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<title>Haaze.com / semedian / Published News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:11:02 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
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<title><![CDATA[Digital Lumens rides Moore's Law to efficient LEDs]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=digital-lumens-rides-moores-law-to-efficient-leds</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=digital-lumens-rides-moores-law-to-efficient-leds</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:11:02 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>semedian</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=digital-lumens-rides-moores-law-to-efficient-leds</guid>
<description><![CDATA[BOSTON--Manygreen-tech start-ups are formed with the hopes of bringing a scientific discovery from a university lab to market. Digital Lumens has taken a different tack: it's applying well-known computer technology to dramatically boost efficiency in lighting.On Friday, I visited Digital Lumens' office here to get a closer look at its commercial LED light fixture, a rectangular-shaped spot light roughly the size of a desktop computer. On one side are three light bars blasting out light, on the other is the computing &quot;horsepower&quot; that allows it to be controlled like other equipment on a company network. Making LEDs smarter (images)  Three-year-old Digital Lumens, which raised a $10 million series B round in venture funding last week, is one of many companies applying existing technology to the energy field for better efficiency or productivity, such ascar-sharing sites or solar monitoring applications. Some see the cross between IT and energy as a ripe field which generally better fits the venture investing model compared to solar, battery, or biofuel technologies.In Digital Lumens' case, it's going after a very narrow market, at least at first. It has several dozen customers which use its Intelligent Light Engine product for lighting up warehouse aisles and now with additional funding, it's eyeing new industries to move into.By replacing the typical high-intensity discharge lamp or fluorescent lights used in commercial spaces, it can knock down the power consumption significantly simply because LED lights are more energy efficient. One of its fixtures using 160 watts can replace a 400-watt lamp and give off as much or more light. But adding an embedded processor and Zigbee wireless mesh networking chip turns lights into a &quot;managed resource&quot; and makes the investment in LED lighting more compelling, according to Digital Lumens chief technology officer Brian Chemel. Schools or municipal organizations may consider a four- or five-year payback for an efficiency investment but that's not the case across the board in industry, he said.&quot;If the payback is more than two years, don't even bother going in,&quot; said Chemel. &quot;This is very driven by payback and after two years, it drops straight to the bottom line.&quot;The on-board processor allows the fixture to collect and process data, giving facility managers fine-tune control over lighting, Chemel said. People can make better use of occupancy sensors, which often don't work well, and set a lighting schedule by aisle or by room, he said. LEDs can be dimmed and their life doesn't degrade by turning them on and off often, as it the case with fluorescents. Using the accompanying Web-based software application, people can adjust settings and track the financial results of switching to LEDs. The energy savings from some of its early customers have been dramatic, with one customer reporting a 90 percent reduction in lighting load. Although Digital Lumens is targeting a narrow audience, businesses are big electricity consumers. One customer's energy reduction would be the same as the entire town doing a deep energy efficiency retrofit on all residential buildings, Chemel said.Toehold for smart buildingsDigital Lumens' fixtures right now collect and process data about light levels and motion in aisles, but the system could collect a wider array of data. For example, sensors to track temperature or air quality could be added, opening up different uses, such as hospitals, Chemel said. Another possibility is connecting security cameras to track traffic in retail outlets. There are several companies, including IBM and Cisco, developing technology to improve commercial building's energy efficiency by collecting and analyzing data from building management systems. Chemel sees lighting as a way to bring intelligence into buildings without the complexity and expense of building-wide systems.&quot;We see the lighting network as the scaffolding that building automation systems will be hung,&quot; he said. &quot;The applications are very broad and lighting is so pervasive. The ability to harness those systems is pretty disruptive.&quot;While many green-tech start-ups highlight the environmentally friendly attributes of their products, the primary focus at Digital Lumens is on economics, with environmental benefits a secondary consideration. Chemel and a few other Digital Lumens employees came from Color Kinetics, an LED company specialized in decorative lighting where they did 15,000 installations that always added more lighting load to the electric grid. Now this new company, which employs both lighting and networking industry veterans, is lightening the environmental footprint of lighting on the grid. &quot;We can push out a very efficient technology where it makes economic sense but we're also doing a good thing,&quot; Chemel said.