alliance

LAS VEGAS--Panasonic has joined LG's Smart TV Alliance, which was set up to develop and use a single connected platform for televisions from 2013 onward.

The Smart TV alliance was announced by LG in June 2012 in conjunction with Philips (TP Vision), but it has now grown to include Toshiba, Panasonic, and chipmakers such as Qualcomm and IBM.

LG's Smart TV interface is arguably one of the best on the market, and this agreement goes some way to creating an industry-standard platform, which is a boon for customers and developers.

The new platform allows for 3D video, MPEG-DASH … Read more

The Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance, aka WiGig, announced today their agreement to consolidate WiGig's certification and development under Wi-Fi Alliance. This is the result of longterm collaboration between the two organizations, since they reached an agreement on the standard of multigigabit wireless networking in May 2011.

While the Wi-Fi Alliance is a popular organization that tests and certifies Wi-Fi devices to guarantee their interoperability, WiGig is a lesser-known entity that develops the 60GHz-based WiGig technology specifications. The Wi-Fi Alliance, however, initiated the work to develop an interoperability certification for 60GHz products.

The WiGig standard, also known … Read more

Seventy-seven percent of small- and medium-sized businesses believe that their companies are safe from cyberthreats and yet 83 percent of them have no formal cybersecurity plan. Um, yeah. And that was just one of the contradictions uncovered in a survey of 1,015 small- and medium-sized businesses carried out by the National Cyber Security Alliance and Symantec.

"It's not part of the culture yet," said Michael Kaiser, executive director of the NCSA, who added that he was "a little disheartened that we didn't see substantial … Read more

Apple's AirPlay, which wirelessly streams movies and music between devices, has a new competitor.

The Wi-Fi Alliance today announced the launch of Miracast, an industry-standard technology that will let users wirelessly transmit video and images from one device to another. As with Apple's AirPlay, users will be able to send the multimedia from, say, a mobile device to a big-screen television.

According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, a not-for-profit industry association of hundreds of companies, all Miracast products come with Wi-Fi Direct, meaning users won't need a wireless network to transfer the data. In addition, the technology automatically … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- An Atlas 5 rocket boosted a pair of satellites into the maelstrom of the Van Allen radiation belts early today, kicking off a $686 million mission to probe the structure of the belts and how they're buffeted by the sun and to improve forecasting to reduce the threat they pose to astronauts, power grids and increasingly critical satellite systems.

"Today, 11 years hard work was realized by the science team," said Nicola Fox, the deputy project scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. "They're now at home in … Read more

Microsoft is not likely to win over advertisers with its decision to turn on Internet Explorer 10's Do Not Track feature in the RTM version of Windows 8.

The Do Not Track, or DNT, feature is designed to stop third-party Web sites from tracking your online activity. Web sites that find Do Not Track turned on in your browser are supposed to back off. Most browsers leave the setting turned off, leaving it up to the user to decide whether to enable it.

But a blog post from Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch confirmed that the company is … Read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- The first space-bound Orion capsule, the centerpiece of NASA's post-shuttle push to break out of low Earth orbit for eventual manned flights to a variety of deep space targets, was officially unveiled at NASA's Florida spaceport today. The spacecraft will be outfitted for an unmanned test flight in 2014.

"As KSC celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, I can't think of a more appropriate way to celebrate than by having the very first Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle here at KSC," Robert Cabana, the center's director and a former shuttle … Read more

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket, the most powerful in the postshuttle U.S. inventory, boosted a top-secret National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite into space early Friday, after a spectacular morning launch from Cape Canaveral.

Running three hours late because of technical snags, the 232-foot-tall rocket, made up of three liquid-fueled common core boosters and a powerful upper stage, roared to life at 9:15 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) and quickly climbed away from launch complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Generating nearly two-and-a-half million pounds of thrust from three upgraded Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne RS-68A … Read more

More than 3,000 languages are on the verge of extinction and Google is trying to do something about it.

Collaborating with scholars, researchers, and language communities, the Web giant launched the Endangered Languages Project today, backed by a coalition called the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity. Through the project Web site, people can learn about the Earth's endangered languages and see what kind of documentation is being created to preserve them.

The diverse languages range from Navajo, which is spoken by only 120,000 people in the Southwest U.S., to Koro, a previously unknown language that was documented … Read more