Intel demos 7Gbps wireless docking

Intel on Thursday demonstrated multi-gigabit wireless docking technology that affords speeds of up to 7Gbps, 10 times the rate of the fastest Wi-Fi networks based on the IEEE 802.11n standard.

At its annual Intel Developers Forum, the chip maker demonstrated Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) docking technology using an ultrabook. The company said WiGig is on track to becoming the most important next-generation multi-gigabit wireless technology.

Intel CTO Justin Rattner said there will come a day when an ultrabook or tablet can be dropped anywhere on a desk and automatically connect to a display monitor and peripherals.

"Looking to the future, all computing will become wireless computing, with an ever-increasing demand for faster wireless communication," Rattner said in a statement. "I'm excited by what I've seen from WiGig technology so far -- not only its multi-gigabit throughput capability, but also the flexibility of the single technology to support a wide range of... applications."

Intel demonstrated the WiGig technology, combined with advanced protocol adaption layers (PAL) designed for PC and mobile applications.

The WiGig medium access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) control specification operates in the unlicensed 60GHz frequency band, which has more spectrum available than the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands used by existing Wi-Fi products. This allows wider channels that support faster transmission speeds.

The WiGig specification is based on the IEEE 802.11 standard, which is at the core of hundreds of millions of Wi-Fi products deployed worldwide, according to the Wireless Gigabit Alliance, a nonprofit standards organization.

The specification includes native support for Wi-Fi over 60GHz, and new devices with tri-band radios will be able to seamlessly integrate into 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi networks, the WiGig Alliance stated.

Several other members of the Wireless Gigabit Alliance plan to demonstrate WiGig technology at CES 2013 in Las Vegas in January.

According to Ali Sadri, chairman of the WiGig Alliance, the specification also supports wireless implementations of HDMI and DisplayPort interfaces, as well as the High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) scheme used to protect digital content transmitted over those interfaces. It scales to allow transmission of both compressed and uncompressed video.

The WiGig specification, for example, allows for wireless connectivity using HDMI and display extensions, so that laptops may one day be able to connect to televisions and stream video.

"Intel demo'ing WiGig ... is a big deal for us and the industry," Sadri said. "It is recognition from one of the world's leading vendors that WiGig is real and has a bright future.

"In just a few years to come, I believe people will not know what they did without it," Sadri said. "The technology is nearly ready, and with chips from multiple WiGig member companies already in production and certification ready for mid-2013, I would expect a real explosion in the number of WiGig devices coming to market soon."

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Openoffice.org / LibreOffice Draw template for Epson direct CD print (PX720WD)

Since writing my review of the Epson Stylus Multifunction Photo printer PX720WD I’ve been using it more. I’m still very happy with the printer, but there’s just one little thing that needs a bit of a fudge to work, which is CD printing.

I’ve only tried this using OpenOffice.org 3 running on Ubuntu (at time of writing the default office suite). The template should work on OpenOffice.org on any platform (Linux, Mac, Windows etc.) or on Libre Office, but I’m not sure whether it is necessary to apply the workaround on all versions / platforms of the office suites. I also expect that the template should work on other Epson printers. Please use the comments below if you have any experience with other models.

This template is unlikely to work on other manufacturer’s printers. Looking for direct CD print for Canon printers? Click here.

Firstly you need to create the CD in the correct position which is in the Top Left of a page. In my case using the A4 paper size as I live in Europe, but if you are in the US you could change your page size to Legal paper size if you preferred, although you shouldn’t need to as only a small amount of the page is used.

To make life easier I’ve created the following template which you can open in OpenOffice.org / Libre Office.

• OpenOffice / Libre Office Epson Direct CD print template (epson-cd-layout.otg)

Opening the template you will get a page as follows:

