http://www.bestechvideos.com/tag/hardware Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:07:29 GMT BestTechVideos: Tag hardware Videos with short descriptions http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/10/12/the-semantic-desktop-the-intimate-supplement-to-memory <p>Google Tech Talks <br /> September 28, 2007 <br /> <br /> ABSTRACT <br /> <br /> A Semantic Desktop is a means to manage all personal information across application borders based on Semantic Web standards. It acts as an extended personal memory assisting users to file, relate, share, and access all digital information like documents, multimedia, and messages through a Personal Information Model (PIMO). This PIMO is build on ontological knowledge generated through user observations and interactions and may be seen as a formal and semi-formal complement of the user's mental models. Thus it reflects experience and typical user behavior and may be processed by a computer in order to provide proactive and adaptive information support or allows personalized semantic search. The Semantic Desktop is build on a middle ware platform allowing to combine information and native applications like the file-system, Mozilla, Thunderbird or MS-Outlook. In this talk I will show how machine learning techniques may be used to support the generation of a PIMO. I will further introduce the main concepts, components, and functionalities of the Semantic Desktop, and give examples which show how the Semantic Desktop may become reality.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/10/12/the-semantic-desktop-the-intimate-supplement-to-memory">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/web-tech">Technologies</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/science">Science</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/techtalks">Techtalks</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies/google">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/science/computer-science">Computer Science</a> Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:07:29 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/10/12/the-semantic-desktop-the-intimate-supplement-to-memory scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/09/27/mwrc-michael-hewner-ruby-usb <p>One of the really neat things about USB devices is that they are almost entirely self-describing, which makes it easy to let Ruby just &quot;do the right thing&quot; when communicating with them. This presentation will give a brief introduction to the USB spec and then a discussion of the difficulties of integrating Ruby with this spec (and the libUsb library that wrapped it). Then there will be a tutorial about how to use RubyUSB to discover the interface of a random USB device and how to write short ruby scripts that do cool things with these USB devices.</p> <p>Michael Hewner is currently applying to graduate school for his Ph.D. in Computer Science. Until recently he worked as a programmer for Amazon.com. He has a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/09/27/mwrc-michael-hewner-ruby-usb">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development">Development</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development/ruby">Ruby</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development/cc">C and C++</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:33:33 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/09/27/mwrc-michael-hewner-ruby-usb scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/06/20/what-to-do-with-thousands-of-gps-tracks Google Tech Talks<br /> May 28, 2007<br /> <br /> ABSTRACT<br /> <br /> Over the past two years, Microsoft has been gathering GPS data from volunteer drivers. Each driver has one of our recording GPS receivers on their dashboard for two weeks. So far, we have data from 227 drivers, comprising over 1.7 million time-stamped (latitude, longitude) points. This talk will give a brief overview of several different research projects we have completed based on this data. These projects include:<br /> <ul> <li>Destination Modeling -- We characterize where and when people go and how quickly they fall into a rut of visiting very few new destinations.</li> <li>Predestination -- We use our destination models to predict where a driver is driving as the trip progresses.</li> <li>Snap-To-Road -- Inferring which road a driver is on is harder than just snapping to the nearest one. Our snap-to-road algorithm improves by accounting for the time stamps of the GPS data.</li> <li>Personalized Routes -- We can plan routes that drivers prefer by looking at where they&#39;ve already driven.</li> <li>Location Privacy -- Can we protect the privacy of our volunteer subjects by simply anonymizing their data? We show it is possible to infer the identities of some of them from anonymized GPS data, and we demonstrate different strategies for protecting their privacy by corrupting the data.</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/06/20/what-to-do-with-thousands-of-gps-tracks">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies">Companies</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/science">Science</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/techtalks">Techtalks</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies/google">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Wed, 20 Jun 2007 03:59:11 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/06/20/what-to-do-with-thousands-of-gps-tracks scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/06/14/a-multi-feature-part-based-object-detection-system Google Tech Talks<br /> May 25, 2007<br /> <br /> ABSTRACT<br /> <br /> I will start with an overview on object recognition systems which use local features and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. I will then present a general purpose part-based object detection system which we evaluated on a benchmark pedestrian detection data set . In a first step, the system computes feature maps from the training images. It then randomly extracts a large number of rectangular parts from the feature maps and clusters the parts based on their feature similarity and their x-y-location in the feature maps. The cluster centers build an initial set of part templates from which the system selects a subset using the gentle-boost algorithm. The localization of the parts during classification is performed by normalized cross-correlation of the part templates with feature maps. Three different types of feature maps were used in our experiments: Original gray value images, the magnitudes of the gradient, and Gabor filtered images. In experiments on a benchmark pedestrian detection database, we investigate how the number of the components, the feature type and the training data affects the detection performance. The system is compared to state-of-the-art pedestrian detectors.