Samsung certain likes to be the first a lot, like when it had the first DivX-certified handset, and now the company has done it again.
With the Wi-Fi Alliance just starting to certify Wi-Fi Direct devices last week, Samsung’s GT-I9000 handset has already been listed on the Wi-Fi Alliance website as Wi-Fi Direct certified. A lot of modern-era Wi-Fi devices are capable of becoming Wi-Fi Direct certified, most likely through system updates as there is no hardware change in the protocol.
That is likely how the Samsung handset will become Direct-capable, a firmware update of some sort.
Wi-Fi Direct allows compatible devices to communicate with each other using Wi-Fi but without the need for a wireless access point or wireless router. This functionality could be added to a lot of existing smartphones on the market with system updates if the manufacturers follow Samsung’s lead.
Result for: compatible devices
Intel has said this weekend that it will sue anyone who uses the HDCP “Master Key” that was recently leaked to the Web.
The crypto key can be used to break the HDCP tech that limits users from recording digital TV streams and Blu-ray discs.
The technology giant, which developed HDCP, says: “There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and owned by the content providers. Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies.”
Earlier in the week, Intel confirmed that the “master key” was authentic, and could be used to break the content protection scheme.
The HDCP master key, which is 28200 letters and numbers, can be used to create “device keys,” thus making all current and future devices “HDCP-free” given the right hardware.
It is unclear how the “master key” was deciphered, but Paul Kocher, the chief scientist at Cryptography Research, gives a possible reason. Kocher says “somebody in the business of making HDCP-compatible devices, who had access to at least 50 individual device keys, would have been able to reconstruct the master key by analyzing “mathematical similarities” in the individual device keys.”
Result for: compatible devices
Google has just introduced its latest Windows application, aptly named Google Media Server which will allow users to share video content and other personal files, most notably from YouTube to UPnP compatible devices such as the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.
The application works alongside the popular Google Desktop and uses the Google Desktop Search for locating media files. To run the Media Server, you will only need a PC with Google Desktop and the UPnP-enabled device. Google Media Server does the rest.
Earlier this month Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted that YouTube had yet to turn a profit and that the site eats most of Google’s outgoing bandwidth as well. The company always hoped to sell ads according to target demographics but have run into hurdles every step of the way. There may be million of viewers watching every second all day but the content is completely unstructured and there is no logical way to make a demographic study.