As you can see the position of the CD is indicated. Note that the CD image is on a non-printable layer and so will not be printed. You can add your own text and images. Any parts that are on the printable area will be printed and any parts that fall outside of the printable area will be ignored.
The printable area is dependant upon the CDs used (particularly whether the inner circle is printable) and upon printer driver settings (more about later).
The problem then comes when trying to print. Whilst I believe it is possible to print to CD from OpenOffice.org the printer driver page makes it very difficult to change the settings to allow printing direct to CD. I therefore recommend first exporting as a PDF and then printing from inside of your PDF viewer, in my case the Evince Document Viewer (default on Ubuntu Linux). Use the Export as PDF option, you can accept most defaults, although you can increase the photo quality as the file size isn’t an issue when just being used locally.
Then load into your PDF viewer (eg. double click the exported pdf file) and print from there.
On the print page choose Page Setup and set to “One Sided”, Paper Type: CD/DVD and Paper Source CD/DVD. The Paper Size should match the paper size used in OpenOffice.org Draw (in my case A4).
You can adjust the size of the printable area (eg. the inner circle size) on the Advanced Options page. If you discs can be printed almost to the centre then set the CD/DVD Inner Print Position to 26mm. CD/DVD Print Pos. Up-Down and Left-Right settings can be used to make small adjustments to the picture position on the disc if necessary.

Conclusion

On the Epson printer direct printing to printable CDs still works and gives excellent results. Unfortunately the way that the printing is handled in OpenOffice.org Draw means that it is difficult to print directly. Exporting as PDF and then printing from a PDF viewer provides a workable solution, although it does feel a bit of a fudge.
An alternative may be to create a template in Inkscape, which looking at the print options should allow an easier way to print direct to CD. I’ll look at putting together an Inkscape template and let you know how I get along.

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Paying for open source software – Crossover / WINE

I’m a big fan of Free and Open Source Software. Obviously getting something that you may otherwise pay up to £100 for, for free is one of the reasons, but it’s also about the philosophy in having the ability to look at how it works and to improve it for yourself and others. It helps build a community around the software and can mean having a direct input into how the software works.

See my earlier post for an explanation of what FREE and Open Source Software is.

I am not however completely against software that is not free (in both open source and money). There are times when it would not be able to get sufficient funding to develop software using the free model. For example whilst there are some really good open source games, it is well short of the amount of commercial games which are developed in response to customer demand and driven by profit.

What I am against are companies that lock you in by using proprietary formats and implement open standards incorrectly so that they only work with their software. Companies that use underhand tactics to destroy competition to maintain their unfair monopolies. But that’s not what this post is about…

What is WINE?

WINE stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator. It provides a way to run Windows Software in a different operating system (eg. Linux or MacOS). It is open source; available for free; possible to modify and improve.

As Windows is a proprietary closed source operating system it’s not possible to see all the different things it uses to work so therefore the WINE software is constantly evolving to work with additional software. The list of software that works without issues is fairly limited, but is growing.

WINE – Crossover Office Professional from Codeweavers

Note that Crossover Office, Crossover Professional and Crossover Impersonator all refer to the same software, but is available in different versions. It is now called CrossOver Impersonator (the Office has been dropped from the name) and is available as CrossOver Linux / Mac Standard or Professional, as CrossOver Games or a Bundle including Crossover (Linux or Mac) and CrossOver Games.

Crossover Impersonator is both open source and closed source. It combines Open Source Software of WINE with some closed source software to make installing software easier. Codeweavers work on improving the WINE open source software which they release as open source for everyone to use, but the “bottles environments” and the installer code is only available by buying a software license.
The cost is not too expensive, certainly less than buying a copy of Windows. The license includes either 6 months or 12 months of support depending upon the version purchased. Support is limited to only certain software that is certified to work, but it does include some key software to justify the purchase.

Software installed

Some of the software that I have been able to successfully install and run includes:

• Adobe Flash Professional
• Adobe Studio
• Railroad Tycoon (on CrossOver Games)
• CorelDraw (limited functionality)
• Microsoft Powerpoint viewer 2007 (the reason for needing support)

and a few other programs.
The list of supported software is much bigger.
I didn’t use the support at all during my previous license period, but I have recently used the support to get Microsoft Powerpoint viewer 2007 working under Mint Linux. It appeared to install correctly, but whenever I tried to launch it nothing happened.

Installing Powerpoint Viewer 2007 on Linux

Normally if I have a Powerpoint presentation I will open it with Libre Office which works very well. Unfortunately I had a password protected presentation file which Libre Office is unable to read. I needed to run this on my Linux Mint (having recently replaced Unbuntu Linux) laptop.
I launched the installer from CrossOver Linux, which downloaded and installed the software over the Internet. Whenever I tried to run it nothing happened.
I spent a lot of time searching the Internet and trying various re-installs before I contacted support. I received a reply in less than 24 hours with some pointers on how to get the software working. They also asked me to submit some more details so that they could investigate further (although that was not needed in the end).
I think that it turned out to be a missing DLL file, and I’m not sure why it was missing or which particular action fixed it, but the advise from the support ticket at least got me working in the right direction. 24 hours after my original ticket and I had PowerPoint viewer up and running and now able to load and play the powerpoint presentation.

