Monday 31 August 2015
Saturday 29 August 2015
[Video] Turn Your iPad Into A Wireless Monitor For Dual Displays | Fstoppers
[Video] Turn Your iPad Into A Wireless Monitor For Dual Displays | Fstoppers
If you have ever used dual monitors, it's very difficult going back to using just one. I'm forced to use one tiny monitor on my laptop every time I travel and its always made working on the road a slow and painful task. That is until I learned that I could use my iPad as a wireless second monitor and pair it with my laptop no matter where I am.
Airdisplay by Avatron is a simple app for your iPad, iPhone, or Android phone or tablet that allows you to turn your device into a wireless monitor. You can either use this extra monitor to extend your display or "mirror" your current display. The App is only $10 and is incredibly easy to set up.
How to set up Air Display on a Windows computer at home (wireless network present)
1. Download the Air Display app on your tablet ($10)
2. Download and install the Air Display application on your computer (download here)
3. Make sure your tablet and computer are connected to the same home network
4. Open the Air Display app on the tablet and the computer
5. You should see the name of your tablet pop up on the Air Display application on your computer. Click it
6. The 2 devices should begin pairing and after a few seconds it should begin working.
How to set up Air Display on a Windows computer on the road (no wireless network present)
1. Repeat all steps above but we will create our own ad hoc network.
2. On your computer click: Start, Control Panel, View network status and tasks, Set up a new connection or network, Set up a wireless ad hoc network
3. Type in a network name (anything you like)
4. We set security type to "no authentication" but you can add a password if you like
5. Click "next" to create the network
6. On the iPad click: Settings, WiFi, and then choose the ad hoc network you just made
7. Continue the steps above to connect
How to set up Air Display on a Mac computer at home (wireless network present)
1. Download the Air Display app on your tablet ($10)
2. Download and install the Air Display application on your computer (download here)
3. Make sure your tablet and computer are connected to the same home network
4. Open the Air Display app on the tablet and the computer
5. You should see the name of your tablet pop up on the Air Display application on your computer. Click it
6. The 2 devices should begin pairing and after a few seconds it should begin working.
How to set up Air Display on a Mac computer on the road (no wireless network present)
1. Repeat all steps above but we will create our own ad hoc network
2. Click on the AirPort icon in your menu bar and click: Create Network
3. Click: Show Options and encrypt the connection by entering a password
4. Click: OK. The AirPort icon in the system menu bar changes to a little computer in a gray signal field
5. Continue the steps above to connect
Friday 28 August 2015
Thursday 27 August 2015
Destiny's Error Codes and Their Solutions - GameSpot
Destiny's Error Codes and Their Solutions - Gamespot
Having problems playing Destiny because of error codes like Centipede, Urchin, or Pear? We may have the fix.
by Chris Pereira on
Wednesday 26 August 2015
TunesToTube - Upload an MP3 to YouTube in HD
TunesToTube - Upload an MP3 to YouTube in HD
What does TunesToTube do?
Despite being a video site, YouTube has also become the most popular place for people to listen to music - TunesToTube lets you upload an MP3 to YouTube.
All you need to do is upload an MP3 and an image to the TunesToTube server - it will combine them and create an HD video. Once the video is created, the YouTube API is used to upload it to your YouTube channel - this normally takes around 10 seconds!
All you need to do is upload an MP3 and an image to the TunesToTube server - it will combine them and create an HD video. Once the video is created, the YouTube API is used to upload it to your YouTube channel - this normally takes around 10 seconds!
Why use it?
There are 3 main processes in making a static-image video with audio in the background: Overlaying the image on to the MP3, rendering the video which can be time consuming, and uploading to YouTube.
Individually these processes can take a lot of time, even with software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas etc. - it is much quicker and easier when everything is automated online!
Individually these processes can take a lot of time, even with software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas etc. - it is much quicker and easier when everything is automated online!
Who is the site for?
