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How to Increase Pendrive Data Transfer Speed

April 10, 2017April 10, 2017 jamesg Leave a comment

We are all using a pen drive to store the data. It is an essential one in now a days. Some pen drives data transfer speed might low. Data transfer rate depends on many factors. If you send videos or music the transfer speed is high compared to application files and exec files. Also if you are using the old pen drive, your data transfer rate is low. Nowadays all the pen drive is 2.o device if you use it 1.1 old computer USB port version the data transfer is very small. By changing some default settings, we can increase the speed of data transmission speed. Let’s see How to Increase Pendrive-Data Transfer Speed.

METHODS TO INCREASE DATA-TRANSFER SPEED

ALWAYS USE NTFS FILE SYSTEM

We can’t send larger files (4GB) if the pen drives not in the NTFS mode. So right click on the pen drive and click on format and select NTFS and don’t use the quick format. Using this settings format your pen drive.

CHECK FOR DISK ERRORS

Right click on the pen drive and click on properties. Under the properties tab of pen drive click on Tools and then click on “check now” button under error checking the menu. Now click on START it takes some time to check the disk error depending on the file size and format.

CHANGING DEVICE POLICY

Right click on the pen drive and click on properties. Under Pendrive, properties tab click on Hardware select your USB device and click on properties a new window should pop up in that window click on change settings.

Now click the Policies tab. Then choose the Better Performance and click OK.

NOTE: If you Click better Performance you must always safely remove the Pendrive whenever you eject the pen drive. I recommend you to remove the Pendrive when it is not used.

MIM & MIIM Diodes: How Do They Work?

September 7, 2013October 1, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

What drains power in today’s electronics, what causes high temperatures and costs in today’s electronic equipment, could be behind extreme electronics of tomorrow. Our world is gearing towards a better tomorrow, where the supercomputers will be millions of times faster than today’s. Processing will be remarkably faster, and high level applications will run in nanoseconds.

What will help us achieve this for our future? The technology known as MIM diodes and its successor, MIIM diodes (Metal-Insulator-Insulator-Metal diodes). Let’s check them out in detail.

What Is MIM & MIIM?

diodes A diode is one of the most basic electronic components of any circuit. It is used to conduct electrons in one direction, like a valve. Advanced diodes are capable of modifying the current as well, such as sine wave to square wave, AC to DC, etc.

Diode is such an important component in today’s electronics that without them nothing would be possibleâ€”no cellphones, tablets, PCs, display technologies, speakers, storage systems, servers, clients, automobiles, or anything.

These electronic componentsâ€”diodes, transistors, ICs, etc.â€”are developed with some kind of semiconductor, and the most widely used of them is Silicon. Other semiconductors are also there, such as Germanium, Gallium Arsenide, and certain organic semiconductors. However, Silicon is the one major semiconducting material we use in all kinds of electronic equipment.

Today’s technologies, however, are pushing the limits of what Silicon-based diodes and ICs can achieve in terms of speed and performance. In a world like that, a better technology that transforms electronics as we know it today is the prime solution. A research to find such a solution resulted in further developing an already existing technology, MIM diodes.

MIM stands for Metal-Insulator-Metal diodes. These are sort of like capacitors in which thin metal plates are separated by an insulator. Here’s the basic structure of a MIM diode. See how the insulator separates metal strips.

Oregon State University (OSU) has been working on MIM diodes for such a long time. In 2011, there was a paper published by researchers in this particular area.

In 2010, OSU finally managed to create the first ever MIM diode. Douglas Keszler, chemist and one of the leading materials science researchers from OSU, said then:

Researchers have been trying to do this for decades, until now without success. Diodes made previously with other approaches always had poor yield and performance. It’s a basic way to eliminate the current speed limitations of electrons that have to move through materials.

Here’s the first ever MIM Diode:

Now, OSU has gone further and created the next level of MIM, MIIM diodes. Here, instead of a layer of insulator, there are two.

