Technology - USB, Cardbus, PCMCIA, Express Card and More

Life happens.  It’s unpredictable.  This is even more true in the world of technology.   Take the massive atom-smasher they’re building on the border of Switzerland and France, for example.  Called the LHC, or Large Hadron Collider, this particle accelerator is designed to smash protons down into even smaller particles, some of which could potentially create a microscopic black hole which would consume the earth.  No, seriously.  They’re actually being sued by physicists in Hawaii because they might destroy the world as we know it.

While slightly less disastrous, losing your Wi-Fi signal can still ruin your day.  Knowing this, companies are getting smarter.  Kyocera, for example, has recently released the KR2, the swiss-army knife of broadband routers.  Not only does the KR2 send out signal from an ethernet cable, it can also be connected to an EVDO or WAN network, and will automatically switch to the other if one fails.  Pumping out a beefy 802.11n signal, the KR2 is a great SOHO solution, taking the worry about losing your wireless signal out of your life.  Now you have more time to figure out what you’re going to do when strangelets reduce the world to a glowing lump of matter.

We were taught countless times to share when we were children, so I bet many of you have been wanting to share your 3G signal with your friends.  Well, if you haven’t thought of it in the past, I bet you are now.  A handy mobile broadband router would do just the trick.

These devices simply accept whatever card or dongle your service provider (like Sprint or Verizon) gave you gave you, and translate that 3G signal into a standard wifi signal that anyone can share as long as their laptop or device works on 802.11 wireless networks.  You can have your own traveling internet hotspot and share your 3G signal with anyone you want.

Wholesale drop shipping is often touted for its simplicity and efficiency but what are the real advantages to using a drop ship service (such as DropShip Design) for an online retail business?

Reduced Overhead
Brick and mortar costs for retailers can be outrageous - many retailers do not (and cannot) break even unless they are operating on a large enough scale to do so. Then add in shipping and packaging costs to send individual items and overhead expenses are far more than you can afford. Drop shipping reduces overhead.

No Inventory Costs
Drop shipping is based on a model where the retailer does not order from the wholesaler until a customer has actually ordered (and paid for) an item. This eliminates the need for inventory investments and enables retailers to test how well new products will sell without having to actually purchase inventory.

Concentrated Time, Efforts, and Money
The time that would be spent receiving and organizing inventory, printing and labeling, and packing and shipping orders can now be focused somewhere else. It saves time and money so you can focus your efforts and funds on areas where you will get the most bang for your buck, such as improved customer service and marketing your website.

No Minimums
You can order as many or few wholesale items as you want, since you do not place on order with the wholesaler until payment has been received from a customer.

Bigger Product Choice
Not only do you have more products to choose from, but you can sell products that you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise; without size, space, and shipping restrictions, you can sell bulky items such as furniture.

One major problem with bigger businesses is that they don’t really care what their employees or customers really think–just as long as the employees get their work done and the customers keep buying from them. One newer way for companies to get some feedback from both their employees and customers is through enterprise feedback management software. Through this software, companies can be abreast of concerns before they turn into a huge fiasco. More companies should implement enterprise feedback management software in order to keep their business running smoother.

With the price of copper on the rise, network cables are getting progressively more expensive.  There are a lot of choices of types of network cable too.  Do you get Cat5? Cat5e (”e” for “enhanced”)? Cat6?  Plenum rated?  Shielded?

Well, I’m going to give you advice assuming you don’t live directly under too many power lines.  Cat5e is probably the most cost efficient way to go if you think there’s at least the possibility of upgrading to gigabit speeds.  Cat5 without the “e” won’t support above megabit speeds, and Cat6 will but is much more expensive. If you are using video baluns (Video Extenders), however, Cat6 is sometimes a good idea.  Unless you live in a place with a lot of electro magnetic interference, like near a transformer grid, you probably won’t need shielding.

Since wiring an entire house will get expensive, I’d also suggest getting bulk cat5e cable.  You’ll probably have to learn to crimp your own cables, but you’ll probably save hundreds of dollars.