This site should be ideal for producers or musicians looking to promote their new music, or maybe recording studios who need to upload MP3 samples of their artists' new material to YouTube.
The MP3 you upload does not get re-encoded by this site, and additional steps are taken so the audio quality is as good as it can be on YouTube.
The MP3 you upload does not get re-encoded by this site, and additional steps are taken so the audio quality is as good as it can be on YouTube.
Am I safe?
In addition to the free YouTube upload service, you can also choose to upgrade your account to access these extra features:
- Increased Daily Upload Quota
- Larger Google Drive™ file transfers - transfer up to 175MB files from Drive
- Remove the watermark - the "Uploaded in HD @ TunesToTube.com" watermark is removed by default
- No more reCAPTCHA - the CAPTCHA is removed, making uploads easier and faster
- Silence Padding - Add between 1 and 180 seconds of silence to the end of videos - useful if YouTube is cutting them short.
- Save description and tags - so you don't have to copy them in every time
- Save default button states - Live / Private, tick-boxes, etc. on the upload form
- Use ID3 Tags - Extract ID3 information from MP3s and dynamically insert into Title, Description and Tags
- Save a background image - so you don't have to re-upload for your next video
- Upload files via a URL (up to 175MB) - a quicker and easier method if you have a large MP3 hosted on your Website, DropBox®, Google Drive™ etc.
- Simultaneous Channel Uploads - upload a video to 2 YouTube channels at the same time (**both accounts need to have upgraded).
- Scheduled Uploads - specify a date and time up to 14 days in the future for your upload.
- Batch Upload Mode - process 25 MP3s (and 1 background Image) all at once.
- SoundCloud® uploads - send your MP3 and image to SoundCloud at the same time as the YouTube upload.
- SoundCloud® direct downloads - see all of your recently uploaded SoundCloud sounds on the upload page and transfer them quickly to the upload queue.
- Custom Watermarks - Use your own watermark on videos - it will show in the bottom left corner of the video and overlayed on the background. Transparent PNG files can be used.
- Embed Template - Save a custom code template for embedding in to blogs, websites etc
- Twitter integration - Tweet about your latest upload and include a 30 second video clip
Sunday 23 August 2015
News > The Art of War | Bungie.net
News > The Art of War | Bungie.net
In the last Weekly Update, we shared out a small sample of the guns you'll be able to acquire in Destiny: The Taken King. Our artists love it when you receive their hard work with enthusiasm so today, they're letting slip a few more dogs of war.
HAKKE PULSE RIFLE (1)
HAKKE PULSE RIFLE (2)
SUROS AUTO RIFLE
SUROS ROCKET LAUNCHER
Creating the weapons you wield, the aliens you destroy, and the places you explore starts with imagination and inspiration. Bungie artists dream in every direction to create a palette of work we can choose from in developing a great experience.
If you want to see more work created by people at Bungie, check out their Art Station portfolios. These belong to some of the talented people from our Hard Surface, Character, and Concept Teams:
Please Note: Their portfolios also contain some extracurricular activity. Not all of it was intended for Destiny. For example, you're never going to see a 57 Chevy in your inventory.
That's not even the full compliment of people who create art at Bungie. Coming soon, we'll share more portfolios from the World Art Team. They've been hard at work building a new destination for you to explore, and we have yet to reveal it in great detail.
Saturday 22 August 2015
Catalyst: Super Solar Cells - ABC TV Science - Tuesday March 10, 2015
Catalyst: Super Solar Cells - ABC TV Science - Tuesday March 10, 2015
Tuesday, 10 March 2015
SUPER SOLAR CELLS - download MP4 video: mp4
Dr Graham Phillips investigates new technology that is able to convert more than 40 per cent of the sun's light into electricity. This is more than double the efficiency of today's domestic rooftop solar panels, and could eventually lead to cheaper sources of renewable energy.
