2.4GB Verizon Movie Download (Video length: 3:08)

From Electronista:

Internet and cable provider Verizon has been performing technical trials that could eventually see bandwidth speeds of up to 10Gbps in each home. The company used prototype Alcatel Lucent XG-PON2 nodes to provide the speed, which is about 200 times faster than FiOS’ regular 50Mbps service. GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) access can theoretically provide download speeds of up to 2.4Gbps or 1.2Gbps upload speeds.

Tests conducted by Verizon back in August saw FiOS speeds as fast as 925Mbps to a local server and 800Mbps to a regional speed test server. The latest test showed a 10Gbps download and upload speed, allowing the user to download a 2.4GB movie in just four seconds. The Optical Network Terminal (ONT) supported as many as 10 individual gigabit connections and a dedicated link that can bring the 10Gbps symmetric speed to a single location. Two computers with a 10Gbps network interface card were communicating across the network between the ONT and the line terminal in Taunton, Massachusetts. The speeds were eight times faster than those provided by the standard GPON technology.

Homemade Flying Hovercraft (Video length: 1:15)

New Zealander Rudy Heeman has been showing off his latest garage invention — a hovercraft which takes off at 70 km/h. Heeman hopes to sell his invention at $13,000 USD per unit.

HT: Neatorama

Related posts:
    • Get Ready for Flying Cars?
    • Jet Pack in Flight

Are Ebooks Dead? -Skip Prichard (Video length: 19:52)

Michael Hyatt of Thomas Nelson Publishing has a good summary of the conference here: The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, along with some great quotes from the conference. The money quote as far as I am concerned? “Obscurity is a bigger problem for authors than piracy.” (Tim O’Reilly; see also linked article below) As the book industry enters the digital age, publishers need to look carefully at the early missteps taken by the music industry and avoid making the same mistakes.

What are your thoughts on Ebooks and how they will change book reading and publishing?

Related article: David Pogue Revisits DRM Question about Ebooks

By mid-2010, there will be 6.8 billion humans on this planet. According to United Nations estimates, there also will be five billion cellphone subscriptions. These are astonishing numbers. What is still more astonishing, and hopeful, is the breadth of change this number reflects.

The United Nations says that right now 80 percent of the world’s population has available cell coverage. The fastest adoption of cellphone use is occurring in some of the world’s poorest places.

Cellphones are cheap, their batteries can be easily recharged with solar power and they are creating nothing short of a revolution: knitting rural communities together, sowing information, and altering the most basic assumptions about health care and finance. Anyone who has traveled to Africa recently can vouch for these changes.

In nearly every sizable town or city, there are dozens of tiny kiosks where phones can be rented or repaired and subscriptions can be purchased. In regions where communications used to be nearly impossible, cellphones are essential to social innovation. This means everything from microfinance and electronic credit, via SMS, to better networking among health care workers and their patients.

Five billion cell phone subscriptions out of 6.8 billion people on the planet is truly a straggering statistic. How will the world going mobile change life as we know it? Your thoughts?

Eight-to-eighteen-year-olds spend more time with media than in any other activity besides (maybe) sleeping — an average of more than 7 1/2 hours a day, seven days a week. The TV shows they watch, video games they play, songs they listen to, books they read and websites they visit are an enormous part of their lives, offering a constant stream of messages about families, peers, relationships, gender roles, sex, violence, food, values, clothes, an abundance of other topics too long to list.

These numbers are up from an average of nearly 6 1/2 hours a day measured five years ago. The study attributes the higher numbers to increased use of mobile devices such as cell phones and iPods.

It also cites a lack of parental supervision. According to the report, most youth say they have no rules about how much time they can spend with tv, video games, or computers. But when parents do set limits, children spend less time with media: those with any media rules consume nearly 3 hours less media per day than those with no rules.

“The amount of time young people spend with media has grown to where it’s even more than a full-time work week,” said Drew Altman, Ph.D., President and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “When children are spending this much time doing anything, we need to understand how it’s affecting them – for good and bad.”

If you would like some tips on managing media consumption in the home, let me recommend an earlier series from this blog on the subject: Taming Technology in the Home. What are your thoughts about teens and time spent online?

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) recently received its first new plane specifically designed for missions.

Manufacturer Quest Aircraft Co. of Sandpoint, Idaho delivered its first KODIAK 100, the first of the next-generation bush planes it produces, to MAF on Thursday. The plane is the long awaited result of the shared vision between MAF and Quest to design an aircraft that can run on jet fuel, which is cheaper than aviation gas (avgas) and in greater supply.

Most of MAF’s fleet is Cessna 206’s (C206), which need avgas that is often in short supply and costly in areas where the mission group operates.

Also, the KODIAK 100 can carry nearly twice the cargo – such as medicine, food or disaster relief supplies – of the C206 and will help MAF dramatically increase delivery while reducing operating costs.

“Aviation, in the minds of many, is the heart and soul of reaching the unreached peoples of the world,” says John Boyd, president and chief executive officer of MAF-USA. “Missionary aircraft can take people into areas where there are no roads. They can deliver food, medicines and other supplies when roads are impassible.”

Profits from the commercial sales of the aircraft will subsidize a portion of the cost for each 11th plane produced. The 11th plane will be delivered to participating non-profit Christian and humanitarian aviation organizations.

• Like robots? The Big Picture has pictures.
• E.T. Phone Home. The Kepler Spacecraft will launch Friday in its quest for Earth-like planets in Earth-like places.
• Read Kindle Books on Your iPhone. Can’t afford to shell out $359 for a Kindle 2? Download this free app that lets you read Kindle books on your iPhone instead.
• How to Make Your PC Boot Faster. I know, my brother would say, “Buy a Mac.” (See PC and Mac in the Garden of Eden) The “/noguiboot” setting was a new one for me.
• Gdrive in 2009. Google Drive, or Gdrive as it is better known, will offer online storage where Google servers have enough capacity to hold the entire contents of your hard drive. (Question: Do you want to give Google access to every file on your hard drive?)

(Video length: 3:57)

Update: Whoops, looks like this was not a real hologram after all. Apparently we could see Jessica on our television screens, but Wolf Blitzer could not see her in the studio.

    1. Text messages,
    2. MySpace and/or Facebook,
    3. Podcasts,
    4. Instant messaging,
    5. Cell phone,
    6. CDs,
    7. DVDs, and
    8. Email.

Source: Pastor’s Weekly Briefing 4/4/08 (HT: Sam Lamerson)

See related post: Why Email is Dying Out with Younger Generation

The audio of the Taming Technology interview on Pilgrim Radio is now available at the original post. Click here to go to: Taming Technology – Pilgrim Radio Interview.