Bell Labs breaks optical transmission record, 100 Petabit per second kilometer barrier

Um, wow! From a press release at physorg.com.

Alcatel-Lucent today announced that scientists in Bell Labs, the company’s research arm, have set a new optical transmission record of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer (equivalent to 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer).

This transmission experiment involved sending the equivalent of 400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris and Chicago. This is the highest capacity ever achieved over a transoceanic distance and represents an increase that exceeds that of today’s most advanced commercial undersea cables by a factor of ten. To achieve these record-breaking results the Bell Labs researchers made innovative use of new detection techniques and harnessed a diverse array of technologies in modulation, transmission, and signal processing.

 

SlideShow Pro - Load the first image in the album

A handy command: it tells the slideshow instance to load the first image in the first album.

my_ssp.loadAlbum(0,0);

(Gleaned from the documentation.)

Compiling Java and C# to SWF

I ran across (well, I saw some “tweets”) on this amazing post by Joa Ebert. Apparently he presented this at Flash on the Beach.

“At the end of my Leaving the Sandbox session I showed two projects I have been working on without telling anyone. The first was a compiler that could compile C# to SWF. The second was another compiling being able to compile Java to SWF. First of all I have to say that both tools are far from being finished. They are a so called proof-of-concept. For me it is enough to know that this is possible.”

Liaise - Turn Words Into Action

I was just reading about this product in Mashable. Perhaps it might be a useful tool to watch?

“…Liaise…is an Outlook plug-in that automatically scans your email and looks for to-do items. As you type, Liaise is using their KeyPoint technology to capture tasks, issues, dates, and priorities that often get lost in emails.”

Star Trek and Titan

A nice,  high-resolution image of the starship Enterprise from the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in the recent motion picture Star Trek. If you are into such things. J

http://diamondskyproductions.com/spotlight.php

Courier: First Details of Microsoft's Secret Tablet

This device seems like it could be pretty impressive. From Gizmodo:

“It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But maybe we've all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft's astonishing take on the tablet.”

Adobe to acquire Omniture

I thought this was an interesting development last week that might affect all of us using Adobe’s tools in the future. Adobe plans to acquire Omniture, a company that specializes in “business optimization.” From Adobe:

“The combination of the two companies will increase the value Adobe delivers to customers. For designers, developers and online marketers, an integrated workflow—with optimization capabilities embedded in the creation tools—will streamline the creation and delivery of relevant content and applications. This optimization will enable advertisers and advertising agencies, publishers, and e-tailers to realize greater ROI from their digital media investments and improve their end users’ experiences.”

 

 

SharePoint: How to calculate week number using a formula

If you ever wish to use a date (say, modified date or creation date, for example) and have SharePoint determine which week number it occurs on, Microsoft has kindly done the work for you:

=INT(([Start Date]-DATE(YEAR([Start Date]),1,1)+(TEXT(WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR([Start Date]),1,1)),"d")))/7)+1

More explanation, if desired, can be found at this blog.

Humor: Incredible, amazing, awesome Apple

OK all true…but I think they may need more adjectives. J Selections from Apple’s recent “Rock and Roll” event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw&feature=player_embedded

Appcelerator Titanium

From Tech Crunch (via MSF):

“This morning, Mountain View-based startup Appcelerator is taking the wraps off its second Preview Release for Titanium, an open-source developer platform meant to compete with Adobe AIR and the likes for building rich internet, mobile and desktop applications.

Titanium PR2 comes with a number of new features that are worth taking a look at, like an extensible Module API and built-in support for Linux and a wide range of programming languages like Python, Ruby and JavaScript in addition to C++. More technical details are outlined on the company blog Appcelerant.”

 

The Google Opt-Out Village

A bit of Wednesday humor: The Google Opt-Out Village.