NARRATION
At the centre of our solar system lies great power. The Sun bathes our tiny blue world with an immense amount of solar energy... many thousands of times the world's current energy usage. Exploiting solar makes so much sense. In space, solar power has been used for a long time. Satellites have advanced photovoltaic cells based not on silicon, like our rooftop cells, but on gallium arsenide. These are more efficient but generally too expensive for use on Earth.
Dr Graham Phillips
But that may be changing. The sky is clear, the sun's shining and today we're going to find out about a new kind of solar cell. At the moment, it's the most efficient cell in the world and it was invented right here in Australia. It brings space technology down to the surface. The story starts at the University of New South Wales.
Dr Graham Phillips
Hi. I'm Graham Phillips.
Prof Martin Green
Good to meet you, Graham.
NARRATION
Professor Martin Green has been researching solar power since 1974. He's seen some huge changes.
Prof Martin Green
The early '70s, people realised that we needed to do something apart from continuing to burn fossil fuels. The whole crises of that era really got people alerted to the fact that we mightn't be able to depend on fossil fuels for ever for our energy supply, and that's when the interest in photovoltaic started taking off.
NARRATION
Solar power has always had a great challenge to improve the efficiency of sunlight being converted into electricity. Your average rooftop panel converts about 15% of the sun's light.
Prof Martin Green
We were the first to get a 20% efficient solar system, you know, back in the late 1980s, so that was one of our early highlights of the work we did here. There's a fundamental limit on how efficient you can convert with just a single cell, and that's about 25% for silicon. If you want to go higher than that, you've got to do something different.
NARRATION
Martin and his team did something different. They came up with a system where one photovoltaic cell was replaced by two and the sun's light was split into two beams - one going to one cell and one to the other.
Prof Martin Green
What works the best is if you split the sunlight up into its different colours, much the same as a rainbow does, then you send each different colour to a cell that's specialised in doing that conversion.
NARRATION
Standard silicon cells are most efficient for longer wavelengths, or colours, of light and gallium arsenide cells are better for shorter wavelengths.
Dr Graham Phillips
The key to this device is this, the filter. Now, the sunlight comes from this direction, some of the wavelengths pass straight through to the silicon-based cell over here. Other wavelengths are reflected back to the gallium arsenide-based cell. The gallium arsenide cell is a triple stack of photovoltaic layers, unlike the silicon cell, which has only one. Splitting the sunbeams and using the double cell system produced a staggering 40% efficiency for converting sunlight to electricity - the highest for any commercially viable solar power system.
Prof Martin Green
I think we can go further, but that the first time anyone's ever exceeded the magic 40% landmark.
NARRATION
Another key to this system is to concentrate the sunlight onto the cell. By focusing the sun's rays, a curved mirror can turn the power of one sun into the power of hundreds.
Dr Mark Keevers
By doing that you can use more expensive cells and also, they give a higher performance. It focuses and concentrates the light onto the cells at about 365 suns.
Dr Graham Phillips
365! That's a decent amount of heat going into those cells.
Dr Mark Keevers
That's right. And what happens if you sort of misalign things and you've got that kind of power lurking around?
Dr Mark Keevers
If we do misalign, we can start cooking some of the rubber and plastic parts.
Dr Graham Phillips
Have you done that?
Dr Mark Keevers
Once.
NARRATION
To develop their technology further, Martin and Mark partnered with another veteran of Australian solar power, John Lasich. He's built a test facility for concentrated solar cell technology. And he's already solved one of its biggest challenges - cooling the solar cells. While the sunlight hitting the cells needs to be intense, the excess heat created has to be taken away or it causes problems.
John Lasich
One of the very big challenges has to be manage that heat and extract the heat so that we can keep the cells happy and running cool so that they have maximum efficiency. This is a secret that we can demonstrate it, we can't tell you precisely how. But we've developed an ultra-efficient heat sink that's able to extract rather a large of heat from the cells and keep them below 60 degrees.