Is it worth paying for?

I like the Crossover products, whilst they don’t run all the software I’d like, the ones it does run really well. It’s worth paying for the convenience of the installer which makes life much easier, but the support has also come in very handy.
Added with the knowledge that the funding for the commercial product is also contributing towards the improvement of the Open Source WINE and I think I’ve had excellent value for money for the software.

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Should children under 13 be allowed to use Facebook?

According to Metro:
“A million children under 12 use Facebook”

Are you surprised?

I’m not!

I suggest you read through the article first which will provide the background for what I’m suggesting below.

At home

Firstly I’d like to state that my eldest child is only 6 years old and she does not have a username for Facebook (the article talks about 7+ so she’s not quite there yet anyway). She does have her own laptop (running Linux) and accesses the Internet on a regular basis. This includes her school homework (the school requires pupils to go online to complete some homework), to access games and educational websites and to watch Internet TV (eg IPlayer).

I do use Facebook and as with many parents that use Facebook there are lots of photos and comments about my children both on my profile and those of friends and relatives.

My daughter knows that I use Facebook and I have shown her my Facebook account, including looking at photos and seeing information about herself, her friends and relatives and other people, but I do not allow her to see / use my Facebook account when I am not present.

I do not believe that Facebook as it is currently setup is a suitable place for younger children, but perhaps it could be?

What’s the current situation

According to my daughter’s school “It is illegal for anyone under 13 to have a Facebook page*”.

I personally think this is wrong, even when you ignore the error of referring to a Facebook Page (see below).

Whilst I’m no legal expert I’m not aware of any UK law forbidding minors from having an account for a social networking website. They may be breaking the terms of use for the website, but I hardly think that a child would be prosecuted for Fraud because they are pretending to be older than they are.

The Facebook Terms and conditions state: “You will not use Facebook if you are under 13.”

The way that Facebook very much puts the responsibility onto the individual for what they do and don’t want to share. I think that Facebook (or another social network site) could have a separate section or set-up that could make it safer for younger children.

But young children are using Facebook

The fact that young children are still using Facebook shows that a blanket ban on under 13s does not work. I think that’s a common thing with life that a minimum age does not deter anyone from wanting to join earlier, and peer pressure will always exist. I’m sure that if Facebook was around when I was under 13 and I could have got an account by pretending to be older then I probably would have.

The problem is that once these young children get an account by pretending to be older than they are and are then treated the same as teenagers.

So how could it be done differently?

Rather than just shutting these children out then there could instead be a social network site where young children can safely interact with friends. This could be achieved by active monitoring of the accounts to ensure that children are using the site correctly and to ensure that they don’t do anything that puts them at risk.

This would be prohibitively expensive for the social network site to monitor using paid staff, but by provide the ability for parents and guardians to have better controls over what their child can do could be policed directly by parents / guardians.

Today many parents do already monitor their children (eg. teenagers) on facebook. The Facebook Help your teens stay safe page suggests that parents work with their children to set appropriate rules. Parents on Facebook are often friends of their teenage children so that they can see any public posts (but that does not allow the parent to see any direct communications).

But I think that it would be better for those under 13 to have a profile that their parent can fully monitor and where a parent can control which “friends” they have on facebook (or other social media site).

The child would need to have their parent set-up their account for them and could place restrictions on what the child could do without first getting electronic approval from their parent.

It could include automatic filters that provide direct SMS notification to parents when their child does something that is considered a safety risk – allowing parents to respond directly in helping to keep their children safe.

This would also help these children understand more about how to use the social network sites in a safer way so that when they became teenagers they would be better prepared for how to deal with unsupervised access to social networking.

What about parents that didn’t monitor their child?

I think that the emphasis is very much down to the parent to talk with their child to work out the appropriate level of protection and monitoring. If the parent does not want to monitor the child then that is down to them, but providing the tools and ability for a parent to oversee a child’s account from a safety perspective would allow those that do want to.