<br /> <br /> Speaker: Bernd Heisele, Honda<p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/06/14/a-multi-feature-part-based-object-detection-system">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies">Companies</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/science">Science</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/techtalks">Techtalks</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies/google">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/science/computer-science">Computer Science</a> Thu, 14 Jun 2007 03:53:43 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/06/14/a-multi-feature-part-based-object-detection-system scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/19/systm-episode-8-crane-game <p>Claw games are everywhere and there are almost as dark mysterious and full of questionable content as the Internet. Patrick, Dan and Dave take you through the inner working of a claw game and then combine the two greatest sins of modern time, games of chance and the Internet to create an internet enabled claw game.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/19/systm-episode-8-crane-game">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/web-tech">Technologies</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development">Development</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Sat, 19 May 2007 11:52:45 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/19/systm-episode-8-crane-game scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/14/linuxconfau-fixing-suspend-for-fun-and-profit <p>Suspend to RAM is now a mostly solved problem under Linux. Resuming, however, is less so. Many drivers fail to support suspend and resume correctly, resulting in a range of failures from the individual device not working to the entire machine crashing. The most common workaround is to unload drivers on suspend and reload them on resume, but this reduces the incentive to fix the bugs while increasing the time taken to complete the suspend/resume process. This presentation will cover what a driver needs to do in order to work over a suspend/resume cycle, discussing the most common failures in drivers. A basic working knowledge of C is assumed, as is the ability to compile a kernel, but no deep understanding of the kernel source tree is required.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/14/linuxconfau-fixing-suspend-for-fun-and-profit">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development">Development</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development/debugging">Debugging</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development/cc">C and C++</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Mon, 14 May 2007 10:54:37 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/14/linuxconfau-fixing-suspend-for-fun-and-profit scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/13/systm-episode-7-appletv <p>Patrick Norton and Dave Randolph take you through some of the more popular hacks and mods out there for the AppleTV. They have sorted out all the articles out there and have come up with a complete step by step procedure to help you get your AppleTV up and running with a larger drive, SSH, Xvid and a RSS reader.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/13/systm-episode-7-appletv">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/web-tech">Technologies</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies">Companies</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/macos">MacOS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/web-tech/rss">RSS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies/apple">Apple</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Sun, 13 May 2007 16:13:41 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/13/systm-episode-7-appletv scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/10/linuxconfau-docks-bays-and-ports-not-just-for-oceans-any-more <p>For many years, the only devices the Linux user could reliably hot plug were USB and PCI. 2006 was the year that users of Linux on a laptop finally realized the dream of being able to hit the eject button on their dock station and have it actually do something other than crash or hang. As if that wasn't exciting enough, later in 2006, thanks to the addition of hot plug support to the SATA layer, removable drive bay support became a reality as well.</p> <p>This presentation will discuss in a generic way how we insert and remove devices into a system, the subsystem interactions required, and the user space notification process. We will discuss the new dock station driver as a specific example of a set of removable devices, and also show how the bay driver was ported from the dock driver to at last allow users to dynamically swap out the drive bay on their laptop.</p> <p>All removable devices have generically the same behavior - detect that the device state has changed, and then create or destroy the device structures that represent the device to the OS. They all must alert their respective subsystems that a new device exists, and handle user notification as applicable. Some subsystems easily accommodate hot plug (such as PCI), while others are not quite ready for removable devices (such as PATA). Some removable devices are required to work with multiple subsystems (such as the dock station driver). For the devices that we will cover, we will show how the drivers interact with the different subsystems. In some cases we will show specific workarounds that we have had to do in the driver to accommodate lack of hot plug support in the subsystem. We will also delve into some of the lower level system support that is required in order to physically remove a device without damaging the system. We will discuss how ACPI is used to assist this process, and show how different system manufactures can implement the same feature in many different ways. Finally, we will describe the common software tasks that are required to insert and remove these devices at the kernel level as well as give an overview of each device driver's unique implementation details.