NARRATION
60 degrees is the maximum operating temperature for these cells. Any higher and they become less efficient. Much like the UNSW prototype, John's system uses mirrors to direct and focus sunlight onto a solar cell. They're called 'heliostats' and they concentrate the sun up to 700 times, in other words, 700 suns. The cooling system must work extremely well. Back in the lab, John shows me just how good it is.
John Lasich
OK, I think it's time to introduce the blowtorch.
Dr Graham Phillips
The blowtorch?
John Lasich
The blowtorch.
Dr Graham Phillips
That's a piece of high-tech equipment I think, isn't it?
John Lasich
Indeed it is, but it needs to be able to extract the heat that is applied by this blowtorch and that's equivalent to what it needs to do when it's actually operating.
Dr Graham Phillips
OK, it's yours, not mine, I guess.
NARRATION
If there was no cooling present, the blowtorch would do serious damage to the chip. But sure enough...
Dr Graham Phillips
This is stone cold.
John Lasich
Stone cold.
Dr Graham Phillips
That is an impressive cooling system. And I guess you need that if you've got the power of 600 or 700 suns hitting those cells.
John Lasich
Indeed, and that's one of the secrets that we've cracked - how to do that effectively, cheaply, easily and reliably.
NARRATION
John's system uses only a single type of solar cell, not the dual system developed at UNSW. But his cell is made of gallium arsenide and capable of generating a lot of power.
Dr Graham Phillips
On a typical home solar panels, you know, the panels are so big, metre and a half by a metre wide. Now imagine ten of those. Well, the power they generate could be generated with just one of those. So to power an entire home, which would take about 20 conventional panels... ..the equivalent amount of power would come from two.
NARRATION
John has even built a pilot power station in central Victoria, which is fully operational.
Dr Graham Phillips
Gee, it's an impressive set of mirrors you've got here.
John Lasich
Yeah, it's pretty exciting.
Dr Graham Phillips
How many?
John Lasich
There are 56 heliostats here and you're looking at the world's first wireless photovoltaic power station. So there are no wires in this field at all.
NARRATION
Each heliostat is programmed to track with the sun, so their collective light is always reflected to the top of the tower. There sits one square metre of John's gallium arsenide cells. Cooling all that focused sunlight onto the cell requires a super-sized version of that top-secret cooling system.
Dr Graham Phillips
When this is up and running, how much power will it generate?
John Lasich
This will generate almost 220 kilowatts, so that's almost a quarter of a megawatt.
NARRATION
That's enough to power 75 homes.
John Lasich
This system could be multiplied as many times as we like, so if you just want a megawatt, we would just use four of these. If you want 100 megawatts, we would use 400 of these. The efficiency is high regardless of the scale of the project.
NARRATION
And the system could be made even more efficient by simply replacing John's gallium arsenide cells with even more efficient ones, like the University of New South Wales' dual cells.
Prof Martin Green
RayGen have demonstrated the concept of focusing light to a central tower and then converting using solar panels there. They were the first to demonstrate that at a reasonable scale. So we're hoping that our improvement will get added as a way of supercharging the performance of that type of system.
John Lasich
It's a very good match for what we do. Because the receiver is very small, it's possible to do sophisticated things in there to enhance the efficiency. That type of technology would work very well. This type of technology and perhaps several others in parallel could indeed mean that a large portion of the world's energy is provided from clean, renewable sources.
NARRATION
It's another small but important step to tapping into one of the greatest clean sources of energy in the solar system.
Topics: Space
- Reporter: Dr Graham Phillips
- Producer: Maurice Branscombe
- Researcher: Claire Smith
- Camera: Kevin May
Peter Healey
Phil Hankin - Sound: Stephen Ravich
Graham Fettling
Mark Tarpey - Editor: Andrew Glover
Thank you to NASA for space images and animations
STORY CONTACTS
Prof. Martin Green
Professor of Photovoltaics Engineering, UNSW.
Dr. Mark Keevers
Senior Research Fellow, Photovoltaics Engineering, UNSW.
Dr. John Lasich
Technical Director, RayGen Resources.
