CES 2008: the future gadgets

CES 2008, one of the best technology events of the world, has just started and lots of new gadgets are being presented there. And for the look of it, 2008 will be an interesting, if not revolutionary, year for the world of technology. Check out some of the news and gadgets that are available at the technology fair:

• A giant curved LCD display that can push your gaming experience to a 2880x900 resolution
• Fujitsu concept devices that can make your shopping experience easier (with video)
• Sony's Wireless USB technology, TransferJet, gets demonstrated (with video)
  
• Wow, a 27-inch OLED display that is as thick as 3 credit cards joined together (with video)
  
• Super-slow filming with the new Casio EX F1, now available for mere mortals (with video)
  
• Skype available on the Playstation Portable
• The real guitar hero
• The Motorola banana slider

Apparently it's Windows fault!

Last August, 16th, Skype users must have noticed that they couldn't connect to the network and perform phone calls. For two days the network was completely unstable and people were starting to think that there was some kind of attack to the Skype infrastructure.

Well, yesterday Skype Inc.'s boss has issued a statement where he "blames" the Windows Update Service for this catastrophic failure. How? Easy: apparently it was in this same day that Windows Update "suggested" the update of some Windows patches. When millions of Windows users performed the necessary updates and restarted their computers (as most of them have the option of starting Skype along with Windows), the Skype network was flooded with millions and millions of log-in requests, thus causing a chain reaction that resulted on the total breakdown of the Skype network.

Although I'm not a big fan of Windows and the fact that I don't particularly like the updating process of Windows, I have to admit that this "blaming" process from Skype towards Microsoft is quite far-fetched. First, because most people don't perform the updates as soon as they are available and second, because not everyone restarts the computer right after the updates. You'd need a huge coincidence for all Windows users to actually perform these two steps at the same time.

Skype has to learn the lesson and improve its infrastructure instead of blaming others for their mistakes.

Source: Skype

Joost: HDTV over IP

The founders of Skype have recently announced that they will launch a new Internet-based television service, which will be named Joost, that consists on the very first high-definition television content transmission service over the Internet.

This project will host not only content from the big media companies, as well as independent content from media users (kind like YouTube but with piracy-awareness control), and it will be totally free since it will work under a business model based on advertising.

However, the service will only be up and running for everybody on the summer of 2007. You could apply for beta testing, though.

Source: Reuters Tech News