</p> <p>Not only is kernel support required for removable devices to be inserted or removed from a running system without catastrophic results, but support in user space is also essential. User space notification of removable devices isn't standardized, and there are a variety of strategies that are employed by kernel drivers to communicate to user space. We will discuss how each separate device communicates events to user space and demonstrate how user space applications can obtain knowledge of the insertion and removal, and how they might take advantage of this knowledge.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/10/linuxconfau-docks-bays-and-ports-not-just-for-oceans-any-more">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Thu, 10 May 2007 09:17:54 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/10/linuxconfau-docks-bays-and-ports-not-just-for-oceans-any-more scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/09/linuxconfau-desktops-on-a-diet-old-pants-back-on <p>In the race to gain desktop acceptance (and mimick as much as possible from the "big" desktops out there - Windows, MacOS-X, etc.), The main desktop players (GNOME and KDE) have also gained weight. A lot of it. Speed of the software has slowed down at the rate hardware has sped up, or even faster.</p> <p>In many cases they no longer fit in the pants people used to wear, and the pants people in developing nations can afford. In that rush and enthusiasm a lot of people have overlooked the alternatives - Desktop environments, shells and window managers that consume significantly less resoruces, and may give sufficient functionality, such as Xfce and Enlightenment.</p> <p>This will focus on the upcoming release of Enlightenment 0.17 and its feature-set, efficiencies, subsystems, and related projects. What it can do and scale down to, as well as scale up to, what kind of people might have an interest in using it (those without the latest top-of-the-line systems with modern closed graphics drivers, those in developing nations or those simply with better things to do with their hardware resources). To get more efficient use of your system does not require the environment to be minimal and austere - it just requires making the right choices in design and implementation.</p> <p>This will cover: <ul> <li>Eye candy - without closed drivers and mega-fast systems</li> <li>State engines &amp; X latencies &amp; design</li> <li>Fast rendering engines &amp; canvases in X and other display targets</li> <li>XRender, XComposite etc. extensions</li> <li>Why open X drivers are better</li> <li>File manager and application management basics</li> <li>What libraries are behind Enlightenment that can help create efficient custom UI's</li> <li>Pants</li> </ul> </p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/09/linuxconfau-desktops-on-a-diet-old-pants-back-on">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development">Development</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Wed, 09 May 2007 00:20:37 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/09/linuxconfau-desktops-on-a-diet-old-pants-back-on scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/09/graphics-processors-graphics-apis-and-computation-on-gpus <p>Google Tech Talks<br /> December 5, 2006<br /> <br /> ABSTRACT</p> <p>Graphics processing units (GPUs), designed to produce images ranging from scenes in computer games to CAT scan results, have become computational powerhouses capable of hundreds of gigaflops per second. As computational power has increased, so has flexibility and programmability, allowing GPUs to be applied in new ways in both graphics and non-graphics applications.</p> <p>I will review the architecture of recent GPUs and the traditional software interfaces to them, as well as present a new interface from ATI that more closely reflects current GPU design and use.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/09/graphics-processors-graphics-apis-and-computation-on-gpus">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies">Companies</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development">Development</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/techtalks">Techtalks</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies/google">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Wed, 09 May 2007 00:13:43 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/09/graphics-processors-graphics-apis-and-computation-on-gpus scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/07/ensuring-your-device-is-not-supported-under-linux-lessons-for-hardware-vendors <p>With the increasing popularity of Linux in the embedded, desktop, and server world, HW vendors are jumping on the bandwagon to add support for their devices/chipsets/SOCs to the kernel; however, we in the community keep seeing the same mistakes (both technical and social) being made over and over again. In this talk I will give some examples of what to do if you want your HW to never be supported by the mainline kernel along with how to build a strong internal Linux team composed of very experienced developers that uses large amounts of resources to write code that is immediately rewritten by a college-aged kernel hacker upon being released to the community. Audience participation and sharing of stories is highly encouraged!</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/07/ensuring-your-device-is-not-supported-under-linux-lessons-for-hardware-vendors">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Mon, 07 May 2007 09:17:46 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/07/ensuring-your-device-is-not-supported-under-linux-lessons-for-hardware-vendors scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/linuxconfau-how-to-build-an-open-source-segway <p>Building a self-balancing scooter like the Segway(R) has previously been shown to be "not actually very hard" by Trevor Blackwell. I have replicated his experience by building my own two-wheeled self-balancing ride-on robot using only off-the-shelf parts, and open-source hardware and software.</p> <p>The presentation will go through how my scooter was built and the theory and practicalities of keeping it upright, along with a demonstration.