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Google answers critics on HTML5 Web video move]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-answers-critics-on-html5-web-video-move</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-answers-critics-on-html5-web-video-move</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:10:04 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>semedian</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-answers-critics-on-html5-web-video-move</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Google responded to critics of its decision to drop support for a popular HTML5 video codec by declaring that a royalty-supported standard for Web video will hold the Web hostage. Much has been made this week of Google's decision to end support for the widely used H.264 video codec as it implements a key portion of the collection of technologies known as HTML5 in its Chrome browser. Mike Jazayeri, a product manager for Google, wrote a blog post today responding to some of the more common critiques of its plan to support only the WebM video codec standard within the &amp;60'video&amp;62' tag. &quot;Our choice was to make a decision today and invest in open technology to move the platform forward, or to accept the status quo of a fragmented platform where the pace of innovation may be clouded by the interests of those collecting royalties,&quot; Jazayeri wrote. &quot;Seen in this light, we are choosing to bet on the open web and are confident this decision will spur innovation that benefits users and the industry.&quot; Google's decision to support WebM only splits the browser community roughly in two. Apple and Microsoft support the H.264 codec as the technology to be used in the &amp;60'video&amp;62' tag, while Mozilla, Opera, and now Google have gotten in line behind WebM, which Google turned into an open-source project after acquiring the VP8 technology at the heart of WebM from On2 Technologies last year. The main issue is that the five organizations involved in the HTML5 standards-setting process were simply not going to agree on a standard codec for the &amp;60'video&amp;62' tag, Jazayeri wrote. Apple and Microsoft are members of the patent pool that licenses the H.264 code, known as MPEG-LA. And Mozilla and Opera are smaller organizations opposed to paying the licensing fees for that technology. &quot;To companies like Google, the license fees may not be material, but to the next great video startup and those in emerging markets these fees stifle innovation,&quot; Jazayeri wrote in the post. &quot;We believe the web will suffer if there isn't a truly open, rapidly evolving, community developed alternative and have made significant investments to ensure there is one.&quot;Google's decision has caused consternation among video producers worried about having to support two different video standards, since they have no choice but to support devices that play H.264 video--nearly all modern devices--for years to come. Hardware decoders for the H.264 codec, which are all but essential for mobile devices with constrained battery life, are widespread while hardware decoders for WebM are just now emerging. Critics have also pointed out that the decision might actually cause video sites to rely on plug-ins to display video when the whole point of the &amp;60'video&amp;62' tag was to give Web publishers a way to move beyond the limiting nature of plug-ins. Google, with a huge repository of video in YouTube, understands the concerns about maintaining two different video standards, Jazayeri wrote. However, they were probably going to have to do so anyway if they wanted to serve video toFirefox users, who constitute roughly 22 percent of the market, he wrote. (Opera's market share is around 2 percent.) Jazayeri did not directly address the issue of Google's support for WebM ensuring Flash would live for years, other than to say that Chrome would continue to support that plug-in. The post is likely to do nothing to mollify those who think Google is making a huge mistake, but it does lay out the company's thinking in a much more detailed way than its original post provided. &quot;Bottom line, we are at an impasse in the evolution of HTML video,&quot; Jazayeri wrote. &quot;This is why we're joining others in the community to invest in WebM and encouraging every browser vendor to adopt it for the emerging HTML video platform (the WebM Project team will soon release plugins that enable WebM support inSafari and IE9).&quot; It's fair to say this debate is far from over.