But what about now?

This is all my own thoughts about how the system could be improved to make it safer for younger children. I don’t think that it is appropriate for those under 13 to join Facebook or other social networking sites as it is setup today, but in reality I know that they will.

For now it’s down to parents to emphasis the risks and to work with their children to create guidelines as to how they use the Internet. I also think schools can help a lot, which in some areas of child Internet safety they do well, but I think in other ways they appear to be out of touch.

There are some useful links below where you can find out more about Internet safety.

More on Internet Safety

The following links are a good starting point for anyone concerned about Internet safety and young people.

• Childnet International
• Think You Know? – Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP)
• Hector’s World
• NSPCC – Internet Safety
• Click Clever, Click Safe
• CyberMentors
• BBC Internet Safety
• Facebook Safety Centre

Note: *

The reference to Facebook page in this context is incorrect. A Facebook Pages “are for organizations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information in an official, public manner to people who choose to connect with them”, but I believe that they mean a Facebook Account (otherwise known as a username or profile).

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Review MiniPC with Ubuntu pre-installed – DinoPC Nanosaur 330

About the mini PC computer

This is a review of a Mini PC which I got some time ago. I’ve had it a few months now so it’s had a good run through for this review. The same model is still available to buy, although I’m guessing comes with a newer version of Ubuntu.

The mini PC was purchased from DinoPC.com and came with Ubuntu Linux installed. It was purchased as a low power computer to replace my ageing desktop machine. It is being used for the following:

• Email server
• Test / development server
• Streaming server for DLNA (Blue-Ray player)
• Samba server for access within my home
• Always on PC for instant web access (including writing this blog post)
• Plus a few other things like a proxy server to access UK only websites whilst travelling etc.

The main features I was looking for is low power (as it is always-on then power cost is significant) and low noise, both of which are outstanding. It also had to run Linux, but having Ubuntu pre-installed was a bonus.

Tiny PC – What’s included?

The PC is small. I lie it on it’s side and it takes up about the same space as my Amazon Kindle ebook reader, but quite a bit deeper. Looking at it another way it’s about the same size as a home ADSL router / modem. It can lay flat, stand up vertically or even be mounted out-of-sight at the rear of a monitor.

I originally ordered a black Nanosaur 330 as shown on the DinoPC website, but I was contacted by the supplier asking if white would be acceptable instead as the black ones were on back order. The colour wasn’t an issue so I got the white model, although the black model may be better if you were looking for something to use in as a home media centre (it has HDMI built-in so would be suitable for use with a HD-TV).

As well as the HDMI output there is a DVI digital video port, but no analogue VGA port (which is what most monitors still use), but it does include a DVI to VGA adapter, although it does stick out some way from the back of the computer. There are 4 USB ports and an SD slot.

There is built in wireless networking 802.11n as well as an ethernet port for wired networks. I found the wireless to be unreliable in my house, but I believe that to be partly due to interference. I get similar problems with my netbook, but my Dell laptop works better (although my laptop still has speed issues rather than drop-outs that the miniPC and netbook suffer).
The miniPC has the same Atom processor as used in Netbooks (eg. Asus EeePC netbook), so it is not a particularly fast processor. It can handle everything I do quite easily although I run Xfce rather than Unity (see later). It runs web based games quite well, and can even handle photo editing, but would not be able to run any processor intensive games or video editing etc.

As far as power usage is concerned the DinoPC is very low powered. I estimate that compared with the PC I was running before it will pay for itself within 2 years or so in electricity savings. It is also very quiet. After my noisy PC I thought that the computer was turned off at first, is really is that quiet. Much of the time there is no active cooling, but there is an internal fan which comes on sometimes. It is noticeable, but not too loud to be a distraction (a little quieter than most laptop fans).
It includes a built-in speaker, but also has speaker / microphone jacks to improve on the sound quality.

