Computer tech

Google, banging its make-the-Web-faster drum again, announced a new service today to rewrite and host others' Web pages so browsers can load them faster.

But this time, the service isn't free.

The company's earlier moves in this area haven't cost a cent, but Google will charge for the new Page Speed Service when it arrives for the masses at some undefined time in the future. In the past Google used the argument that a faster Web leads to more activity and, ultimately, more ad revenue for Google, but with Page Speed Service, Google is going the old-fashioned … Read more

Every now and again, the rules for how to build a personal computer change. One of those moments may arrive next year with a high-speed wireless technology that could let people link tablets with big-screen TVs or dock laptops when arriving in the office.

The technology, which uses the 60GHz band of radio spectrum and is designed to transfer as much as 7 gigabits of data per second, matches what many wired connections provide, either inside a computer chassis or through the profusion of ports that perforate laptop sides. A group called the WiGig Alliance is developing it, and the … Read more

Two groups have agreed to work together on a technology designed to making it easier for mobile network users to jump from one company's Wi-Fi network to another.

In the partnership are the Wi-Fi Alliance and Wireless Broadband Alliance, the groups announced today.

The technology in question is the WBA's Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) program, which sets out Wi-Fi roaming requirements--in other words, to make sure that somebody using Wi-Fi on one operator's network can also use it on another operator's network. A big part of that is authentication.

The Wi-Fi Alliance, in turn, will certify the equipment. That's the role the organization has played with Wi-Fi for years, providing some practical help in making the IEEE's 802.11 series of standards. The Wi-Fi roaming product certification should begin in mid-2012, the alliance said.

Roaming technology is common in the mobile realm where 3G rules the roost and 4G is arriving. Users often avoid it, though, given the substantial data fees roaming can incur. It's not clear how charges would work for Wi-Fi roaming, though.

"A trial launched under the program this week between leading operators and vendors will address seamless, secure auto-authentication on multiple operator networks," the groups said in their announcement.

The agreement also tackles hot-spot branding issues that crop up when people are looking for a Wi-Fi network to join, the groups said.

Today's 3G networks are often overtaxed, and Wi-Fi offers one way out by providing alternative data access at high traffic areas. To be effective, Wi-Fi hot spots still need adequate "back-haul" network capacity to link to the Internet and potentially also need good technology for handing off phone calls from the Internet to 3G when a mobile user moves out of the Wi-Fi hot-spot area. … Read more

Apple picked up a patent yesterday that could come in very handy in today's thicket of smartphone-related intellectual property litigation.

The patent gets to the heart of what it means to be a smartphone these days: a user interface with a multitouch display. Patent No. 7,966,578 bears the title "Portable multifunction device, method, and graphical user interface for translating displayed content."

But what's it mean? CNET takes a look at some of the issues involved.

First, what does the patent cover? The patent involves some of the most basic things you can do with a smartphone: touch the screen to move elements shown on it. That could be a touch with one finger, two fingers, or more, and the meat of the patent concerns just how many. Specifically, it has a lot to say about whether a sliding gesture moves a whole page of content or just some elements within a frame.

"Depending on the number of fingers used in the gesture, a user may easily translate page content or just translate frame content within the page content," the patent said.

The abstract of the patent reads as follows:… Read more

SPDY, a would-be standard with which Google hopes to speed up the Web, has taken a baby step outside its founding company's walls.

Strangeloop Networks, a Vancouver company that sells technology and services for hosting content on the Web, now includes SPDY in its products, the company announced yesterday.

SPDY is basically a new and improved HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), the standard that Web browsers and Web servers use to communicate. To develop and test such a technology, a company needs to control both ends of a communication channel, and that's just what Google has done. Google's … Read more

The computing industry has begun a major 24-hour test today to work the kinks out of IPv6, a disruptive but necessary overhaul of the Internet's inner workings.

Starting at midnight, Universal Coordinated Time on June 8--or 5 p.m. PT today--dozens of companies lit up servers, Web sites, and network infrastructure that communicate using Internet Protocol version 6. The test, called World IPv6 Day, provides a bit of deadline, albeit one that's more artificial and less pressing than the Y2K bug's January 1, 2000, zero hour.

Unfortunately, the IPv6 test could disrupt the Net for some … Read more

Nvidia, an emerging power in the world of ARM processors for smartphones and tablets, has published a demonstration game called Glowball the company says shows what can be achieved with its quad-core Kal-El mobile processor project.

In the demo, an internally lit ball rolls around a playing board. With "dynamic lighting," shapes on the ball's exterior casting shadows on stacked barrels, lurking jack-in-the-boxes, hanging rugs, and a creepy clown face. The game's physics engine is wired into the tablet's accelerometer to determine how the ball rolls, the rugs hang, and the barrels tumble.

"All … Read more

Google faces plenty of skeptics when it comes to Chrome OS, the browser-based operating system it hopes will catalyze a Web app future.

But when it comes to selling the vision, the company also has a group of potentially influential allies that already have a foot in the door: partners making a business selling the Google Apps suite.

Google Apps is the suite of Gmail, calendar, word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation Web apps that Google sells in subscription form for $50 per user per year. And although Google Apps hasn't come close to pushing aside Microsoft Office, it does … Read more

Step aside, Google Docs, there's a new JavaScript tour de force in town.

I'm talking about the latest project from programmer Fabrice Bellard, a JavaScript program that emulates an x86 processor fast enough to run Linux in a Web browser.

The JavaScript PC Emulator can do the work of an Intel 486 chip from the 1990s, but doesn't have a built-in floating point unit for numeric processing, Bellard said. Happily, Linux itself can emulate that, and a version of the operating system's core--2.6.20--runs on the foundation.

Bellard published a technical description of the JavaScript PC Emulator … Read more