Here’s an image. The material has four layersâ€”ZCAN (Amorphous Zirconium), Hafnium Oxide (HfO₂), Aluminum Oxide (Al₂O₃), and Aluminum (Al).

As I mentioned earlier, the technology is not new. The MIIM diodes are a type of â€˜tunnel diodes’ that were in existence since the 60’s, known for the technology behind it, â€˜quantum tunneling’. It has never been researched further and developed for mass production.

SanDisk 3D LLC, a subsidiary of the flash storage memory maker, SanDisk, has a patent on MIIM diodes with a trench structure. The patent dates back to 2008, although no work has been done by the company based on the technology.

What Is Quantum Tunneling?

Quantum Tunneling is the technology behind MIM diodes. As we mentioned, the tunnel diodes are called so due to this reason.

Normally, we know an electron beam is unable to go through an insulator. However, when the insulating material is extremely thin at less than 3 nm, a special phenomenon known as quantum tunneling can happen. This phenomenon can only be explained with quantum mechanics, not classical mechanics. This is the reason why it is known as â€˜quantum tunneling’. This concept has a more extensive reach than MIM diodes. For instance, the energy production in the Sun actually has a lot to do with quantum tunneling.

Imagine a ball rolling up a hill. It will not be able to cross the hill if the energy it already has is not enough. However, if you are thinking of a ball in the quantum scale (which is infinitesimal), the ball can no longer be regarded as an object, but as a wave. In such a state, it can be expected that the ball crosses to the other side of the said hill if the other side has a slope where the ball can stay without expending much energy.

The same concept applies to electrons in MIM diodes. When the electron reaches the barrier, the insulator in between the metal strips, it absorbs energy from the surroundings in order to pass through the insulator. In doing that, a part of the electron beam passes through the barrier, but another part reflects back. However, due to the energy absorption, the reflected electron beam has far more energy than it originally has.

The electron beam that traverses the barrier does not follow the normal laws of conduction as it is going through an insulator, which does not help in conducting electrons. Due to this reason, the energy the beam absorbs makes it travel at ultra-high speeds. The speed is much higher than that on a normal conductor or a semiconductor like Silicon.

Also, when we visualize electron beam as a wave, quantum tunneling can be seen in action below. Quantum tunneling happens in the form of a ripple effect you see at the barrier. Also, after that, the passing beam and the reflected beam have lower altitude (height) and higher wavelength.

This tunneling phenomenon is what causes the extreme speed on MIM and MIIM diodes.

Ironically enough, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, quantum tunneling is a major reason behind power drain and extreme temperature in current electronic systems, but that is unwanted quantum tunneling.

Extra insulator layer helps enhance an MIM diode. Dr. John Conley, Jr., of OSU that was part of the research into MIIM says:

This approach enables us to enhance device operation. It … moves us closer to the real applications that should be possible with this technology.

This extra insulator layer causes something known as â€˜step tunneling’ that allows highly precise control of the asymmetric diodes.

Advantages

Quantum tunneling and MIIM diodes have only advantages.

They are as easy to manufacture as Silicon based electronic components.
They are inexpensive.
They can form extremely fast electronic components as compared to any available technology todayâ€”imagine terahertz of processing power in place of gigahertz we have now.
They will find application in all kinds of electronic technologiesâ€”smartphones, tablets, LCD displays, TVs, consumer electronics, automobiles, etc.

Conclusion

I am not an electronics expert, but when it comes to technologies that will enhance what we have today in smartphones and tablets, I do take high level of interest. We do not have infrastructure today to make MIIM diodes on large scale. However, when it happens in the near future, we will all have extremely powerful smartphones and tablets. We will have in our hands devices better than the biggest and the most massive of today’s supercomputers.

[Image source: BSN, Wikipedia]

BT Captures Huge 320-Gigapixel Panoramic Image of London City

February 23, 2013September 30, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Whoa! Look at that! That is a complete 360° panoramic image of the city of London. It just doesn’t end there. To get the amazing experience of looking at the city as a whole, just visit BTLondon. There you go!

