USB Type-C, or simply USB-C, sounds fine in theory—a single port to handle charging, data transfer, video output, and more, and one that’s reversible too. Three years down the line from its introduction, you’ll find it on most smartphones and many laptops, but its apparent simplicity isn’t the whole story. Here’s what…
Wireless charging has been held back by poor tech for many years, but now we’re seeing major manufacturers integrate it, and it’s becoming a viable option. The biggest hurdle it currently faces is that there are two standard versions of the technology, making it difficult to offer chargers compatible with everyone’s…
Just when you thought you could chitchat with authority about USB standards at your next dinner party, a new one comes along to shake everything up again. The latest USB 3.2 standard is going to be confirmed in September, and here’s what that means for your laptop, your phone, and those new USB-C cables you just went…
You can order the same drink at bars all over the world, but how much booze each order is really going to get you depends a lot on where you are.
You probably take the DisplayPort on your laptop for granted, but the folks that develop the standard have been working hard to make it perform way better—and the next version will allow you to drive an 8K display with HDR video, if you ever happen to own one.
Have you heard? HTTP/2 is finally finished. That means that pretty soon webpages will load faster; connections will last longer; servers will respond to requests with more content. What's not to like! But hold on a sec: What the heck is HTTP/2, again?
If you think your 4K laptop drips with graphical power, remember that all things are relative—and a new video standard will allow laptops to make use of 8K screens.
A consortium of companies just announced a new wireless networking protocol for the home called Thread. It's designed to help build low-power, wireless mesh networks so that devices can seamlessly connect to form a true internet of things. In a way, Thread promises to create little mini internet for your home.
Standards, formats, protocols. There are thousands of them! Probably! I've never counted, I've always been too buys slamming my head against a wall. But you know what? Even the road to gadget compatibility hell is paved with good intentions. Right before it's repaved with terrible, pigheaded greed. [xkcd]
Along with snappy Sandy Bridge processors and beefy GPUs, Apple's new MacBook Pros have a superfast, versatile new I/O tech called Thunderbolt. Whazat?
To help prod along our slow, inexorable march towards the HTML5 web standard, and because everything today needs branding, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has unveiled a snazzy new HTML5 logo. The biggest surprise? It's pretty controversial!
What a pleasant surprise! The fellows over at Create Digital Music have discovered that iOS 4.2 will allow iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches to support MIDI devices over both USB (via camera connection kit) and Wi-Fi.
CNET reports that Intel's Light Peak, a high-speed connection standard capable of transferring data at 10 gigabits per second, will be arriving sooner than expected: sometime in the first half of 2011. And Apple's poised to be an early adopter.
Researchers at the National Physics Laboratory in the U.K. have modeled what they believe to be the perfect human ear. It will replace the "flawed" one created by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1990. Perfect headphones for everyone!
Earlier today, the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed off stickers that would give car buyers standardized info on a particular model's fuel economy and environmental impact. Gadgets should have standardized ratings, too.
MPEG LA, the group that licenses the h.264 video codec, has extended its royalty-free use (for free internet video) from 2016 until, well, forever. Update: Kinda. But Mozilla thinks the better part of forever could belong to Google's WebM format.
WiMAX isn't even remotely ubiquitous in these United States, but that hasn't stopped progress on its successor, the aptly named WiMAX 2.
The Wireless Power Consortium has finalized the Qi standard, meant for low power devices. It's good for gadgets up to 5 watts. And the goal is for the standard to be interoperable between chargers and gadgets from different makers. That's the sort of openness that doesn't always happen when standards are too vague, so…
Speaking to TechRadar, Opera product analyst Phillip Grønvold conceded that Flash is essential to today's web and will be for the foreseeable future. But for internet video, he says, there are alternatives that won't make your laptop a stove top.
The beardier parts of the web-o-sphere have been abuzz about HTML5, the next version of the language that powers our internet. Will it revolutionize web apps? Will it kill Flash video? Will it fix our gimpy iPads? Yes... and no.