Software

The Mini PC comes with Linux pre-installed. It uses a standard Ubuntu Linux. Mine originally arrived about a week after Ubuntu 11.04 was released and was installed with the very latest version which was impressive. It was a standard install, but they had made the effort of using my own name as the default login which it went into straight away. The only problem was that they didn’t tell me the password. I expect that if I’d emailed them then they would have provided it, but it was a weekend and so I just reinstalled Ubuntu Linux.
Ubuntu Linux is an easy to use operating system which is free* and comes with lots of free software. This includes just about everything you would want to do including office suite, web browsers, photo editors and video editors, so you don’t normally need to buy any more software. It doesn’t however run Windows software (although there’s usually an alternative), but some can be used by using WINE or paying for Crossover WINE software.
The only thing I found was that Ubuntu is a little slow on such a low powered machine. It is usable, but not as responsive as I would like. I therefore installed xubuntu which has all of the same software as Ubuntu, but uses less memory and runs faster.
*Free can mean that you don’t need to pay to use it, but for open source software it also means you have the freedom to use and modify the programs as you wish. It does includes some proprietary drivers, but most of Ubuntu Linux is completely FREE in both respects.

Summary

The DinoPC is small, low power and very quiet. It can handle most computing functions, but is based on a low power processor so is not up to particularly intensive programs.
It comes pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux which is easy to use and saves a lot on having to buy Windows and additional software. You just may need to ask what the password is as they forgot to include it when they sent mine.
To make it run faster you may also want to consider replacing Ubuntu Linux with Xubuntu Linux which is free and runs a bit faster.

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Getting wireless to work on Xubuntu / Ubuntu linux with broadcom based firmware

In the past I have had problems with getting wireless working on Linux laptops. I thought this had been fixed with more recent distributions, but in some rare circumstances there can be problems.

In this case I have an old laptop that I have set-up for my son to use. It’s ancient compared with current hardware, but is still able to run a less demanding distribution such as Xubuntu. It installed OK with and older version of Xubuntu, but with 11.10 it said “Requires Firmware”.

Checking it’s a Broadcom mini-wireless card

The first step is to identify what wireless chipset is installed. In my case a Dell mini-pci wireless card, which uses the Broadcom chipset. To check this run the lspci command from a terminal:

$lspci | grep Network
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

Note you still use lspci for a pcmcia card.

Assuming this says Broadcom BCM43??? we can proceed, if not then you may have to look at configuring the card manually using ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers, but that’s beyond the scope of this.

Install the drivers

To install the drivers run the following from a terminal. You need to be connected to the Internet when this is run using the onboard Ethernet card and a cable direct to your router.

sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

This will download the firmware from the Internet and install the appropriate driver. You should then be able to select the appropriate wireless network from the normal network list.

Conflicts with other wireless packages

If you have the broadcom-sta-common package installed it blacklists the b43 driver which is required for wireless.

To fix – edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf
delete (or comment out with a #) the line. If this file does not exist then move on to the next step.

blacklist b43

Then to force the module to load during boot edit /etc/modules
add a line with


b43

It should now still work after a reboot.

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Computer Benefits and Disadvantages

Computer is widely used now-a-days all over the world for various purposes. Computer has many benefits as well as many drawbacks.

The main benefits of using computer is it helps for education purpose, scientific research, medical purpose, entertainment, internet marketing & e-commerce, communication etc.

Computer helps to study us in more convenient  and interactive way. In most of the Universities and Colleges, using computer and computer education is compulsory.  Students study various subjects of computer such as Information Technology(IT), Engineering, Programming, Graphics, Animation, and so on.

Scientists also use computer for their different research purpose such as space exploration, planet study, constellation study, atomic and molecular study of matters.

Advancement of computer technology has also helped in medical field. Modern surgery, and radiation treatment  for cancer and tumor is done more safely and accurately.

One of the main benefit/advantage of computer is for entertainment purpose. Entertainment is also the main reason for rapid development of computer field. People rather watch movies online on youtube and other site in their convenient time than watching movie in cinema hall. Children play games on computers. People also use computer to communicate and interact with each other through social networking sites such as facebook, and twitter. Computer animation is also widely used in film industry.

Information Technology  is considered as the heart of every organization. Information Technology has helped every organization for internet marketing and e-commerce business either for organization or customer. Success of any organization depends upon IT. For example, people use internet to know detail information of any organization about their status in share market.

Although computer has many advantages but there as few drawbacks/disadvantages as well. Research has shown that the blood pressure of people using computer regularly is higher than normal people. Excessive use of computer also leads to the addiction of it. Information of people can be easily found on different social networking sites and it leads to insecurity for their digital information.

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