The people behind this amazing 320-gigapixel photograph of London are from British Telecom and a largely less known company that takes panoramic images of major world cities, 360Cities. That company does have a number of images and virtual tours that you can check out. This panorama was created to celebrate the financial performance of BT.

320 Gigapixel is not simple or small. It is huge. Do you know the actual size of the images that you capture with your smartphone camera (8 MP or 13 MP)? Those images could easily be larger than the display of your desktop computer.

A 320 Gigapixel image, by our calculations, could be print on a sheet of 1885.62 inches in length and width, assuming a perfect square. That is a 157 feet long image. The panorama of London shows everything in the city pretty clearly.

Also one thing. This is a panorama, and panoramas are not perfect. This broken-in-the-middle Volkswagen was found in a street. You could spot quite a number of such abnormalities in the image.

Google Glass Project Unveiled: What Do You Get From Wearable Computers?

February 21, 2013October 1, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

On Twitter, the #IfIHadGlass hashtag is going strong with about a tweet every two seconds. If you don’t know about it, it is the hashtag used to inform Google about your desire to get your hands on Google Glass, wearable computing solution from Google. In this article, let’s take a deep look at Google Glass and know how the experience will be. To start with, here, take a look at some of the tweetsâ€¦

Tweets about “#ifihadglass”

A Brief History of Wearables

It all started with an abacus ring pioneered by the Chinese Quing dynasty in the 1600’s.

In the 80’s and 90’s we got to see quite a number of wearable innovations. A few of them are here.

In the early 80’s, Dr. Steve Mann, one of the pioneers of wearable computing, invented this largely unappealing apparatus. Rig could be worn, but as you can imagine it is quite easy to go around without it. But again, it was in the 80’s. In the 90’s Steve Mann came up with other inventions, which were a bit better to look at. One of them is the EyeTap shown here.

Here is another invention called Zypad that wraps around your wrist like a watch, a big, big watch!

In 2010, a company called Brother released another invention, quite similar to Google Glass called AiRScouter. Here it is:

Besides these, you are probably quite familiar with the likes of Nike+ FuelBand and Jawbone Up (which I think looks a lot cooler).

If you need to know more of the history of wearables, you can visit Interaction Design Foundation’s wearable computing page.

Google Glass

The latest addition to the wearable computing world is Google’s own product, Glass. If you have never heard about some of those devices mentioned in the history section above (save for the FuelBand and Up), then you are probably wondering why these devices are so rare! They are rare and more or less unpopular. Although some of these wearable inventions can be quite easy to handle, they have never become popular enough.

Google on the other hand is expecting to get people interested in Glass.

Google Glass first made its appearance back in April 2012, when Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google and chief of Google X (where Glass and other major innovative, secret Google projects are developed), displayed it. On Jan 21, Sergey was spotted in New York subway train wearing his invention. The guy who spotted him blogged about it (it does rhyme with ‘bragged about it’ doesn’t it?).

Glass is Google’s own augmented reality wearable computing invention that will go on sales by the end of the year (as per latest expectations) or in two. However, if you are a US citizen, you may be able to get your hands on one test device if you fulfill a few Google requirements. That is where we come across the above-mentioned hashtag, #IfIHadGlass and about 1500 dollars.

What It Does?

â€˜OK Glass’ is a command that you will use quite often if you own one. It starts the computer’s natural language voice recognition system, deeply integrated to Google search. The voice recognition is exactly like how you use it on Android devices. Just add â€˜ok glass’ in front.

For instance, in order to take a picture, you say â€˜OK glass, take a picture’; to record a video, you say â€˜OK Glass, record a video’. Pretty simple indeed!

In effect, Google Glass is just another way technology is shaping our lives. Or trying to shape!

Google Glass project runs Android (we don’t know which version) and does everything with the tight integration to Google. There is no way to input data to the system other than using voice. Also, the capabilities are limited to a few. It doesn’t have as much capability and usability as a smartphone.

We don’t know the details of the features yet, but we expect to know about them soon.

Google Glass sports a lens-less eye-mounted frame that has a tiny display attached with a camera.