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/linuxconfau-how-to-build-an-open-source-segway">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Sun, 06 May 2007 09:58:21 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/linuxconfau-how-to-build-an-open-source-segway scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/linuxconfau-%25e2%2580%259chow-to%25e2%2580%259d-build-custom-microcontroller-projects-for-fun-and-profit <p>This presentation looks at how to develop your own custom microcontroller hardware from scratch. Often laptops and general purpose computers are too powerful and too large to use for simple hardware projects. Often you can perform tasks like controlling DC motors, stepper motors, switches, LCDs, LEDs, buzzers/speakers etc. efficiently and effectively using inexpensive/free microcontrollers. Other benefits such as extremely small size and ultra low power consumption are also inherent benefits of most popular microcontrollers.</p><p>I will describe the Texas Instruments MSP430 family of microcontrollers, a powerful low voltage microcontroller that can be obtained at no cost using techniques I will show you. I will describe the entire process needed to develop your own projects starting with where to obtain free microcontrollers, the process needed to design and etch your own Printed Circuit Boards. Followed by a “how to” explaining the process needed to set up GCC and associated tool chain so you can develop software four your newly developed project hardware.</p><p>I also have a number of interesting previous projects that demonstrate how I have used the controllers in the past. This demonstrates how to implement RS232 serial ports, Bluetooth, simple bus design, Buttons (I/O), LED indicators, LCD, Analogue to Digital Converters, motor controlling (PWM), stepper motors and more. Over time while working on these projects I have compiled many of the different design features into a generic board. Both schematic design and code examples will be available for interested parties.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/linuxconfau-%25e2%2580%259chow-to%25e2%2580%259d-build-custom-microcontroller-projects-for-fun-and-profit">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Sun, 06 May 2007 09:49:46 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/linuxconfau-%25e2%2580%259chow-to%25e2%2580%259d-build-custom-microcontroller-projects-for-fun-and-profit scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/transactional-memory-from-semantics-to-silicon <p>Google Tech Talks<br /> April 25, 2007<br /> <br /> ABSTRACT</p> <p>Chip-level multiprocessing has recently emerged as one of the most effective solutions to the problem of increasing processor performance. As a result, issues related to construction of scalable and reliable concurrent applications have become increasingly important. In particular, providing effective means for controlling concurrent accesses to shared memory is currently one of the most pressing problems in concurrent programming. Traditionally, such accesses have been mediated using mutual-exclusion locks resulting in scalability, composability and safety problems. In this talk, I will present transactional memory, an alternative concurrency management mechanism eliminating many problems associated with lock-based synchronization.</p> <p> I will first discuss language extensions that allow programmers to access transactional memory: the semantics of transaction-specific language constructs and the benefits of programming with these constructs over using mutual-exclusion locks. I will then proceed to discussing the architecture of the transactional memory system we developed at Intel<p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/transactional-memory-from-semantics-to-silicon">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies">Companies</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/science">Science</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/techtalks">Techtalks</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/companies/google">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/science/computer-science">Computer Science</a> Sun, 06 May 2007 01:25:05 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/06/transactional-memory-from-semantics-to-silicon scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/01/linuxconfau-albatross-open-uav-project <p>Recent advances in communications, solid state inertial sensors and increased computational power have made unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) a feasible solution for many applications, and accessible to people in scientific research, commercial, and hobbyist communities. However, such UAVs require a sophisticated automatic pilot and guidance system to achieve autonomous flight, due to the absence of a human pilot. Although commercial systems exist, they are very expensive, are often targeted for military surveillance applications, and often have export restrictions associated with them. </p><p>During 2005, we began development on Albatross, a completely open source UAV project that has been surprisingly successful to date. This year we have begun work on the second version of the system, consisting of a new hardware design, an overhauled control and inertial measurement system, new user interface software, and a custom-designed aircraft.</p><p>We will outline the Albatross system; the hardware components, and the software architecture. We will illustrate how we used an custom hardware platform running embedded Linux, a transparent UDP-based IPC framework and a versatile combination of sensors and electronics to develop a successful first prototype in just six months. The talk intends to be interest to anyone involved in hardware hacking, embedded systems, and developing complex projects on a very tight budget. </p><p>The talk will also include observations and practical advice regarding embedded Linux for real-time applications, and insight into the current state of the Linux desktop as a platform for hardware design. The open source philosophy, especially as it applies to hardware and embedded software projects, will form an underlying theme for the talk.</p><p>We will conclude with a look to the future; the possible uses for a Free UAV, our specific goals, expanding the project, and how we hope to complete a autonomous trans-Tasman Albatross flight in the next 12 months.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/01/linuxconfau-albatross-open-uav-project">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Tue, 01 May 2007 15:49:48 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/05/01/linuxconfau-albatross-open-uav-project scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/30/linuxconfau-x-monitor-hotplugging-sweetness <p>Three extensions currently deal with screen geometry in the X world -- Xinerama, XFree86VidModeExtension and RandR. Even still, this combination doesn't support monitor hot-plug or multi-head dynamic screen configuration.