technology and audio matters

Wall of fame up against the Blackberry.  Sadly Psion didn’t win! But then in usual Gadget show fashion it’s  competitions are purely for fun.  Still great TV, even showed my old boss Colly Myers.

Watch the video here:

http://fwd.five.tv/videos/wall-of-fame-blackberry-vs-psion

I’m currently working on  an invention in the mains trailing extension space. I’ve had some useful advice including a free patent search carried out by the IP centre at the British Library. (Be aware that the re-searcher’s time is free but access to the Derwent database is chargeable. There are also constraints on qualification for free searching , so best to check first with the IP centre.)  http://www.bl.uk/bipc/ for more details.

I’ve just bought myself another router , as I’ve had some problems with my Zyxel ‘locking up’ after heavy wireless traffic.  This unit apppears to have better wifi performance than the P-336M.  Signal strength is up from about 50% to 70%+ on my Pure –  Evoke Flow which is furthest from the router.

Bought on ebay as new old stock I suppose, but interesting has come with an alternative operating system by a company called dd-wrt i.e. the original Buffalo image has been replashed.  See http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php It’s extremely comprehensive and includes lots of statistics including total WAN traffic. Very useful when Virgin have got very aggressive ‘bandwidth throttling’ in place.  See http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Other potentially useful tabs include QOS.

Sign up at https://www.spotify.com/ Fascinating and free if you’re happy with the commercial breaks. Perhaps there’s a limit too for the free service. Still brilliant for checking out material before buying if nothing else. There’s a radio mode too Just brilliant …

A good friend keeps reminding  me of NXT loudspeakers and their success stories. Yet when I look at what’s happened they seem to have ‘missed the spot’ at a level! My informed guess/opinion is that for many applications their intrinsic benefits i.e.  ’ being flat just  isn’t enough to win design ins  i.e. for many applications a conventional moving coil loudspeaker does the job presumably as well (if not better?) for less money. Therefore NXT  only ‘win’s when size alone is critical,  say in the case of turning the display of  a mobile phone into a loudpspeaker. But even this application seems to have had limited success? I presume that in absolute fidelity terms the NXT solution doesn’t count for HiFi so has also missed the traditional 2 channel stereo market. Maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Let me know what you think.