In the design front, Google Glass looks pretty awesome with lenses, rather than without them. You could look geeky wearing it, or if you can pull it off, you could look like the main character of a Sci-Fi film.

The product is light and flexible, and yet it is sturdy. The basic Glass without any lenses looks awkward a bit (I mean, why would you wear a pair of eyeglasses without glasses?) It also has quite a number of color choices, just like Google’s logo, offices, storage facilities, etc.

The Facts

There have been quite a bit of talk about how good and chic it is to wear Google Glass. There is already a very fine line between stylish wearables and ridiculous ones. Apple’s soon expected iWatch also is getting mixed response among people. It is definitely not so stylish to wear a wrist-bound computer like the Zypad we saw earlier. There is a huge population that disapproves of wearable technology due to the fact that it could look awkward in public. However, the perception could change if the technology becomes popular.

As far as Google Glass is concerned, I believe it cuts right in the middle ground between what is cool and what is lame. It has the potential to go both ways. When Sergey was wearing it in train, it looked pretty good. When an average Joe wears it in public where no one else does, it could look awkward. But among the pictures we were able to find, the Glass looks pretty stylish on most faces.

Along with this image, where Google Glass is doctored on the faces of the duke and duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, we got to see a number of other spoof images (those of Barack Obama, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, etc.) of Google Glass. The general idea here is that Glass can look beautiful on your face.

Prince William and beautiful wife Catherine Middleton wearing Google glass

Last year, Steve Mann, the man behind augmented reality wearables was attacked in a McDonald’s in Paris, while wearing his own invention, the EyeTap (see the above picture with Steve Mann wearing EyeTap). He was assaulted by people purporting to be McDonald’s own employees. The story also mentions a lady who was attacked by the same outfit for photographing their menu.

Whether people find it weird or funny to have an eye-mounted computer is yet unknown. However, anything could be stylish if it becomes popular.

We will have to wait and see how Google Glass performs in the market.

We will see quite a number of Glass wearers in a few days. Google will provide Glass to a number of people who apply to become â€œGlass Explorersâ€. We have been seeing celebrities taking interest in this test by Google. Here is a tweet by Neil Patrick Harris:

Google Glass is going strong with over 100,000 searches in the United States about it.

Here, take a quiz:

The Price

Other than the fact that it is a strong wearable product, I don’t understand the hefty price tag of 1500 dollars. It is more than a few full-fledged laptops and all of the high-end smartphones and tablets. However, this is the Explorer edition shipping right now for the winners of the application process in Google.

Google itself has given us assurance that the actual price of the device should be much lower than that.

Conclusion

Google Glass is definitely an innovative product from the search giant. We are still worried about the future of the device. As we mentioned, it has the potential to be both the next big thing and the laughable tech! With Google’s backing, it has all the potential to succeed. There is also big competition to Google Glass, and one of them is under development in Cupertino itself. Apple has a patent for a head-mounted display computer as well, dated July 2012.

[Update: Mar 27, 2013]

Google did announce yesterday that the results of the Glass program #ifihadglass are in. That post was made in the Google plus page of the project. Soon enough, we will also know the winners of the project. All of the winners are expected to be individuals.

[Update: Apr 17, 2013]

Here are a few of the first videos shot with Google Glass. From the people passionate about it, and subsequently got it to test.

What Is 4K? All You Need to Know About Next Generation Ultra HD TV Resolution

January 11, 2013September 30, 2016 jamesg Leave a comment

Within CES, the International Consumer Electronics Show, of Las Vegas, we have been seeing some TVs, which sport not High Definition (HD) video output, but better than that, Ultra HD format, also known as 4K and 8K. Many movies are being shot these days in 4K, and broadcasting industry will probably move to this standard in the very near future.

We have also seen the latest Snapdragon 800 processor that supports 4K image/video capture. What is the big deal about these displays, and what is 4K technology really all about? We will see in this article.

In these first few sections, we will introduce the basics to novices.