There’s USB to anything you can think of these days.  TOSlink is one of those outputs that are rarely used, and if so, are used only when expensive equipment is concerned.  It is simply an audio output that is transfered using fiber optics.  When it comes to either audio or video, fiber optics is a smart choice simply because with copper wire you are prone to electro magnetic interference that is hard to diagnose.  To avoid unwanted noise, I’d recommend going with a usb to Toslink adapter.  This particular one will give you 5.1 surround sound.

A legitimate concern often faced by those aiming to deliver a VGA signal across a great distance is signal decay; ultimately the VGA signal just isn’t strong enough to make it very far on its own, due to limitations of the technology utilized in VGA cabling. The geniuses at Gefen are both aware of this dilemma and responding to it in their typically innovative fashion: by asking “Who says that a VGA signal has to ride in a VGA cable, anyway?”

The answer to this question is the EXT-VGA-141SR, and what an answer it is. A combination of unorthodox problem-solving and precise engineering, the VGA extender carries the VGA signal 150 ft through, of all things, Category 5 network cable. By transforming the signal so that it can be wired through Cat5, Gefen has completely bypassed the limitations of VGA cabling and utilize the faster and more efficient specifications of ethernet cable.

Now you can carry that signal as far as it wants to go, and farther.

Who says a VGA signal has to ride in a VGA cable, anyway?

With the new HDMI 1.3 standard come beneficial changes, but also the need to upgrade your equipment. So the question is whether its worth it.

HDMI 1.3 includes optional support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD sound, deep color support for over a billion colors, incorporates automatic audio syncing (which I’ve never had problems with), and introduces a new mini-HDMI connector for HD camcorders.

If you’re going to get the new HDMI 1.3 players and receivers, you’ll also have to invest in a new switch as well. We recommend the EXT-HDMI1.3-441 switch from Gefen that takes your 4 sources and switches them on one display.  For home users, the EXT-GEFENTV1.3-441 comes in at a lower price point but with all of the features you need for your home theater.

Although USB is one of the fastest transfer methods for consumer data transfer, it has one crippling limitation: distance. USB can only travel 16 feet. For most consumers, this isn’t a problem. Perhaps the most common use for USB these days is to connect a mouse, iPod or some other peripheral to a computer which only requires a maximum of 6 feet of cable.

There are many reasons for needing to connect USB to a distant location. If you are reading this article, you probably already know that there are many commercial and industrial situations that require this.

Perhaps one of the most economical ways to extend USB is over Cat5. Cat5 cable is cheap, skinny, and easy to install in a wall. But how do you run a USB signal through a Cat5 cable you ask? We recommend the EXT-USB-2.0 by Gefen. It is a simple Sender/Receiver package where all you have to do is provide the Cat5 cable length of your choice. This extender will send your USB signal 150 feet max. over Cat5.

If you don’t need to go all that far and you want the most economical way to extend USB, you should probably check out the USB extension cable.  This has an active repeater attached to the cable that

There are so many types of connectors out there that transfer different signals of obscure origins, but its fun to hear a learn about them.  One of them is the GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus) specification that is known officially as the IEEE-488.  It was originally developed by Hewlett Packard to use with automated test equipment, but has branched out into many different uses, mostly industrial.

The signal has been in use for roughly 30 years already.  It wasn’t intended for use with consumer end personal computers, but Commodore (remember those?) adopted the connector to connect peripherals including disk drives.  HP and Tecktronix also eventually adopted the connector for the same purpose in their 8-bit machines.  In the 1980s HP also adopted the interface for use with certain calculators.  Because it utilized a simple parallel electrical bus, it could share the same electrical signal with computers, controllers, industrial equipment, and so forth, making it a natural choice for universal data sending and receiving during the dawn of mass networking.</p><p>

In many industrial and commercial settings the GPIB connector is still very much in use, although modern computers have long since lost the interface.  To universalize the GPIB interface, products such as the usb to GPIB controller have allowed this legacy connector to live on and operate with today’s computers.