Tag Archives: Modem
This is the Modem World: Why are we still texting?
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.
“Just text me…”
How many times have you told someone that? Say you’re meeting a friend somewhere: What’s the first thing you do when you get there? You text him or her to announce your arrival. Why? Because that’s how you’re trained. You don’t email, call or use some other protocol.
And you know what? You’re paying for that text even though you already have a data plan, unless you’re grandfathered into one of the better unlimited plans of the 20th century. Truth is, SMS texts are perhaps the most lucrative service that providers offer — more so than data or voice plans, and they want us to keep using the outdated technology whether we need to or not.
Filed under: Cellphones
This is the Modem World: Japan is not weird
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.
There’s a dotted line between geekdom and Japan — some of us call ourselves “otaku;” we follow Japanese technology companies; we look to Japanese culture as a beacon of our tech-obsessed future; we dream of visiting Tokyo. And yet we love to criticize Japanese culture, as if to say, “Well, sure, they make cool stuff, but they sure are messed up.”
I’m no expert on Japanese culture. While my visits to the island nation number in the double digits and I’m married to a citizen, I’m not about to claim any sort of authority on matters of Japan.
However, I’m pretty sure they’re not as weird as we like to say they are. And if they are, we’re just as off-kilter.
This is the Modem World: Please fix two things
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.
We can all agree that technology is pretty cool. It allows us to communicate with one another, entertain ourselves, meet new people, learn new things and even find love and health. We love to discover new technologies, see it do amazing things and get a glimpse of the future. We, the early adopters, are pioneers, beta testers and happy to be first in line. This is all good.
But despite our hammering, our pleas and our shouts from the tops of the greatest blogs we know, some bad things just don’t change. When I say “bad things,” I’m talking about two annoying little facts of technology that, in my opinion, don’t need to be so painful. These are things we can and should fix.
Perhaps we’re not heard loudly enough, or perhaps the technology isn’t there to fix what we want, or maybe the manufacturers have better things to do. Whatever it is, let’s list those things out here, perhaps so that some engineer or product designer will read this and think, “Why, yes… Yes. I should fix this.”
Filed under: Misc, Peripherals, Software
This is the Modem World: Why we troll
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.
Back when the PlayStation 2 was the world’s most popular game console, the original Xbox was struggling to gain a post-Halo audience and the GameCube was a cute diversion with a couple decent titles, I trolled gaming message boards. I was so sure that anyone who bought anything other than a PS2 was out of his mind that I set on the most immature mission in history to inform the masses, proselytize the word as handed down by Hirai-san, and ridicule those who were wasting their time with The Wind Waker.
Those who were active gamers at the time probably read that paragraph and are now either annoyed or cracking a wry smile in understanding. The latter are the ones who played Ico. Those who weren’t gamers at the time can insert their own products into the mix for context.
Filed under: Internet
NVIDIA unveils i500 Soft Modem with Tegra 4, capable of pushing 1.2 trillion ops per second
NVIDIA’s apparently still not out of news from its CES 2013 presser — the company just unveiled the i500 Soft Modem chip. The soft modem, which is the fruit of the company’s purchase of Icera and is utilized with Tegra 4, is a baseband processor that can do 1.2 trillion operations per second and is reprogrammable with software to work with a lot of different networks. The modem, which is 40 percent smaller than a conventional baseband chip, is sampling to manufacturers this month.
Developing…
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, NVIDIA
This is the Modem World: Why I don’t like lists — a list
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.
It’s both the end of one year and the beginning of another, and that means we’re inundated with best-of, worst-of and something-of lists from all of our favorite — like this one — tech media outlets. I don’t like lists.
But lists are useful. I’ve been guilty of making lists. They’re nice ways to organize a year, and they get people talking about why X is No. 1 and Y is way down at the bottom. It brings out our inner fanboy, exposes us to products we wouldn’t normally consider and makes for an easy reading experience.
Therefore, I present to you a list… about why I don’t like best-of product lists.
Continue reading This is the Modem World: Why I don’t like lists — a list
Filed under: Misc
