ITE 221 - Fall 2011 -Chapter 8

FCC Study “Measuring Broadband America” 

Posted on www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently released a report of their study “Measuring Broadband America: A Report on Consumer Broadband Performance in the US.” The report presents the results of their nationwide performance study of residential broadband service.  The study examined service offerings from 13 of the largest broadband providers using automated, direct measurements of broadband performance delivered to the homes of thousands of volunteers during March 2011. According to the FCC the purpose of the study was to “give consumers additional information about the quality of their broadband connections across their chosen ISPs’ networks and to increase awareness about the importance of broadband quality in accessing content and services over the Internet.” A major finding of the study was that most Internet service providers (ISPs) had improved the accuracy of their download speeds since a 2009 study. Performance variations were noted by technology and providers:

• Technology Variation: Fiber-to-the-home services were the most accurate at an average of 114 % of advertised speeds. Cable- based services were next at an average of 93 % of advertised speeds. DSL-based services only delivered on average 82 percent of advertised speeds.
• Internet Service Provider Variation: The greatest variation in advertised speed among service provides was greatest in upload speeds, which ranged from a low of 85 percent of advertised speed to a high of 125 percent of advertised speed.

ITE 221 - Fall 2011 -Chapter 7

Article Review: “Apple Inc. To Improve Screen Quality”

By Felice Medders

http://www.emoneydaily.com/apple-inc-to-improve-screen-quality/69820150/

Apple Inc., who is currently dependent upon other manufacturers for their mobile device displays, filed for a patent to create an energy saving organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display. While traditional OLEDs are already more energy efficient than other displays, like LCDs, they still aren’t 100% efficient and many users of the iPhone 4S have been complaining about the quick drain on the device power. An excerpt from the patent filing stated, "The relative power inefficiency in display white spaces using an OLED display may be particularly problematic in certain contexts. For example, certain applications, such as word processing, spreadsheet design and use, database design and use, e-mail, and other business or productivity applications, typically utilize dark or black alphanumeric characters on a white background, such as to simulate writing or printing on a sheet of paper."

Apple’s proposed solution has a transparent OLED display panel that will be positioned in front of a solid white background layer, like a white transflective sheet. In addition, the display will have an opacity switchable layer between the OLED panel and the background layer. A side benefit to Apple is that the Apple logo can be place on the transflective sheet as well so the logo will show even when the device is off. 

ITE 210 - Fall 2011 - Chapter 6

Article Review: “After seven years, Apple open sources its Apple Lossless Audio Codec”

By Chris Foresman

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/

Compression is a technique that reduces the number of bits used to encode data, such as a file or stream of audio from the Internet. Compression can be either lossless, meaning it doesn’t change from the compression/decompression process, or lossy, meaning it does. MP3, a common standard for audio files, is an example of lossy compression and is used because it speeds up download times without a noticeable change for most people.

This article is about Apple’s Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) that was introduced in 2004 with iTunes 4.5 and is supported on all Apple’s iPod and iOS devices. It is similar to an open lossless format, Free Lossles Audi Codec (FLAC), but it uses an MPEG 4 compliant QuickTime container. Apple has now made the code for the encoder and decoder open source through the Apache 2.0 open source license.