RELATED INFO
UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering
Australian Renewable Energy Agency
^ top
Dr Graham Phillips investigates new technology that is able to convert more than 40 per cent of the sun's light into electricity. This is more than double the efficiency of today's domestic rooftop solar panels, and could eventually lead to cheaper sources of renewable energy.
Channel Seven announces live streaming from December 1, 2015 | 4bc.com.au
Channel Seven announces live streaming from December 1, 2015 | 4bc.com.au
Viewers will be able to live stream Seven, Seven Mate and Seven Two.
From December 1, you'll be able to live stream all three Channel Seven channels on your smartphone or tablet.
This is a globally massive move by the Seven network.
This is a really big deal - I think the BBC and maybe one or two others are the only ones that do this.
Seven News technology editor Djuro Sen said Australia's streaming is about to change forever.
"It is a first, to be 24/7 pumping out three stations across the mobile networks of Australia is an unbelievable undertaking," he said.
"How many times have you had a phone call on the bus or on the way home in the car 'can you turn the TV on now', well guess what, you can, by just turning your phone on."
Mr Sen said there will be a slight delay because the vision has to go through network switches, but buffering times shouldn't be a problem.
"There's plenty of bandwidth for it, it always depends on how many users you have at either end, and having spoken to all the telcos recently for Seven News, they are all gearing up for that peak hour, you know when you jump on the bus between 4 o'clock and 7 o'clock in Australia's metro centres," he said.
"They know they're going to get hammered and they're prepared for it."
Listen to the full interview with Ben Davis on 4BC Drive here.
Friday 21 August 2015
Thursday 20 August 2015
Wednesday 19 August 2015
Destiny: Bungie Explains Why It’s Nerfing Top Tier Weapons | GamerRant
Destiny: Bungie Explains Why It’s Nerfing Top Tier Weapons | GamerRant
Destiny remains to be a contentious subject amongst gamers. While many fans consider the action-RPG to be an exercise in futile repetition – get this gun, shoot that alien, grab that gear, rinse and repeat – there are a lot of dedicated Destinyplayers who would argue differently. As a matter of fact, the title’s gameplay doesn’t seem to be slowing would-be Guardians from enjoying it on an almost daily basis, especially as they hone their skills for the upcoming The Taken Kingexpansion. Nor does the game’s fan base seem to be shrinking at the slightest, particularly considering that fans have logged more than 2 billion hours of play time since its release.
Bearing all of that in mind, by incorporating some new changes and upgrades in preparation for The Taken King‘s arrival, Bungie is attempting to keep Destinyfresh and interesting not only for its diehard fans, but also in order to attract newcomers as well. For instance, once the DLC launches this September, the content will have some considerably large changes, including the Update 2.0’s alterations to weapon power and balance. Although a significant amount of fans would contend that the “nerfing” – that is, the reduction of potency – of popular firearms like the hand-cannon Thorn, or the rocket launcher Gjallarhorn (one of the best guns in the game) is unfair, the game developers would disagree.
As it happens, in an interview with IGN, Bungie’s own Community Manager, David “Deej” Dague, makes an effort to convey why the studio is decreasing certain weapons’ powers. To put it succinctly, he explains that they want players to depend on a variety of guns rather than a couple. However, Dague goes on to provide an even longer justification for the changes, saying:
“This is the challenge for us, to create things that you always want to do. . . . We want to give you new things to experience all the time, new places to go, new ways to upgrade your Guardian, new enemies to fight, new weapons to use, new subclasses to master. The act of playing Destiny is all about evolving your character. And using the same weapons for the next decade wasn’t really part of that vision.”
Furthermore, the Community Manager addresses the Gjallarhorn specifically, saying:
“Our goal as developers is to keep you guessing, to keep you thinking about, ‘I’m going into this tactical scenario, what am I going to equip?’ And if Gjallarhorn is an obvious choice, then we’d like to provoke you to think a little bit more about your loadout.”