The Resolution of a Display

You might have heard about various termsâ€”VGA, QGA, XGA, WXGA, HD, FHD, etc. In order to understand what they are, you should first understand what is meant by display resolution. Resolution is a measure that indicates the number of pixels on a display.

Pixels are the smallest elements on a screen. These square shaped elements are spread in a grid on your smartphone or TV screen to properly display an image. When you enlarge a display, you will be able to see the individual pixels, like this:

A display has a number of vertical pixels and horizontal pixels, which constitute the array, and this came to be known as its resolution. For instance, a display of 640 horizontal pixels and 480 vertical pixels would constitute a display resolution of 640×480 or a total of 307,200 pixels.

Low resolutions like 640×480 are collectively known as Standard Definition (SD). 640×480 is specifically called Video Graphics Array (VGA). VGA used to be a standard for the most part of 90’s. Also, if you notice, 640×480 corresponds to 4:3 aspect ratio. That is, 640/480=4/3.

Right now, the aspect ratio of choice for most of the smartphones and televisions is 16:9 (16 units wide, 9 units tall), and this directly corresponds to HD resolutions.

What Is HD?

High Definition and Ultra HD (4K) are just terms to refer to display resolutions consisting of 720 or more horizontal lines. On SD, you have content delivered in 480 or 576 horizontal lines (i.e., 480 vertical pixels or 576 vertical pixels).

Also, they support mostly16:9 aspect ratio. These resolutions include 1280×720 (WXGA), 1920×1080 (Full HD or FHD). WXGA and FHD are the major display resolutions known as HD in the marketplace today.

Also, the terms like VGA, QVGA, XGA, WXGA, etc., do not represent the quality or technology used in the display (like Retina or Super AMOLED) of your smartphone. These are simply the indication of how many pixels the display has.

In HD, if you calculate the number of pixels, you will see 720p HD has 1280×720=921,600 pixels and in 1920×1080, 2,073,600 pixels. They have so many more pixels than the regular VGA resolution displays (aka standard resolution displays). This is the reason why High Definition videos can be displayed with more detail through HD displays.

What Is All About 720p, 1080i, & 1080p

There are three common formats in HDâ€”720p, 1080i, and 1080p. What do these letters suggest? â€˜p’ stands for Progressive scan and â€˜i’ for Interlaced scan. These are terms describing how a particular image or video is transmitted to your HDTV and how it reads that data.

In progressive scanning, the image is scanned in a normal way, top to bottom, and one line at a time. This in essence shows the most natural looking videos and images to you. On the other hand, interlacing doesn’t scan in the normal way. Here, every other line of the image is displayed in one pass, and the rest of the lines are displayed in the second pass. Hence, it requires two passes to display an image. Check out the image below:

Left: Progressive Scan; Right: Interlaced Scan:

With interlacing, video broadcasters have an advantage. This broadcasting technique takes up less bandwidth than the progressive version. This is the reason why many broadcasters resort to 1080i instead of 1080p. Also, with 1080p you can get much better motion sense and quality, but at a higher bandwidth of course.

4K & 8K

Now, we come to the big question, what are 4K and 8K resolutions. These are the next big thing in video resolutions, available in too few TVs today. In CES, we have been seeing several manufacturers showing off their Ultra HD TVs, with amazingly high pixel density and resolution.

The display is known as 4K because it has roughly four times as many pixels as in Full HD 1080p.

In 4K display, also known as Quad Full HD, there are two popular resolutions: 3840×2160 (8,294,400 pixels in total), or nearly 4000 (4K) pixels along the horizontal line and 4096×2160 (8,847,360 pixels), which is widely known in the industry as 4K. Eight million pixels are four times the current 1080p HD standard. This makes 4K displays extremely vivid and detailed.

You want even richer display? There is the option of course. It is known as 8K, or twice 4K. This one is more appropriately known in the industry as Ultra HD (UHD) display. The resolution is 7680×4320 (33,177,600 pixels) or roughly four times as many pixels as in 4K.

A few 4K TVs as found in CES are hereâ€¦

Do Regular Videos Work?

