June 28, 2007
Divx: an easy path to the TV
Bit Player
Jon Healey writes about the love hate relationship Hollywood has with IT.
“Film Fresh, an online store specializing in indie films, getting into the downloadable-film market with the help of DivX, which was supplying the software to compress, play and burn the files. The store’s approach offered something that has largely eluded other downloadable movie ventures: an easy path to the TV set, at least for the tens of millions of people with DivX-capable DVD players in their living rooms. Or rather, that’s what the folks at DivX promised. I recently downloaded a couple of movies from the site and found that the claim was pretty much true: within minutes of the movie’s arrival on my PC, it was playing on my TV.”
IBM’s petaflop supercomputer
DailyTech
Marcus Yam says IBM’s Blue Gene/P triples the performance of its previous supercomputer.
“IBM has announced Blue Gene/P, the second generation of the world’s most powerful supercomputer. Blue Gene/P nearly triples the performance of its predecessor, Blue Gene/L – which also held the title of being the world’s fastest computer.”
When you’ve really got to go
TechCrunch
Duncan Riley discovers a Web site that helps people locate washrooms.
“Mizpee.com is a new service focused on delivering pertinent information regarding the location of nearby restrooms. Using MizPee is as simple as surfing to mizpee.com via a mobile device browser. Users simply enter their location and MizPee delivers a list of nearby toilets, how far away the toilet is, a rating and whether it requires payment. Further details may include disabled access, whether the restroom includes a diaper-changing station and for those really keen on browsing for the best toilet, user comments as well.”