Although it’s admirable that Dague and Bungie‘s team of developers are trying to get Destiny players to switch up their attack styles with a mantra similar to “variety is the spice of life”, some fans of the game would claim that one of the main reasons they stuck with it for so long was because of their ability to rely on familiar weaponry. Not to mention, with the confirmation of other legendary gear not being upgradeable once Year Two starts, it seems as if Bungie is trying to force fans into liking the new content, which often results in an audience rejecting things immediately out of hand.
At any rate, no one besides Bungie’s employees really know exactly how The Taken King will play once it becomes available, but even then the studio can’t truly anticipate if it will be received positively by the public. Considering that, it’s important for everyone to keep an open mind until we all get our hands on a copy.
Destiny: The Taken King is set to release on September 15, 2015 for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
Tuesday 18 August 2015
Xbox One backwards compatibility launching in November | XBLAFans
Xbox One backwards compatibility launching in November | XBLAFans
When it was first announced that the Xbox One would be receiving backwards compatibility it was given the ambiguous launch date of "fall". The launch window has finally been narrowed to a single month, November, but, alas, still no sign of a solid date. Microsoft is still pledging that over 100 Xbox 360 titles will be available to play via backwards compatibility when the service is released to the public. The count of games in the program has been steadily growing; with the latest two games in the program being Gears of War and Shadow Complex.
The next titles chosen in the program will be aided by votes on Xbox Feedback where over three million votes have already been cast since E3. Also, all future Xbox 360 Games with Gold will be backwards compatible meaning that Xbox One gamers will now essentially get four games a month.
Ways to Help Intergrate Light into Your Body | Louix.Org
Ways to Help Intergrate Light into Your Body | Louix.Org
Louix gives advice on how to take care of your body after receiving huge infusions of Light or after going through very cathartic transformations (Audio Discourse).
Monday 17 August 2015
Choc Nut Bliss Ball Recipe | soniastyling.com
Choc Nut Bliss Ball Recipe
Choc Nut Bliss Ball Recipe
Ingredients
- 24 fresh dates, pitted
- ¼ cup of almond meal
- ½ cup peanut butter
- 1 tablespoon rice malt syrup
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
- 2 tablespoons raw cacao powder
- Pinch of sea salt flakes (if peanut butter is not already salted)
- ¼ cup desiccated coconut, toasted
Method
- Place the dates, almond meal, rice malt syrup, coconut oil, cacao powder and sea salt flakes in a food processor.
- Process for 2-3 minutes, until all ingredients are combined.
- Scrape down the sides of your food processor, add peanut butter and process until all ingredients are combined.
- Scoop out a heaped teaspoon of the mixture and roll into a ball with your hands. Repeat until you’ve used up all of your mixture.
- Roll the bliss balls in the toasted desiccated coconut.
- Pop in the fridge to set for around one hour or until set.
- Enjoy!
This recipe makes approximately 20 bliss balls and they will keep in the fridge (in an air tight container) for about a week or so.
That’s a whole week’s worth of treats made in under 20 minutes!
An end to your wi-fi pain is in sight: The router that does all the config work itself is almost here | ZDNet
An end to your wi-fi pain is in sight: The router that does all the config work itself is almost here | ZDNet
A Norwegian startup is using lightweight software, machine learning, and automatic configuration to turn your home hub into the router you've always wanted.
Home routers are the backbone of many consumer and small business setups across the world. Despite their importance, they're largely ignored until they go down or start creaking. For one Norwegian startup, home routers are ripe for improvement.
Domos is aiming to smarten up user experience for home routers. It's working on automated and dynamic router configuration, based on machine learning and making use of long-term traffic statistics stored in the cloud, combined with a lightweight software agent on the router. The company's vision has already attracted the attention of major wi-fi router chip vendors.
DUMB ROUTERS
The two Domos founders "sat together a couple of years ago and were annoyed by our bad home networks, especially the wireless part," Bent Erik Skaug, one of those co-founders, told ZDNet. "We had good enough broadband connections, which should be able to carry all the load. After a while we realized that some of the problems were in the wi-fi part of the home network.