</p> <p>This talk will present changes to the RandR extension which provides support for monitor hot-plug and dynamic multi-monitor reconfiguration. The design of the extension changes, implications for backward compatibility and desktop environment integration will be discussed along with a presentation of the implementation integrated into the X desktop.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/30/linuxconfau-x-monitor-hotplugging-sweetness">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:33:59 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/30/linuxconfau-x-monitor-hotplugging-sweetness scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/29/linuxconfau-making-sausage-how-the-olpc-machine-was-designed <p>Software and hardware are very different. Software is malleable and has no cost to reproduce; hardware is a very different experience.</p> <p>Hardware systems design is like sausage making: <ul> <li>You can only make as much sausage as you can get <strong>all</strong> the ingredients for</li> <li>Some parts of the recipe can be substituted, but not others</li> <li>There are only a finite number of ingredients you can use in a recipe</li> <li>If you know the right ingredient suppliers, you may be able to get custom ingredients made for you, so long as you are making a *lot* of sausage</li> <li>Some of the major ingredients take years to grow, rather than a season. You can at best let the farmers (custom chip designers) know what kinds of ingredients you'd like the next time, and have to live with those commodity ingredients that are available in the quantity you need</li> <li>It isn't a pretty process.</li> <li>You don't know exactly how it is going to taste until you've cooked it.</li> </ul> <p>I will explore the sausage making that is the first One Laptop Per Child System, a novel, very low cost and low power laptop for kids education in the developing world, that runs Linux. The reailities of life for many or most of the world's children present novel challenges to our hardware and software design, particularly due to lack of power, infrastructure, and available expertise in the field.</p> <p>Its recipe, while made out of standard or at most semi-custom ingredients, makes it a novel system including: Our display has higher resolution than 95% of the laptop displays on the market today; approximately 1/7th the power consumption; 1/3rd the price; sunlight readability; and room-light readability with the backlight off, mesh networking, a novel dual mode touchpad that can function both as a standard touchpad and be used with a stylus, and novel power conservation capabilities. These include the ability to leave the screen and wireless mesh network fully on while the machine is suspended to RAM. </p> <p>As you might imagine, these novel capabilities present novel challenges to Linux, which is the only system which could quickly fulfill our needs. It also presents challenges to our software: the power conservation techniques needed are very new and conventional GUI's are intended for adult office workers: our audience are young children learning to read or getting a basic education, since most children only receive 5-6 years of education in many parts of the world. I'll touch on some of these aspects as well.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/29/linuxconfau-making-sausage-how-the-olpc-machine-was-designed">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:45:01 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/29/linuxconfau-making-sausage-how-the-olpc-machine-was-designed scoundrel http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/17/linuxconfau-linux-on-the-cell-broadband-engine-architecture <p>Computers based on the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture have in the past been available only to a very small group of developers. They are now becoming vastly more popular, in the end of 2006 at least four companies (IBM, Sony, Mercury and Toshiba) are selling products, all of them designed to run Linux.</p><p>This presentation gives an overview of the available software stack for Cell, including tool chain, optimized libraries, simulators and distributions. The main focus will be on the implementation and interfaces of the kernel specific to the usage of the Synergistic Processing Units (SPUs). These are the main novelty of the Cell BE processor compared to other common CPUs.</p><p>A Cell BE processor has eight SPU cores, which autonomously execute application code in their own local memory of 256kb per SPU, while the operating system runs on another core implementing the PowerPC architecture. Linux uses a file system for interaction between user tasks running on the PowerPC core and those running on an SPU. This file system manages virtualizing the SPU resources as well as loading binaries compiled for the SPU instruction set<br />and communicating with them at run time.</p><p>On a higher-level abstraction, an operating system independent library is used to create threads running on an SPU and interact with them from a given process.</p><p>The presenter is maintaining the Cell BE platform code in the Linux kernel and has implemented a significant portion of that code.</p><p><a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/17/linuxconfau-linux-on-the-cell-broadband-engine-architecture">Read more about this video…</a></p><p><b>Want to control this feed contents?</b>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/user/all/signup">Sign up here</a> and create your own feed!</p><hr/>Want more on these topics?<br/>Browse the archive of posts filed under <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os">OS</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences">Conferences</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development">Development</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting">Broadcasting</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/os/linux">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/conferences/linuxconfau">LinuxConf.AU</a>, <a href="http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/broadcasting/lectures">Lectures</a> Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:16:14 GMT http://www.bestechvideos.com/2007/04/17/linuxconfau-linux-on-the-cell-broadband-engine-architecture scoundrel