threaded

While Wonder Woman's bracelets can deflect bullets, for a mere $15,000 you can get a device that not only does the same, but can tell time, too. The Tread 1 by Los Angeles-based Devon Works is a unique timepiece that's described as "space-aged and bulletproof haute horology for the wired generation."

Exactly how Space Age is this watch? Instead of quartz crystals and gears, the Thread 1 comprises four belts that are only 2/1,000 of an inch thick turned by an individual microstep electric motor. To ensure accuracy, an optical sensor tracks the … Read more

A reverse proxy server stands between your home network server and the Internet, controlling access and protecting your network. Fastream Technologies' IQ Proxy Server is a forward-reverse proxy server application for Windows. It acts as a secure front end for all incoming traffic, and it can also perform common tasks like load balancing, authentication, and caching. It boasts a robust, scalable server engine that can handle up to 20,000 hits at once and serve more than 10,000 requests per second in keep-alive mode. It supports all major Web protocols, features a strong firewall for both forward and reverse … Read more

The Internet contains an abundance of entertaining and educational content in both audio and video formats, and sooner or later almost everyone finds themselves wanting to download such content for later use. Fortunately for all of us, many programs have cropped up in recent years to help us with this task. HiDownload is one such program; but, we're sorry to say, it's not nearly as user-friendly as some others we've encountered.

The program's interface is plain and doesn't offer a whole lot in the way of direction. Some of the features were pretty easy to … Read more

Intel and Microsoft will hold an event next week to discuss collaboration on improvements to Windows 7.

The event, on September 1 in San Francisco, will "share how the two companies collaborated on key enhancements during the development of Windows 7," according to Intel. Steve Smith, vice president and director, Intel's Digital Enterprise Group Operations, and Michael Angiulo, general manager of Windows Planning and PC Ecosystem at Microsoft, will talk at the event. Microsoft plans to launch Windows 7 on October 22.

Windows 7 collaboration will be demonstrated by engineers from both companies, according to Intel. Not … Read more

One of the features I did like about my old Instinct was threaded messaging. With Sprint's service being very unpredictable in our area there are days when texts and calls seem to get lost, only to show up hours after they've been sent. When you're sitting on your porch and you get a text from a friend that says "What aisle are you in now?" it's nice to have it show up right under the text you sent them two hours earlier that reads "Cool! I'm in Walmart too!"

The Palm … Read more

Windows 7 will be more than just a better interface. Under-the-hood changes will allow chips from Intel, Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Devices to ratchet up Windows 7 performance above previous Microsoft operating systems.

Microsoft on Wednesday said it has finalized the code for Windows 7, set to ship with new PCs starting October 22. Improvements will include how Windows handles multitasking, graphics acceleration, and solid-state drives.

Microsoft is working closely with Intel, whose chips will power the vast majority of PCs running Windows 7. A July 22 post from Intel's Joakim Lialias, Alliance Manager responsible for Microsoft, described how … Read more

I've been getting a fair number of questions about multi-threading the past couple of weeks. The reason is that Intel has been previewing its "Nehalem EX" Xeon processor in advance of Advanced Micro Device's six-core "Istanbul" CPU launch. Intel's Nehalem generation has simultaneous multi-threading (SMT)--which Intel calls Hyper-Threading (HT)--while Istanbul does not.

I wrote about this topic in depth a couple of years back in "Gradations of Threading," but it's worth reviewing in the context of these new server processors.

First, a little terminology.

A thread is a … Read more

VoiceThread is a photo- and video-sharing tool. It lets users upload photos , videos and documents from their hard drive or other online services, and add voice, text, and video annotations to each slide. These 'VoiceBooks' can be embedded in blogs, Web sites, or social networking profiles. Other users can comment on each slide, draw doodles, or leave voice messages of their own.

In addition to the standard methods of adding voice comments to a photo, one thing that makes VoiceThread especially cool is the telephone integration, which lets you record messages using a standard landline or mobile phone.

Winner: VoiceThread (… Read more

Group conversation service VoiceThread (review) has a great new feature called Video Doodling, which as you can guess, lets users draw on top of video clips on the fly. The technology, formally called a Telestrator, is best known for its usage in football games by John Madden, who pointed out things to look for to viewers at home with the aid of an onscreen drawing tool. VoiceThread takes a similar approach, and instead of overlaying drawings on video while it's playing, only lets you draw when paused.

In a sample clip sent to us (embedded below), creator Steve Muth … Read more