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Peter Sunde Seconds The Idea Of An Alternative Root&nbsp'DNS]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=peter-sunde-seconds-the-idea-of-an-alternative-rootnbspdns</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=peter-sunde-seconds-the-idea-of-an-alternative-rootnbspdns</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>semedian</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=peter-sunde-seconds-the-idea-of-an-alternative-rootnbspdns</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In October, after the COICA bill was postponed (until now, essentially), I suggested that as long as the internet was bound by a DNS system centralized enough to be gripped at will by the United States government, it was in fact too centralized. An alternative to traditional DNS, currently presided over by ICANN, seems the only option if the current level of freedom of information on the internet is to be maintained.I was (and am) speaking as a layman' I know virtually nothing about the technical details of DNS, and the dangers and difficulties accompanying a departure from that system are numerous. But the benefits would be considerable, and it&amp;'s beginning to look like it has to happen sooner or later. Now Peter Sunde, a man somewhat more acquainted with the way things work on the internet, seems to be of a similar opinion.At the moment, it&amp;'s just a request for help &amp;mdash' pie in the sky. And the objections raised in my last post will certainly be raised again: centralized DNS is essential for maintaining order, security, and so on. Yes, well, as long as we rely on centralized DNS for those things, it&amp;'s logical to think that they are necessary. But that kind of A=B because B=A logic isn&amp;'t convincing for long. We rely on it because it&amp;'s what we rely on What do we do when we no longer wish to rely on itThe next step in DNS and the distribution of bits to and from users isn&amp;'t going to be a lot like what we&amp;'ve got. Fundamental changes will happen, and the trend will be decentralization. And yes, it&amp;'s not going to be secure and authenticated like the present system. We&amp;'re just going to have to deal with that. It&amp;'s natural to think about what&amp;'s new in terms of what&amp;'s old, but only to a point.There have been experiments with this kind of thing before, obviously none of them successful, but that doesn&amp;'t mean it shouldn&amp;'t be attempted again. Doubtless there are hundreds or thousands of people willing to contribute time or money to something like this, and maybe Sunde is the spearhead the idea needs.A reasonable question is &amp;''how will the man organize this effort while he is in jail, and broke to boot&amp;'' Because indeed, Sunde will be serving eight months following the recent ruling against The Pirate Bay&amp;'s founders. I don&amp;'t have an answer for you, but I&amp;'m guessing that a minimum security Swedish corrective facility is as good a place as any to do it. They probably have faster internet than I do.If nothing else, establishing an alternate DNS root with sufficient weight to keep itself around will press the issue. And it&amp;'s not like this kind of thing will happen overnight. But the COICAs of the world are hot on the heels of freedom of information, and there&amp;'s no time like the present to get started on the future.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Microsoft TV: A Bold Move That May Blow Up&nbsp'Broadcast]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-tv-a-bold-move-that-may-blow-upnbspbroadcast</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-tv-a-bold-move-that-may-blow-upnbspbroadcast</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>semedian</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-tv-a-bold-move-that-may-blow-upnbspbroadcast</guid>
<description><![CDATA[From what we can tell from a brief Reuters report, Microsoft is in talks with HBO and Showtime to broadcast and sell a la carte video through the XBox. Microsoft already offers ESPN through XBox Live.For years pundits have been blathering on about the &amp;''Trojan horse&amp;'' that is console gaming. The Playstation 2, arguably, was the first DVD player many of us ever had while the PS3 is probably the first Blu-Ray player many of us ever used. These devices were also some of the first to stream Netflix and, with this new deal, they&amp;'ll start replacing the cable box entirely. Imagine &amp;8211' a full complement of content available 24/7 from a box you already own. That is amazingly compelling and, dare I say it, kind of exciting.Presumably you&amp;'re not going to sit and watch HBO&amp;'s regular programming through this service. Instead, you&amp;'ll watch a la carte versions of their original shows and exclusive movies, which is definitely compelling to some. The issue, obviously, is the cost associated with this service versus the cost tacked onto your cable bill for the actual channels.Where does that leave broadcast TV Well, as Matt pointed out, the best way to watch TV on your TV is to get cable. Still formats and tastes change and while a decade ago you couldn&amp;'t imagine buying more than a few singles over a full album, now the album as an art form is all but dead. For better or worse, the &amp;''channel&amp;'' &amp;8211' meaning a group of programs that appear one after the other interspersed with commercials &amp;8211' may be going away.Working with the XBox team on this is a boon for both HBO and Microsoft. HBO gets a new subscriber based addicted to their programming while Microsoft becomes known as the first company to dismantle the decades old cable companies. Here&amp;'s hoping that the rumors aren&amp;'t just hot air.CrunchBase InformationMicrosoftInformation provided by CrunchBase<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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