Brian's Brain
<p><img alt="Brian Dipert" hspace="6" align="left" border="0" src="/contents/images/_brian_s60.gif" /><em>EDN</em> contributor Brian Dipert exposes, analyzes and<br />opines on diverse topics in technology.</p>
The system retrofit: Thanks, iFixit!
As mentioned in my prior post, I plan to leverage iFixit’s maintenance resources (documentation and video) whenever my girlfriend’s iPhone 3GS’s embedded battery becomes sufficiently capacity-hampered to require a swap. And I’ll drop $20 on the replacement battery and tools from iFixit, even though the collection is available for less on Ebay, to acknowledge iFixit for ...... Read More
Comments (0)Obsolescence by design: Short-term gain, long-term loss, and an environmental crime
A recent conversation with my girlfriend reminded me of a longstanding “beef” I’ve had with a major consumer electronics supplier. Although I realize I’m a poor case study of “voting with my wallet,” going forward I aspire to do a better job of “putting my money where my mouth is.” And in the interim I hope you’ll follow the spirit of ...... Read More
Comments (46)The top three rules of (display) real estate: location, location, and location
Having discussed handheld device display ppi (pixels per inch) in some depth in my prior writeup, thereby giving (at least near-term) closure to one of the topics I raised in the preceding post, I thought I’d wrap up this particular series by focusing on the remaining subjects I previously introduced in this series: the sizes and pixel densities of computer monitors and televisions. Specifi ...... Read More
Comments (1)Hold me closer, tiny display*
Last week’s write-up, “The Only Constant Is Change,” posited a question; why have computer displays and televisions remained at fairly conservative ppi (pixels-per-inch) metrics, while tablets and (especially) smartphones have pushed the envelope quite quickly (a la Apple’s Retina Display)? Those of you who did the homework I assigned you, consisting of reading two part ...... Read More
Comments (5)The Only Constant Is Change
Eleven months ago, I said goodbye. Now I’m saying hello again. How cool is that? Director of Content Patrick Mannion and Online Managing Editor Suzanne Deffree recently decided to resurrect the Brian’s Brain blog, and unlike their counterparts at InfoWorld, they thankfully went back to the originator instead of going with a ghostwriter. My full-time gig nowadays is as a senior analys ...... Read More
Comments (6)So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish
One of the things that’s always struck me in interacting with various folks over my time at EDN is how impermanent your careers have tended to be in comparison to mine. Many of you, for example, job-hopped a great deal during the dot-com-boom second half of the 1990s. And conversely, some of you have unfortunately also experienced layoff periods coincident with economic downturns, outsourci ...... Read More
Comments (15)Qualcomm's MSM8660: Does Dual-Core Hype Translate Into Practical-Benefit Reality?
Continued from ‘Qualcomm’s MSM8660: The Benchmark’s The Thing Wherein I’ll Crown The King‘… Here’s the Quadrant Advanced benchmark results screenshot of the MDP with Vsync on: And off: Next comes my Google Nexus One: And Motorola Droid: It’s now time to turn to the tablets. Starting with the smaller 7″ system, the NOOKcolor’ ...... Read More
Comments (0)Qualcomm's MSM8660: The Benchmark's The Thing Wherein I'll Crown The King
Continued from ‘Qualcomm’s MSM8660: Dual-Core ARM With Adreno 220 Graphics For The Performance-Hungry‘… What benchmark did I employ in this study? After much consideration and no shortage of gnashing of teeth, I reluctantly settled on Aurora Softworks’ Quadrant Advanced, one of the utilities which came pre-installed on the MDP. Quadrant is seemingly by far the mo ...... Read More
Comments (1)Qualcomm's MSM8660: Dual-Core ARM With Adreno 220 Graphics For The Performance-Hungry
Within my early-April cover story, ‘ARM versus Intel: a successful stratagem for RISC or grist for CISC’s tricks?‘, I discussed (among other SoCs) Qualcomm’s dual-core MSM8660. By means of review, the MSM8660 (befitting its prefix, which stands for Mobile Station Modem and is the successor to QSD aka Qualcomm Semiconductor) embeds a cellular baseband processor alongside ...... Read More
Comments (0)Sunday's Video Of The Day: Sony's PlayStation Network Goes Back Online
Hey, it only took a month… More on the mandatory firmware update and the state-by-state (and country-by-country) resurrection status specifics. Now the all-important question: how many people will give Sony yet another chance? ...... Read More
Comments (0)Implementing And Comparing Video Over USB: The Thunderbolt Back Story
Hopefully by now at least some of you have gotten a chance to peruse Cypress Semiconductor’s contributed feature story in the latest issue of EDN, which went live yesterday. I’ve been working with Cypress on it since early February, and as you’ll see when you read through it, the main article compares USB v3 against HDMI and DisplayPort as video connection candidates. Personal ...... Read More
Comments (4)Wednesday's Quote Of The Day: Google's Chrome OS On Openness
From Senior Vice President of Chrome, Sundar Pichai regarding today’s Chromebook news, 57 minutes (and a few seconds) into today’s Google I/O keynote…and also noted as curious by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler: Of course as you developers, we want to make sure you can completely jailbreak these devices. So my partners may not want to say it, but these devices have a full jailb ...... Read More
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