"At the same time, we were looking at what started to happen with the Internet of Things, where the home network isn't just a network for a couple of PCs anymore, but it's started to serve a multitude of different wireless devices, such as home alarms or automation systems, which all depend on a network that's in good working order."
"Much of the solution lies within the router. We spent a year getting to understand the value chain from chip vendors to the OEMs, who manufacture the product, and the ISPs, who buy and deploy the routers in users' homes. The problem with this is that the routers become just a cost item in the ISPs' world, so they squeeze the prices on these products as much as possible. This results in bad routers - they are cheap, but they aren't any good," he said.
READ THIS
"If you have a smarter router, which does things correctly, you don't need a very powerful one in order to get a good effect and a well-functioning network. The problem, as we see it, is that today's routers aren't smart enough. They push traffic to and from, but they don't take history into consideration. The firmware is relatively old [and has] old automatic functionality. When I start to stream Netflix or YouTube today, they don't have good enough functionality to handle this in combination with the other needs I have elsewhere in the same home network," Skaug added.
OPENWRT, SMALL AGENT, CLOUD
Domos' product is based upon the open source router operating system OpenWRT. Domos has added its own lightweight software component to the router, which collects traffic statistics and assists in making changes to the router's configuration. As well as the software, Domos offers a Microsoft Azure-based cloud service, where statistics on the long-term use of the router are stored, and analytics and machine learning are brought to bear on the data. The result is a router that's configured automatically, based on usage and local wi-fi conditions at the user's location.
"The core of what we do is to put a small software component into the router. This software sends a lot of data up to our cloud solution, including radio noise, signal strength of the different devices in the network, the continuous speeds you've got from the different devices to the internet, the amount of data sent to and from the devices and the network. We store this data in our cloud system, where we run a lot of statistics and machine learning on them.
"We can detect lots of different patterns from that, and based on them, we have a rules base which will generate configuration commands that we send back down to the router. For instance, if the router sees radio noise on a channel over time - perhaps not all the time, but regularly over time - our analysis will show that fact, and automatically reconfigure the router to another wi-fi channel to avoid it," Skaug said.
AUTOMATIC EXPERT CONFIG
Many of the settings the Domos product can take care of, Skaug said, are configuration options available through most routers' user interfaces. One example is capping the maximum bandwidth allocation for a specific application, like YouTube or Netflix, in order to avoid it eating up all available bandwidth. If another user tries to get on the network at the same time, the session suffers under the load from the previous session.
By capping the the bandwidth at such a level that neither the streaming session nor the second session are disturbed by each other, the network performs better for everyone. It's an option many routers offer, but it isn't something most consumers can set up on their own.
"It's possible to do a lot of the adjustments we do in the router manually yourself, but then you're a more advanced than average user. Our contribution is to do these adjustments automatically and dynamically when needed, and for every user who uses our solution," Skaug said.
ISPS AND CHIP VENDORS
Domos is targeting ISPs and chip vendors with its product. Even though ISPs are looking for ever-cheaper home routers for their customers, they come with a hidden price tag.
"One ISP I was speaking with recently told me that 80 per cent of their support issues are related to wi-fi," Skaug said. Any product that can help with that has the potential to save ISPs' resources, and in turn improve their bottom line.
It has an effect further up the value chain as well: router chip vendors are competing for the ISPs' business, and want to deliver higher value for their partners.
"We are talking to major chip vendors in the US, because we want to get our software into the products that the chip vendors are delivering to the OEMs. We also want to join with the chip vendors when they approach the ISPs. We have close discussions with their marketing departments," Skaug said, but declined to name the vendors in question.
These days Domos is giving away 100 routers to Norwegian users, as a pilot project to test that its product scales properly. The next step is to prove it in an ISP environment, and Skaug told ZDNet "one or two ISPs" will be running a trial later this year.
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