aereo does not trigger the so-called public performance clause in U.S. copyright law, and should not have to pay royalties, because it gives subscribers access only to TV stations that are available over the air for free, David Frederick, Aereo’s lawyer, told the panel of Supreme Court justices. And unlike cable and satellite TV services, which pay royalties to some networks, Aereo does not give thousands of people access to the same TV show at the same time, he said.
Windows 8.1 has some great little goodies in it, and Microsoft gave us a few more with the recent Speaking of goodies, two features buried in the recent versions of Windows are particularly useful for taking the hassle out of some pretty hassle-prone Wi-Fi management tasks. Use the PC Setting app to dump old Wi-Fi connections from your known networks list.
Do we really need to spell this out for you? OK, gather around. We'll make this short.
The undead are rising from their graves—or at least a legion of long-forgotten AOL email addresses are. Folks have been complaining about a flood of spam email flowing out from a sea of AOL email addresses over the past several days, with tales of angst being chronicled under the My wife & I were very early Internet users, new thing called "AOL" - & now
LG is getting ready to enter the increasingly competitive smartwatch market
Apple is offering to recycle its products for free worldwide, and has included even third-party products like mobile phones and PCs in the program in some countries. The company said on its redesigned environmental responsibility A spokesman for Apple confirmed Monday that the program would be available worldwide. The announcement ahead of Earth Day on Tuesday offers store gift cards, if the old product is found to be reusable, for use against new purchases at Apple online and physical stores. If the product cannot be reused, Apple will recycle it at no cost to the user.
Google Glass-wearing, iPhone-toting techies who can’t be bothered to look at their smartphones for texts can instead peer into a different screen out of the corner of their eye. Google on Monday People won’t be able to reply to the texts on Glass due to limitations with iOS, Google said. But they will get a notification on Glass whenever they receive a text. Users will be able to turn on the feature by going to their iPhone’s Bluetooth settings, and selecting “Show notifications” for their paired Glass.