News for Monday, 2 February 2009

Sony has announced to have completed the development of a new system of biometric recognition intended to replace those currently based on the recognition of a digital fingerprint.

Their system still uses the finger, but it is the venous system that is charted and analyzed at the time of the recognition.
It is technically relatively simple to counterfeit a digital fingerprint, it is much more difficult to recopy this system in 3 dimensions and which must have a blood flow to be recognized. Even if the official statement does not mention it since it is unpalatable, since this system does not function on a "dead" body (without going into the details), there is an additional security.

XLR8yourmac described the procedure to make iMovie 09 function on G4. It is rather tedious to force the installation of the software and then to patch it so that it will launch.
The first testimonies show that the software does agree to launch but does not detail on its real capacity to treat projects. It is probable that the things will go well as long as one stays with traditional DV projects and does not use these greedy filters, especially that one designed to remove camera shake.

This is sufficiently rare in the computing industry that it has to be signaled: the 6 principal manufacturers in the world of hard drives intend to develop a standard of encoding intended to safeguard the data stored on their products. This new standard will be usable on the traditional disks and also the SSD will make it possible to lock the data present on the disks and to be able only to read it with the password that will be requested at the moment of the start up of the machine. Usable also with the removable disks, this system will also require a password before being mounted.
The system being standardized, it will be very easy for the computer manufacturers to set up their machines without having to be worried in advance of the marque of the hard drive that will be placed in it.
Even if the general public is not really interest (even though it is easy to lose a USB key), the professionals and the administrations should make a broad use of this possibility which has the merit to block a disk even if it is taken out of the computer.
Note to finish: contrary to FileVault, this protocol is put on chips specifically dedicated to the encoding and that are built into the hard drives. Thus it will not consume CPU resources and will not slow down the data transfer.

EEEPC, who we do not need to present to you any more, at least in some of its guises, embarks on a new venture with a SSD disk in the format mini PCI Express. The very significant sales of their computers make sure that these disks are aimed at the general public.

Thus, Supertalent announced the release of a range of these disks going from 16 to 64 GB and whose performances are far from being ridiculous, reaching 90 MB/s in reading and 55 MB/s in writing. The price remains reasonable, $169 for the model 64 GB.
The reason we tell you about these disks is because all our Mac Intels have one of these mini PCI Express ports. This port is intended to support the Airport card. It is thus completely possible that if you do not use your Airport (Mac mini or Mac Pro) to amuse yourself by grafting on such a SSD and that it should function there.
This is completely possible, Grincheux, a reader of Macbidouille has successfully succeeded in connecting to this connector a RAID PCI Express card(in french).
However, we do not believe that it is possible to start up using this SSD. But to place on this disk the applications would already bring a real comfort to daily usage and also has in in its favour a do-it-yourself that is amusing and not complicated.

According to MarketShare

, the number of Apple hardware connected to the internet keeps growing in USA. A bit less than 10% (9.93%) of internet-connected computers are Mac hardware units, while the iPhone represents now 0.48%. In other words, more than 10% of internet connected units are Apple hardware.
Apple marketshare increased by 1.5% compared to the previous month, a more than substantial performance. We are curious to know at which level Apple marketshare will stabilize or at which pace it will keep growing. This study also indicates that Windows keeps losing marketshare.

The makers of mother boards for the PC start to offer connectors that allow the choice of USB connector or connector that is compatible but also allows the passage of the SATA signal.

One sees that the right-hand side SATA connector surrounded by a plastic rectangle.
We think that this is an excellent compromise which allows an additional port without overloading the machine with connectors and that has the merit of native data flow with an external discs. Moreover, there remains possible to get power from the USB port and thus to propose 2,5" discs that get the power from the computer.
It is a pity that Apple did not install this kind of connectors on its portables. They would have made removed some of the fire of the detractors due to the absence of Firewire (only a part) and also those which complain about the lack of connectors on MacBook Air.
So if PC manufacturers can get there, it would be sad if Apple does not manage in doing this!

At the time of the initial presentation of the iPhone, Steve Jobs had indicated that Apple would be more than satisfied if they managed to reach 1% market share. This has now been reached and even exceeded, the iPhone accounting for 1,1% of the global mobile phone market in 2008, having sold 13,7 million telephones during the year that were, in the main part, the 3G version.
Apple will now have to face a new challenge, to preserve and if possible increase its position whereas the competition has become more and more sharpened.
Fortunately, the AppStore is currently without serious competition and is a second external vector for growth of the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

Toshiba has confirmed that they want to market the first battery with fuel intended for the general public in March. They will sell at the same time the methanol cartridges needed to reload it easily.
We do not know what form it will take or the power that it will be able to deliver. But it is almost certain that this first fuel battery will be external with the purpose of recharging the batteries of electronic devices than to substitute them.

Sandisk have announced their intention to get rid of their memory chips production factories and to give control to Toshiba that is its partner in this sector of activity.
Thus they will recover money which they need but will become dependent on others to manufacture their products. In the current situation this does not pose any problem, but if the tendency changes in this market that is currently a disaster then things will be harder for them.
This inversion of tendency could occur more quickly than envisaged because of the bankruptcy of Quimonda which produced 7% of the memory chips in this market. The other manufacturers are in the process recovering their orders and this has already caused a stabilization between offer and demand.