Regular videos in very low resolutions will not play with quality on 4K TVs. SD and even 1080p HD videos do not have as much pixel information to fill into a 4K screen. Due to this, such videos will not look sharp on a 4K TV. You need to have 4K content to work with these televisions. This is the reason why TV manufacturers are not yet promoting this technology actively. They are waiting for Hollywood and broadcasting industry to move into 4K technology. Only then we will have any real use of a 4K TV.

If you have seen certain movies, such as Avatar 3D, the Amazing Spiderman, or Total Recall, you have seen 4K movies. You can get a real taste of a 4K movie watching this trailer of TimeScapes . This is a documentary created by cinematographer, Tom Lowe. Make sure you have enough bandwidth to stream this video in full detail.

The full movie is available in 4K format for purchase, and the file will be about 160 GB in size.

Disadvantages of 4K

Does 4K have any disadvantages? In fact there are quite a few, although most of them do not relate to 4K technology.

The current movie industry is too insecure perhaps to fully adapt to this platform. Also, the broadcasting industry hasn’t even touched 4K yet. Movies being shot in 4K are too few. A few of the movies include The Social Network, Total Recall, The Amazing Spiderman (5K), The Great Gatsby, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.

In terms of the resolution, there is probably no standard in the industry. We came across film camera companies like Red, Sony, Arri, etc., coming up with a number of their own resolutions. They call it 4K, 4.5K, 3K, 5K, and so on. These different formats may not work as perfectly as expected on a standard 4K TV.

Sony already has a 4K digital distribution system to be made available for its 4K TVs. Also, Sony provides support for digital 4K film making and distribution through its array of 4K products including cameras, digital projectors, etc. However, the number of movies available in 4K resolution (including those that were shot in 2K and HD and were re-mastered to 4K) is pretty less, and this makes people’s reception of 4K content lukewarm at best today.

The current infrastructure is too ill-equipped to handle 4K movies and broadcasting. Although Sony provides a compression algorithm that could turn 4K movies into the size of current HD movies, so that they can be broadcast with the currently available bandwidth, we will have to wait and see how the infrastructure is going to come about. For one thing, a 4K movie without compression could take not gigabytes, but up to a few terabytes in size.

Let’s take an example…

Resolution: 4K QFHD (3840×2160)
Frame rate: 24fps (pretty standard)
Color mode: YUV 4:4:4 (high quality video)
Color depth: 8 bits

An hour’s video with these parameters will have the size of exactly 2.15 TB. In order to download a movie like that, even with a 4G LTE connection, you need days.

Currently available data transfer technologies and storage systems are not at all equipped to handle sheer sizes like that. You cannot afford to store such large files in a cloud computing platform.

The maximum data transfer speed available in the current market, with such technologies as Intel Thunderbolt or USB 3.0, can work with a few gigabytes of data, but they are ill-equipped to handle terabytes of data. Also, fastest hard disks available today, such as SSDs (Solid State Drives) cannot handle 4K content.

Expensive SSDs work at nearly 4 Gbps bit rate, while the bit rate of a 4K movie could go well beyond that. This means, while watching a 4K movie on your computer, you may experience the buffering issue you come across on YouTube.

If these are the constraints of 4K movies, imagine 8K.

Conclusion

4K and 8K are the future of display resolutions. Some even say you won’t be requiring any higher resolution to watch amazing details. However, the infrastructure required to support 4K is so big and complex, and that for 8K will create havoc in the industry.

Due to the sheer size, 4K movies warrant extremely good compression algorithms that can take advantage of scene-by-scene opportunities to reduce movie sizes. Sony has a compression technique they say delivers good quality at amazingly low bit rates, and Red promises to deliver 4K content at the bandwidth of 20 Mbps through their REDRAY Cinema Player.

More advancement in this area will create better entertainment opportunities that we will see in the near future. For the time being, stick with your regular HDTV and do not purchase a new 4K TV.

[Image credit: BradHallArt, CNET, CSMonitor, Engadget, Pocket-lint]